#this time two years ago I was taking myself 0% seriously so I was writing my applications and critiques night of (sometimes un-sober 🤧)

[hawnks]

CONGRATULATIONS OMG

ahhh thank u!! :’) i have done nothing but think about these applications for the past week and i am so glad to be DONE 🎉🎉

also im like….genuinely proud of the manuscripts i sent out. i feel like they’re a good representation of my work and like not really boring ansndjcjjc so fingers crossed

[xpacestuff]

Su/gf crossover things part 2

(sorry if these aren't that good!)

------------------------

Dipper: So... that glowing pink thing?

Steven: Yeah?

Dipper: Why does that happen exactly?

Steven: Oh, I'm not sure... I guess when I don't feel well? It's like a burst of energy when it happens...when i feel like i need to run away or just...-

Dipper: Oh! Like a flight or fight response!

Steven: What is-

Dipper, taking out the journal: Interesting...

Steven: What's a-

Dipper: mumbles to himself

Steven: ...Nevermind.

------------------------

Steven: Hey Mabel! what are you-

Steven: Mabel.

Mabel, putting fake gems on waddles face: Whaaat... he likes it...

Steven: Why didn't you ask me to help you?

Mabel: :D

------------------------

Mabel: OH! YOU CAN DO SHAPESHIFTING, RIGHT?

Steven: Oh, yeah, but-

Mabel: Can you turn into anything!? Like a unicorn! Or a hamster! You can do this hamster ball thing, so!

Steven: uuhh haha... I don't really... like shapeshifting... sorry..

Mabel: Aw, why?

Steven: It's just... some things happened when I did...

Mabel: Like what?

Dipper: Mabel, don't bother him! If he doesn't like it then leave him alone.

Mabel: Yeahh... you're right. Sorry Steven!

Steven: Nono, it's okay, don't worry!

------------------------

this is something different than the "steven has the same powers as bill so dipper is sus" writing post i made lol (basically this one is just silly)

Dipper, walking around in circles: It's just... what does that star symbolize?

Mabel: What do you mean?

Dipper: The star on his shirt, Mabel! Does it have to do with this gem stuff? Is it related to his powers?

Mabel: Uh...Dipper, why are you questioning something like that?

Dipper: Well, he showed me a picture of himself when he was younger, and he always had this star on his shirt! Why?

Mabel: Maybe he just likes stars? Come on, bro. It's just some shirt design.

Dipper: I don't know...

later

Dipper: Steven... okay, so, this will sound weird but what does that star on your shirt mean?

Steven: Huh?

Dipper, pointing at it: You always have that star on your shirt. Does it have to do with your powers or something? Is it some magical shirt?

Steven: Oooh hahaha! No no, it's just my dads merchandise. Just like that pine tree on your hat, I'm guessing?

Dipper: ...Oh. Well then. rips a page from a notebook

Steven: ...Seriously?

Dipper: Yes, seriously.

------------------------

So what if something dangerous happens and steven completely turns pink also starts turns into his buff chad form (haha edgy)

Steven, in that form: Oh, oh no no no... oh no.. shit..

Dipper: Wha-

Mabel: What!?

Steven: Oh god, Mabel and Dipper, d-don't look at me!

Dipper: ...Does that new form... hurt you?

Steven: What? uh.. no.

Steven: I- I didn't want you guys to see me like this!

Dipper: No, no, it's uh, okay!

Mabel: Yeah, we're here! Don't worry!

Steven, slowly getting smaller do his normal form: It's just..

Steven, as his pink glow fades: This just hasn't happened in a while...

later

Mabel: Well, I made you some chocolate milk!

Steven: Thanks, Mabel.

Dipper: So... you better now? You're smaller than when you were well... all pink and glowy

Steven: Yeah, yeah i'm better now. I guess I need to tell this to my therapist though.

Mabel: You better! I don't want to see you hurt :(

------------------------

Steven: Hey do guys wanna fly

Dipper: Wh-

Mabel: YES!

Dipper: Um... what do you mean with "fly"?

Steven: I have floating powers. I can just carry you two and well.. fly around

Mabel: Oh my god!!! really!?

Steven: Yeah!

Dipper: How come you're just randomly suggesting this?

Steven: Well, strange things have been happening here in Gravity Falls, so I just wanted to lighten the mood up a little bit.

Dipper: Alright, then

Mabel: YEAHH!!! LETS FLOAT!

------------------------

Mabel, Dipper and Steven are basically floating now

Mabel: THIS IS AMAZING!!! You can float and summon a hamster ball! That's like, the best thing EVER!

Steven: hahah, yeah! ...Dipper you alright?

Dipper, absolutely worried that he's going to fall: y.. yes.

Steven: I can drop you off-

Dipper: AH- NO!

Steven: I mean like... slowly help you land on your feet again, yknow?

Dipper: Oh, uh, yes... please..

Steven: Alright!

------------------------

Mabel: Tickle attack!

Dipper: Mabel no- hahaha! Stop!

Steven, entering the room: Hey guys

Mabel, staring at him: >:)

Steven: o h n o

------------------------

Dipper: Is this your real form? You can shapeshift, after all.

Steven: Yes?

Dipper: HMM

Steven: How could I prove it to you anyways?

Dipper: I don't know-

Steven: Here, a picture of when I was younger. I can assure you that's me, and my 'real' form haha

Dipper: ...Wow you were small

Steven: You're one to talk

Dipper: Hey!

Steven: Haha!

Steven: Oh, by the way, you know that I don't like shapeshifting, right?

Dipper: Yeah... I guess you don't.

------------------------

Mabel: Uuughh I'm so bored

Dipper: Yeah, me too.

Steven: Do you guys wanna uh, bake something? maybe?

Mabel: Hmmm... like what

Steven: Oh! Have you heard of cookie cats?

Dipper: Cookie cats?

Steven: Here, let me show you a picture of them shows a picture of it from his phone

Mabel: It looks so cute!

Steven: We can bake this if you guys wanna?

Dipper: Well, we don't have anything else to do.

Mabel and Steven: Yeah!

------------------------

steven and dipper are just walking around the woods cause why not

Dipper: Ouch!

Steven: What happened? Are you okay?

Dipper: Yeah, it's just...I just scratched myself on this branch, i didn't even see it.

Steven: Oh, that's no problem! licks his finger

Dipper: uh-

Steven: puts his finger on Dippers wound there!

Dipper, healed: WH- HOW?

Steven: I have healing powers :)

Dipper: You surprise me everyday...

Dipper, whispering: Maybe I should tell Ford... hmm..

------------------------

again before they knew steven is half gem

Mabel: I love gems!

Steven: Me too! Even though some tried to kill me, most of them didn't really know what they were doing. Mostly when they were corrupted.

Mabel: H..huh?

------------------------

Mabel: Your girlfriend sure is cool Steven!

Steven: Yeah, I love her a lot.

Mabel:

Mabel: :")

Steven:

Steven: Uh-

Mabel: No, no. It's just cute. Don't mind me. I hope when I'm a teenager I can find love like this. Haha...

------------------------

Steven: You guys' grunkle is really nice!

Dipper: Yeah, at first he can be a bit mean, but in reality he's a great guy if he wants to be. Trust me, I've been there.

Steven: Aw... I said that cause he gave me something for free. That's a start, I guess?

Dipper: Sure is.

------------------------

Stan, going through a box of old stuff: Ahaha, yeah. Brings back some good old memories.

Steven: Oh, can I look? If you don't mind?

Stan: Sure kid.

Steven: ...

Steven: A... Space Train to the Cosmos CD?

Stan: Yeah, haha. He has the same last name as you. I remember listening to him years ago.

Steven: Mr. Pines... this is my dad. Greg Universe.

Stan: ... What.

------------------------

this is before D & M met Ford, I guess? (if this takes place when D & M arrive to GF for the first time)

Steven: So... what's that?

Dipper: Ah! It's uh- it's nothing. haha...

Steven: Dipper, are you okay? What are you holding there?

Dipper: sighs It's just...

Mabel: IT'S A JOURNAL!

Dipper: Mabel!

Steven: Oh, like a diary? That's cool.

Dipper: It's... more than that, actually.

Mabel: Come on! Let's just tell him!

Dippers: Well, uh, it's basically a journal that has a lot of information written down from all these weird monsters and creatures in Gravity Falls. I still have no idea who the author is.

Steven: Wow... Have you told Mr. Pines?

Dipper: He didn't take it seriously.

Steven: Hmm...

------------------------

Steven: I don't understand your purpose... nor do I understand why you look like that

Steven: But I support you

Soos: Dude it's just square pizza

------------------------

Connie visits again

Steven: Connie! Hey!

Connie: Steven!

they go for a hug, then fuse

Stevonnie: ...Uh-oh.

Mabel: :D WOOOO!!! HOW???

Dipper: >:0

Dipper: WHAT THE FUCK??

------------------------

Ford: This is so interesting... a half-gem, half-human.

Ford: Tell me, what can you do?

Steven: Well, I can summon a shield. I have healing powers. I can bring plants to life. I can bubble things up. I can also have destruct- oh, I uh, I actually don't like talking about that.

Ford: ...Can you show me your shield?

Steven: sure summons his shield

Ford: Wh- how do you do that?

Steven: Well, it's my gem that just summons it when I want to.

Ford: So how powerful is it?

Steven: Oh, pretty powerful, I guess? I was able to protect myself from the diamonds- oh uh, yeah, the uh diamonds are the most strongest gem, by the way. Yellow tried to step on me and tried to uh, hurt me haha but it's okay now.

Ford: Wow! So, how tall and strong are these diamonds? And uh, that's crazy she did that. But do tell me more.

Steven: They're really tall. I don't exactly know how much but as tall as a skyscraper... maybe taller? I'm not sure. The tallest one is White.

Ford: Interesting... I'm guessing you're a diamond too? You were able to protect yourself, after all.

Steven: starts glowing pink a little

Ford: Huh!?

Steven: Ah- sorry, sorry! That just happens sometimes!

Ford: Glowing pink... hm...

------------------------

Imagine they all (Stan, Soos, Steven, Dipper and Mabel) fall into that one bottomless pit. Steven completely panics because the others are falling and he's worried to the point where he just forgets about his floating powers. But after the others start telling some of their stories, he calms down. They turn around to him and ask him if he could tell a story aswell. He tells them about how cool it was to learn combat with his (now girl-)friend Connie. How at that point he learned something very important. The others listen very well to him, and as he finishes the story they, surprisingly, fall out of the bottomless pit. After this Mabel and Dipper ask Steven about the things he has learned and if he could teach them.

------------------------

Mabel and Dipper: wearing their peanut butter and jelly costumes

Steven: Hahaha! That looks nice, why are you dressed like that?

Mabel: Summerween!

Steven: Oh, I've never heard of that! :D

Dipper: Yeah cause they honestly just made all of this up.

------------------------

Steven hanging out with the other teens!!! Very important!!! He needs to learn how to "act his age", y'know what I mean? explore around. take some risks (that are not traumatising, thank you). just be a teenager in general.

(i could make a whole other post for this tbh)

------------------------

Stan: You have literally no legal documents, kid.

Steven: Yeahh...

Stan: I love it!

------------------------

Robbie: And who are you?

Steven: Oh I just, uh, work here.

Robbie: Yeah? With Wendy, huh?

Steven: Oh! Yeah, she's my workmate, I guess?

Robbie: Hm... right.

Robbie: walks past him while elbowing him in an aggressive way

Steven, whispering: Yikes... scary.

Dipper, from the back: I know right!?

------------------------

Mabel, goofing around, doing some weird stuff: hehehe

Steven: Wow... thinking about it, she'd get along with Amethyst.

------------------------

Mabel: gasp Oh my gosh! Steven, look at Waddles and Lion!

Lion and Waddles: literally just staring at eachother

Mabel and Steven, with star eyes: Awww....

------------------------

Wendy: Dude, your girlfriend seems really cool.

Steven: Oh, yeah! She's great. She's really smart and pretty, she can sing and play the violin... she can sword fight-

Wendy: Wait wait wait... sword fight?

Steven: Yeah!

Wendy: Your girlfriend rides a pink lion and can sword fight? That's so cool!

Steven, full of love: Ah, yeah... she's amazing...

------------------------

Hope y'all enjoyed this one. This is the second part! Even though none of these are in any order, so it doesn't matter. But here's the first one. Also, I just wanted to say something about the shapeshifting thing: I do enjoy posts where Steven shapeshifts to make his arm or whatever longer to help. It's really cute, but in my opinion (again, my opinion) I feel like after steven turning into a cat and kaiju monster, he'd be way too uncomfortable to shapeshift. It'd also remind him of when he became taller, buff and was glowing pink. That's just what I think. :-)

[fk12b]

Mr and Mrs Mcgarrett

Steve McGarrett x Williams!Reader

Plot: The chilling adventures of the McGarretts

Main Characters: Task Force

Prompts:

318 - “Why can’t you appreciate my sense of humor?”

319 - “I’m trying, okay?”

340 - “I didn’t think you could get any less romantic”

360 - “You’re a nerd”

Warnings: Nothing, just a usual day in Hawaii. A bad joke that had to be done, and several bad jokes that needed to be done or else I would have exploded. Sorry, not sorry.

Word Count: 7397 Words

A/N: Hello friends! seeing that the world needs more Steve McGarrett, I decided to give this man some love. Hope you enjoy some Hawaii Five-0.

Based on this song -> What I Like About You - The Romantics

Steve wrapped his arms tighter around you, bringing you closer to his chest. He had heard a strange noise coming from downstairs. Surely it was just his mind playing tricks on him. After all, it was… he slightly turned his head to look at the clock in the nightstand, 6:15 AM? He shook off the silly thoughts and laid his head back down on the pillow, thinking Eddie might have dropped something, snuggling closer to you. When he got comfortable enough, he heard the noise again, almost jumping out of bed but already having an idea of what might have caused the noise.

“Stevie?” you mumbled stirring slightly “Was that you?”

“No, I’m right here babe” Steve sat up leaning his weight on one elbow to kiss your cheek “Go back to sleep” you hummed in acknowledgment.

Steve held his breath to concentrate and listen to any noise, closing his eyes and pursing his lips for a second. That’s when he heard it, a faint curse, that would have missed if he wasn’t focusing that intently. With an angry huff, he shot out of bed, not bothering to put on a shirt, and taking a broom from the corridor’s cabinet.

Once he reached the stairs, he descended them carefully, yet quickly, avoiding the parts that creaked. While Steve neared the kitchen, where he was sure the noise came from, he wondered why Eddie didn’t bark if it was a stranger who broke in. His frown deepened when he heard happy hums coming from the room. Now that is weird. Rising the broom higher and adjusting his grip, he stepped into the kitchen.

“Danny?” Steve’s brow deepened, once he saw his partner standing in his kitchen wearing his apron “What are you doing here at this unholy hour?!”

“Good morning, brother in law! Nice to see you too” Danny Williams cheered once he turned around to place a plate of pancakes in the table and saw him standing there “You neanderthal animal, do a favor to the humanity and put on a tank top at least. What are you doing with a broom, by the way?” he frowned he noticed the object in his hands

“I’m the Neanderthal?!” Steve shouted flipping out and then remembering that you were sleeping upstairs and lowered his voice to a whisper “I thought someone broke in!” He whisper-shouted smacking his brother in law in the head with the broom repeatedly “It’s my day off and it’s too early to put up with you, I thought I wouldn’t have to see your face today” Steve smacked him one more time before Danny grabbed it and started hitting him back with the broom.

“You could at least thank me” the short blonde man huffed smacking Steve in the face “I made you breakfast” Steve let out an angry groan before retrieving the broom but he wasn’t fast enough and Danny rounded the table bumping into a chair in the process.

“Hey, hey!” you stepped into the kitchen rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, messy hair and wearing one of your husband’s t-shirts. Steve smiled at the sight of you, thinking you looked adorable, even more so than usual, at this hour of the day “What is all this havoc about?”

“Tell your husband to show some gratitude when someone cooks breakfast for him” You instantly woke up at the sound of your brother’s voice. Apparently, you didn’t notice that he was here until he spoke, not expecting him today at all since it was his and Steve’s day off.

“Danno!” you squealed walking up to him to greet him with a tight hug and a kiss to his cheek “I didn’t expect you today, isn’t today your day off?”

“Hey! Do me a favor and don’t call me Danno, uhum? I thought it was forgotten. Well, at least my baby sister is happy to see me, so I’ll let that go” he returned the kiss and went to serve the pancakes “I felt lonely at home, the kids went on a school trip and I decided to visit my other two kids” the joke made Steve groan and roll his eyes while he moved to the fridge to take out the juice.

“I can’t have one day to myself and sleep in with my gorgeous wife next to me, without anyone bothering me?” Steve mumbled placing the bottle at the table and kissed your pouty lips when he walked past you on his way to the cabinet to pick three glasses.

“I heard that!” Danny pointed the spatula at him “No buttered pancakes for you”

You couldn’t help but let out a chuckle, shaking your head at their antics, which soon turned into a laugh when Steve mumbled something around the lines of being too soon to put up with your brother and that he didn’t want buttered pancakes anyway, while he took a seat next to you. Once he was settled and took a blueberry from the bowl in front of you, you placed your hand at the nape of his neck to bring him closer to you for a loving kiss, to kiss his deep frown away.

“Guys, come on! PDA!” Your brother groaned making Steve break the kiss in annoyance.

“My house, my kitchen, my wife, my rules” He replied kissing you again, deeply this time, making your brother roll his eyes in annoyance.

“Oh, come on! It's my sister, you SEAL. And there are kids around” your brother pointed to the kitchen door, and you both turned your heads to see Eddie happily wagging his tail and happily barked. Then he laid down and placed his paws in front of his eyes as if to hide from you two kissing. “Good boy!” Danny chuckled throwing a berry at Eddie who cached it in the air and trotted away.

“Are you turning my dog against me?” Steve squinted his eyes at your brother.

“I swear you behave like an old married couple” you mumbled letting out a full laugh and taking a bite of your pancakes before they cooled down. You moaned savoring the buttered goodie “Danno, you’re the best at making pancakes” your brother smirked at you and flipping the spatula in his hand with a victorious grin before he returned to the task of cooking. “Hey! Give them back!” you squealed when Steve stole your plate.

“Nope” Your husband denied turning away from you when you grabbed his arm too pull him towards you, and stuffed his face with an excessive amount of your pancakes. He said something but you couldn’t understand him.

“Swallow first, then talk” you softly slapped his cheek and tried to take his pancakes instead, but he grabbed them away from you too. “Steve!” you whined crossing your arms over your chest.

“You’re not having pancakes until you admit I’m the best,” he said after swallowing the bite and having some juice.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Danny said placing another plate of the buttered goodies in front of you “King of pancakes to the rescue” he joked kissing your head and taking a seat in front of you, after he finished serving the breakfast, and taking your previous plate of pancakes. He slapped Steve’s hand away with the spatula when he tried to reach back for it.

“Not fair” he mumbled into his coffee “he never butters my pancakes” you laughed at your pouty husband.

“Y/N/N, can you tell your husband to put on a shirt? He can cut the pancakes with his nipples” Danny groaned into his coffee.

“I could, but someone keeps stealing my clothes” Steve turned in his chair to glare at Eddie, who was sprawled on the floor and pointed a finger to him “Eddie stop stealing my clothes!” you laughed at his antics while your brother rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, make him put on a shirt or something”

“Wait” you rolled your eyes and stood up walking up to the fridge to retrieve some sticky notes from the block you kept there to write down reminders or shopping items or, in Steve’s case, just silly love notes and bad puns to make you smile. You took two of them, one green and the other orange, and walked back to your husband, who raised an eyebrow at you, to place them over his nipples with a pat on each one, making him chuckle and kissed his cheek before sitting back in your chair “There, PEGI 12” you all laughed and went back to your breakfast, the commander making sure the stickies stayed in place every each second.

The peace didn’t last long, though. Your phone started to ring, making you groan, since you were the one out of the three, who didn’t have a day off today, which means that you’ll have to go earlier than usual to the palace. You quickly apologized and stood from the table to retrieve your phone which was on your bag in the living room. “Williams-McGarrett” You answered once you noticed it was a call from Jerry.

Five-0 years ag-0…

“If you keep frowning, your face will get stuck like that” You cheered knocking on your brother’s, Danny Williams, office “How’s my favorite bro doing?” you smiled once he looked up from the papers he was looking at.

Since Grace and Charlie were at school and you haven’t yet visited your brother at work since you landed three days ago, and he probably was neglecting his diet, you decided to visit him and have lunch with him, even though he might be swamped with work.

“Y/N/N!” He cheered once he saw you standing there and stood up with a smile, engulfing you in a bear hug “What’s my favorite Williams doing here?”

“Taking care of my bro, of course. Since the kids are at school, I had nothing to do. And please,” you rolled your eyes breaking away from the hug and taking a seat at his desk before placing the take-away on it, careful not to dirt anything, while he closed the door after you to have more privacy “Everyone in Hawaii knows Grace and Charlie are your favorite Williams”

“Not true” He sat back and started opening the bags.

“Yes true,” Grabbing your bag which contained a taco bowl, you leaned into your seat. “How’s the case going?”

“Well,” he reclined in his chair, letting a long huff of breath widening his eyes and propping his feet on the table. “Not well, but we found a lead that hopefully will clarify things, we’ve gone from a dead-end to another” you nodded taking a bite from your food “By the way” you hummed in acknowledgment “Why can’t you eat tacos like normal people?” you squinted your eyes at him and threw a used napkin at him, making him protest.

While you ate, you and your brother made plans for the week suggesting activities that the kids might like, and once the trash was discarded and the desk was clean again, you both relaxed a bit while exchanging all the stories that happened these past months, trying to take his mind out of this stressful case. Even though they only have been six months to Danny they felt like six long centuries, he missed having his youngest sister, who he felt the closest to around. You were about to tell him another one of your college stories when someone knocked on the door.

“Oh, sorry I didn’t know you had company,” Kono said as she opened the door “Oh my god, Y/N? It’s been a long time!” she cheered when you turned around to face the familiar voice and stood up to hug her “How have you been?”

“Kono!” you gave her a tight hug “I’ve been good, but every day I felt homesick, how have you been?”

“I’ve been great thanks for asking, but did you miss your brother that much?” She joked making you chuckle and Danny roll his eyes to the back of his head.

“Nah, I just missed the Hawaiian nice weather” you joked back making your brother gasp while you two laughed. But you instantly pouted hugging him when he said he wouldn’t make any more buttered goodies for you.

“By the way Danny, that industrial ship was another dead end” the officer commented making your brother groan throwing himself to his chair facepalming. “McGarrett went to talk to Chin to see if he could get something from those drives”

“I see you guys are still busy with this case” you commented frowning.

“You have no idea” Kono sighed “This is the longest case so far” she groaned grabbing her hair in frustration. “And the weirdest” she added after letting a huff of air

“If it wasn’t for those drives, we would have solved this case long ago” Danny groaned.

“I see,” you trailed off considering your options “well, then, I won’t be distracting you anymore, you’ve got a lot of work”

“Oh no, you can stay as much as you want” Your brother quickly reassured you, standing up from his chair and walking up to you to place an arm around your shoulders “It’s fun having you around, and besides, I’ve missed you. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do”

“I don’t want to interfere with anything” you quickly commented.

“Don’t even say it” Kono quickly stopped you “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you around”

“Wanna join us for the rest of day?” your brother suggested, almost pleadingly, squeezing your arm “We need a lot of moral support right now”

“Okay, that sounds funnier than binging some crappy show alone” your mood quickly lightened at the prospect of spending some more time with your ohana and seeing how things worked around.

“Amazing!” Kono cheered walking up to the door “let’s see if Kelly discovered something” She said leading the way.

It was a short walk from your brother’s office to the briefing room. You were so engrossed in a conversation, catching up and talking nonstop with the both of them, that you failed to notice a pair of eyes looking intently at you, following your moves along the corridor. Steve had an idea of who you were, given that his partner never shut up about you.

“Hey, are you even listening to me?” Chin frowned waving a hand in front of the commander’s face and snapped his fingers grabbing his attention. He turned around to discover the cause of the distraction but saw nothing.

“Yeah” Steve cleared his throat “You were talking about” he trailed off waiting for a revelation and waving his hand around before crossing his arms over his chest, looking apologetically and trying to smile sweetly at his colleague to no avail.

“As I was saying” Kelly started again when Jerry’s outburst interrupted him once again, placing his hands on his hips exasperated, grabbing everyone’s attention.

“Y/N/N!” He stood up from his chair and walked up to you to greet you properly.

“Jerry!” you cheered giving him a big hug “long time no see, big guy. What you’ve been up to?”

“Nothing much, the usual” Jerry shrugged. “With my theories and helping these guys”

“Good to see nothing's changed then” you smiled at him and jumped when someone slapped your arm.

“You never cease to interrupt me or what?” Chin gave you a rather serious, yet playful look that soon turned into a grin.

“Chin!” you hugged him tightly too “Do you ever age? You haven’t changed a thing!”

“You should come here more often” Chin joked patting your head.

“Steve, this my baby sister” Danny introduced you to the rather attractive tall man “I don’t know if you have ever met her”

“Commander Steve McGarrett” the young man introduced himself extending a hand towards you, which you gladly took and shook it “And you must be the infamous Y/N, it’s like I already know you, Danno never shuts up talking about you, Y/N this, Y/N that. I’m happy to finally put a face to the name” he continued still shaking your hand.

Now, your relationship with the team was curious, to say the least, you knew everyone and considered them your ohana. Commander Steve McGarrett was the exception. Even though he was one of your brother’s best friend, you were pretty sure were joined at the hip, you never had the occasion to meet him in person, or spend some time with him yet. You knew perfectly who he was because Danny always told you everything that happened during the day when he called you or went to visit him, to keep you updated. But due to your busy schedule with your work and studies and his duties you never had spare time to spend together. And, of course, every time you came back home to spend some time in Hawaii, Danny preferred to spend that time with you alone and the kids.

“Likewise, commander” you nodded giving him a smile, that he thought was brighter than the sun, and before releasing your hand he brought it to his lips to kiss it.

“Ahem, Y/N/N?” Your brother grabbed your attention and hastily turning around to face him making your hair flow. “Why don’t you take a seat over here?” he said patting the chair next to him. You nodded with a smile and quickly moved to that spot, failing to notice how your brother sent daggers to a rather distracted Steve.

“So” Steve cleared his throat, ignoring Danno’s glares, grabbing back the team's attention “apart from the empty industrial ship, do we have any advances on the drives” He wondered turning to Jerry and Chin.

“Nothing. Not a clue” the Lieutenant shook his head defeated “The laptop is too damaged to take anything from it, and despite having tried everything, we can’t manage to get the drives back to work. They are damaged or empty”

“So basically what you’re saying is that we are back to the start again?” Kono stated as everyone grew frustrated.

“Well not really form the start” Jerry chimed in “I might think that the drives might be encrypted, being “empty” and “not working” a way of disguise. But it will take probably days to decrypt them” that grabbed your focus, being encryption your field of work amongst other areas, and raised your hand.

“Yes, Y/N/N?” Your brother nudged you.

“I don’t want to interfere because I know you are a thousand times better qualified than me, but” now you had everyone listening intently at you. “Have you tried combining the hard disk and the memories of the laptop with the drives?”

“What?” Chin raised an eyebrow “How?”

“Maybe the motherboard is not that damaged and doing a ‘quick fix’ you can get the drives to work again” you suggested pointing to the damaged laptop.

“Suggested the nerd” Danny joked earning a slap on the head from Kono.

“Can I take a look?” you looked at everyone eager to help until your eyes landed on the commander who was in charge.

“Honestly, a fresh pair of experts hands would be welcomed” Jerry requested to Steve who motioned for you with his hand, accepting your offer.

“What’s your plan?” Chin stood next to you while Jerry passed the laptop to you.

“First we open what’s left of this device” you suggested grabbing the small screwdriver Ortega offered you. “Thanks” Once the screws were off the cover you opened it, frowning at what you found “Amazing! I've never seen such a fried circuit. Someone took time doing this to make sure it wouldn’t work”

“Great news” Kono complained “Our only clue gone trash”

“Oh don’t worry, everything can be saved. There’s always a way in” you reassured continuing to unclasp things and disconnecting wires, not noticing how everyone shared a look, except Jerry who was carefully and intently watching your every move.

“Even when the laptop is burned and beaten to smithereens?” Steve wondered really curious resting his arms at the right end of the table very curious about your methods, while Kono and your brother stood opposite him.

“It’s the software that counts, not the hardware” you joked giving the commander a thousand watts smile.

“You’re a nerd” your brother picked on you making Kono slap his arm again, and earning a glare from you.

“Thanks, Kono. And you’re an idiot” you retorted placing on the table the fans you disconnected.

“Still, that doesn’t change the fact that you are a computer nerd” you rolled your eyes

“IT engineer, Danno” you let out a breath through your nose disconnecting carefully another part.

“What’s the difference?” Danny kept on joking “still a nerd and a computer nerd”

“I didn’t think you could get any less romantic” Everyone wholeheartedly laughed at that.

“Why can’t you appreciate my sense of humor like that?” Danny playfully complained.

“Because you’re ugly” you quickly replied putting down the last part and smiling at your brother.

“I wouldn’t have summarized it better, sweetheart” Steve joined the banter with a laugh earning a glare from your brother before going back to examine the important parts, mainly the drives and disks.

“I love you, too” Danny grimaced throwing a piece of wire at him.

“Very bad news and very good news” you cheered, once the laptop was dismounted, placing on the table the last piece of the laptop. “Bad news first?”

“Shot” Steve said straitening himself and placing his hand on his hips. “We’re immune to them by now”

“The hard disk is damaged, but I think it can be saved with a bit of love” you explained while giving Jerry said part and looked at the boss.

“And the good news?” Kono spoke “We really need to hear very good news”

“The cache memory and the solid-state drive are intact” you passed them to Chin while your brother gave you a deeply confused frown.

“In Christian, for the ones that aren’t nerds like you,” your brother asked for an explanation with a sweet smile.

“The cache memory stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. So whatever the owner did last, this sneak will tell us” You tried to explain as best as you could, making sure everyone followed.

“That’s what I said but they didn’t listen” you chuckled at your brother's childish behavior.

“Okay, that’s great” Steve cheered pointing at you “That’s amazing, what else?”

“It’s actually very simple and common,” you said shrugging of his comment and continued with your explanation “And as the hard disk” you pointed to the part Jerry was holding, which he showed everyone “Is mostly used for mass storage, the solid-state drive, commonly known as SSD” you pointed to the long and rectangular piece Chin was holding, which he also showed “Is used for boosting, the operative system, Windows for example, and most used applications.”

“We have the pieces of the puzzle. We only need to connect them” Jerry agreed having understood what was your point “How do you plan on doing that?” he questioned looking at you curiously.

“Well, I need a motherboard, and wires” you requested biting your lip looking to the discarded pieces and then at Jerry “And a computer of course”

“This way my lady” Jerry motioned for you to follow him.

"Danno?" you called from the back of the room "Can you please bring me a black small box from the bag that I left on your office?"

"Of course!" he answered dropping the screw he was playing with to go retrieve the item you asked for in a hurry.

You went back to the desk holding too many things and yellow wires around your neck. Everyone was in awe at how fast you mounted the parts together, sharing with Jerry and Chin every now and then

the different options you had. Danny came back to the room moments later, waving a small box in his hand.

“Yes!” you squealed when your brother passed you the small box “you’re the best” you added fist-bumping your brother.

“What’s that?” Steve said picking the small black box in his hands to examine it.

“It’s a crafted CPU” you explained while you linked the yellow wires to motherboard “It can work as a computer if you connect a screen to it”

“Cool,” he nodded giving a pout of approval placing it back on the table.

“Great” you smiled once you made sure every wire was well linked “Next step, connect this baby to a computer”

Steve already pulled the chair from the computer for you. Giving him a curt nod and a smile, that he gladly returned, you plugged on of the yellow wires from the motherboard to the CPU of the computer and another to your black box, before you took a seat. Once you were comfortable and settled Chin passed you the drivers that were driving the team crazy, plugging them to the box and proceeded to work away on them typing very fast.

Chin, Kono and your brother had wandered away and scattered around the room giving you space for you to work properly, while Jerry grabbed a chair and took a seat to your left sharing his theories with you. Steve genuinely curious about what you were doing and eager to learn more from you, even though he had no idea about what you were doing, grabbed another chair and sat to your right. In a couple of minutes, you had managed to prepare everything and hesitated your hands hovering over the keyboard.

“What’s wrong?” Steve worried genuinely concerned while Jerry placed a reassuring hand on your shoulder.

“I’m about to break a handful of dozens of rules,” You said frowning to the screen and looking intently to the enter key you index finger hovering over it, touching but not pressing “The full weight of the law can drop on whoever presses this button. Like an anvil”

Before you even get to finish your speech, Steve had leaned forward and with no hesitation whatsoever, pressed the enter key and leaned back on his chair crossing his arms over his chest with a satisfied look, making you turn in your seat to look at him with your eyes wide open and your mouth slightly ajar. He simply raised an eyebrow and shrugged one shoulder back. Could someone make the carefreeness look hot and rock some bicep tattoos? Apparently, it’s big hot damn yes from Commander McGarrett.

Those thoughts stopped right there when a ding rang around the room that something happened with the drives. Suddenly, Jerry laughed grabbing your attention and looking back to the screen as well as the rest around the room, all of them gathering around you.

“Did it work?” Lieutenant Kelly wondered hopefully, standing behind Jerry “If it worked you have beer supply for life”

“I don’t know if it worked” You frowned reading the screen that asked for a password to be entered.

“Yes, it did” Jerry nodded eagerly

“It asks for some credentials” You frowned trying to look for patrons “They look like some GPS coordinates” you suggested making Steve lean forward resting an arm over the back of your chair, to take a better look at the screen.

“Try the industrial ship location” The commander suggested passing you a piece of paper with messy scribbled numbers which you quickly typed them.

“We’re in” You cheered high fiving Jerry “It worked!”

“Good job, kid” Chin smirked affectionately patting your head “She’s good” he stated the obvious whispering to your brother.

“She’s amazing” he confirmed looking down at you with a proud smile, placing both of his hands on your shoulders and giving them a squeeze

Meanwhile, you continued analyzing the estrange documents in the devices. Someone took time making sure no one could read them. Almost anyone. They didn’t take you into account. The level of encryption was something you have never seen before. This person was very good but not as good as you. No one was better than you.

“Guys” you suddenly exclaimed instantly grabbing the commander’s attention, who leaned forward and rested his arm over the back of your chair. “These are not simple drives. They are part of a fallen military satellite.”

“How do you know that,” Steve asked growing curious every second and not licking a single bit where this case was heading.

“The company I worked before for worked with putting into orbit satellites, mostly for defense. Of course, they never stay up long, they have a certain period of life. Some months ago one of the old ones came back down and the location where it was supposed to land was empty, so the company assumed that it disintegrated and was destroyed in the process, not taking into account that someone might have stolen it. At least we made sure to retrieve any important data from them. It’s mostly scrapped material, but some parts can be reused” You quickly explained to everyone “Now someone here reused these drivers and they are hiding footprints, amongst other things that are encrypted” you displayed a footprint causing Steve to frown in thought before he widened his eyes in realization.

“Of course we couldn’t find anything” the blue-eyed man groaned running a hand down his face “We didn’t look where we needed to. Their headquarter is located underground” He stood up giving instructions to Kono, Chin and your brother who quickly got into action. “Y/N do you have anything else to do today?” you turned to look at him but he stopped “Change of plans you’ll be working with us. Can you take this with you?”

“Yes, but most of it is still encrypted and I need to work on it. Give me a second, though” you quickly got into action transferring everything to your black box.

“Good, you’ll be our eyes. Jerry, Danno already went to warn Lou, can you go to him and explain everything?”

“Coming right up” Jerry nodded patting you on the shoulder.

Once everything was transferred to the box you disconnected everything and switched off the computer and disarming the parts from the motherboard and McGarrett helped you secure the parts, given they were important proofs in the case.

The walk to the silver Camaro RS, where your brother was waiting for you, leaning in the car and holding your purse, was filled with small chitchat, that consisted of you talking about your work these past months, and jokes. The conversation flowed easily between the two of you. It felt like you knew each other from a long time ago. Danny, noticing the happy smiles his partner sent you, he couldn’t help but sent a warning glare to Steve, who simply rolled his eyes and got in the driver seat, like the overprotective big brother he was while he opened the passenger door for you.

You, of course, didn’t notice that exchange between them, too worried about the discovery wanting to get back to it as soon as possible. Once you were settled and heard the reassuring click of the seatbelt, you started drumming away with fast taps on the keyboard, tuning out any other noise except the soft hum of the radio playing some station. Steve glanced at you amazed at how fast you focused on your work what made share a look with cranky man at the back seat throw the rearview mirror, who shrugged back at him clearly very used to that.

“Y/N/N?” Danny called from the back seat, leaning forward between the two seats when you hummed in acknowledgment not taking your focus from the screen “Aren’t your fingers sore?”

“Nah” you replied pouting your lips pressing enter harsher than normal to make your point “I’m used to it”

“You caveman, tell me again why we need to bring her with us?” Danny questioned his partner with steam almost coming out of his ears.

You turned to your brother with a curious look “Danny, this is a really coarse tracker, even though the hardware is not. Amazing work but raw, it can’t work properly if it’s too far away from the area” you tried to reassure your brother in your sweet voice. “Besides someone needs to take care of you, so you won’t do anything stupid. Don’t be a whiner”

“I’m trying, okay?” he was clearly irritated, At what you didn’t know.

Danno?”

You knew your voice had a way of calming your brother down “Yes, kiddo?” His voice immediately softened.

“If this is your car, why is Commander McGarrett driving it?” Clearly, you couldn’t wait to tease him back.

Danny’s smile dropped from his face and turned into a frown as soon as Steve snorted “Because this animal has control issues” he slapped Steve’s arm.

“What?” Steve, exclaimed very offended “Control issues? Why do you have to make up such lies now?”

“What,” Danny turned to Steve annoyed and voice rising “Lies? What lies? If not lying, then why do you always have to drive my car? How do you explain that, hm?”

The commander’s hands left the steering wheel, “Is it wrong for me to spoil a friend, I’m chauffeuring you around. I want you to feel special”

“Well, that’s just hogwash,” Danny said to Steve “Keep your hands on the wheel, you idiot”

“Neat” you whispered in awe tuning out their banter looking back to your laptop when the screen flashed showing a map of the local area.

“What?” The men turned to look at you but Danny force Steve’s face forward with his hand

“I reprogrammed the software of they used in the satellite, that was used as a tracker, and now have access too” you laughed in happiness.

“She’s a genius” Your brother shook his head in bewilderment.

“Thank god you took all the stupid with you then” Steve joked whispering stifling a laugh, what sent the two men into another round of bantering.

After some turns, maneuvers and car overtaking, the three of you finally arrived in no time to the area where the SWAT team was deployed and getting ready for the action, and followed the pair to the van, laptop under your arm.

“Commander McGarrett, Detective Williams” Lou Groover greeted as soon as he saw you. “I see you brought great company with you,” He said smiling at you.

“Captain Groover is good to see you again” you smiled back shaking his hand in greeting.

“Little Williams will be our eyes once we’re inside the building” Steve explained while Lou led you three to the control point where he indicated a place for you to settle where two men were getting ready some devices.

“Ready for some action, Little Williams?” Lou teased playfully raising an eyebrow at you.

“Ready as ever I will be” You confidently nodded and walked up to the SWAT agents who helped you get everything ready after greeting each other, while you explained your plan to the captain and the chaotic duo.

“My men are at your service” Lou patted you on the shoulder once you were properly seated “Marshal, Rogers, she’s in charge”

“Yes, sir” they replied with a nod and handed you an earpiece which you quickly placed in your ear.

“Be careful” you turned to the pair and with a salute, they went to meet the rest of the team “Radio check” you said into the intercom to make sure everyone heard you.

“Read you loud and clear” McGarrett was the first one to reply receiving a series of confirmation of the rest of the team.

“Perfect” you acknowledged typing away on your laptop “I have accessed the building security to have more control of the area” you informed signaling to the man on your left to control the cameras on the inside while you commanded the other SWAT to control the cameras on the outside and perimeter.

The mission flowed smoothly from there with your coordination and skills. The building was evacuated in no time and bad guys were on their way to be interrogated. After high fiving and congratulating the two SWATs that worked along with you for a successful operation, you thanked them and exited the van to meet the rest of the Five-O team.

McGarrett was talking to a SWAT when you came into view and caught his attention, once he noticed you approaching them. He bid goodbye to the agent in a hurry and parted ways to walk up to you. Usually, you were wary of any uniformed man, but you had acknowledged the fact that the tactic gear looked especially good on him

“Danny never told me you were an expert tactician” The tall blue-eyed man smiled at you.

“Even though I’ve worked with military, I can assure you, I’m very far from being an expert” you couldn’t contain the shy smile of your own you looked at your shows.

“You did a great job today, even more so than your brother” the commander chuckled really amazed at what he had witnessed today “We would have been lost if you hadn’t helped us today”

“Is my duty as a civilian to help the authorities as much as I can” You gave him a curt nod, not believing a word he was saying. “The Five-O and SWAT teams are the real heroes. I’m just a mere IT girl”

“A great one in your job” McGarrett complimented crossing his arms over his chest “There’s a vacant in the team for you if you want it”

You pondered his offer for a moment, were you really ready to get back into action? “Thanks for the offer, Steve” this was the first time you called him by his first name and his heart skipped a bit “but, even though I love my job and technology, I’m not one of those people that want to spend the rest of their life sitting in a chair typing away until their fingerprints are gone” declined his offer with a sad smile looking into his beautiful eyes.

“Tell me you’ll think about it at least”

“Of course” you nodded at him looking to where your brother was talking to an officer “I’ll think about it. It was a pleasure working with you, Lieutenant Commander McGarrett” You saluted him with a happy smile.

“It was my pleasure” Steve returned the salute and watched you walk up to your brother with content yet forlorn look.

Dinner was almost ready when the oven dinged signaling that the pumpkin pie was fully cooked. All it needed now was cool down.

“Is that pumpkin pie I smell?” Danny startled you making you hastily turn around and almost dropping the pie.

“No pie for you” squinting your eyes at him you placed the pie in the windowsill so none of the kids, nor Danno could eat it.

“Now you’re just being mean” He walked up to the fridge to pick a water bottle “You did amazing today. And you really must have impressed Steve with your hacking skills, because he doesn’t offer a place to everybody”

“Oh, you heard that?” You wondered wiping the counter with a clean rag.

“Steve told me” Danny clarified after taking a gulp from the water bottle “He’s my partner. We don’t have secrets with each other” you laughed but your brother could tell something was off. “What’s wrong?” he wondered placing an arm around your shoulders.

“I got a call from ACID today” You placed your arm around his middle without looking at him. “They offered me a job”

“Whoah!” Your brother cheered placing his hands on your shoulders and turning you to face him “That’s the company you wanted to work for since you started your degree. That’s amazing. Wait, a second why aren’t you smiling, and jumping?” he frowned upon seeing your expression.

“It’s in the Mainland” you simply said shrugging one shoulder.

“And?” his frown deepened, “I thought it was your dream. It seemed like a good opportunity for you. That’s why you never stopped talking about it”

“I don’t know” you sighed “I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t want to be sat all day in front of a screen” you hugged your brother “Even though, I love it. It’s a big company and I don’t what to be treated like a number”

“Then, are you going to accept Steve’s offer?” Danny hugged you back kissing your cheek.

“I don’t know, Danno” you started swaying “Office work is not my thing”

“You’re a genius” your brother reassured you “You’ll find the answer. Besides you still have a lot of time to think over the situation. And whatever you decide” he paused to cradle your face with his hands “I’ll support you”

“Thanks, Danno” You smiled brightly and hugging him tight until the doorbell rang.

“Always” he kissed your head and went to answer the door “Do me a favor and check on that pie!”

“Aunty Y/N?” Grace called for you from the backyard, where she and Charlie were playing “Aunty Y/N!” Charlie repeated.

“Yes, monkeys!” you shouted walking through the corridor making them laugh. In a second they were running towards you and when you noticed them they had already tackled you to the ground, making you tickle them in return.

“You can have my bed tonight” Grace suddenly squealed “No, no. You can sleep with me!” Charlie offered.

You chuckled at your niece and nephew's behavior “What are you talking about? Where are you going to sleep, then Grace?”

“We don’t want you to go” Charlie pleaded with puppy eyes while his sister copied him.

“You nosy little things” you softly said tickling them and earning a laugh from them “Guys, I’m not going anywhere, yet” you reassured them hugging them to you “We still got a week to do plenty of things” you started kissing their cheeks a million times making them giggle like crazy. “But for now let’s eat some pumpkin pie with vanilla ice and cream cheese frosting”

You three stood up and when you saw they weren’t ready yet you ran to the kitchen to grab the first piece of the pie. However, when you arrived there the pie was nowhere to be seen.

“Danno!” you shouted grabbing walking to the door “Did you stole my pie?” you asked irritated.

What you didn’t expect was two full-grown men fighting over a half-eaten pie. More like commander McGarrett, holding the pie over his head with a hand and holding your brother back with the other, while struggling to masticate a big bite of food. Grabbing a chair, you placed it next to the door, to steal back your pie. The commander didn’t notice that, and you managed to reach the kitchen to serve the rest of the pie for your niece, nephew and you.

“Did Uncle Steve, steal the pie again?” Grace asked you watching how you placed a big ball of ice cream on top of the pie. “He’s on a donut diet” Charlie eagerly placed his plate next to you so you could place the ice cream on top of his piece too

Definitely, you didn’t know what that meant, nor wanted to know “Yes, Uncle Steve was being a pie thief”

Later on, after you five had dinner, you were sure you hadn’t ever seen a mean eat like that and be that fit, Steve was enjoying the sun, sitting on a chair in your brother’s backyard and you quietly approached him holding two beers.

“Hey there, Little Williams” Steve smiled upon seeing you, offering you a seat next to him.

“Hey there, Commander McGarrett” You returned the smile offering him a beer that gladly accepted.

“Steve” he interrupted taking the beer from you “My name is Steve”

“My name is Y/N, though” You tilted your head to the side to look at him.

“I like Little Williams better” The man smirked when you rolled your eyes but chuckling you took a seat next to him. “So, did you make a decision?” He wondered taking a gulp from his beer bottle.

The sun was starting to set and you watched how Charlie and Grace played with the Nerfs you bought them with a content smile, and then turned to look at him who was already looking at you expectantly “I think I already made a decision”

@beccollie18

to be continued?

I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at writing a crime show fic. Let me know your thoughts on it and if you want more of this chilling adventures. My ask is always open. I love y’all <3000

[signofwolf]

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – book review

Series: Throne of Glass #7 Genre: YA, Fantasy Theme: Fae, magic users, war Warnings: mentions of torture, imprisonment Star rating: 0,5/10

Why did I pick this up?: I wanted to end this horrible series once and for all.

[Heavy spoilers ahead]

To make myself clear, before this book I quite liked this series. It wouldn’t place in my top 100 books, not even close, but it was a pleasant pageturner to listen to in audiobooks when working.

Language

Let’s start slow. I lack the words to express how much I hate the words ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘mate’ after this series. Not even gonna try to express my trauma. But these 3 gems aside, Sarah J. Maas needs a dictionary. Or compress her work to a manageable size. Everything sang, Everyone melted, Every man roared, Every woman trembled, Everyone was unleashing themselves at least once a chapter (number of chapters: 122) ). And now I know definitely too much about Yrene’s ‘womb’. I know so much…

Dynamism

I thought that was a book about a war with heavy action content. Oh boy, I was wrong. This 984-pages monstrosity has maybe 5 pages of action. If you squint.

Every sequence, where by design action should take place was followed by one of two scripts:

Few sentences of action and then a few pages long internal monologue. Often repeated with the same character after the next few sentences of action, or with the next character and then the next (sometimes the first character made a second appearance and then everything would go all over again). And the word ‘character’ used in these sentences is not because I’m rambling. This book is written that way!

Few sentences of action and then action stops, and we are graced by a few pages long conversation. In the middle of a battle. Or spying. Or in Erawan’s chambers, when his castle is going down, and he is running up the stairs...

Time

Leaving alone the fact that apparently all series took less than a year (till this book I estimated the plot for about 3 years, Wiki told me it was 2, but Maas knows best), because that is a can of worms in itself. Time in this one? I honestly have no idea. There were many ‘few weeks of travel’ parts with two main groups of POVs. Personally my only time indicator was ‘Orynth won’t fall till Aelin gets here’. But nothing just fit. And I saw Lost Song when in the last episode we as the audience realized that our two POVs parallel storylines are in reality millennia apart. Lost Song made sense.

Emotional loading

… there wasn’t any. Really, it was like reading a milk label. Every time the scene was potentially emotionally impactful, Maas went ahead to overexplaining EVERY. GOD. DAMMED. THING. And it was abso-fucking-lutely everything. ‘Emotional dilemma? Let’s current POV explain it! 2 pages should be enough… Damn maybe it wasn’t enough. I know! I’ll switch POVs and explain it through the other character!’ <= My impression of Maas’ thought process. I’m fairly sure that the record was 7 POVs explaining the same thing in the row, but I was blacking out a little, so I cannot be sure.

And if that wasn’t enough, this book had a second way to defuse tension: random-plastic-repetitive-badly_written-smut. Really badly written and really repetitive. How could you not feel the spicy bits, when Manon (cruel, self assured 100+years old witch-queen) reacts the same in bed as Elide (20years old, virgin, ex-slave). And the rest of them were the same, there weren’t ANY distinctions.Just copy-paste.

The next point in current case: Someone died, it was impactful, I really liked the character, so I got sad. But then 2 of our characters came out of the room with a body, and after a paragraph of grieving they started making out, and then I was regaled with 2-pages-long description of melting cores. That was the place then this book stopped being badly written, and started being distasteful.

Characters

Remember when I was writing about switching POVs (which is 15(!!!) In the whole book. Oh and an omniscient narrator in places when our current POV was grieving too much to overthink something, but Maas still wanted to inform us about something)? They were all savagely murdered in the worst way: character mutilation. Somewhere between books our maybe-not-that-original but colorful and interesting characters became carbon copies of each other. I have no idea how many times I didn’t realise there was a POV switch. The only indicator was a change of pronoun, or when Maas was telling us the name of a current narrator. These were the only ways. And if you can't distinguish if you are in Dorian’s head or in Manon’s, that is the sign of a really BAD writing.

Romance

…there wasn't any. In all this book there wasn't any naturally progressing romantic scene. There were Maas’ endgame pairings which were sexing or pinning. As the author Maas loves to write about soulmates. And it’s not a bad thing itself. When I want some fluffy story I often tag ‘soulmates’ in AO3 and voila, +10 to good mood. But God above, it is not cute when every pair you write about are ‘true mates’ just BECAUSE. It is the only way Maas sees a relationship, as a fated pairing, written in the wake of the universe by the God himself. There is no choice, nor the work to put in it. They are the author's OTP and that means that they are perfect and they should have children right now. Point in case:

Guy was treating a girl like a shit on his sole, including throwing her naked out of tent, on a snow, with their friends present, all the while abusing her verbally in a worst way. But it’s okay, because when she almost died he realised his mistakes and apologised. Two scenes later, he was forgiven, because... fated mates?

The pathos

I know that many people don't like this type of scenes, but it's not my case. I’m reading by picturing images and not repeating words. I like sequences that I can imagine to be grand and glorious, even if they are a little corny. That said, the pathos scenes were the most disappointing ones for me. Maas likes to write parts that are more picturesquely exalted than logically possible [point in case: meeting of 5 armies/forces in the random patch of sand in Empire of Storms, and it being painted as ‘an Aelin’s great plan’. I laughed myself silly at that. But not taking logic and all the plot holes into consideration that was a nicely looking scene. In Kingdom of Ash that wasn’t the case. I would say that the author wanted to paint us a renaissance painting every 20 pages or so. In my opinion, every time she failed miserably. Each and every of those scenes was or to farfetched to be even remotely realistic, and evidently written only for a sake of the picture, or just plainly stupid.

Example, and it’s so priceless a scene, that I just need to share it: Battle of Orynth, 25th day or so (time in this book doesn’t exist), the 13. sacrificed themselves (like thousands before them but hush). And then, time stops: grieving Manon is going through the city, they open the gates for her (yes, the siege is still on), she goes to the place where they died, after her come out all of our main heroes, and half the city itself with ‘flowers, rocks and precious possessions’ and they lay it there in a tribute to these brave (evil till 2 months ago) witches. I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw such an abstract scene. It’s a material for an essay in itself. No, I could not take it seriously.

Additionally, it's hard to make an impact as every damn sentence is grand and lofty. In the end it became truly pathetic, Aelin vs Maeve was unreadable.

Character deaths:

Let's make a quick count: main characters in a series at the start of KoA: 12 secondary characters in a series at the start of KoA: 20ish minor and total background: a lot more

Death count: main: 0 secondary: 3 minor: 2 (11 if we try very hard)

Resurrections: 1 (possibly 3, but not gonna analyze it)

Did you feel emotions of this impossible war against this all-encompassing, all-powerful, invincible, immortal, cunning Evil with armies from 3 continents and 2 worlds? No? Me neither.

Oh well, but there were a lot of deaths of ordinary soldiers. I’m quite certain that all of Terrasen’s army was at least twice brought back to life for them to die in these numbers.

Logic or lack thereof

Oh, and let’s not forget about the Deus ex machina army of unbeatable, magical elves on wolves, from legends, living for the past thousands of years in the unreachable lands of the north, because they managed to run from the surprise attack 10 years earlier. Did I mention that they came from portals, which the whole book was telling us were impossible to make in this scenario? After the previous saviour army was already fighting there for a day? And that Aelin didn’t know they would come for sure (how did she contact them again?)? Even though they were waiting in the full armours for these portals? Ah, and also: that army didn’t do anything. They just came and fought for maybe 4 minutes. And there were just so many things like that!

And if we’re on the topic of armies I present you: ‘My favourite absurd-list in the series: allied armies’.

(As a comparison, in A Song of Ice and Fire by J.R.R Martin, in 7 kingdoms of Westeros, at the peak of war there were 7 forces present, but not all were even engaged in a war.)

First the ones that made sense:

Armies of Terrasen’s Lords (counted as one, not gonna nitpick)

The Khaganate army (also counted as one)

Galan Ashryver’s armada

Whitethorn fraction

Rebel Ironteeth witches

…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’?

And there were some that did not:

Ansel of Briarcliff’s army

The Silent Assassins

Mycenians

Wild Men of the Fangs

Army of magical elves on wolves

And the ‘I don’t even know’ category:

Crochan witches

Overpowering and overreaching

Section title tells it all. The stakes were too high. I was honestly waiting for Aelin to become Super Saiyan and start to throw planets at Maeve and Erawan. I won’t spoil if this happened.

In my opinion it could be a really great series, if our list of villains ended with Arobynn and King of Adarlan, and the list of Aelin titles with an assassin and a princess. We could have had two main fight plots: one emotional with Arobynn, when Aelin would have to face a damage he had done to her, and overcome it. And the second one, with freeing Terrasen from Adarlan’s rule. That’s it. There was an asshole, power hungry king, who feared magic and wanted to rule the East part of a continent. A lot of plot, but not so much that we stopped to care, or didn’t have time to cover everything. We could really get to know what Terrasen and his people were like and not JUST GET TOLD that it was ‘the greatest place in the world’ every damn 20 pages.

Plus…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’? It's a REALLY valid question.

Climaxes

IIf I have to write a list of things that disappointed me in this book, this review would be thrice its current size, but one of the worst grievances I have is the complete lack of acknowledging the plotlines that had been started. This book series has overall 4 372 pages (not counting novellas) and 12 main characters (still not gonna address this). All of them had their storylines and arcs but if they weren't tied up in the previous instalments they wouldn’t be in this one. I get it, Maeve and Erawan got beaten (in an extremely unsatisfactory way) but they were only a background in this series' plots.

Aelin Well, Aelin was one of 3 people (+2 paragraf-long insertion from Nesryn and Chaol) who got their own POV’s after the battle (second was technically Rowan, who was ‘Aelin’s POV outside of Aelin’.The third Dorian, who got almost a full two pages). And from this we got that: she got crowned, Aedion got his bond and that Maas have no idea how the city looks after weeks of siege. In her case what angered me the most was ‘Terrasen is my home’ subplot. Only in this tome we read at least 3 times that Aelin will be okay with dying, if only she gets to see Terrasen one last time, or if she get to die on Terrassen soil. But you know what? Maas forgot to write the scene where Aelin actually ‘comes in’.

Mannon Didn't get her own POV after the battle, but here’s what we’ve got: She is going to the Wastes with Croachans and Ironteeth. Whait. What? Yes, that was the ending of this 500+ years of feud. They fought together and they decided to unite their two species, completely forgetting more than half a millenia of slaughter. I can only hope that there were at least some talks behind the scenes… NO! F*** NO! This isn’t how it works!

Rowan, Dorian, Chaol, Yrene, Lysandra, Aedion, Lorcan, Elide, Nesryn, Sartaq Lived happily ever after

Secondary minor and total background characters Survived (I acknowledge that they would be ignored in most books’ epilogues, but this abomination is almost 1000 pages of nothing!!).

Good Scenes

That saying, this book actually had 4 good scenes:

Crochan witches go to war - gathering-forces-to-fight trope, which is my *love-always trope* so I’m not even sure if it was relatively good, or if I’m just a slut for this trope. It was still only a paragraph long though.

[recurring] The children’s tale Aelin repeated to herself to remember who she is.

‘Lorcan Lochan’ - the only marginally funny scene in the whole book

I actually found Darrel making Evangeline his heir charming. Even if circumstances were far-fetched at least.

But the words crime of this book? It was agonisingly, mind-numbingly boring. If the overexplaining and repetitions were to be taken out I highly doubt that there would be 300 pages left.

For these 33 hours of audiobook I suffered through I give it half a star. Because Abraxos exist.

Please see my garishly accurate cover on my instagram! You can also like it there :D

instagram | goodreads

[nodesiretogrowup]

alrighty, review time!

Do you think Donald wrote the song? He did write a song when he was younger and the lyrics fit him best

I love that Donald is the sane man of the Caballeros

Why did you choose the bathroom? That’s really weird and kind of perverted

I love the picture of a rubber ducky in a top hat on the wall

Just how big is that bathtub? Four grown men were able to fit in it at the same time

Never mess with a man who has a demon-ghost butler

“That’s the FOURTH rich guy’s bathroom we’ve been kicked out of.” I...I would like to know about the other three. And again, WHY THE BATHROOM?!

“We just need someone to listen to us!” Donald giving us the theme/moral of the episode

Was Louie just waiting out there?

Louie looks like a drug dealer. He also looks a bit like the reboot version of himself from that poster in Quack Pack

“And you’re willing to do whatever I say, at any cost whatsoever?” “Well, not any...” “QUIET, DONALD!” Guys, you should listen to Donald, he knows Louie better than you

Poor Donald, the only sane man here

I love the stickers on Louie’s laptop. I wonder if he actually knows how to hack

I love the stupid “it” trends. Hats-Hats and Invisible Piercings, what will they think of next

Of course Dewey would keep up with an IT list. He actually cares about his image/how his peers view him

The lead singer of the Feather Weights looks like a punk girl version of Drake. I’m gonna go with them being related somehow. Or they used to date. Or they go to the same hair stylist. THEY ARE TIED TOGETHER SOMEHOW

Yo-yo tricks were more of a 2000s thing, Dewey (seriously though, does anyone else remember when yo-yos were SUPER POPULAR for some reason?)

Panchito is so ridiculously EXTRA and I LOVE HIM

“These are my people.” Oh sweet Dewford, they wish they were on your level

“Internet fame-the most important fame of all” Well it’s the most achievable

And then Dewey just rolls off screen

“If only someone had a super-elaborate scheme to get in...KA-BOOM!” Dewey’s not the only showman in the family

This show LOVES some big boards

Why/when did Louie plan all of this? I mean he did want the Caballeros to make him their manager so he could get a cut, but why?

Already you can see that Louie’s pride is gonna get in the way

Again, Donald is being the responsible one

I love their signatures. Panchito’s is like a 12 year old girl’s, José’s is curvy, and Donald’s is the least showy. And I love that Panchito thought “Don” was enough lol. He is close to Launchpad levels of ditziness

The pictures Louie uses on his board are GREAT! I love fridge-raiding Panchito

Agent Dewey-License to Chill. Dewey, that was two episodes ago

“I have a very special job for you.” “Oh-ho ho-ho, special.”

Luis P Canard. Is that a false identity Louie already had or did he make it up for the party? Or is there an actual Luis P Canard?

Huey looks SO CUTE! Though he should have known something was up when Louie asked him to forge a signature. Do you think Huey has forged other documents with or without knowing it?

Louie looks good with that black “lipstick”

“Welcome to the scheme.” “What scheme?” “Nothing.” “TELL NO ONE.”

Gyro Gearloose-Kid inventor. Does that mean he was a child prodigy or that he LITERALLY invents kids? Or both? The possible clone’s tube had K.I.D. on it. I bet this will be explored more, probably next episode

I love how they all stare at the earpieces when Gyro says the DEFINITELY won’t explode 

I love that the lion statues have sunglasses and there’s a statue of a ballerina hippo from Fantasia

OUR QUEEN HAS ARRIVED

How do ducks whistle if they don’t have lips?

Daisy-smiles, Donald-I WOULD DIE FOR YOU

I love Daisy’s fake laugh

With both of them in tuxes you can really see that Dewey and Louie have different body types. Louie has broader shoulders.

“I’M GONNA DANCE DOWN THE RED CARPET.” No Dewey, that’s for the after party

It’s the PEP guy! I feel like he’s gonna become a villain with how much he’s been embarrassed (and he already LOOKS like a cheesy superhero show villain)

GRAVES IS BACK, BABY

Dewey has made a LOT of enemies

“New plan-Dewey is NOT going to the party!” DAMN, THAT’S COLD

“This is the Dewey-est party in town!”

“Oh, WHY was I cursed to be so FLASHY and UNFORGETTABLE?!” I love my dramatic son

Why did the Caballeros have to switch hats?

“SO TIGHT. !”

WE NEED MORE DJ DAFT DUCK

Ok, real talk? That party looks boring as fuck 

I like that there’s sweat when Dewey pulls off his helmet. It’s the little details

“Everyone listens to my plan.” Dewey looks PISSED

“The plan to wow Glamour with our haunting melodies.” Panchito is Drake/DW if he was a Latin Lover. THEY NEED TO MEET. IT WOULD BE HAMMY AND GLORIOUS

“You mean our SICK dance beats!”

Donald is like “girls, girls, you’re BOTH pretty”

But seriously, they need to decide what direction they want to go with their sound

Donald is ALWAYS the voice of reason (except in The Town Where Everyone Was Nice, he got a bit caught up in that lie)

“I will charm my way on stage with my golden voice.” #youtried

That smirk José gives him, beautiful

“Easy, grownups.” YOU JUST GOT DISSED BY A 10 YEAR OLD!

“So I’ll dazzly Daisy with my hip, cool yo-yo tricks.” I would have liked to see how that played out

Does Louie have some kind of dirt on Jane? Why does she keep helping him out? Why does she call him “Mr. Duck?”

Glamour is a BITCH. And it seems like Daisy might share the same luck as Donald and Della

SERIOUSLY, WHAT DO YOU HAVE ON HER, LOUIE?!

Donald was posing all cool

Why send Donald in to do the most important part of the plan? At least have someone with him. Louie should have gone with him so Donald could distract Daisy and Louie could use his pickpocket skills to get the pass. Louie did not account for the variables

“Ooooh PHOOEY.” I love that all of the Duck family say Donald’s catchphrase

POOR DEWEY!

I love Louie’s other distraction ideas-explosion, food poisoning, SET FREE A WILD MONGOOSE, ghosts, ANOTHER explosion 

LET DAISY SAY FUCK

I’m pretty sure Donald got a boner when he saw Daisy DESTROY that vase (I also found it hot). He was scaroused

OUCH. That HAD to have hurt/broken SOMETHING

How did Louie get that picture of Webby? Hell, how was that pic taken in the first place?

“WHEEEEEEE” Webby knows what’s up

“MY FAULT! It’s...your bag.” Oh Donald

LET DAISY SAY FUCK

“My band is sorta...crashing the party.” DONALD YOU ARE TOO CUTE

The yo-yo just rolls away

Louie, you hurt Dewey’s feelings! Also, your plans are pretty ridiculous too, including the one you are currently trying to pull off. There had to be a better idea than a harpy

Listy-er

GLAMOUR MUST DIE FOR WHAT SHE DID TO LOUIE! IT’S A GOOD THING DONALD WASN’T THERE OR ELSE SHE WOULD BE

“I don’t want to be at Funzo’s forever.” “Why not?” Oh Webby, so innocent to the horrors of minimum wage jobs. Also it’s nice to see Webby being able to have an ordinary conversation with someone

FALCON’S EYEBROWS ARE MESMERIZING

It’s equal parts cute and sad how long Dewey takes to count

MANNY IS FUCKING SWOLE

Manny is 0 for 2 when it comes to being the muscle (I’m counting him vs Mega-Beaks as well)

“That was odd.” You have no idea

Donald sees Daisy as the GODDESS she is. GET YOU A MAN LIKE DONALD

I KNEW IT! I KNEW SHE WANTED TO BE A FASHION DESIGNER! It was like the only guess I got right so let me have this

“Nobody listens to me either.” Awww

“They don’t understand me.” AWWW

“Well that’s weird, I understand you perfectly.” MY HEART!!!

I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH! And when it changes into how Daisy hears him...chef’s kisses. It reminded me of Remember Me from Coco and I Love You Too Much from Book of Life

Real talk-the song really got me. I feel a lot like Donald. A lot of times it feels like no one is listening or understands me because my thought process is a bit different. Or they can understand but they don’t care, like how Daisy feels. When Donald sings for her, I teared up because I want to be comfortable enough with someone to let down my guard like that. Music is a big part of who I am so I would love if someone sang for me even if they don’t have the “perfect” voice. I want someone to feel comfortable enough with me to let down their guard and be real

Daisy is a woman of ACTION

Do you think she’s been stuck in that elevator before?

“My kids!” “Wait, you have kids?” Whenever Donald calls them his kids I gain 5 years to my lifespan. I can’t wait for Daisy to officially meet the kids

“Oh no, not again!” Starting to rethink your life-choices aren’t ya?

I love Mark. He’s so stupid and out of touch with the real world

“Oh Gravesy! Long time, no crime.” GRAVEBEAK LIVES ON!

I love Mark’s hoverboard crashing and catching fire in the background. And then it chases Slash

Haha, Mark’s name is Markus. What a dewb

I was rooting for rich lesbian aunt, but mom works too

Graves is SO DONE with these people

Dewey is all of us

Poor Louie. His self confidence is the most fragile of the kids

Nerp

“Just listen to me for once.” WE ALL NEED TO LISTEN TO EACH OTHER, THAT’S THE THEME OF THE EPISODE

THEY’RE HOLDING HANDS! And Mark seemed into it ;)

“I want to look away but I can’t” CALLING IT NOW, THIS LINE’S GONNA BE A MEME

I want Dewey’s yo-yo skills to be a reoccurring thing

That’s one of the things he has in common with his uncle-being a performer even if they aren’t the best at it

Louie’s face as he sneaks away is great

“The failure of it is ridiculous...and BEAUTIFUL!” Gonna use that to describe myself from now on

Dewey is IT. SO FABULOUS!

Daisy, maybe you should let the man get rid of them

DOUBLE BADASS ONE-LINERS

LET DONALD SAY FUCK

HE’S SO PROUD OF HIS BOY

I like the “totally not Pirates of the Caribbean” music that accompanies José when he’s fighting

“Nice singing.” “Nice moves.” NOW KISS

“Oo, nice dagger.” Webby, not the time for that

There is NO WAY that the scene with Gabby and Webby isn’t foreshadowing SOMETHING

“I gotta get out of Duckburg.” Jane starts a GoFundMe page to get out of Duckburg when she gets home

BATTLE COUPLE!

DAISY WILL FUCK YOU UP

DON’T MESS WITH HER MAN

It was then Donald realized that he had met his future wife

DONALD AIN’T GONNA TAKE THAT SHIT FROM YOU

It was then Daisy realized she had met her future husband

“LOVE YOUR BLOG” Who knew Manny kept on on the latest trends

Glamour probably realized those fuckers were crazy so she should back off

SILENT M’MA CABRERA!

OMG EVEN THE TREE HAS FUCKING SUNGLASSES

Manny is one suave motherfucker

Glamour playing with the yo-yo while Mark acts like a spoiled brat

DEWEY IS PROUD OF HIS DADNALD!

IF WE DON’T GET DEWEY’S DOZEN AT SOME POINT I’M SUING

“Our brotherhood is the greatest scheme of all!” SO FUCKING WHOLESOME! MORE LOUIE AND DEWEY PLOTS

“HEY, YOU’RE MESSING WITH MY MOJO!” Don’t be a hater, Manny!

“I could listen to it all night.” DAAAAAWWWWWWW

GAAAAAAHHHHH THIS EPISODE WAS SO GOOD! I love that there was a common theme of feeling like you aren’t being heard. Daisy felt like she was too unimportant to be listened to, Louie doesn’t listen to Dewey because he feels like Dewey isn’t serious enough, and NO ONE listens to Donald because his voice is hard to understand. In the end they all get heard, with Donald and Daisy getting the bonus of finding someone who understands them. The two of them really are relationship goals. I cannot WAIT for more wholesome Donisy content. This one bumped Quack Pack down from my favorite so far.

[mayonakazkrazy]

Soooooooo I wanna talk about an Animated Movie

One night recently, I may have been watching a show that started giving me too many... ‘too real life’ vibes, when what i needed in the moment was ‘taking a break to mentally and emotionally recharge’ time. SOOOO to redirect my overstimulated brain I changed over to a ‘safe’ non threatening movie, Monster House.

Spoilers below the cut in a sort of review as well as some random details that i noticed that make me go ‘... well that got real fast...’ and one tangent/character dive i been wanting to get into toward the end.

Also fair warning about my run on sentences... they’re not going anywhere

Monster House is... a CG movie that oddly enough gives off Claymation vibes... at least to me from certain style design choices. I honestly feel that sort of works in it’s favor since the CG of the mid 2000s was.... terrifying if care wasn’t take in the process. Not good if you want you film to be taken seriously, buuut this movie manages to tow the line because a) it IS supposed to be at least a little scary to kids... haunted house? and b) even though the characters take things seriously enough the writing itself doesn’t try TOO hard to pretend it’s more than it is.

As it stands, the movie is Ok - in the best possible vein of ok. Not some epic, groundbreaking thing but I think it warrants being on people’s list of fun movies to play on Halloween. Visually interesting and funny, you can tell that the people who made the movie at least had fun working on it; and cared more about the project than some other kids’ movies that get put out purely for the easy cash grab via paint by numbers. (I found out that this movie was nominated for Best Animated Feature apparently?! like... i like this movie but... i don’t know, i’ll have to see what other movies came out that year cuz while i like it i’d like to reiterate that i don’t know if it’s BEST (animated/kids) movie of the year material...)

I can honestly say that it was at the Start if not ahead of the ‘remember the 80s?’ fad in movies. Again, not to the film’s discredit. It’s less concerned with smacking you over the head with ‘EIGHTIES!’ and is more set in the time period to make things more plausible. Ya got kids running around unattended for hours without parental guidance, and a number of other 80′s tropes that are, easily ignored at worse and make story elements more believable at best. I mean... .when ELSE would you believe that kids could run around basically unattended for HOURS just before Halloween....hell one kid ACTUALLY STEALS an amount of cold medicine that would have you on MULTIPLE investigative lists even 15 years ago. And NOT just because “the parents are just bad parents”... there’s arguably only one ACTUALLY bad parent in the film who’s only mentioned off-hand but i’ll talk about in a little bit. The rest are parents with semi justifiable reasons for either not believing their respective kid about the haunted house or not thinking they’re NOT unattended (ie. someone’s supposed to be babysitting one of these kids but SURPRISE! she’s in the “selfish teen is a disinterested babysitter spending more time talking to or about boys than ACTUALLY doing the job she’s paid to do” trope)

TLDR on that paragraph, this movie spends so little time being WE”RE THE 80′S! that i wasn’t even sure WHEN it was supposed to take place if it wasn’t for the lack of iPhones and the stationwagons all over.

ANYWAY. some details that tend to stand out to me with this movie tend to be the things that we just get to hear about briefly and are arguably meant to encourage conversation if someone NEEDS to know more about it rather than just getting EVERYTHING explained for no good reason. So enjoy me conversing with myself here.

First up, Chowders family life is kind of sad. Like i said earlier there’s only one or two parents to the three main characters of the movie that people would likely consider ACTUALLY bad. 

The lead’s, DJ’s, parents go out of town at the start of the movie and could reasonably be expected to think that their kid was being watched by the babysitter (see trope rant above). 

The mother of the token female character (Jenny) is Maaayyybe a bad parent but that is to be argued as we only have a few reasons to believe so and some can be explained by the aforementioned 80′s era lack of parental awareness. All we really know is that, this girl is walking around selling candy on her own, gets nearly eaten by the Monster House, and when she calls her mother to tell her about it, the mom doesn’t believe her as no parent ever does about monsters. Sooooo while she does get points off for her kid not even having someone with her during the candy selling, we also don’t hear from or about her again for the rest of the movie until just, coming to pick her up at the end. She get’s a *shrug* on the scale of good or bad parenthood.

Then there’s our secondary male character, Chowder The Dumb One Comic Relief. He’s the one with arguably the most complicated family that we get any insight to. and it’s pretty much just from his off-handed comments on it and a single snipet of a phone call we get to overhear. Literally, what you are about to read, my brain managed to over think from these freakin context clues... SO, it WOULD be SUPER easy to miss what we get about this family and just chalk it up to ‘OH those kids movie parents and their rampant absenteeism and DEATH’ but no. Chowder’s family life is... a little sad if i’m honest. we only hear about 2 calls regarding these kids and their parents. One is when Jenny calls her mom to try to tell on the House for eating her and the other is when Chowder’s dad calls looking for his son. NOW, Chowder himself tells DJ (and the audience) that his Dad is working at a Pharmacy the night Chowder goes over to DJ’s house and nearly gets himself eaten by the Monster House. The boys end up spending the entire night after that, watching the house to see if anybody or anything else gets attacked. Chowder’s dad doesn’t call DJ’s house to find out where his kid is until morning, so we’re lead to believe that his lack of knowledge about the boys’ impromtu sleep-over because he works the graveyard shift (or at least late enough that he would assume Chowder’s in bed until waking the next morning). 

The somewhat sad part comes with the second bit of information we get from Chowder after he tells DJ that his dad is at work that evening and it’s, “Mom is at the movies with her personal trainer”. 0.o ooooooh the scandal... i mean, yeah in general cheating spouses isn’t exactly the most uncommon occurance....anywhere. but isn’t it just a little sad that part of the reason that this is not only the reason that Chowder is home alone (making it SUPER easy for him to just leave when DJ calls). But she’s also apparently gone long enough to ALSO be out so late as to not notice that her kid is GONE all night. Looking at it nowadays just... reminds ya WHY there were ads in the 90′s asking parents where their kids were at 10pm.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

well not about the cheating Chowder’s mom part.

More like the WHOLE thing that got me wanting to type about Monster House in the first place.

A sad story with more potential doom than maybe even the film intended.

YOU SEE

A major plot twist of the movie is WHO is possessing the house. DJ and crew initially believe to be the someone they kind of know - the house’s owner, Mr. Horace Nebbercracker. At first glance, Nebbercracker is obsessively protective of his house, literally the first scene of the film is him SCREAMING in a little girl’s face and confiscating her tricycle when she accidentally ends up on his lawn (again, where are her parents?). He’s literally Mr. “Get off my lawn”.

So it’s not difficult to imagine that he’s the one haunting the place when the house seems to come life immediately after his sudden heart attack. (PS. WTF to the writers cause we AND THE TWO TEENAGED LEADS see the heart attack happen real time and the boys may have even contributed to it!! THERAPY FOR EVERYONE) Especially since Dj’s babysitter invites over her.....boyfriend? maybe. who reaffirms that Mr. Nebbercracker has been screaming at kids and confiscating toys for YEARS. yeah, super easy to see this dude sticking around after death and continuing his time honored tradition of AGGRESSIVELY dealing with trespassers. Only now as a house that WILL eat you just for stepping on the grass.

So as you may have already guessed, this later gets proved to NOT be the case. As Horace ends up returning in the climax alive and well (enough to sneak out of the hospital and steal an ambulance LIKE A BOSS).

Throughout the course of the movie, we and the kids find out that this creepy old man once had a wife but not only is she not around, rumor has it that he ATE her. for some reason. When the kids go into the house to try to ‘kill’ it and stop the house from eating people, they find a bunch of old pictures inside that at least confirm there was a wife at some point. When they end up in the basement among the piles and piles of stuff that’s landed in the yard over the years, the ALSO find a shrine to Mrs. Nebbercracker. Which is also her final resting place (a spot where she was apparently covered completely with cement).

DJ puts 2 and 2 together pretty quick when Mr. Nebbercracker returns and starts trying to calm the house. Mrs. Constance Nebbercracker is the one haunting the place, not Horace. That’s when we unlock Horace’s Tragic Back Story:

Sometime in the 1930′s Horace (a former demolition man) fell in love with Constance. Constance was being exploited as an “attraction” at a circus/freak-show at the time (during the height of just being abnormally tall, short, or obese made you a relevant ‘freak’). This place made her sleep OUTSIDE IN A CAGE and you know people were happily entertaining themselves by throwing things at her and laughing at both her weight  ‘freakishness’ and helplessness.

So to follow a simple love story, the sweet skinny boy sneaks her away, his feelings are reciprocated, and the two start their life together. They’ve gotten to that nice, building their own house stage when everything goes terribly wrong.

For me, this is sort of the start of my opinion that... things for the Nebbercrackers weren’t likely to go well anyway. Like we got the impression from their wedding photos that they managed to have SOME normalcy in their honeymoon phase but when we see the beginnings of the house, Horace is JUST THEN taking apart the cage/cart that Constance was kept in. i’m presuming he was originally gonna use the various parts in the house but dear christ that means that not much time may have past between leaving the circus (guess they at least didn’t care enough about her ‘as property’ to keep the couple on the run?) to getting married and going on a vacation to buying the land and beginning construction.

That said, the mid-twentieth century isn’t exactly known for it’s forwardness on mental health, and oooooohhhhh boy, if this poor couple aint a fitting example that “and they lived happily ever after” doesn’t happen often. Halloween happens to come around and kids get up to their traditional mischief by, what else? Egging what little of the Nebbercracker house existed at the time. 

(Disclaimer i am an expert in nothing so i may get somethings wrong here but this IS just me hashing out an idea i have) When we first see Constance, we see someone actually throwing food and trash at her while she’s “on display”. And when we see her at the skeleton of the Nebbercracker house, she get VISIBLY upset at the children throwing things at the house, she seeks out her husband telling him that those monsters ‘are attacking [their] house and they’re hurting [her]’. In my mind, she and Horace likely haven’t really dealt with her trauma from the circus. Yes Horace removed her from the bad situation and stopped the trauma, but as of good ole 1935, i doubt they really talked about it much, let alone saw a therapist. Both likely just trying to power forward INTO their future.

Horace’s confusion when Constance becomes triggered by the children throwing things and laughing like assholes shows us that he likely hadn’t seen or had to deal with a situation like this before. He does try to get her to focus on him and remind her that she’s with him and not back at the circus, so maybe he’s had to reassure her (like after a nightmare or maybe he got small panics when in more crowded areas - thus the house that’s likely on the edge of town since they don’t have close neighbors). But the course of events indicates that he’d never seen such a STRONG episode from her. 

Perhaps she’d just finally gotten comfortable with being truly free since they could build their own home and so the perceived ‘attack’ on her home became an attack to her safety and happiness. When she goes to her husband, her savior, and (in her eyes) he doesn’t fix it/ he doesn’t get the chance to. When that egg hit HER BODY. it was game over.

Constance tried to take matters into her own hands, remove the ‘threat’ herself.... with the axe Horace was holding. Now it’s a kids movie so no children come even close to getting hurt, but one could take this to mean that, if constance had lived, she may have only gotten more violent as time went on if she didn’t get the help she needed... help Horace may not have been able to give or get for her.

We’ll never know since the way you get a haunted house is... pretty obvious. In a desparate attempt to stop Constance from likely maiming some kids or hurting herself, Horace causes constance to fall into their uncovered basement. As she falls, she tries to grab the cement mixer for stability and ends up dumping the load on top of herself in the basement (making for a VERY creepy site for a shrine). Horace’s guilt compels him to finish the house and he stays there.

Now such a violent, angry moment right before death MEANS THAT SOMETHIN’S GETTING HAUNTED. SO Constance’s spirit possesses the house and begins “defending” itself from the people of the growing town that happen to get too close. ESPECIALLY on Halloween... ya know one of the nights where EVERYBODY goes out and willingly approaches people’s front doors.

Throughout the rest of the flashback we Mr. Nebbercracker trying to keep people away with more and more desperation. Likely because DJ and Chowder haven’t witnessed the first of Constance’s victims. As the movie’s climax pics up we see how Horace talks to the house, trying to placate the angry spirit by taking care of the house and trying to be the first responder when someone enters the lawn before Constance gets to use HER WAY.

From here, Horace’s relationship with the House begins to look...pretty abusive actually. When he gets back home from the hospital he’s grumpy to the kids, but then we see him pause, he’s apprehensive as he turns to get back to the house. From the expressions the house is given and the way Mr Nebbercracker responds, it’s TELLING him to get HOME NOW. He’s timid, and fearful, and the kids begin to get the idea that if he goes into the house now, he may not come out again. And when the house LITERALLY GETS UP AND STARTS CHASING PEOPLE, he’s desperate. He tries soothing her, he tries to redirect her away from the targets of her anger - the kids. 

Can you just imagine the 45 years leading up to this? Horace having to isolate himself from the whole town until it’s just him and this angry house under the pretext of “IF YOU DO NOT DEFEND HOUSE THEN THE HOUSE WILL DO IT”. He even get’s the heart breaking line of “then i’ll have nobody”. Like so many victims that feel they CAN’T leave their homes. I like to imagine that the house is PRIMARILY motivated by the rage and fear that was driving Constance in her final moments but like... what if she hadn’t? Even if she didn’t kill those kids from 45 years ago, would they have been able to get her the help she needed? Like so many back in those days, Constance and Horace likely would’ve only had the option to self medicate or get her institutionalized (ie. Imprisoned again). Would that have devolved into Constance manipulating Horace with things like “i won’t make it without you” and similar tactics. Would have maybe gone the other way? with Constance still not technically being free because Horace would (intentionally or unintentionally) encourage her dependence on him... 

Anyway, when pleading to the house to just leave the children alone fails, he makes the decision to stop her. with dynamite from his Demo days. 

Constance does not take this well.

From there we get the exciting confrontation where the main characters destroy the house WITHOUT the self-sacrifice that Mr. Nebbercracker may have been planning. We even get a nice little moment where constance’s spirit (unattached to the destroyed house) get’s to move on after a quick goodbye to Horace. And now we get our kids movie happy ending with DJ, Chowder, and Jenny helping Mr. Nebbercracker begin redistributing the pile of toys still in what’s left of the basement to trick-or-treaters and the living things that the house ate somehow climb out of whatever pocket dimension they were trapped in. Nobody seems to question why Nebbercracker’s house is just a crater now....and that this old man that left the hospital without a discharge is now homeless....

Buuuuuuuut i’ve been typing for like 2 hours now. I still have thoughts about other side characters and maybe more exploring the dynamics of technically being in a relationship with a haunted house. buuuuut i need to sleep.

Stay nerdy fellow overthinkers.

[eurosong]

Undo my ESC

Good evening, folks! If you saw my first instalment of “Undo my ESC”, the annual feature where I make a year’s Eurovision better for me by making alterations in each country, you might have thought that ESC getting cancelled had dulled my edge, since, comparing to usual standards, I hardly changed much at all there. Well, that’s because, once again, we have seriously uneven semis, and Semi #1 would have been killer, whilst Semi #2 would have been dead. Here is what Í would have done to even those semis up! 🇦🇱 Albania: The Albanian delegation had seemingly done all it could to wash its hands of, well, two years of comparatively excellent results with authentic, melancholically poëtic and qualitative tracks, namely Malland Ktheju tokës. They brought in Byuckman, in whose interest it is for the contest to become as generically “radio-friendly” as possible, and the genius who brought us lyrics like “this is love/rain falls from above”. As judges. Of a serious musical festival. The foreign jurors did as expected, and voted for the appointed “bop”, but were foiled, however, by one of the minority Albanian jurors on the panel who put it  low in her ranks. An actual renowned music professor who got called all the names under the sun for doing so. And so, to an ensuing shitstorm, the classical and powerful Shaj prevailed instead. Unfortunately, the battle was won but the war was lost, because the representative herself took the lessons of 2018-9, threw them down the aeroplane toilet on the way to LA, and ripped the spirit out of the song, reverting back to the previous Albanian trend of terrible “revamps” and laboured translations into English. The result, Fall from the sky, is but a husk of the original. In my ESC, I’d probably simply keeping the original version of Shaj, which was my uncontested #1 of all songs, but part of me would opt for Ajër, which I love almost as well but which doesn’t carry the baggage of hanging over my head like the sword of Democles this entire season. 🇦🇲 Armenia: I’ve more often than not loved the entries of Hayastan, from the joyous Jan Jan to the soaring Fly with me and defiant Walking out. To say they took a step back this year is kind – it was more like a powerful jump backwards that landed them in the nearest ocean, where they sank like a stone. It was one of the most singularly unpalatable NFs that I have ever watched in this era. Rather than retraumatise myself by going into detail about it, I’ll just say, I would have sent Srbuk or Artsvik again to get the top 10 that I feel both warranted!

🇦🇹 Austria: What a journey for Österreich. From Conchita to this guy, a perky homophobe who explicitly said he wished his kids would not turn out to be gay. He comes up with a third-rate impersonator of a third-rate Benjamin Ingrosso impersonator’s third-rate impersonation of a Timberlake b-side. I would throw that in the bin and invite Pænda back from last year for a shot at redemption after her gorgeous Limits got slept on in 2019.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria: Some people had the neck to say to me “who needs Hungary when Bulgaria is coming back?” Well, I do. Hungary were constantly in the top of my rankings, and just quietly and consistently brought quality. Bulgaria has brought me one good thing – Poli Genova’s œuvre – and a tonne of hype. Their song this year was one of the favourites, and I still can’t wrap my head around how other than the force of PR. It’s a bizarre, unsettling combination of passive-aggressive “look how much you’re making me hurt myself” lyrics with Disneyish saccharine accompaniment, topped off with a key change?! For want yet again of a national final, I would bring Poli back – third time even luckier? 🇨🇿 Czechia: The Bohemians (and Moravians) keep it contemporary but superficial for a third year running, although, thankfully, for the first time since they began doing national finals, we finally have a song without a dubious attitude towards women in the lyrics. Not that there is much to analyse in those lyrics. It’s a merely ok song for me, no better, no worse: a superior alternative would have been Barbara Mochowa’s lush and contemplative second effort, White and black holes, or the glorious 90s British indie-influenced All the blood. 🇩🇰 Denmark: Did Denmark confound international monitors into calling it the world’s happiest country by exposing them to the relentlessly cheery songs that they pick for Eurovision lately? And yet – I really do say yes to Yes, To a certain extent, to a limited amount of exposure, and despite the fact that it leans a little too hard into the territory of sounding like a second Little talks. It was one of the few good songs from DMGP – I also liked the 80s shoegaze-ish Den eneste goth– and I feel so mad at DR that they won’t give Ben and Tan a guaranteed second shot to represent their country after they won in front of an empty crowd. 🇪🇪 Estonia: The days of Eesti being Beesti seem like from a distant memory to me, but there was some quality and quirkiness in Eesti Laul, buried under mountains of beigedom, like the rich-voiced Egert Miller’s soulful Georgia, the jazzy Write about me, or the feisty earworm that was Ping pong. Instead, we got a dreary dirge with sub-Hallmark lines about wot luv is, which would have sounded dated in a contest 30 years ago, sung by a repugnant guy who tried to get people to vote for him last year by leaning on the idea that he was the “only true Estonian.” I’d have Egert get his rightful place as Jüri Pootsmann’s spiritual successor. 🇫🇮 Finland: I was one of the few to be jubilant when a bizarre ode to an Italian porn star with a backing track sounding like a violated version of Eläköön elämä came second in the polls to its spiritual opposite: a shy and rather awkward guy singing a quietly moving song about the passing of time. I love Looking back and wouldn’t change a thing. 🇬🇪 Georgia: You never know what to expect from Georgia, except the unexpected, and yet even I was surprised by what they came up with: a close-shaven guy with veins popping in his head screaming “why don’t you love meeeee?” to a rocky, electronic backdrop. Me being me, I actually do like it a lot. “Take me as I am” sounds like a veiled potshot at the big 5 and a vindication of Georgia’s “keep it weird, send what we want” philosophy. I could suggest that the lyrics, that sound like those of a spurned angsty teen, change a bit, but that would be defeating the purpose of Georgia: one takes them as they are. 🇬🇪 Greece: So, somehow, despite S!STERS coming dead last with 0 pts in the televote last year, using exclamation marks to substitute the letter I is now a thing in Eurovision with the advent of Superg!rl. I spent an hour watching folk waffle on in Greek in its reveal show only for them to reveal the song literally at the very end, so after that, it was a little underwhelming, and nowhere near as good as Better love in 2019. I don’t hate it – and the music video’s concept of her being an amazing superhero who can change the world, but instead she’s stopping people slipping over bananas and rescuing cats from trees is weirdly endearing, so it can stay, but I’d improve the lyrics, particularly in the chorus. “I’m a supergirl, supergirl, in a crazy world, crazy world” is not much higher than “this is love, rain falls from above” in historically bad Greek lyrics at ESC. 🇮🇸 Iceland: Daði Freyr came back from near-victory with the delightful Is this love, added a lovely inspiration in his newborn daughter to a similarly funky and playful track, and came out with Think about things. Unlike what usually happens with songs that are a little bit odd, I was positively surprised to see it walk the NF, and become a phenomenon even outside the ESC fandom. This was perfect and joyous from beginning to end. I hope Iceland will not be like the other Nordics, and will invite Daði directly back .🇱🇻 Latvia: I have come to enjoy the bizarre chaötic energy of Still breathing, It’s a hot mess, but I take weird over dull any day. It wasn’t my favourite in Supernova – that would be the effortlessly cool Polyester, an earworm with a social conscience, written about the cost of fast fashion but dismissed by many people as “she luvs t-shirts song lol”. Given that Samanta Tina tried over half a dozen times to go to ESC, finally won and then had the chance ripped out of her hands by the cancellation, I don’t have the heart to remove her from my ideal ESC 2020 though. She stays, but maybe the staging changes? It’s odd to have what you believe is a feminist anthem but then relegate your backing singers to in the distance, their faces shielded away. 🇲🇩 Moldova: Life is too short to follow Moldovan national finals, especially when you know, lately, that whoever is backed by the hilariously inaptly named Dream team will win there. They are like a parasite, sucking out the colour and fun out of a country that once had plenty of both – cross-reference Hora din Moldova or Lăutar to name just two examples. I guess out of an uninspiring lineüp, I’d go for Moldoviţa for having at least a hint of the brassy folk that used to be their calling card. 🇵🇱 Poland: Speaking of calling cards, after a one year hiatus with an arresting combo of white voice and rocky instrumentation, Poland has returned to what it has most often done in recent years – presented us with an absolute dirge, Empires, which seems like it was written by an unenthusiastic English student whose homework assignment (for which they received a generous C-) was to write a poëm with a bunch of metaphors “we’re moths to a flame, birds to a pane of glass, gasoline and a match”. Despite having a big music industry from which to choose many gems, Poland offers me little alternative choice given that there were only three songs in their grand final – one by the Czech representative last year who, as you might guess from what I said literally a sentence up, isn’t even Polish!Horny Elf, who’s contractually obliged to write only creepy lyrics for songs, tried to represent Polska with a song inspired by a true-life situation where he went around Tel Aviv with a cardboard cutout of one of the hostesses of the show. It’s a love song inspired by gallivanting around with a piece of cardboard. Addressed to that actual hostess. And it’s an almighty earworm that hasn’t escaped my mind since. Amazingly, his Lucy would be my Polish representative. 🇵🇹 Portugal: Portugal is another country beloved by me by for dancing to the beat of its own drummer, or perhaps, rather shedding tears to the strumming of its own fado guitar. They struggled being different, they won being different, and for the last few years they’ve struggled again, despite having a lot of support for both O jardim and Telemóveis amongst fans. This year, the televote went for one interesting song, the charmingly Gallic, accordion-drenched Passe-partout, a song about a cultured girl shaking off her boorish ex who could “never even get into Piaf”, whilst the jury got behind another interesting song, Gerbera, an entrancing, arresting and poëtic song laden with metaphor about the idea of music competing itself. This let Medo de sentir,second in both polls, turn silver into gold. It’s a lovely, heart-felt track, but rather unexceptional - I would have had one of the other more singular songs win. 🇸🇲 San Marino: The weird boil on the face of ESC that somehow never pops, SM is back after its bewildering qualification with a tone-deaf dentist wailing to a microwaved disco song… with something actually palatable, sort of. The aptly named Freaky is dated, odd, overly busy, but Senhit has a lot of charisma, and the idea of “break[ing] all the rules, mak[ing] up some new [ones] and destroy[ing] all of them too” and “life goes by too quickly not to be freaking it up”, well, maybe we do get on board. 🇷🇸 Serbia: Serbia is usually a byword for quality at the contest – they won with one of the best 21st century winners hands down in Molitva, and also sent some of the most beautiful compositions in the contest’s history at the hands of Željko. This year, they decided to join in the leitmotif of reliable countries sucking by sending a group that sound like a third-rate mid-2000s girl band from Transnistria when beautiful songs like Cvet sa Prokletija were right there. 🇨🇭 Switzerland: Fair play to the Swiss for not doing a Cyprus and leaning in on their success with their male Fuego, She gat me, and instead going in a completely different direction with this moody effort. I’m not entirely convinced by the teenage emo-ish lyrics or the unnecessary falsetto, but Répondez-moi is a refreshing effort, and has the bonus of being in French too! And the automatic qualifiers: 🇫🇷 France: You’ve heard of France, right? You know, that wee country south of Belgium, north of Andorra, not much of a music industry… or so you’d think, given that the troolee jeenyuss new delegation, who abandoned their brilliant national final which showcased how diverse and qualitative their music scene is despite it being a huge success in the fandom, and instead reached out to the writer of last year’s last place song for the UK and a few other rentaswedes and they produced something that sounds like a b-side that not even Westlife would have recorded, replete with a stock key change. About as French as IKEA köttbullar. A real shame for one of Europe’s most highly esteemed cultural hotbeds. If they wanted to pick Tom Leeb, who seems like a nice guy and has written some lovely music, he could have made his own song and it would have indubitably been scores better than this. 🇪🇸 Spain: I’m going to apply this to all the automatic qualifiers voting on this semi-final: they scrapped a national final for this? OT was not an ideal format as last year demonstrated with its shit show of contestants sabotaging themselves so as not to get picked for ESC – but still. There’s not much I can say about this other than I don’t like it much and I’d rather Spain return to a proper NF. You don’t spend time trapped on a bus where this song with its torturous falsetto was on replay and emerge with fond feelings. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Usually, in this space, I can point to a song that the UK should have sent and that I fell in love with – like I wish I loved you more or You. Once again, though, another big 6 nation scrapped their NF after tanking it with a bizarre format last year. The BBC said nothing for months, then were unwilling to spend tv time on ESC this year so just blurted out an announcement of an announcement in  about 40 seconds after some dance show. And then they dropped this song. It’s… passable at best, with an annoying chorus (especially that beat in “my last… breath”) and a staggering amount of repetition in a song that clocks in at only around 80% of the standard Eurovision song length. James Newman surely could have come up with something better. It’s a baby step in the right direction, but one taken at the shore where you need to start running to avoid getting pulled away in a rip.

[nikatyler]

Quarantine, day one. I’m currently taking a break from studying. I did some phonetics and morphology in the morning, now I’m going to read a few more pages from the history book that I was supposed to finish yesterday. This one is so slow. It’s packed with facts, gives a detailed description about probably every single thing that happened in medieval Europe...and most these things are somewhat new to me because I usually only studied what directly influenced my country. Everything else was just basics to be aware of the fact that we didn’t live in a vacuum. Also, the letters in this book are really small and it’s hell to read. I look up to my screen to write down a note, then I look back at the book and I have no idea where I was. But small letters generally are hell to read for me, even here at simblr, if there are “subtitles” in the pictures and they’re tiny, I’ll probably just skip the whole story. Sorry, that was off topic. But yeah. Long story short I have dumb eyes.

I haven’t had much time to play sims. I take breaks when I’m studying, but I don’t open the game because I know I’d spend way too much time there and then I wouldn’t go back to study. And when I’m done studying, usually I don’t see a point in opening it. I’m trying to go to bed early every day so I have more time in the day. It used to be difficult for me to get up before 10am, now I usually wake up between 8-9 and I’m aiming for an even earlier time. We’ll see how that goes. But I really like it. My days are longer and I don’t feel that tired. Also, maybe sunlight is good after all...

Take care of yourself, wash your hands, stay at home if you don’t absolutely have to go out, you know how it goes. Don’t hoard toilet paper, help other people. Be nice. Follow the orders, they were made for a good reason. I’m done preaching now but seriously. Stay safe. This isn’t a joke.

amuhav replied to your post “what's your pinterest? i would love to follow it :0 I'm sorry, I won't...”

OOF, yeah, mine's conected to my facebook too and every so often I have a little heartattack when I make a new board and forget to set it to private ������

Yeah same! I’m so glad the option exists haha.

Also, I think I disconnected my Facebook successfully? Like it works here?? I thought it was impossible. But maybe after all I will share my pinterest haha.

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Everyone went crazy because Dustin Broke was at the restaurant.”

Lol, see, everyone hates Thorne Bailey but Dustin Broke is the one I dislike most ��

lmao I hate all the celebrities in this game because usually they show up and only mess with my plans

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “I opened this poll almost a month ago, closed it about two weeks ago...”

Lilith's relationships also raise really quickly due to her vampric charisma (I experienced it myself yesterday) so BC would be... "Lilith scored herself a harem" �� propably Cassandra is a good choice!

Oh yeah, I didn’t even think of that. Well, it would be kinda fun haha.

Also, off topic but that harem idea reminded me of something that happened when I was in my first year of high school. We only had one boy (and 11 girls) in our class. The first time we all took a picture together and put it up online, people were like “oooh, look at that harem he has!” Ah, 2015. 

justkeeponsimming replied to your photo “I’m pretty much unable to just sit in the dark and watch a movie, I...”

Wow this is stunning! You’re so talented!

Thank youuu 🥺❤

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Do not panic guys. Do not. I have it under control. I won’t let...”

Omg ��‍♀️

Okay but do you have any idea how I panicked in that moment? 😂 It was happening again and all because Sunset was dumb and walked straight into the fire. Like father, like daughter, seriously. They know what could kill them and they do it anyway.

glammoose replied to your post “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to get a message from the...”

It's a wild world right now. Take care of yourself and try not to panic, it only makes things worse

I’m actually strangely calm. I mean, I read the news, go on social media and think “holy shit this can’t be actually happening in the world right now”, but then I go on with my day like everything is fine. By the way, side note to everyone reading this, if you’re overwhelmed with the news and you are afraid, it’s okay. I personally think it’s important to stay informed but if it gets too much for you, just log out and take a break from all of this.

But yeah, I agree. Panic makes things worse. I wish someone explained that to certain news websites though...people started panic shopping here two weeks before we even had our first case of coronavirus...and it’s probably because one popular news website published an article saying that we should start hoarding shit in case apocalypse comes 🤦‍♀️ As far as I know it was all worded like the actual end of the world is coming...clearly many people got that message and went wild.

prossims replied to your photoset “Claudia: “Hey Zack! What are you doing here?” Zackery: “I just wanted...”

Oh she is so clueless ��

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Iris: “I bought this dress yesterday. What do you think?” Crystal:...”

Hahaha not sure if Crystal is getting the point....pretty sure she means "wear it on a date....with YOU"

Yup yup, they’re both oblivious. It pretty much runs in the family. I mean, how long did it take certain two vampires to realize that “hold up, maybe I’m in love with my best friend?!”

elisabettasims replied to your photoset “Huh. That’s weird. Turns out Iris has been here all along, and now...”

Sometimes they hide. I've had friends come home that I couldn't find on the lot, LOL. And I've had more than the one they asked come, too. Just like teens, ha ha ha.

Yeah it makes sense. I wonder though, is it supposed to be like that or is it just a glitch?

[actualhumansunshine]

OMG Alyssa, thank you for posting about Normal People! I started watching it because I saw Niall’s tweet about it that you posted on here and I was curious. I just finished the series two days ago and wow, it packed a punch. I read some spoilers ahead of time and still was surprised and super sad by the way the last 5 min played out. Like many people, I had an on again off again ‘relationship’ that sometimes resembled this one, and I really appreciate a story taking that seriously. Part1

Pt2: now that I have finished Normal People I read through all your tagged posts. It’s so nice to see so many people that love and relate to this show and have wonderful things to say about it. Parts of it were 😭 and some discussions are too, so hooray for fan content celebrating the best moments and lessons ☺️ So many stories and tv shows have these on and off relationships, but they rarely seem realistic or like they are meant to be taken seriously. I love that NP claims that they are an

Pt3: important source of personal growth, and worth the time and energy, even if the two people don’t end up together, and even if it looks like the ‘relationship’ isn’t mature or quite working when they are in it. I related to some of Marianne’s insecurities because I wasn’t popular in grade school and I waited so long to start dating and making moves on guys I liked. But unlike Marrianne, I always had a small group of friends and the most supportive family that made me feel good about myself 

Pt4 NP: Since my first kiss & first time were post-college, I was VERY self conscious about my lack of experience. It made dating more difficult for me at the time. The first guy I slept with looked a bit like MP 😍 and has some traits in common with Connel: athletic, yet quiet and smart, loves to read and write, and assumes that makes him a great communicator, despite his difficulty expressing emotions. Also the depression 😞 Needless to say, I was really Going Through It watching this show.

Pt5 NP: I didn’t expect to relate to any of the other relationships on the show, but Gareth kind of looks like and f*cks like my first serious boyfriend. We met in grad school shortly after I decided I was done with the back and forth unpredictability with the PM lookalike. Serious & Commited boyfriend was also involved in every club and was class president of his grad school, super gregarious and loved to host parties yet not clean up, argumentative and critical and always thought he was right

Pt6: So when I saw the Marianne-Gareth dynamic I was like: WTF I relate to this so hard too. I can see what she was doing there: exploring new things in college and dating someone very different than C. I was with my Gareth for 3.5 years and he ended it. Now we are friendly exes who talk regularly, he is married, and I have 0 desire to f*ck him. First dude however: still have the hots 🥵 for him, which makes it difficult to have a cordial friendship, despite genuinely wanting to.

NP pt6 or 7 I lost count tbh sorry for spamming you via anon: I related to Paul and Marianne emailing when they were dating other people. When I’ve done that, it has felt like a good way to stay in touch while keeping some emotional distance and avoiding flirting and falling into the communication patterns you had while dating. I also related to the sporadic timing of their communication. we all need space to move on and fall for new people. When things are good with an ex it’s easy to want them  

please, i love that you shared this with me 🥺 it’s wild that you related to it and found yourself in it as much as you did, but then again, i suppose it’s a very relatable and true to life story, and if i were to list everything that i saw of myself throughout the series, it would probably be a long-ass list as well. 

that also a VERY good point about finding ways to keep emotional distance, because it’s easy to want someone when your relationship is going well. i feel like we kind of saw that during the episode in italy especially. things between them were going well, while her relationship with her boyfriend was getting more and more tense, so it was easy for them to slip into their old patterns and ways :’/

[comicteaparty]

May 9th-May 15th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from May 9th, 2020 to May 15th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

What experiences do you have related to contests for comics, and do you find them worthwhile?

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

:0 what a relevant question(edited)

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Funnily enough, I was going to enter this year’s WEBTOON competition, but I decided to focus on my webcomic instead. I still have concept art of my original idea (based off of Russian folklore) that I might draw one day, but it was fun drawing it.

I decided instead to just support the friends and fellow artists I know who entered the contest. It’s nice to see their hard work pay off.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I usually had either no time or no interest in a particular contest, so I have no clue. The only time I had both you needed to give up your copyright to enter, and thus I found it more worthwhile to put the effort into my own art and the dayjob.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I’ve never submitted to a contest I’ve considered submitting my existing work for various contests/awards, but in the end I always decide my story just isn’t far enough along yet to justify it. And my brain isn’t buzzy enough to create an original short story for something like the Webtoon one, so I’m out on that. I did get nominated for an award that turned into a voting contest anyway, but the winners were going to be practically guaranteed based on existing popularity, so... it was a nice gesture without any real chance of success. But it was cool to be up there with some heavy hitters. I dunno. Maybe one day I’ll feel more comfortable with the idea, once I feel like I’ve earned the chance

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not webcomic related, but back in 5th grade, there was this shounen jump-like Korean magazine that I was reading. One day, they announced a contest with the first and second place winners being offered a chance to serialize their own thing. While I had been doodling my own comics before that point, that was the first time it occurred to me: hey, I could be doing this like a pro. I could be a pro. So I tried to make my own entry for that contest. I never finished it, nor did I, in retrospect, stand a chance. But it was an eye-opener: my work could be taken seriously, could be seen by others. It was a possibility! I was going through a less than ideal time in my life at the time, too. Nothing super bad or abusive, just unstable/unpredictable, left me no headspace for a 5th grade kid to dream of the future. So it was pretty meaningful to have that kind of eye-opening excitement about possibilities/ future/ change.

I no longer want to go pro. I don't think I can deal with the emotional burden of relying on audience reception for income. But it was a good phase to go through.

DanitheCarutor

For comics it's never crossed my mind to submit anything for a contest, the prizes never catch my interest since I'd rather just buy something if I want it. I'm not much of a competitive person in general, if I do get like that it's usually for something fun that doesn't require as much stress, time and resources as art. (like sports or video games) A while back I saw two contests to win a digital drawing tablet, it was getting a lot of hype in the webcomic Twitter community, but I already have a tablet and almost never use it so the contests were kind of pointless for me. Even if the tablets were those fancy screen tablets you draw directly on. Not comic related, but when I was a teen I hung out on Gaia Online almost all day and partook in the art contests there to win items and gold. Drawing was just some fun thing back then since I didn't have to worry about cost of materials or the value of my time, so I indulged in those contests often. My mom used to get really mad at me wasting my "talent" and resources pretty much for free. Lol I still have all the avie drawings saved on my computer.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah, Gaia contests were fun that way

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Speaking of contest, I did participate in an illustration fan contest for ADV (when it was still around), I found it while I was still a small Deviantart artist. I don't have strong hope of winning but when I did, my school kid self was excited. My work was appreciated and I made art for a series I loved. I felt a little victory. :) It's easier to draw for a fan series than make up an original that has obstacles stacked against me. But I might try to participate in a comic contest one day(edited)

DanitheCarutor

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) Fff Gaia was such a low stress site, I loved hanging out there. Getting those monthly special items was a while event.

carcarchu

I agree dani, i have never understood the point of art contests where the prize is tablet. what do you think they're drawing on to enter it??

DanitheCarutor

I think a lot of the people who do have contests for art supplies like that have sponsorships, but they're pretty pointless if you're good with what you got... and you just don't like competing in general.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It probably makes more sense with traditional media supplies since you run out of them all the time. But tablets... yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I had kind of a similar early experience with contests as keii'ii. Went I was a kiddo, Tokyo Pop still existed and had their rising stars of manga contest. Seeing other Americans being published like that really took me from "I love these comics and drawing fan art and ocs for them" to "I could write my own stories with my own characters and other kids could buy them at the store and be inspired." My adult experience with contest had mostly been that they're a one way a good way to feel heart broken for a while X') I've got a lot of perfectionist tendencies, so loosing always feels really bad. Maybe also because I take a lot of pride in my work and I want to be recognized for it. And I think maybe winning a contest is kind of an easier way of feeling accomplished than a followed count or monthly site statistics? I'm not sure XD also it would just be cool to be able to tell people I'm an award winning comic artist XDXD Dealing with rejection/not winning is definitely something I've gotten better at. I'm hoping to make a small submission for that shonen jump contest that got posted here a few days ago. Not cuz I think I'll probably win anything, but it feel like a neat thing to do for myself. But also... Always got that secret hope of what if I did haha! XD

DanitheCarutor

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) In a way it's kind of redundant though? If you think about it you're using up your resources to get more, which would probably just be enough to refill the stock you used for the contest with a little extra. (depending on how much work you put into the illustration/comic) Unless the contest was for a year supply of 'X' you don't get much out of it. xP I can also see the tablet contest being good for people who can't afford to get one, or can't afford to upgrade if theirs is broken down and old, but yeah. It's not super useful if you already have a good functioning one. I know for some contests it's also the bragging rights, or some credibility when you're trying to get art/comic jobs, but it's just not my thing.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Aww I understand how you feel @mariah (rainy day dreams) you describe the same emotion I felt trying to enter comic submissions, wanting that chance to get it noticed and picked up. Yeah as long as you give it a try, at least a story is made!

[monicalorandavis]

I was an intern at Comedy Central and it mostly sucked

File this under the category of “Who Cares?”

Everybody knows interns (at basically every company) are treated like shit.  They are used strictly for running errands and little else. It was likely that a TV network should follow suit. To no one’s surprise, Comedy Central treated interns like shit. I was. The interns around me were. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I had so little work experience and I was so grateful for the opportunity that I figured it was part of the process of getting to where you wanted to be. It wasn’t until I ran into Joe, an assistant (who had particularly made my life hell) at a party a few years later that I even thought about how mean he had been to me. I wanted to let it go. But he had been really fucking mean and it stung to think about. He wasn’t alone. It was actually a whole group of assistants who I’d felt had humiliated me. I remember going to lunch at the same time the assistants were leaving for lunch. They caught the elevator and I had asked to join, trailing just a step behind them. Joe barked “No”, closed the elevator doors in my face and I heard them all laughing at me on the way down. I stared at the closed doors, shocked. Never in my life had I been treated like such a loser. I was in a fucking teen movie being bullied by complete pricks. And the worst part was, these people were definitely the kids who’d been bullied.

I caught the next elevator and when I arrived on the ground level, they were waiting for me. They didn’t say anything. They looked guilty like they’d realized they’d been mean to an intern who would likely say something to someone in HR and decided to extend me the kindness of waiting for me. Only I didn’t want them to wait for me and I would never say anything. Unlike them, I didn’t like making people feel like shit. We walked to get salads in silence. They resumed their conversation but I paid and left before them. It was so weird after that. For like a day. And then, it started all over again.

There were exceptions during that time and I would like to name them and give them all their credit. Tony, one of the early writer/producers of Workaholics (a gig he got during my time there), was fabulously kind to me. He never made me feel lame or stupid and I was sad to see him go even though I knew writing was his goal. Walter was nice. Gary was nice. Seth. But I have forgotten many people’s names and you’ll forgive me as this was almost a decade ago. That time exists in a haze. I was living downtown with two of my girlfriends in a loft apartment that didn’t have walls. I had no bedroom. Just an upstairs “room” with a bathroom with a toilet but no shower. I paid $500 a month for a glorified port-a-potty and thus, acted like a degenerate. Every night, I either smoked weed until I fell asleep or scoured the streets for a cute boy to spend the night with. It was during that time that I was lucky enough to get an internship at a company that could change the course of my life - Comedy Central. It was a gift to work there and I knew it. I didn’t have any Hollywood connections.This was it. I would take it seriously, I promised myself. So, I did.

Comedy Central used to be the mecca. Before Tosh.0 and Jim Jefferies, it was the home of Chappelle’s Show. I am not exaggerating when I tell you this: that show changed the whole goddamn world and I was no exception. it changed me. It was the blueprint. Comedy could be brutal on white people. It could get real and gross and political and stupid all at the same time. Comedy nerds like me ate it up.

Dave Chappelle’s two season masterpiece of a show infected college campuses in 2004 when it was released on DVD. That was the year I started college. By happenstance, I was part of the DVD revolution. We would crowd into each other’s dorm rooms and cry laughing and then watch the same episode again. It caught fire. Dave Chappelle bridged the gap between black and white, famous and normal while still keeping himself removed from the whole thing, aloof - distinguished...better than us. His skewering of racism was a glass through which we could see in fact, we were all participants in the same system albeit on other sides. 

So, Chappelle’s Show was important to me. I wanted to work at a place that had created art. I would try to shine there and let my own ideas blossom into projects.

But in spite of my eagerness, I was aware at the time (as we all were) that Comedy Central had paid Dave Chappelle $50 million for a third season but instead of delivering, he walked off set and fled to Africa. This was the story we were told. This was before Twitter and Instagram. The internet swirled with rumors that he had gone crazy and was going to live in Africa forever. He had abandoned Hollywood for good.

But the whole thing stank of racism, buried just underneath the surface. Why was Chappelle suddenly crazy when he didn’t want a huge sum of money? Yes, that’s a huge sum of money but deep down I thought, those people are trying to exploit him. Intuitively I felt like Chappelle knew he was part of a bigger racial-bridging that was allowing white people access to private areas of black culture. He had invited fans to shout famous lines back at him. Lines that Chappelle himself and other black actors had killed with. But, lines that white fans should never say. They were insensitive to the privilege shared by black people to communicate to other black people. White people want to say the n-word and it’s not theirs to say. It’s a truth other black comedians have shared.

When Chris Rock was caught in conversations with racists who relayed his “niggers versus black people” bit back to him he retired it permanently. The price of being an honest black comedian in this country is that white people can retell your insider information as intel. White people who would otherwise have no interaction with black people now has an arsenal of information. They have evidence that was not acquired through firsthand experience. They have heard the inner monologue of black America and instead of fixing racial injustice, they are repeating their favorite lines. And in spite of all of that, in spite of all the drama between Comedy Central and Dave Chappelle, in spite of the racial implications the media had thrown around, I got a job as an intern in hopes just being in the same office that created Chappelle’s Show could imbue me with some genius or good fortune.

It didn’t.

It was whack. There were like 40 of us on a rotating schedule where three of us would work certain days together and then another three would work another group of days and sometimes you would see other interns on your day because they couldn’t come in on their regular day. Since there were so many interns doing the work that one capable assistant could perform we were all basically twiddling our thumbs, trying to look useful and eager. Some interns dazzled executives with their epic notes on scripts, replete with a solid three act structure and relevant examples, figures, marketing suggestions. Others buried their noses up anyone’s ass who lingered near them long enough, offering to get coffee, lunch, snacks, dry cleaning, children from daycare, gifts for spouses, you name it. I employed none of these strategies. I scoped the most eligible bachelors and tried to dazzle them with my charms. The married ones would have been the smarter bet. Married men are more willing to go out on a limb for a cute, inexperienced graduate with a lot to prove. They won’t cheat but they like feeling important to women still so they’ll toss around bread crumbs. The single ones are still so obsessed with themselves that they can’t see far enough past their noses to help. I was vying for the attention of one executive I was sure would marry me, given I had enough alone time with him in the kitchen, when I learned he was getting engaged. It was devastating. Of course I would choose to be in love with someone just about to propose.

It dawned on me that marrying your way into the entertainment business was sort of gross and I was at Comedy Central to make a name for myself. Meaning, I should make it for myself. Not rely on somebody else giving me a handout. I had to go out and earn my job. Unfortunately, it seemed that only a few at Comedy Central had actually earned their job from sheer hard work. Most people had arrived there from a combination of knowing someone and favors and white privilege that is the winningest cocktail of all time. But, even they didn’t really like their jobs. It made no sense. The ones with the worst attitudes, who were the most lazy, cranky, emotionally unhinged seemed to know the most people. And they hated everything and everyone.

Below them, were us, the interns. And to my chagrin, I’d been wasting entire weeks of time pining over some man who’d hardly noticed me while these nerds were working their asses off. I was light years behind and frankly, unwilling to break my back for a job that didn’t seem like it would ever come my way. I was this sore thumb. I felt like a step sister and everyone else was The Brady Bunch. Primarily, I looked very different than everyone there. I wore ripped jeans and had tattoos and listened to hip hop. Wearing hoop earrings to work basically identified me as a member of the Crips. These people were so white and goofy that the only person of color they’d managed to hire had gone to private school their entire lives.

This sounds bratty already and I swear to God, I am not an ungrateful asshole. I am writing this to say that the experience crushed me a little bit. I left the internship at the end of the summer with no interest in staying in touch with anyone. With the exception of running into Joe at a party, I’ve run into one girl, Sarah, at my exercise class. I reveled when she feigned confusion when I asked if she’d remembered me from Comedy Central three years prior. I thought to myself, “I’m about to ruin this bitch’s day” and I’d like to think that her trembling, noodle-like legs during my class were some karmic retribution for her unkindness.

Besides that, I have no ill feelings towards anyone presently. To be fair, the assistants were only a year or two older than me at the time and wielding an unnatural amount of power. They did not handle power well. Not many do.

[purplesurveys]

874

What's something you couldn't live without, other than the obvious? It’d be very hard to have to get by without my glasses. I’d technically survive, but I’ll have to get used to bumping into things a lot and never recognizing anyone unless they’re right beside/in front of me. What's something that will always cheer you up? Dogs. Real life dogs, photos of dogs, videos of dogs, stories about dogs, etc. Who's had the biggest positive impact on your life? My orgmates. They made me happy when I needed it the most, called me out when I needed the help, and idk I’m just happy whenever I get to see them. I can’t recall a time where I felt like it was a chore to spend some time with them. Do you wear flip-flops during the winter? Sigh...moving on... What was the last thing you said out loud? I asked Nina to help me bring Cooper and his stuff up to my parents’ room; specifically, I asked her to bring his food and water bowls.

What's something that irritates you to no end? Backhand compliments. An uncle once congratulated me for getting into my dream school but ended his sentence with “are you sure you don’t wanna go to [2nd top university in the country, (which I also passed the day before)]? You’ll fit better there.” This was like two days after I found out I got into UP, so I was still on cloud nine. I don’t know how my face contorted after that but I wasn’t pleased.

Honestly, do looks matter to you? Yes, but not as much as personality and intelligence. When was the last time you had a girls/guys night out? Not sure. I just have nights out in general; I never plan out gender-exclusive hangouts with my friends. Do you still watch kiddie movies/tv shows? Sometimes, when I get in the mood to. It’s not something I feel the need to do regularly. What's your worst habit? Never learning my lesson and being careless just because everything is going well. Best way I can illustrate this is when a couple of a months ago I started getting regular headaches because I’d sleep at 3, 4 AM – I addressed it by giving myself an earlier bedtime. When the headaches went away and I started feeling better, I went right back to sleeping late lol. Procrastinating is a good example too; I’ve submitted work early occasionally and it’s satisfying as fuck, but I never learn for the most part and stick to doing stuff at the last minute. Do your parents call you by any embarrassing nicknames? No. Byn is a nickname, but I don’t find it embarrassing. Do you have road rage? Yeah but there have to be certain conditions for me to get to that point, like once I’ve seen enough stupidity on the road and I can’t take it anymore; when I’m tense about something; or when traffic has been standstill for too long. Is there a certain word that you always forget how to spell? Not really. I know my spelling pretty well. Are there any books in your room? Which ones? Yesssss but it’s mostly because I owned a lot of books as a kid and I’ve thrown none of them out. My book collection is sorely not updated because I stopped reading as I got older. Do you take too many surveys? I wouldn’t say I take too many, especially considering the fact that I used to take like 7-10 surveys everyday back in high school. I do take them regularly. Write some lyrics from the song you're currently listening to: "You know I’m always coming back to this place, you know I’m always gonna look for your face.”

When it comes to dating, what's your preferred age range? 0-1 year. When was the last time someone gave you a weird look? Continued the next morning, lol. I was dancing in my seat over dinner last night because the fried chicken we had was super good, so my mom looked at me strangely. Do you like to cuddle? Only with a significant other, and an animal if they’re willing to cuddle. Do you like the band Cartel? I don’t think I’ve heard of that band yet. Do you play any instruments? No, but I’m always wishing I could. Do you ever blare the music in the car and dance like an idiot? I used to do that when I drove to and from school. It’s the only time in the day where I’m not working and I’m alone, so I allow myself to let loose. Though I gotta say, most of it is recorded because I always have a dashcam on HAHAHAHA so I definitely have some footage I don’t want getting aired in like my funeral or something. Do you like playing in the rain? When I was a kid.

What's something you miss? Going to the mall is a big one. Anything unpleasant coming up soon? The worst thing I can think of is the first anniversary of Nacho’s passing. It’s not till September, but when I think about how March literally feels like yesterday September doesn’t seem too far away anymore. If you had a pet moose, what would you name him? Probably the name of another animal, like Cow. I’ve seen other people name their dogs the names of different animals and it has always sounded so hilarious to me. Do you often hold back what you really want to say? If it’s gonna make me look unnecessarily blunt and hurtful then yes. Are you currently wearing any jewlery? Nope. What was the last gift you gave to someone? Cooper, for Father’s Day. It was my mom’s idea but I helped chip in with the graduation money I got from one of my aunts. Do you decorate for Christmas? (If you celebrate it, that is.) We do. I’ll probably put a tree and some stockings up once I live alone, idk, just so I don’t feel too lonely. Are you hungry? A bit, but it’s manageable. On that note, I miss continental breakfasts. I’ve been having Filipino-style breakfast for months and I really would just like a goddamn croissant or bread rolls with butter for once, lol. When was the last time you went bowling? Sometime in September and October last year. Can you whistle? Yes. Is there a certain genre of music that you just can't stand? Country. Are you allergic to anything? Nope. How many pillows do you sleep with? Two. I lay my head on one and hug another. If I don’t have a ~hug pillow~ it takes much longer for me to fall asleep. You've just won a free vacation! Where do you want to go? Covid restrictions hypothetically put aside, I’d love to go on the New York/Texas trip I initially planned as my grad gift. Do you have a good relationship with your parents? I have a good relationship with my dad. But it’s not like I feel comfortable enough to tell either of my parents any of my secrets. What's your favorite thing about yourself? Gabie likes to tell me “you’re too selfless, you don’t have to help everyone” in sort of like an annoyed tone because that’s exactly what I do lol - help anyone, even if I have to go out of my way or even if it’ll inconvenience me to do it. But I love it about me. I like when I get to make people go home with one less issue on their shoulders. Do you have any health problems? Scoliosis. Have you ever had a near-death experience? Almost smashed into a car that suddenly braked while I was going 50, 60 kph. Are you extremely picky when it comes to guys/girls? That’s what demis essentially are, lol. Do you ever listen to classical music? It’s my last resort when I’m studying and no other music is helping me get focused. What was the last concert you attended? Paramore. What's a movie you'd like to see right now? (Old or new) Ammonite, it’s an upcoming film with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Do you take life too seriously? Most of the time. I just find it necessary that way. When was the last time you were truly scared? This weekend when my mom watched a jumpscare with the sound on, so I heard the loud demon scream that came up in the end. What's the funniest trick you've ever pulled on anyone? I don’t like pulling tricks because I don’t like them pulled on me. The most I’ve done is take Gab’s phone and pretend with her that it’s lost. Do you like orange juice? I’ll drink it if it’s served for free, but I wouldn’t buy one for myself. Do you own any skinny jeans? Yes, nearly all my jeans are skinny. Do you have a diary/journal that you frequently write in? You’re looking at it. When was the last time you had a good workout? November, back when I still had that intense PE class that made me work out for an hour every Wednesday and Friday. Do you like your eye color? I find it too common but I’m not actively complaining about it. I don’t feel the need to change it. When was the last time you played with Play-Doh? Two or three years ago at a cousins’ place. One of them was still a baby then, so the toys they had around were clay and kinetic sand and stuff. What's something that you think people waste too much time on? Fighting on Facebook comments lol Do you think they should outlaw talking on your cell phone while driving? They already have, at least here. Are you embarrassed to burp or fart in front of your friends? For the most part. I’ll burp only in front of Angela and Gab. Do you like peanut butter cookies? Yesssssss, but I don’t get to have it a lot. :(

[mentalillnessmouse]

(p1) Hi, I'm writing because I feel there is no hope for me. I'm 30, I live at home where I get verbally mistreated (it was physical when I was younger.) I'm morbidly obese, agoraphobic, I literally didn't leave the house for a 2 year period and still rarely do. I have 0 friends and never had any except a few online ones who ditched me years ago. I was bullied constantly. I have self-harm marks all over my arms. I've NEVER had a job, or finished high school. I still almost never leave the house.

(p2) I’ve asked for help to learn to drive, but they tell me I can’t. I guess because they call me autistic and tell me I am not very smart and make jokes about me having ADHD. I took those comments seriously and they told me I was “looking for problems.” WHAT? I made the mistake of speaking with a few psychiatrists about it who shut me down because, in their words, I didn’t “look” like I had those issues. And that my parents had hard jobs so it made sense they would lash out at me. 

(p3) I deal with other issues too like menorrhagia. A doctor had me do an ultrasound (this was like my 3rd one since ‘06) and sent me to a specialist because they saw something. The specialist said she didn’t think anything was there and wasn’t going to actually examine me. I gave up. I’m afraid to speak up for myself, I genuinely don’t understand how to live, make friends, talk to people. I feel like I just have TOO MANY issues. And at my age I don’t see why anyone would bother with me anymore.

(p4) I have an appt with a psych at the same place as the others because I have my city’s free insurance and nowhere else to go. I don’t know if I can do it again after this? I just wanted somewhere to reach out at least one more time :( I’ve reached out to others (like extended family) who will talk to me for a bit then ignore? I can’t help but to feel damaged or like I’m doing something wrong I can’t figure out. I feel like a weak loser and I didn’t try good enough.I’m sorry this is so long

Hello Anon, 

I’m mod Bee and I’ll do my best to help you out, but I received help myself from the other mods to write you back. So this is a communal effort!

Thank you for reaching out, and I’m sorry you’re going though such a difficult and distressing situation. You sound strong and tenacious, and I’m proud of you for the way you keep trying to improve your life. 

We have some suggestions that we hope can be of help. They’ll concerne:

finding online communities/groups to hang out with

finding a professional that suits your needs 

looking for courses you can join 

thinking about possible job options 

Just an head up: this is going to be long, and it will contain tons of links. I’ll highlight one - that I think it’s most useful - for each section, but I suggest you to go through them all. 

1. finding online communities/groups to hang out with

Having friends is important for our mental health, but it can get difficult to make new ones, especially when we’ve been burned before.  

Online communities, forums, and groups, can be good places to start looking for friends again. You can approach them with as much caution as you need, and find those people you relate with the most.

If you like games, and rpgs in particular, there are online options that allow you to connect with other others all over the world. Activities like Dungeon&Dragons are based around players’ interactions, so you’d get to know people without putting the stress on forging new friendships. The article 10 Best Online Chat Rooms & Games suggests other equally fitting games. 

Forums and groups where you can share your experience and fears are another important tool you can use. I’ve looked into active ones and found Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia Forum, r/Agoraphobia/ (on reddit), bus (a self-harm support forum), Mental health support group and discussion community, Online Support Groups by Turn2Me, PsychForums (Psychology and Mental Health Forums), and the ReachOut app.

Trying with pen pals - a one on one exchange - could also be a good idea: InterPals and PenPalWorld are only two of the many websites dedicated to this purpose. Here’s some tips on how it works.

Finally, there are apps with the specific purpose of finding new friends, like Bumble BFF. Try to see if you there’s one of your liking in this list.

2. finding a professional that suits your needs

We usually recommend what it’s colloquially called “psychiatrist/therapist shopping”, the act of choosing a professional after inquiring what we need to know of their line of work, based on our own wishes, and asking this to more than one.

It’s difficult when insurance covers just a little portion of professionals, but not impossible. 

Can’t afford therapy? No insurance? Need low cost options? Here is a great list of ways to get help when money or insurance is an issue.

Therapy For Every Budget: How To Access It

9 Ways to Get Free or Cheap Therapy When You Don’t Have Health Insurance

Dial 211 for Essential Community Services: if you call 211, you can ask about free therapy options in your area, or how to work with you insurance to afford other professionals.

If none of these options work out, and you have to stick with the professional your insurance provides, there are measures you can take that might help making the sessions successful. Check out 21 Tips for getting the most out of each therapy session and How to Talk to Your Doctors When They Don’t Listen. 

If your new psychiatrist tries to dismiss you without hearing everything that you have to say, insist that they write on your record exactly what they did and why, and that you absolutely want a copy of it before you exit their room. It’s your right to have both your requests accomplished. I know it’s not easy to have them respected: you’ll probably have to stand your ground and that can be difficult, but I think it’s important for you and fundamental for what you can get out of this session. This is a post with links to various module you can complete to help you assert yourself, which I suggest you to start before going to your appointment, if you can. It can be useful to face your family, too.

Does your insurance cover a different specialist for the gynecological problem your doctor wanted you to check out? Is there any free or low-cost clinic near you, like Planned Parenthood or Free Clinic? You can inquire about their services through email.

3. looking for courses you can join

Online courses can be helpful for a number of things, like keeping busy, learning new stuff, feeling accomplished, and possibly getting some qualifications. 

There are some free options that end with a proper certificate, but not all are accredited, meaning that they’re not automatically accepted by employers (they can choose to consider them valid or not). Still, there are no downsides in joining such a course, seeing that it doesn’t cost anything but your time.

Not accredited certificates/no certificates:

Alison’s Diploma Courses and Certificate Courses 

FutureLearn doesn’t grant you certificates with their free courses, but it still provides learning access

edX’s Courses

Udemi, not free but it offers up to 90% discounts generally once a month

Learn how to code, a masterpost that lists different courses to learn coding

Free Online Language Courses, a masterpost that lists different courses to learn languages  

24 Invaluable Skills To Learn For Free

Accredited certificates

coursera offers some free courses, and/or the possibility to apply for financial aid

Online Degree require no tuition, no applications, and no interviews, and has worked so participating Universities around the country will consider the courses for credit, potentially finishing up to an entire freshman year of college

edX’s Professional Certificate Programs are not free, but edX offers up to a 90% discount to those who prove they cannot pay a full price.

University Of The People is tuition-free, which means there is no charge for teaching or instruction, only initial fees (around 160$) for each course. You can also apply for scholarships.

on StudyPortal - Scholarships, you can find a huge number of scholarships available in your country, and here you can find the easiest scholarships to apply to. There are also scholarships for online courses.

There’s also the possibility of completing high school through virtual courses, and if they’re organized by your State’s public school system, they should be free. You can find more info on this here. 

4. thinking about possible job options

Working towards finding a job is important for our own self-worth and feeling like a valuable member of society, and of course it can also help with looking for better therapy. 

It can be tricky when mental and physical illnesses are at play, though. That’s why I’d like to give you some online options here, too, that don’t ask for any particular prerequisite, and would give you enough free time to focus to get better. Jobs like data entry or app testing are doable from home, and may not pay much, but they’d allow you to start building some savings. 

5 Online Jobs That Require Little or No Experience

No Experience? Start One of These Online Jobs

Best Data Entry Jobs From Home

10 (Legit) Data Entry Jobs from Home

Work At Home Data Entry on Indeed.com

FlexJobs

Glassdoor

Whatever you choose, creating a strong resume is always a good step. I’m giving you some resources on how to do that:

How to Create a Professional Resume

How To Make A Resume 101

Help Everyone Find A Job In Their Field

And between checking out all these options we gave you, please try to do some of this Workout For Daily Life, because focusing on a screen for too long can cause so many aches!

You’re not a loser, you’re strong and you keep fighting for yourself, which is admirable. I hope these resources can be of help, and please do send another ask if you need anything else.

Take care,

mod Bee

[putschki1969]

2019/07/07 Blog post by Wakana 『ボタボタしたおはなし。』 

『A little talk that’s dribbling away』

This is here Mama-Agave, I posted a picture of her on instagram yesterday. While looking through the pictures on my phone, I found one of her when she was still a little baby! So young and small~ So pretty~. (If you look closely, you can see Chibi-Agave starting to grow) That was about 2 1/2 years ago, it’s amazing how much she has changed. It’s almost like having a class reunion and people don’t recognise each other anymore. “Eh, seriously? THAT’S Agave??!!”

Hello, this is Wakana (0￣∇￣0)／ It is so much fun to watch my plants grow. Truth is, my Mama-Agave is from the same shop as my two-metres high everfresh. (This is another old picture, it was taken at night-time so the leaves are closed, they only open during daytime.) Eva-san has been in rough shape ever since the beginning of the year ... I consulted an expert and asked them what to do. So many things could be wrong with her, she could be pot bound so that would require a replanting in the near future, there is also the possibility of root rot....I wanted to make sure so I asked an expert for confirmation (since she is really big a professional needs to look at her). By the way, all of my large plants including Mama-Agave, Eve-san and my  schefflera (which I had pruned a while back) were all bought at the same shop after I had moved about 2 1/2 years ago. (Here is a picture of how Chef looks today). Actually, the owner of the plant shop is my friend, I am always so grateful for her help. Eva-san is in her care right now. She hasn’t recovered her health yet so I fear it’s gonna be a while till she is gonna get discharged from the plant hospital. When I first started growing plants all I did was worry since everything was new to me. By having to deal with all kinds of problems, troubles and little accidents I gradually got used to living together with plants. Also, at the beginning when I saw a pretty plant sitting at the store front I would immediately want to get it. These days, I consider many things before purchasing a plant, “where do I put it?” “Will it be able to get enough sunlight?” That’s what you call self-control! *laughs* In these past years I also experienced many sad events, I had to witness my plants dying. I started wondering, “should I raise anymore plants if I can’t handle it?” But I realised there is no use in being scared of raising plants, it’s just important to inform yourself properly before you make a purchase. Once you have done your research you can pick up a plant with confidence. Taking care of plants has become normal for me, I think *laughs* BUT if I encounter a particularly beautiful plant baby at the storefront I still can’t quite control myself  (+_+;) These days there are lots of green corners added to interior shops. I love to visit them, spending time there has a healing effect on me. To the clerks it might seem like I am just innocently checking out the plants but there is actually so much going through my head whenever I am there.  "What should I do??  I want it so bad!! ... But I have no room for it!... Maybe if I move that one over a little bit? Will it be healthy in that space? Will it get enough sunlight? No ...that spot won’t work out, its no good in there. But maybe it would work another way? No Wakana, you are getting ahead of yourself!!! Ahhh, what am I supposed to do??” This is the kind of stuff that’s going through my head when I am visiting one of those stores. I think and think but I usally leave without buying anything. That’s the time when my own greed hits me the strongest. At that moment I would like someone to pat my back in praise *laughs* After careful consideration I am now considering extending my family again, I want to get some more babies for my veranda and in addition, I would like to get a few more hanging plants. I am really looking forward to it. I guess it’s still nowhere near close to Nausicaä's secret garden lab (>_<) Either way, I would like to spend an eternity together with my plants. Well, this post turned out longer than expected. I actually meant to talk about the plant shop I went to the other day  (^_^;) I will write about that in my next post which will follow soon.

Speaking of which, today is Tanabata☆ミ.+:｡ヽ(´∀｀≡´∀｀)ﾉﾟ.+:｡ Unfortunately it’s very rainy in Tokyo. We won’t be able to celebrate the stars tonight. Let it be sunny! That’s the wish I would like to write on a piece of paper and hang it on the bamboo tree that’s growing rapidly in front of my house.  Everyone, have a great Tanabata! Well then, until next time ～☆ミ(*'▽’*)/ *** Wakana ***

2019/07/07 Instagram post by Wakana

色んな星☆ミ Lots of different stars

[incarnateirony]

Narrative grounding

It’s not really particularly this-side-or-that, but I’ve started to really come to grasp just how much having two viewers that don’t auto-partner their ideals in show-viewing ... helps.

You’ve all heard about my wife. Dean stan, formerly all for brother booze and cars, but at least recognized Cas was important to the dudes by late season; she was an outright anti until the last year, when she took a terrible dive into the dumpster.

For years my defenses of shippers actually came from already being geared, within the house, to discuss it and keep her tamped down on her frustration there, and honestly recognizing how many issues were personal, internal, and so on that cleared themselves up once she got past those internal issues. Honestly that was a bigger drive to me than Destiel, which I more understood/tolerated surfacing in my game and defended people’s narrative integrity over before taking the tumble in, myself -- but it was the persistent real-world problem dialogue that was really something I wanted to help dial back. And eventually, it did. And she got over a LOT of personal, real world internalized issues herself. Next stop Dumpsterville.

That all said, I’m also now the rudder putting my hand up and going “Calm down,” or “Slow your roll” when she decides This Is The Year They Gon Kiss or whatever, which she was CONVINCED was the season 13 finale and I was like, Shea, honey, baby, I love you, but dial it back a bit.

She used to get frustrated with the old Destiel-tilty original Dean player in our game years ago, but later came to recognize it was actually her hating the internal writing style laying all his issues bare because it was... pretty personally hitting. And so on. Plus her other issues. But I could even her out from that. At the same time I can even her out from expecting They Gon Do It Right Now.

And it doesn’t really stop there. It’s been wild seeing her slide, but this last episode with Davy, she said she felt uncomfortable with the final Sam and Dean speech and actually threw that towards elements she would blame BL influence on and I sort of headtilted. Because wow, this coming from her was wild.

You see, I get that angle, the “only Sam could convince-” angle, I get the sentiment behind it, and the mirroring and layering. Before it ever aired I clapped about the 5.18 goodbye tour and throwbacks, and those throwbacks also included conversations between the bros to similar effects, as did the next few episodes. But Cas has evolved past throwing Dean around in 5.18; he’s had the MoC battle season 10 and, when arguing failed, took the hits and gotten thrown around for it without raising an actual hand against him beyond restraint.

Now, this isn’t MoC Dean, but the situation is ripe with parallels of the internal threats, of throwing yourself to the moon or the bottom of the ocean, of Death’s Ultimatum. Dean isn’t going to open up slinging on them but he’s committed to what he currently *perceives* to be the course of action. 

And Dean’s option really doesn’t bode WELL for Cas, perse, but you know, he’s kind of immortal and can kind of hear him anyway -- which I’m sure long term if this actually happened, would suck muchly -- but Cas’ reservation was about watching Dean NOT burn the world, NOT turn into a monster. He’s going to barter, he’s going to try to convince him, but if Dean absolutely felt it was the road to go to keep people safe, he’s going to let him take it.

The same reason he spaced himself from everyone while making the box, because while they’ve gotten better about their circle jerking over this kind of thing, habits are habits, and Dean is literally trying to end this stupid cycle. Last time it required putting Sam’s head on a plate so he didn’t. At this point, no such head on a plate. And frankly, as I’ve told people before, I disagree with the fandom analysis at large on that S10 moment anyway, because acting like double suicide is somehow a better non-codependent option is pretty wild. 

But here we are, not needing to murder a loved one, just taking every step to break the cycle before outside events inevitably fuck it up excessively.

It’s not really that Cas couldn’t convince Dean; in the same season that it defaulted back to Cain/Abel and defying that fate (and thus not getting thrown into space, that everybody keeps chattering about in parallel), we had Cain/Colette and he defied that with a look and passivity (thus also breaking that and not killing his timeline-progress-Colette). 

It’s that Cas wouldn’t. He wouldn’t raise a hand, he wouldn’t just go out of his way to disrupt the process, he’d look into Dean and see the conviction there -- no Mark, no selfish drive, none of that as anything powering him, just the whole Blitzkrieg the World -- and you know. He couldn’t.

He’ll still reason and try, the same as with MoC Dean. I have 0 doubt on that. But it’s more of a wouldn’t/couldn’t, and questioning where exactly that line draws.

So back to the poit of my OP, once I sat and had this chat with her, she went. “Oh. Yeah, I mean, I guess. Wow, you’re right.” and moved on, no weird bitterness continued.

Which I feel is a gift this household has. We can actually, like, discuss and compare ideas and moments before the full volatility of digital fandom has a chance to seep into our brain cores and it levels out extremism in any direction.

And... that’s really the point of the post. Seriously, find a brainbuddy that’s willing to have different points of view than you but able to more share back and forth, and you’ll manage a fairly broad viewing experience.

[nightingaletrash]

📖 for an OC of your choice? :0

Tysm :D I’ll do this for Venaya ^^ under the cut cuz oops it got kinda long o.o

[The journal looks old, but well looked after. The binding is made from guar-leather, and a heavy lock emblazoned with the shape of a bird cradling an orb keeps it firmly shut from prying eyes. The pages are generally pristine, some a little yellowed with age, but otherwise intact. The writing is neatly uniform, written by a practised, educated hand.]

28th Sun’s Height 216

Mother and Father spend the morning arguing, as has become their usual, so I spent the day with Uncle Melar rather than attending my lessons with Mother. She’ll be so busy being furious with Father, I imagine she won’t even remember. And if she does remember, Melar will surely speak on my behalf.

Things have definitely been much more tense as of late. Staying in the house is becoming unbearable. Father accuses Mother of being more interested in Redoran politics than her own family, Mother accuses him of apathy that weakens our House. It’s hard not to take sides. 

I hardly see Mother unless I visit her at her office, and even then she refuses to speak of anything but House affairs. Sometimes it feels like I’m less of a child to her and more of an investment for our future. The son who will set House Redoran on it’s ear, or at least that’s what she envisions for me. And I worry about Father’s habits lately. He disappears into the town for hours at a time and comes home with the strangest smells on his person. And it’s not matze. I’m worried he’s turning to skooma due to the stress of constantly fighting against Mother.

Perhaps I should have said something to Uncle Melar. I’ve always been able to speak to him about a great many things, and he is one of the few who I can speak to openly without fear of judgement or reprimand.But Mother and Father are both very proud. I doubt they’d be happy if I asked Melar to insert himself into our family’s affairs, and it might end up doing more harm than good.

I’ll speak with Father tomorrow. Perhaps being able to talk to me will ease his burden and make skooma a less tempting option.

5th Last Seed 2E 216

It finally happened. The fight to end all fights. Father is leaving tomorrow morning and is already packing his things... And so am I. My Father may not be ideal, but at least he has not divorced himself so entirely from his family that House Redoran is all he has left. I’m still concerned about his forming habits - I can see he is trying since we talked - but I won’t stay in Suran. Not whilst she is here.

After Father announced his intentions, Mother swiftly turned to me - for the first time in months - and demanded to know if I also intended to sully our family name. It was oddly satisfying to inform her that she was the one who destroyed the name Serethi, and even more so to see the look on her face. I’d not seen her so thunderstruck since I copied that argonian phrase as a child. Only this time was not met with a swift reprimand. Instead it was met by silence followed by the slamming of the door as she returned to her office.

May she find it as empty as the Void.

We depart for Sadrith Mora in the morning. Perhaps under the guidance of Ayem we will be able to lay the foundations of our new beginning.

[The later entries are markedly different from the earlier, the handwriting a little less uniform with increasing mentions of the author’s struggles with her father’s growing skooma habit. The pages are occasionally blotted with tear stains, and the next entry is undated and written in a shaky, almost indecipherable hand with smears of what appear to be blood.]

The Cammona Tong finally ran out of patience for Father. They jumped just along the coast and shoved me into the back of their caravan. To teach him a lesson, they said. I’ve never been so scared in my life. 

The smell of sulfur is almost overwhelming, even though it’s been nearly two weeks. My skin won’t stop bleeding. I can barely see what I’m writing. Even the smallest amount of sunlight makes my eyes hurt more than I can say.

Father is distraught. Every moment he’s at my side, he’s either in tears or on the verge of them, unable to process what the Tong did to me for his mistakes. He’s sworn off the damned skooma, at least. Promised he’ll work hard to repay his debts to the Tong and to every damned dealer he owes money. It won’t heal me, no amount of magic has, but it’ll make up for what I’ve been through on his behalf. Or at least I hope it will. I didn’t much like what I saw in the mirror already. This isn’t an improvement.

[The next entry is barely anymore readable than the last, but is free of blood smears at the very least.]

3rd Midyear 2E 218

It’s been over a month since I left Sadrith Mora. Since I found that damned s’wit and his fucking pipe. He promised me there would be no more skooma after what the Tong did to me. Well, it’s good to know that I’m as valuable as guar shit to him. Saves me a lot of time trying to justify his habits anymore.

I just can’t believe I wrote to Mother of all people. I can imagine she was practically cackling to herself in glee when she got my letter. She’ll be full of ‘I told you so’s’ and will be all too happy to remind me that duty to House Redoran is above all else. 

Well, we’ll see how long that lasts. I just need a place to stay a while and make some coin before leaving for the mainland. I’ve had enough of Vvardenfell. It’s brought me nothing but misery. The further I am from here, the happier I’ll be.

15th Midyear 2E 218

I’ve had a change of plans, and I couldn’t be happier for it. During my journey to Suran, I met the most fascinating nord, a young woman calling herself Astrid. She was struggling to dispatch a few cliff striders that had attacked her camp and I stepped in to help. What magic I learned from the Telvanni has evidently been worth the effort.Astrid was very grateful to me and offered me a place in her camp for the night. It’s preferable to curling up beneath a rock and praying to the Three that nothing gnaws my legs off in the night, so I accepted. 

We sat at the fireside, talking as we ate fresh kwama eggs, and something about her made me want to tell her everything. Perhaps it was magic, now with what I know about her, or maybe it was just being so tired of having no one to turn to since leaving Suran, but I told her anyway. About my struggles with being the son my parents had dreamed of, with their constant arguing and the way their marriage fell apart, my father’s struggles with skooma, and how he carried on with the stuff even after the Cammona Tong’s warnings.

It felt very much like talking to Uncle Melar because rather than interject her own opinions like so many people do, she simply sat and listened and only spoke when I was finished. She asked me my name, and when I told her it was Venaryn, she laughed and said ‘no silly, I mean the name you want to be called.’ So I told her I wanted to be called Venaya. She then asked if I truly wanted to returned to Suran and my mother. I told her no, that I didn’t want anything to do with the place, and she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Astrid is a cultist, a member of a cell of Nocturnal worshippers, and she offered to bring me to them. I asked, jokingly but also a little seriously, if she intended to sacrifice me. But she held my hand and, with the utmost sincerity, told me that she wished to repay me for stepping in to save her life by stepping in to save mine.

We’re headed for the coast, and from there we depart for Skyrim. I can’t say for certain if this cult is a wise choice, but wisdom hasn’t exactly done me many favours. At the very least, it couldn’t be any worse than returning to my mother.

[The following entry has returned to being readable - not crisply uniform and formal, but readable and relaxed. The pages as clean, save for a few pressings of wild flowers between the pages and a few (relatively poor) sketches have begun to appear between entries as well.]

28th Sun’s Height 2E 218

It’s hard to believe that just two years ago I was listening to my parents arguing over every little thing. The Twilight Sepulcher is practically a paradise in comparison. Here I study and pray in quiet contemplation, sometimes carrying out tasks for the Night Mistress. My transition continues, and whilst there have been bumps in the road, I am never without the support of my brothers and sisters. Astrid celebrates every milestone I reach with more exuberance than anyone else. Sometimes I think she’s happier than I am with my progress. 

Even now I can’t imagine what my life would be if I’d gone through with that stupid idea to return to Suran. I can only imagine my mother wondering why she never heard from me again. Undoubtedly she was bragging to her colleagues about the return of her wonderful son, only to be humiliated by my non-appearance. I honestly wish I could say it was planned, but part of me hopes it was part of Nocturnal’s plan for me. Some small measured vengeance for the woman who tore that family apart.

As for my father, I don’t know if he’s even alive. Every time I’m tempted to find out, Astrid and the others remind me of what he did to me, and I remind myself that that part of my life is over and the temptation passes. I have a life here. A family. I’m happy, for the first time. Venaryn Serethi is a chapter long since closed. I am Venaya Sero, 

and I won’t let the past take that from me.