#while I'd like to say 2. and I do write regularly

[zombiigrll]

Could you write an enemies to lovers carl grimes x reader where the reader is Negan's daughter? There could be something maybe where Carl and her meet when he breaks into the sanctuary and she escorts him around with or without Negan maybe?

I don't have the best ideas lol but you can be creative I'd love to see what you can come up with!

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HEART OF GOLD. ⋆｡°✩ carl grimes x savior!reader .ᐟ WORD COUNT .ᐟ ⭑ 4.5K ꩜ .ᐟ WARNINGS ⭑ enemies to lovers, use of y/n, negan is readers dad, spoilers for twd 7x1 - 7x7, enid and carl arent dating in this universe ofc, lots of rambling and build-up before any romance (sorry guys 🙏) .ᐟ SUMMARY .ᐟ ⭑ you catch feelings for the wrong person. ꩜ .ᐟ A/N .ᐟ ⭑ thank you for the request anon! i've always wanted to do a savior reader fic so i'm so hyped writing this 🙏 its a bit long...so i hope you enjoyy!! part 2 here!

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you were there the day your dad had lined up the people of alexandria.

you hated what he would do, and what the saviors in general would do. but, unfortunately, you were used to it. you did what you were told and never protested. it's what your life was now.

you were sitting next to your father in the rv you guys had stolen from one of the people in their group.

there was a knock at the door, and your dad stepped out. you followed behind with your hands behind your back and a plain expression on your face.

your expression was regularly blank, the opposite of your fathers. you never had fun with what you and the saviors were doing. you thought it was sick, and it was.

"pissing our pants yet?" negan laughed as he stepped out of the rv. "boy, do i have a feeling were getting close."

you shook your head in response, looking at all the people in the line. they were terrified. besides one boy. he had an eyepatch over his left eye, long brown hair, and a sheriffs hat. he looked around your age, too.

you knew he most likely was scared, but he looked tough.

then, you realized you were staring too long. he looked up at you with a piercing glare, and you quickly looked away. you crossed your arms and sat down on the steps of the rv.

you watched as your father berated and teased the group, pointing lucille in their faces. he walked around the group, taking turns talking to them- or more at them.

he made his way over to the boy. "you got a lot of our guns." negan laughed, tilting his head as he examined the kids face. "shit, kid. lighten up. at least cry a little."

as negan began walking away and to the next person, the kid looked at you again. this time, he tilted his head slightly with a confused expression. you furrowed your eyebrows with a stern expression on your face.

negan began making his way around, and a few minutes had passed before he began his 'eenie, meenie, miney, mo' game. you watched anxiously, your face turning as your heart raced. they might not have been your group, but you would always feel anxious and upset.

you could never understand how the others were always so normal about it.

he landed on a man with ginger hair and a big, tough figure.

"anybody moves, anybody says anything, cut the boy's other eye out and feed it to his father, then we'll start."

...

you watched as that man got his head split in half, and then another man afterwards.

your dad had never taken you to one of these runs before. you were aware the things he had done, but you never witnessed it like this before.

your dad had left with rick in the rv and had you stay with ricks group. you watched as everyone processed what had happened. the blood and the bodies on the ground.. the tears.

you crossed your arms as you tried to keep your composure. as much as you were disgusted by negans actions, you knew if you had shown it you would get in trouble.

your father came back a little while after leaving. as he parked, you opened the rv door for your dad.

right as you opened it, your dad and rick exited. ricks eyes were bloodshot, and he was shaking.

"this must be hard for you, right?" negan mocked rick. "i mean, you have been king shit for so long. losin' two of your own like..." he snaps his fingers dramatically, his shit-eating grin still plastered on his face. "gettin' 'em clipped like that, one nut, then the other, and in front of your boy? that is some screwed up shit!"

you crossed your arms and looked up at your father, standing by his side and giving him a knowing look. he looked down at you and laughed before continuing to brutally taunt rick.

after a bit, negan ordered the other saviors to point guns to the back of everybodys heads, telling them to align it to their noses so if they need to fire, it'll be a mess.

you stayed by negans side, as always. you must've looked like a dog compared to your father, always following by his side unless ordered otherwise. you knew your dad was fucked up, but that wouldn't stop you from loving him. people would be surprised of how good of a dad he was capable of being.

"kid.. right here." negan looked into the boys eyes, doing a motion with his hands as a silent order for him to come over. "kid. now."

the kid silently walked over, glaring at both you and negan.

"you a south paw?"

"am i a what?" the kid tilted his head and squinted his eyes at negan, crossing his arms.

"are you left handed?" you clarified blankly.

"no."

"good." negan smiled.

negan tightens his belt around carls upper arm. "that hurt?"

carl looks down at the ground. "no."

"should." negan chuckles in response. "it's supposed to."

"dad, what're you doing?" you whispered to negan, slightly worried for the boy.

"doesn't matter." he looks at you, his expression turned slightly serious. you scoffed and looked back at the boy curiously. "alright. get down on the ground, kid. next to daddy."

the boy complied, laying down on the ground and laying his arms out. negan drew a line on his arm and informed rick that he'd have to cut the kids arm off.

you watched as everyones expressions turned surprised, but specifically one lady who was still in the line on her knees.

"you- you don't have to do this. we understand." the lady begged. "we understand. you understand."

"yeah. i'm not sure that rick does."

"dad." you mumbled, but to no avail. he just ignored you.

"rick. this needs to happen now. chop, chop, or i will crush the little fella's skull myself.

tears fell from ricks eyes as he looked at his son and the ax. "it can- it can be me." he pleaded. "it can be me."

rick and negan continue going back and fourth. tears falling, negan laughing at ricks desperate attempts and pleads to stop this. your face grimaced in disgust of your dads behavior, but your expression quickly changed at the boys words.

"dad.. just do it." he spoke, looking at his dad. "just do it."

rick grabs the ax and begins slowly lowering down, until negan stops him.

"rick."

rick looks up at negan, confusion and tears flooding his face.

"you answer to me. you provide for me. you belong to me. right?"

ricks body continues shaking as he fearfully looks into negans eyes.

"speak when you're spoke to!" negan yelled. "you answer to me. you provide for me."

"provide for you.." rick weakly repeats.

"you belong to me, right?!"

rick breaths heavily, nodding vigorously. "right."

"that is the look i wanted to see." negan smiles, looking down at the beaten up man.

you put your hand on your dads shoulder. "we're done here, dad."

he looks at you and nods, before looking up at dwight. "dwight. load him up." negan points to the man on the ground who had punched negan, and gotten someone killed.

"seriously, dad. let's go."

negan laughs. "today was a productive damn day!" you were always taken aback on how through all of the terrible, repulsive things that your father did, he still had that shit-eating grin along his face. "i hope, for all your sake.. that you get it now. that you understand how things work. things have changed."

he lets out one more loud laugh before speaking again.

"welcome to a brand-new beginning, you sorry shits!"

...

it had been a few days since that lineup. you could still hear the cries of the people there. the last words of the victims. sure, you had killed people yourself before, but you'd never been apart of something that insane before. all you could think of was the man, rick, and his son. all you could think was that they were strong. you were sure negan was looking at the boy wishing you were more like him. tough, strong.

but not much had changed in the sanctuary since that day, besides the new recruit from the line up, daryl.

you sat in your room, reading a book as you usually did. but then, you heard a few shots. you quickly ran outside, grabbing your gun as you ran out.

you spotted the kid from before, with a large machine gun in hand.

"are you fucking kidding?" you raised an eyebrow, lowering your gun. you weren't phased by the boy. you knew he was aware that negan was your father. if he killed you, he knows there'd be repercussions for him.

"i only want negan." he glared, the gun still pointing toward you.

"put the gun down, dude." you holstered your gun and crossed your arms.

but before he could, dwight tackled him down.

"dwight!" you sternly yelled, running over and pushing him. "i have it under control, thanks."

dwight looks up at you and shakes his head, irritated, standing back up. you put your hand down, offering it to the boy. he awkwardly accepted it.

"he's busy right now, i'm not exactly sure where." you dust your hands off as you speak. "i'll give you a tour, i guess."

you walk inside the building, looking around at everyone working. "what's your name?" you ask, walking around the perimeter.

"why do you want to know?" he glares at you.

you scoff, stopping in your tracks and tilting your head at him. "hey, i'm not my dad. i'm not being an asshole. don't treat me like i am."

his eyes slightly widen at your stern reaction as he nods. "carl."

"i'm y/n." you continue walking around.

carl follows behind you, a bit nervously. "so negan is really your dad?"

"yeah."

he raises an eyebrow, his expression curious. "like, biologically?"

his sudden questions confuse you. "yes, why?"

"well, i don't know if you've noticed, but your dad is a piece of shit."

"i actually have noticed. i've been with him through this whole thing." your voice was angered at his sudden insult towards your father. "he's a better dad than you think."

"that's hard to believe." carl scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief.

"i'm sure it is. i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, though. i don't agree with what he does at all, but that doesn't change how he is as a parent." an annoyed and slight upset sigh leaves your mouth as you finish your sentence, disappointed by who your father has become.

after a moment of silence, carl continues speaking. "it's weird to think how a man like him could have a child like you."

"what is that supposed to mean?" you shot him a threatening look. he might not have meant it that way, but you were a bit insecure how you were as his child.

"i just mean, you seem nice. it's hard to believe you're a savior, and much harder to believe your related to negan." he defends himself.

you shot him an aggressive glare. "sure."

...

you had been looking around for quite a bit, making small talk with carl every now and then, but it was mostly silence between the two of you.

you didn't fully understand why you were so content with carl. i mean, you didn't know the kid, and you guys didn't necessarily have the best first introduction. he had a gun pointed toward you as well, but you still felt calm around him. why were you feeling this way?

eventually, you made it to one of the rooms. specifically the room with your fathers 'wives.' you knocked on the door before entering.

you spotted your dad and leaned on the door frame. "i brought you something."

"i'm busy right now, y/n, give me a second." negan calmly spoke, which carl could instantly spot was different from how he spoke to all the other saviors.

"yeah, uhm.." you pushed carl into the room. "i kinda cant."

negans expression changed from soft back to his regular 'negan' expression. he whistled, a grin plastered on his face. "damn." he let out an extended laugh, putting his hands on his face. "now, how big of a mess did he make?"

"he killed two people. dwight tackled him. but it wasn't too crazy."

negan nods in response, his gaze turning over to carl. "two men.. and you're giving me the same stink-eye as your dad. except, only half as good. cause... y'know." he signals to his eye, making a mocking face at him. "i'm assuming you already showed him around?"

"yeah, i had to go on a scavenger hunt looking for you." you chuckled, putting your hands in your pockets.

"well, come over here." negan signaled you and carl to come closer, pointing down to the ground next to him. you and carl quickly obey.

"what are you doin' here, kid?" negan tilted his head over into carls direction.

"why do you think?" carl glared at negan and his smartassed tone, his arms crossed.

right after carl said that, daryl stepped into the room with a tray of food in his hands, dwight following right behind him. negan lets out a shortened laugh before pointing to the tray.

"carl, will you grab this tray for me?" negan politely asks, but it still sounds as if he's mocking.

daryl looks from carl back to negan and you, then back to carl. "why do you got him here?"

"woah!" negan puts his hands up defensively with a chuckle, a toothpick from the tray laying between his pointer and middle finger. "what we talk about when you're not here is none of your business." he lifts the toothpick up near carls face. "do not make me put this toothpick through the only eye he has." you nudge negan in the shoulder, giving him a look to discreetly tell him to stop. he nods at you and turns his head back over to dwight. "dwighty boy... fire up that furnace. we'll be down in a few." he laughs to himself quietly at the irony, "time for a little déjé vu."

dwight and daryl exit the room.

"now, i need to talk to you." negan uses his toothpick to get a piece of food from the tray, looking up at carl. "come on, let's go." negan signals for the two of you to follow.

he leads you guys out of the room and walks a little ways in front of you two. carl looks over to you, walking a bit closer. "are all of those women actually his wives?" carl lowly speaks.

"why are you so persistent on talking to me?" you whisper as well, giving him a bit of a dirty look. not necessarily on purpose, but it got your point across. "you should hate me."

"you're just a kid, too. i know i was skeptical before, but i can tell you're not like.." he tilts his head toward negan. "you've got a heart of gold compared to him."

you stop in your tracks and look at him, clenching your jaw in frustration. "you've gotten yourself into a hell of a situation. i suggest you stop making it worse."

you continue walking, a bit faster so carl trails behind you. negan opens the door in front of you guys, moving his hand to signal for you guys to get in, to which you comply, but let carl go in front of you.

you sit on the bed whilst carl and negan sit on the couch.

you sit and watch as your father talks back and fourth with carl, causing you to zone out a bit. he spoke about wanting to bond with carl, which slightly irked you.

through his laughs, negan speaks. "ah.. i can't. i can't do it. it's like talking to a birthday present."

you tune back in as he says that, curious to what he was talking about this time.

"you got to take that crap off your face." negan signals to the bandages wrapped around the side of carls face. "i wanna see what grandma got me."

"no." carl lowly speaks, slight anger in his tone as his brows knit together.

"two men!" negan yells, standing up from his seat and leaning forward.

"dad, stop it." you softly begged, your expression a bit bleak. you tapped your foot anxiously.

"two. men." negan simply glances over to you, his expression just barely softening. "punishment."

"he's a kid. you can punish him, but don't.. humiliate him."

you didn't know why you had a soft spot for him. or why you called him a kid, despite him being your age. but, you just did. negan lets out a sigh, shaking his head before looking back toward carl.

"you like music?" he asks, which carl simply furrows his brows in confusion to. "i want you to sing me a song."

after a moment of staring and processing, carl softly responds.

"what?"

"you mowed down two of my men, i want something in return for that. sing me a song." negan turns his head over in your direction. "and you, can you go check on the boiler?"

you glance at carl before standing up from the bed. "...alright."

you exit the room and look below the railing. you see someone you don't recognize tied to a chair and a group of people waiting around.

you walk around the perimeter before knocking loudly on the railing to get everyones attention. everybody downstairs looks up and kneels down.

god, you hated these standards you dad had put up for you two. you hated this princess treatment.

you cleared your throat. "is everything ready?" you asked as you began stepping down the stairs to get a better look on the scene.

you saw that the man lined up for the iron this time was mark. you knew him and amber had something going on for a bit now, you didn't think that your dad would have found out however.

"yes, we're ready whenever." one of the saviors informed you calmly, though you could sense they seemed a bit fearful.

you didn't understand why the saviors were scared of you. well, you did, but it didn't make sense when you're the only savior who hadn't been super involved in the killings.

"..okay." you awkwardly pressed your lips together. "i'll go get my dad."

you stepped back up the stairs swiftly, walking back over in the direction of the room you had left your father and carl in, but they were already walking toward you.

"it's all ready." you informed your dad, giving him a moment to step in front of you so you could be back to carls side. he looked a bit shaken up, and you were worried what your dad had done.

the three of you make it back up to the balcony, and negan hits the railing a couple times with lucille to get everyones attention. he hands lucille over. "hold that for me." he says to carl, but you take her before carl has to, shooting him a lopsided smile as you do so.

negan begins giving his speech before the iron. you continue glancing over at carl, whos staring down at the whole scenery going on. negan begins going down the steps, and you two follow with him.

"mark.. i'm sorry. but it is what it is." negan says before signaling for dwight to do the iron.

you look down at your feet, but your gaze turns up to carl. his expression had changed from confused to terrified in seconds.

when it was all over, negan gave the end of his speech before walking abck up to you and carl.

"you probably think im a lunatic." he chuckles, examining carls changed expression. "come on. let's go figure out what to do with you-"

"hey, dad." you cut him off. "i'm just gonna take him back home."

negans eyebrows rose as he looked down. he was silent for a moment before he nodded. he turned his head over in carls direction yet again. "take everything that happened today as a warning. don't pull that shit again."

carl simply just looks away, looking back at you.

"i'll be back soon." you weakly smiled up at your dad. "love you."

"love you too, kiddo."

you walked out of the building, grabbing the car keys on your way out. you got into the car along with carl and began driving off.

it was silent and awkward for a bit, but you couldn't help to ask..

"what did my dad do when i was out of the room?"

carl leaned his arm against the door, using his hand to lift up his head. "he made me sing. and he swung the bat over by the bed while i sung."

you clenched your jaw, shaking your head. "..sorry."

"why? you're one of them, it's what you guys do."

"i don't do that stuff." you clarified yet again.

he turned his head back over to you, squinting a bit in confusion. "you asked me why i was so persistent on talking to you, but i could ask you the same thing. why do you keep defending me and talking to me?"

you anxiously tapped your fingers onto the steering wheel. "because i don't want to end up like my dad."

...

you couldn't sleep that night. all you could think about was carl. it was stupid. you didn't know why you were so entranced by that boy, but just the fact that you were.. falling for an alexandrian, the people you were currently going to war with.. it wasn't looking good for you.

you had only been back home for a little bit, maybe an hour? and still, all you could think about was him.

you had to make things right.

everyone had started to go off to their rooms already, so it'd be pretty easy to sneak out. you knew the perimeters, having been here for a few years, and you knew where all the watch posts were and the blind spots of said watch posts.

you packed regular essentials in a small crossbody bag, grabbed your knife and gun, and headed out. you grabbed one of the motorcycles and your helmet and began dragging it alongside you until you got some place safe on the road where no one could spot you. then, you started speeding over to alexandria.

you were a bit worried that they'd catch you and put you somewhere, or kill you, but what you were feeling was too persistent. no matter what carls reaction was, you'd at least be rid of the feeling.

after a while, you arrived near alexandria. you stopped the motorcycle and thrown it off somewhere safe in the woods so you could walk up to the gates.

unlike the sanctuary, you knew nothing about the perimeters of alexandria. you had only been there when you took carl back, so the front was all you knew. you also knew that approaching the front gates could possibly get you kidnapped or killed, so you weren't exactly sure what to do.

you looked at the watch tower that was to the side of the gate, investigating to see if anyone was up there. and, to your avail, there wasn't anyone.

..now you just needed to figure out how to get past the gate.

since you knew it was safe, you stepped closer and investigated the gate. it looked as if you could climb up the bars that held the walls up and drop down off of it inside of alexandria. so, you did. it was difficult and if anyone had seen you, you probably would have let them kill you for your own good.

you carefully dropped down. it made a loud noise, but you didn't think anyone heard because of it being quite late..

until you heard your name whisper-yelled from the distance by a familiar voice.

you turned around and spotted carl, his eyebrows furrowed and his expression surprisingly not angry, but just confused.

"fuck.. hi." you awkwardly responded, putting your hands on your knees as you caught your breath.

he squinted his eye at you, crossing his arms. "why are you here?"

"i'll tell you in a second, can we go somewhere more private?"

he nods and quickly starts walking back toward what you were assuming was his house. there was already a window open, and he climbed through first, reaching his hand down to help you through.

you step into the room and he pulls out a chair from his desk, sitting down in it and offering for you to sit on his bed. you sit down with a sigh.

"so, why are you here?" his voice is still in a low whisper, but it's loud enough for you to hear. "i mean, if you wanted to do something, you could've done it when you dropped me off. so what's up?"

"yeah, uhm.." you take a deep breath out, messing with your fingers as you continue speaking. "i wanted to talk to you." "you wanted to talk to me?" carl repeats, tilting his head in confusion.

"it's just.. with everything that happened. how we met, what happened earlier at the sanctuary.. i can't stop thinking about you." you cross your arms around yourself in embarrassment, unsure what carls expression is changing to. "i know i shouldn't. but theres just something about you, and i can't exactly put my finger on it. i know it's weird, and we know nothing about each other besides the fact that i'm the daughter of a bad man, but-"

"stop." he scoffs, shaking his head.

you look back up at him nervously, biting your lip.

"..it doesn't matter that your dad was a bad man. you're obviously not." you can tell by his voice and body language changing that he seems slightly nervous as well. "i keep thinking about you, too. you're different from the saviors. you could be safe here, y'know."

"if i stayed here, i'd put you guys in more danger." you give him a lopsided smile, your stomach dropping slightly the more you think about it. "..can i love you?"

carls eyes widen as he processes what you just told him.

"i know it'd be difficult-"

he stands up and puts his hands on your shoulders, moving one up to the side of your face. "i don't care how difficult it is. we'll figure it out together."

before you could respond, he leaned down and quickly kissed you, leaving his forehead on yours, and his hands on your cheeks. you lifted your hands up to his, closing your eyes as you took in the moment.

it was a sort of sorrowful moment. you knew that it wouldn't last forever. you were a savior. your people were trying to kill his, and have killed his. but the fact that you were together now was all you needed. you had to make it work.

you opened your eyes and smiled up at him. "we'll make this work."

"we will. i promise."

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[mrshesh]

Hello :D I saw that you write for Modern Warfare 2, so I'd like to request how the boys would react if you ask if they'd still love you if you were a worm! Hehehehe :p

"a...worm?" - modern warfare 2 x reader

overview: mw2 men reacting to you asking if they'd still love you if you were a worm

pairing: mw2 men x gender neutral reader, romantic

genre: fluff

a/n: hi anon! thanks for the request, it's really funny. i had a blast writing this. keep them coming!

x simon "ghost" riley

He would turn his head super slowly in your direction after you ask, and you can practically see the look on his face, even with his mask on 😭

He hits you with one of his side eyes, processing the question as he blinks judgementally at you.

“Fuckin' hell." He immediately sighs.

“Well? Would you?"

"Sure."

He would indeed love you, and yes, he would feed you and take care of you.

Realistically, Simon would keep you in his pocket at all times. He would also try to teach you self-defense! (Would it go horrible? Absolutely. But it’s the thought that counts.)

x john "soap" mactavish

“A worm?” He sits back in his seat, looking down at his shoes as he digs into his brain as if this is the most important question of his life. “Yeah, I think I would."

Before you know it, you’re discussing your worm life with Johnny in full detail, with him explaining how he’d build a small house for you in his backyard. 

Immediately bursts out laughing at the thought of you as a worm crawling around with a gun on the battlefield. 

“As long as you don’t cheat on me with some other worm lad, I’d still love ya, bonnie.”

x kyle "gaz" garrick

He, like Simon, hits you with one of his side eyes. 

He actually thinks about it for a hot minute, though, going through the pros and cons of this hypothetical situation. 

“Yeah, pretty much.” He concludes, shrugging as his thoughts return to the mental list of the upsides and downsides of you turning into a worm. 

“The biggest pro is that I can protect you easily. The biggest con is that you’re a worm.” 

He gets so into this scenario, discussing the matter with you as if it’s forthcoming. 

“What about you then? Would you love me if I was a worm?” He returns the question, his mind still wandering. Would you have shelter? How would he feed you? Would he accidentally stomp on you? “Yeah, I would. We can be worms together!” “Word.”

x john price

“Where do you come up with this stuff?” 

He rubs his eyes almost urgently, a light groan coming from him as he breathes heavily. He’s trying to act all tough and unbothered, but in reality, he’s melting inside. He thinks your thought process and comfortability with him is adorable. 

“I’d have to be extra careful with you, wouldn’t I?” 

He runs the scenario in his head, playing it back and skipping forward like a movie. He’s very conflicted. It’s hard to love a worm, but it’s not just any worm - it is you! 

“Sure.” He shrugs while his eyes lock in with yours. His face is to die for. He looks so done.

Realistically, he’d keep you in an aquarium full of dirt. It would be in his office so he can keep an eye on you to assure you aren’t doing something absurd, as worms do.

x alejandro vargas

Oh, he’s living for this. 

You can’t help but snicker a little when he starts laughing at your question. He’s even smacking his thigh with his hand! It can’t be that funny… it’s a simple question!

He wipes his teary eyes when he can feel his hearty laughter calm down. 

“Mi amor, you’re too funny. Yes, I would.”

He’d keep you in his pocket, regularly feeding and petting you. He’d also talk to you constantly, knowing you can’t do anything about it - the thought of it makes him giggle.

“You’re not planning on turning into one, right?” 

x phillip graves

“...What?”

He’s so confused. Why are you asking him this? 

He rolls his eyes at your expression. Your deviance drives him insane, but it also makes his heart flutter. 

He tries avoiding the question, but you keep poking and prodding - it’s safe to say he’s not getting away without an answer. 

“You’re driving me crazy, sweetie.” He sighs, shaking his head in exhaustion. You can see the corners of his lips curl up when you cackle at his response. 

“It would be difficult, but I’d try. Only because it’s you.” 

He would have a hard time originally, but he’d grow to love your worm self. It’s still you, after all. 

x könig

“Hm… I suppose I would.” 

His eyes narrow when he thinks of you as a worm. He’d fancy it if you don’t turn into a worm, but he’d still absolutely adore you.

“You really would?” “Yes. But wouldn’t that be kind of difficult?” His voice is as soft as ever, which tells you he’s genuine. He doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, and he doesn’t want to lie to you - which is ironic since he’d take the best care of you out of all these men! 

He would always keep you on his shoulder and talk to you constantly. You would always be full and entertained, and he would be inclined to pet you regularly. 

He would be afraid to hurt you on accident. He’s a big guy! So he would be cautious with you. 

You would also be in his hands a lot! He would love holding you. 

“But I’d prefer it if you stay like this, schatz.”

x horangi

His head snaps in your direction instantly. His eyebrows furrow unhesitatingly, but he’s soon giggling like a schoolgirl. 

“Jagiya… you are crazy.”

He, like Kyle, starts thinking about this as if it’s inevitably cropping up.

“I would. Just don’t slither all over my face.” “I said worm, not a snake, Jin.” 

He’d keep you on his helmet/his head most of the time. He would remember to feed you every time he eats, and like Simon, he would try to teach you self-defense. He’s already protective of you, but if you were a worm? He’d be your bodyguard. 

“What do worms even eat?” “I don’t know. You’re gonna have to figure that out.” “Wait- don’t tell me you’re turning into one?”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I start giving some very *very* Christian family members religious pamphlets from non-Christian religions as gifts?

To be clear, I am writing this while firmly believing I'm NTA but I am angry and don't trust my own judgment too much right now.

Background and Players: My Son (19) was adopted out as a baby by his incubator behind (my husband, 40) his father's back. He was abandoned at 4 by his adopted family because of behavioral issues related to what his incubator was putting into her body while she was pregnant with him, and went into foster care with people I will call Amom and Adad. Adad is a pastor in his 90s and Amom is a pastor's wife in her 80s. When Son was 13 and I had been with Husband for 5ish years, we had been told (by someone from his incubator's family but we didn't know that at the time) he was non-verbal and "mentally an infant" and that trying to pull him out of the routine he had would just be incredibly harmful to him, so we had given up hope of finding him and having a relationship with him. We got a phone call one day, a worker who was looking for a medical history for Son. Husband spent close to 3 hours on the phone with her, answering questions and asking anything he could squeeze in. Turns out, we had been lied to about his mental health just... completely. He's impossible to shut up and he graduated high school last year despite, you know, *gestures vaguely at everything* and I am incredibly proud of him. Half an hour after that call ended, she called back and told us Son might be interested in meeting us, was it okay for her to pass on our contact info. A month later, Son, Amom, Adad, Husband and I were sitting in a restaurant together and a month after that we went to their place for a week to spend Christmas with them. This is when they informed us that they had finalized his legal adoption a couple of weeks earlier. 2 years after that, my QPP moved in with us, and another year later 16 year old Son asked if he could move in with us. He still does.

The Issue: Son wants a continuing relationship with Amom and Adad, but due to the previously mentioned substances used by his incubator, he has memory and time management issues so I have to regularly remind him to contact them. I have no problem doing this, but the contact we have had with them over the last few years has soured me on their company. I've got no problem reminding Son to contact them and organizing rides for him to visit (usually QPP and I driving him, the trip is a couple of hours each way) but I'd rather never speak to them myself if it can be avoided. It didn't start out this way, but over the years they have made it very clear that they don't respect anyone else's beliefs. Not just us, like there was one night where they were going off about some Danish surgeon saying publicly that he was Muslim first, Danish second, and they were trying to convince us to be terrified by that. The conversation ended awkwardly when Husband asked if Adad was Nationality or Christian first (because that's different you see). We have found books on the bookshelves in the guest room about how any kind of queerness at all is demonic possession, one of which they wrote. They talk about things like being sent on a mission by their god to save as many (and I hate that these are quotes) "brown heathen children" by making them Christians as possible (Son and his adopted siblings are all First Nations, Amom and Adad are as white as I am), or how Jewish people are evil for stopping Christians from claiming their suffering because "Jesus was a Jew so aren't all Christians also Jews?". Amom once spent a week trying to convince me to go to church with her and share the details of my childhood sexual abuse with the entire congregation because "it will show God you are ready to be forgiven". QPP is a shintoist and after they found that out, we started seeing more literature about the Japanese, specifically during WWII, around their house when we visited.

We have politely made it clear that we are not interested in Christianity, especially not their version. Multiple times. We thought it was finally over after Son had a meltdown at them at his graduation ceremony because he wanted JUST ONE conversation with them that wasn't about Jesus. He was in tears trying to explain that to them, and their response was to tell him he needed to come back to church so they could lay on hands and chase all the demons making him say these horrible disrespectful things to them out of him. He was supposed to stay with them for a few days to visit after that, but by the time I tracked him down and got him calm, he didn't want to go anymore. They seemed to stop after that, like they actually backed off and I think I got maybe 2 emails that didn't mention God or Jesus, not even a "God bless" in the sign off. We were optimistic. Son was late organizing it but we dropped him off (at his request, he's worried that Adad won't make it to next Christmas and wanted to see him) at their place on Boxing Day. We did not hang around, we did not send gifts, we didn't even reply to the Family Christmas Email (it had a video of a Jordan B Peterson rant embedded in it and I've told them before that we are not interested in anything that sack of hateful arrogance has to say please stop putting him in my inbox). We have done everything we can to make it clear that we do not want a relationship with them for ourselves, including outright directly telling them politely to their faces that we will not stop Son from seeing them but we don't feel comfortable around them and don't want a relationship with them for ourselves. Son came back with "gifts" from them - a study guide for a specific Bible book (I got John, Husband got Michael, QPP set his on fire before we saw who it was) and a bag of candy that looked like it came out of a thrift store (I got the same one they always get me, which I laughed off the first and second and third time and explained I couldn't stand them because my abuser used to give me one when he was done. Husband is diabetic and got York Patties. QPP actually got something decent though, $20 for gas).

I have managed to keep my "I'd rather you hadn't bothered actually" rantingvto Tumblr, which i don't think they even know exists, but I'm still pissed about the Bible crap as "gifts". I am considering changing tactics completely and being super friendly, mirroring their energy, and giving them the same treatment they've given us. I want to make excuses to visit so I can explain the finer points of shintoism and Celtic paganism in every single conversation. I want to give them books for gifts, books like The Tao of Pooh and The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I want to wrap cash in pamphlets about The Invisible Pink Unicorn and leave it on their fridge.

QPP and husband think I should give myself more time to calm down and just keep ignoring it and playing nice when I'm forced to play at all but like, IT'S BEEN 6 YEARS.

What are these acronyms?

[730kc]

First of all, I think you draw incredibly, well—but okay, I have so many questions. Writing and drawing? How do you do it? How do you manage your time? Because I’m genuinely fascinated by that. (I can’t organize myself, so when I see people who can do so many things… What’s the secret? Or which ancient god do you pray to?)

Hi! Thank you! ❤️ To seriously answer your question, I think you're giving me too much credit!

Due to life priorities, I go through massive blips of inactivity (4-6 months at a time.) But when I'm active, you'll see me 2-3x a week, haha.

An example— cinders has been a fic published in 2022, it's been 3 years— I write slow, I'm not even writing much now. 🤭

I get it though— when I was fandoming 10-some years ago, I had the drive + energy to churn something out everyday, almost as if I'd die if I didn't create anything. But overtime, as life rearranged itself, I also rearranged my priorities. I still get stuck and feel guilty for being gone for so long, but I try to tell myself— fandom can wait. Kaishin can wait for me while I deal with life. I have to remember that I don't serve fandoms, ships, art/fic, but rather they serve me, when I'm ready for it. Things can wait, really.

Of course, I look at my 18-25 year old self, and wonder where all the passion has gone. I had explosive "productivity" at the time. (I say "productivity" because hyper fixation was a perfect escape from real life.)

Now, I have to remind myself: oh right, I moved countries for a job, I moved back with my partner, I got married, I deal with crunching deadlines at work... I have become one of those ~adults~ with ~adult responsibilities~ while I still feel like I'm stumbling around blindly. 🤭

Anyways, sorry for the long, long ramble. as you can probably tell, I'm a prattling fandom elderly.

I fondly recall being 18 and being so insanely jealous of this jpn Kaishin artist and how they could put out works so regularly, that I held myself to a high standard to draw something every single day. Now that I think about it, they were probably much, much older than me, just chugging along leisurely... 🤭; Hmm ...!

[marengogo]

UGH!-9: Y’all Done Did It

Listening to the play list Who is Standing next to you 

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

Yes, I am enjoying my day-off, thank you for asking 😘. In fact, everything was going 🍑y, and then, as I scrolled on my husband’s post to see if other people had requested PIXID and liking all the ones who requested it 💜 I noticed one comment, and then a similar one and then I started scrolling …

WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS?:

The whole time AYS aired I left it alone. I saw this type of comments on the Blue Bird app, but I left it alone.

I thought: “Blue Bird AMI don’t know better Marengo, let them be …”, “Once the show is finished everyone will go back to their regularly scheduled stanning …” … that’s what I kept telling myself 😩 yet; here we are. 

For Fuck Sake:

Are You Sure?! 👏🏾 Is a Jungkook 👏🏾 and Jimin 👏🏾Show 👏🏾. Period👏🏾.

Do you know American Hustle Life? Yes! It is a Joonie, Jin, Yoongi, Hobi, JM, Tae and JK show.

Do you know Bon Voyage? Yes! It is a Joonie, Jin, Yoongi, Hobi, JM, Tae and JK show.

Do you know In The Soop? Yes! It is a Joonie, Jin, Yoongi, Hobi, JM, Tae and JK show.

IT REALLY AIN’T THAT HARD. 

I don't even know how to keep explaining this. Forget the shipping, forget the fact that JK and JM might be a couple, forget ALL OF IT:

I know I still have to do the EI post about JK, but let me say this for the MILLIONTH TIME: JK IS NOR STUPID OR CRUEL. If he, and JM, wanted a show where they would invite members every other episode, they would have a show where they would invite members every other episode and this would have been clear from the very beginning, because just like myself, I believe organization and routine to be a big part of JK’s life. Tae was an exception/special guest. As simple as.

Does this mean that they hate the members' presence? No. Do they want to leave the band? No. Do they think they are the most important members? NO. It simply means that maybe, just maybe, these two particular members particularly enjoy each other’s company. Some of us think it is romantic, the general public think it is strictly friendship: WHATEVER! Can AMI please please please acknowledge all harmless forms of expression? Joonie came out with one of the best albums out there, by himself, and JK & JM went on various trips and adventures together, which they wanted to share with us, AS SIMPLE AS THAT.

Liking Are you Sure?! doesn't make you a shipper, liking Are you Sure?! doesn't make you less OT7, however, liking Are You Sure?! will make you a person who is accepting of whatever harmless forms of entertainment that are being gifted to you by people whom you supposedly care about, and that very obviously means a lot to them, SO AMI NEEDS TO STOP TRYING TO TWEAK IT, BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT IN ANY WAY.

Yes I am a bitch, Yes I am petty, and Yes I am also OT7 AMI, an OT7 AMI who thinks two gentlemen in the band may fancy each other, but that is about it. I don’t go around forcing people to believe my perceptions, I don’t go brain-showing people into believing that these two individuals are married and I am very aware that they may just be straight men whom were never even curious. 

Remember my grammar pet-peeve? The one where I explained that Some people isn't the same as All people? Well, the same goes for Are You Sure?! Isn’t the same as A show like Are You Sure?! Like this person commented:

TRANS: A travel show. Something like Are You Sure? With Hobi 💜💜💜💜

This type of suggestion is totally fine. This ☝🏾, implies that the person understands that this particular show is something that two other members did, but it would be nice if two other members would make their own show with similar premises. So NO, Are You Sure Season 2?! Shouldn’t be a show with two other members and NO JK & JM don’t need to invite all the members if they don’t want to. And once again, for the love of everything that is demure,

it doesn't mean that they hate the members.

Okay? Okay.

Ayte, I’ve said all I wanted to say, now it's time for some comfort food & drinks.

またね！💋

Marengo.

[the-colourful-witch]

i'd love to know more about astrid cresswell if you're willing to tell us more. such as her family, is she dirk cresswell's daughter? what's her wand like? what year was she born? etc

Hiya! I can't believe you found her! I forgot I shared an illustration of Astrid on my page a long time ago :) Astrid Cresswell is my OC. And yes, I did take inspiration for her name from Dirk Cresswell, who is an Auror at the Ministry. He was one of the Aurors who was supposed to arrest Dumbledore if I remember correctly. In Order of the Phoenix. The two of them have no relation, actually. I took the last name when I was toying with the idea of her being the daughter of Dirk, but I went in a different direction. The last name kind of stuck, oops :) Anyway! Astrid!

Astrid is a Slytherin, in the same year as Fred and George (born 1978). My story for her is:

She was raised by her dad, who is a Healer at St Mungo's, in the permanent ward. Her mother was a Muggle, who died in childbirth. Robb Cresswell, Astrid's father, never told his girlfriend he was a Wizard. Astrid grew up with her dad, who was always working. They lived in the hillside village of Ottery St Catchpole where a few more magical families were housed in the hills. Robb regularly dropped Astrid off at the Weasleys, where Molly was more than happy to look after Astrid when he went to work. And so Astrid grew up with her two best friends: Fred and George Weasley. But that friendship didn't last very long after Astrid got sorted into Slytherin House. From that moment on, Astrid and the twins became rivals. They will do anything to destroy each other, both on and off the Quidditch pitch.

Astrid is a Chaser, the only girl on the Slytherin team. She's constantly dealing with Marcus Flint's sexist antics but is determined to play. She has something to prove, after all. Her patronus is a fox and her wand is 9 1/2 inches, Aspen wood with a dragon heartstring core. It stylishly resembles ivory; excellent for duelling and charm-casting. It's a wand made for revolutionaries but can be temperamentful, reacting to uncontrolled emotions. Astrid has two best friends: Maeve and Dorian, both Slytherins in her year. Dorian plays on the Quidditch team with her, as a Beater. He wants to be an Auror, like his father John Dawlish and is ahead of everyone in their class in all subjects. Maeve is the oldest of seven girls and the only one sorted into Slytherin. Hogwarts is the only place where she doesn't have to be a parent to her sisters. She enjoys reading and is Captain of the chess club. Oh, and she has a pet: a tubby black and white cat named Tibo. Tibo likes treats and scratches behind his ears. He has one of those loud purrs.

Astrid herself has a toad, which is a surprisingly uncool pet for a girl of her status. He's called Samuel the Second. You don't want to know what happened to the first. Sebastian usually hangs out in Astrid's room, but she takes him with her to the greenhouses sometimes when she's doing extra credit work. And Astrid is popular! After finding out she wasn't ever going to fit in with her Gryffindor friends (not really friends anymore), she decided to really embrace the Slytherin identity. She is clever and cunning. She knows how to get what she wants. To everyone who does not know her, she is perfect. Prefect, Quidditch player, star student. Behind the scenes, it's a little more rough... But she tries. She wants to become a Healer, after a successful Quidditch career, of course.

I am still figuring out Astrid's story, but it's fun for me to work on her every now and then. I admit, it's been a while. I dream of writing a fic for her one day, but I am not much of a writer. I start with something and then I can't finish, because I get distracted and instead draw my characters. What can I say, I like to draw! Maybe one day I'll actually finish a first draft :)

(an older version of Astrid - I don't love how I drew this)

I would like to share some more OC work in the future, but it's been a while since I worked on my characters. All the existing HP characters take up a lot of my time at the moment. One day :) I hope you like this. I'm happy to answer more questions if you have them <3

Magical wishes, Fleur

Some more earlier concepts of Astrid..

[captainsophiestark]

No Way To Know For Sure Part 2

Daniel Sousa x Reader

Masterlist - Part 1 - Join My Taglist!

Written for my personal fic writing challenge for 2024, Sophie's Year of Fic! Featuring a new fic being posted every Friday, all year long :)

Also written for @ghostofskywalker as a part 2 to the fic you let me adopt a while ago! I've had this in my drafts since all that AI stuff and I'm happy to have rediscovered and finished it 😄 Hope you like it!

Fandom: Marvel

Summary: Now that you've decided to move to LA with Daniel, there's a few loose ends left to tie up in New York.

Word Count: 2,174

Category: Fluff, Humor

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I sighed dramatically as I sared straight ahead out the window, watching all the people bustling around the streets and the familiar, giant buildings hovering over them. I'd been gone for some time now, but New York hadn't changed.

Jarvis, currently in the driver's seat of the car, was positively buzzing, and I could tell he was struggling not to say anything. Even the great city of New York couldn't keep me distracted from all the ridiculous energy he was projecting.

"Alright, Mr. Jarvis, spit it out," I said, at last turning from the window to look at my friend. He glanced at me, lips pursed tight to try and hold back a smile before he had to turn his gaze back to the road.

"I'm sorry, it's just... I must admit, I'm rather excited. Since Mr. Stark has been spending more time in Los Angeles, I've missed seeing all of you here in New York. Having you regularly in Los Angeles as well as Rose and Chief Sousa... well, it will be a delight."

A smile made its way onto my face despite my best effots. I'd wanted Daniel to drive me in to the office this morning to put in my transfer request for the LA office, but he had a meeting with an informant he couldn't move. I hadn't really wanted to resort to Jarvis, only because I knew he wouldn't be able to stay calm about my decision, but now I had to admit I was happy to be here with him.

"It'll be wonderful to get to see more of you too, Mr. Jarvis," I said with a smile. "You, me, Ana, and Daniel should set up a regular double date."

"Oh, that would be lovely!" Jarvis turned to give me a big smile as we at last pulled up in front of the New York SSR. He hopped out and ran around to open my door for me, beating me to the punch of opening it myself, something we'd turned into a bit of a competition. "Ana will be delighted at the idea too, I'm sure."

"Maybe we can even invite Howard," I said, my voice serious even though I was cackling in my head. I got out of the car and stood, smirking at Jarvis' less than enthusiastic expression as I continued. "He can bring along whoever he's brought home with him on any given week."

"That may be the single most horrifying suggestion I've heard in my entire life."

I cackled, clapping Jarvis on the shoulder as I walked past him and towards the entrance to the "telephone company".

"Thanks for the ride! I promise I won't let Howard crash any of our couples' nights, unless he finally gets a girlfriend who sticks around for more than a few weeks."

"At this point in Mr. Stark's life, a few days would be impressive," he called after me. I laughed, then turned back at the door to give Jarvis a smile.

"I'll see you back in LA!"

"I'm looking forward to it!"

I smiled and waved before finally heading through the door and back into the familiar hallways of the New York SSR. Daniel would be picking me up later, after I got everything sorted out for my move, and then who knew when I'd next be back in this place and this city. We had plenty of friends here and the other half of the SSR, so it's not like I'd never see the city again, but for the first time since I'd started working here I had no idea when I'd next be back. I tried not to let it get to me, but stepping into the currently-empty bullpen of the place I'd spent so much time in the last few years drove the knife in a little harder.

I'd intentionally arrived before most of the other agents got here, hoping to avoid a lot of hubub about my transfer request. No matter how nostalgic I felt being here, my decision had been made. I loved Daniel and the life I'd started building with Daniel in LA enough that nothing could make me want to leave it. Not even my favorite pizza place on the way between here and my former apartment.

"Well well well. Look what the cat dragged in."

Of course, I couldn't get away with avoiding Chief Jack Thompson, especially not when I had to turn my transfer request papers in to him. He came striding out of his office, a massive grin on his face as he crossed the bullpen towards me.

"Long time no see, Agent."

"I saw you two weeks ago, Jack."

"Yeah, but in LA. You've been on-loan for a while. I haven't seen you as my agent, in New York, in a long time."

I just rolled my eyes. "Yeah, well, enjoy the next half hour then, because as soon as these papers are finalized, I'm officially Daniel's agent."

"Now hold on a minute, I have some serious concerns about you leaving that we need to address before I finalize anything. I mean, is it really appropriate for a chief to be dating one of his own agents? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen if you ask me."

"Jack. You are the one who sent me there, you meddling mother hen, with the exact hope that this would happen. I will literally fight you in the middle of the bullpen if you want to use that against me now."

Jack held up his hands. "Alright, relax. Your transfer's basically already finalized, I just need your signature next to mine. Then you can go run off into the sunset with Sousa and leave the greatest city in the world behind like it's nothing."

"Alright, you went to Ithica for college. At least I'm leaving for another interesting city, even if it's not as good."

"At least we can agree on that last part."

I snorted, but I couldn't totally keep a smile off my face either. Jack and I had actually kind of become friends in the past few months, especially in the wake of Daniel leaving, and I was surprised to find a little ping of sadness in my chest at the thought of leaving him behind with the rest of this city. If you'd told me a few years ago I'd be missing Jack Thompson, I would've laughed in your face.

Jack pulled the transfer papers out of a file on the nearest desk where they'd apparently been waiting for me all morning, setting them down in front of me. In turn, I handed him the papers I'd filled out since I last saw him, then glanced at what was in front of me. True to his word, they only needed my signature to be finalized.

"We're gonna miss you around here," he said, his voice unusually serious. I glanced up to find him holding out a pen to me, a small smile on his face. "Seriously."

"...I'm gonna miss you too, Jack."

We held each other's gaze for a few moments, maybe the first time we'd had a sincere exchange in my entire time working here. Finally, he cleared his throat, looking away as I finally took the pen from his hand.

"Alright, that's enough of that sappy crap. You bring a box to clean out your desk? I don't want to have to waste agency time clearing out whatever garbage you left in there before you went to LA."

"Don't worry, I've got a plan for all my leftover trash and scribbled notes I don't need anymore."

"I don't like the way you said that. What do you-"

"Oh, thank goodness!"

I straightened from signing the documents after finishing the last one to find Peggy coming through the doors into the bullpen, looking slightly more frazzled than usual. She shook her head at me as she approached, dropping her stuff at the base of the desk and putting her hands on her hips.

"I thought I'd missed you. I can't believe you were planning to just duck in and duck out this morning. What were you planning to do if Thompson hadn't called me to tell me when you were coming in? Just leave for Los Angeles without a goodbye?"

"Actually, Daniel and I were planning to invite the two of you to dinner tonight for a real goodbye. I'm just trying to avoid causing a scene in the middle of the bullpen, in the middle of the SSR's workday."

Peggy and Jack both scoffed, the sounds eerily similar. I raised an eyebrow, but Jack leaned in and snatched the papers off my desk before I could comment.

"Alright, I'm gonna go process these since you don't want to hang around here. By the time you're done with your desk, I'll be done with these."

I nodded, watching Jack's back as he headed back into his office. As soon as he disappeared through the doorway, I turned back to Peggy.

"I need you to get him out of his office for, like, five minutes between when I finish cleaning out my desk and when I head out of here. I'm gonna put all the papers and stuff I don't need in his desk."

Peggy grinned. "I'll make sure you have the window of opportunity you need."

"I knew I could count on you."

We snuck a high-five before Jack could notice, then I headed over my desk to start the packing process in earnest. There really wasn't much I needed to get, since I'd brought most of the things I needed with me to LA the first time, but a handful of the things I'd collected found a temporary home in my bag. Even better, the stack of trash I was planning to stick in Jack's office was substantial, and just like Peggy'd promised, she dragged Jack away from his desk long enough to give me just the opening I needed.

I stepped out of his office and back into the bullpen after finishing my mission, and a moment later, Peggy and Jack came around the corner to join me. I smiled at the both of them.

"Desk's been cleared. Papers are done. I think... I'm officially all finished up here."

"You sure I'm not going to find some trash you forgot about when I try to put somebody else at your desk?" Jack asked, hands on his hips. I rolled my eyes and sighed, responding without missing a beat.

"Of course not, Jack. You're not going to find any forgotten trash in my desk. Come on."

All true, technically. Peggy grinned at me, but I managed to keep a straight face as Jack put his hands on his hips and sighed.

"...I guess this is it, then, huh?"

"I guess it is."

I sighed, looking around at the empty bullpen one last time. I hadn't been working out of this office for a while now, and it's not like I'd never be back. But something about having my desk packed, ready to head out the door with the last of my roots pulled up still hit me a bit.

"I'm... gonna miss you guys," I said, shaking my head as I turned back to my two friends. Jack rolled his eyes, since we'd already exhausted his reserve of sincerity for the day, but Peggy gave me a soft smile.

"We'll miss you too. And you can expect regular visits from us in the winter, when we're sick of the snow and need to use our friends for access to the sunshine in Los Angeles."

I grinned. "As long as you promise to bring real pizza with you whenever you visit."

"Deal."

We shared a smile, and thankfully, before any of us could get any sappier, Daniel walked through the door, his meeting with his contact apparently over with.

"Hey," he said, giviing me a smile as he walked over to join us. He leaned in to give me a quick kiss, then pulled back with a smile. "You ready to go? Our favorite breakfast place is waiting for us."

I smiled, then gave Daniel a nod. We were technically on vacation, so we'd planned to spend the rest of our day on a tour of all of our favorite places in New York city.

"We'll see you guys for dinner tonight, right?" Daniel asked as he took my hand, the two of us taking a few steps towards the door.

"As long as you're buying," called Jack, and Peggy nodded. Daniel shot him a thumbs up as I rolled my eyes, and just like that, Daniel and I were standing on the threshold of the New York SSR.

"You ready?" Daniel asked, leaning in to whisper to me. I took a deep breath, sparing one last moment of reminiscing for the place I'd spent so much of my life in over the last few years, then turned to Daniel with a smile.

"Yeah. I'm ready."

He smiled back at me, giving my hand a quick squeeze before we turned our backs on the office, officially and completely moving forward together. It still stung a little to be leaving, but not nearly as badly as it could've, since I knew and loved where I was heading.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989 @space-helen

Marvel Taglist: @valkyriepirate @infinetlyforgotten @sagesmelts @gaychaosgremlin

[earlgreytea68]

congratulations on posting 135 chapters of i prefer our love pt 2! i've followed your work on ao3 for a while, since before i prefer our love pt 1, and i've always felt that you consistently put out very high quality works. to post over 110k words in a pt 1 and then 240k+ words with more to come in a sequel is quite impressive, especially considering how impeccably written all of it is.

sincerely i hope you are already extremely proud of yourself because what you're doing is incredible, especially since you're regularly putting out updates on top of everything else. amazing job!

This is such a lovely thing to say, thank you! I can't believe I wrote so much and it's a little embarrassing, but I'm glad I brought it in for a landing and I also felt like I really let the story breathe and said what I wanted to say. I was worried when it was getting so long that I'd lose steam with the writing halfway through, but the story was never a chore, I was always really happy to come back to it. And I'm so glad that you're enjoying it, too!!

[olderthannetfic]

You know what obnoxious thing I keep seeing in fandom I wish would stop? This absolute need some people seem to have for their ship to be Representation in some way. Shipping is just imagining scenarios between two characters! You don’t need it to be a Special reason or whatever? I have a ship that is popular and people make weird vague comments about how the fandom is racist because both of them are white and there are other ship options that have poc so the white ship being big is a reflection on how racist the fandom is but the thing is…

Look I’m going to be real with y’all the fandom is for the game Detroit: Become Human and let’s just say the two major black characters are basically stereotypes written by a neocon lib boomer in a story that itself is imho…let’s call it tone deaf and corny af rather than overtly racist but yeah. Black folks on twitter regularly mock this game for good reason. It is very much a boomer white man’s idea of the civil rights movement but with robots. The robots sing actual slave hymns. The main character is essentially a light-skinned Martin Luther King Jr (dubbed Markus Luthur King by blktwt lol) and the religious allegories of him as a savior figure are very on the nose. It is bad lol. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to explore the black characters but the fandom is full of young white people singing the praises of this writing while patting themselves on the back about it which is genuinely uncomfortable to be around. Just my 2 cents but the virtue signaling and insane policing around those two characters makes it unbearable to interact with their content it is deeply sanitized and you WILL get death threats if you attempt any nuance or are critical of the (kinda racist imo) way they were written in canon.

The worst part of this is that Markus has a popular ship with a character a lot of people read or interpret as a more soft or femme gay man and you know what zoomers hate? Femme gay men. So obviously this is made to be ‘problematic’ in some way because these people can’t just admit to being femmphobic/homophobic themselves.

Sometimes it’s easier to stick with the boring white characters in the background because they aren’t being closely guarded by stupid reactionary people who are used to flashing their favorite fictional poc characters as tokens of their own goodness and virtue.

--

The pinnacle of this game is that moment when the black lady lectures her son about why they need to run the robot underground railroad to Canada.

I watched some playthroughs. Unsurprisingly, I liked the buddy cops with the good development, not the cringey activism plot with too many foils and not enough development of any single relationship and not the the Women Care About Babies plot.

But if I were going to do something fannish with Markus, I'd write him having a fucked up relationship with his mentor's son post game—the surrogate son who thought the guy was great and the estranged son who knew he wasn't but who has also done a bunch of shitty stuff himself.

It's especially hilarious when tryhards think the problem is not enough people shipping Markus with North as if the slashers are going to be into 1. het and 2. yet another unnecessary traumatic sex stuff backstory for a lady.

Even worse, half the whining isn't even about that Nines fanon nonsense being more popular than Markus: it's about how Markus/Connor would be better than Hank/Connor because old people are ew.

Sorry, children, a lot of people are here to thirst for Clancy Brown and because they'll turn up for any Caves of Steel ripoff. Other Connor ships were never in the running.

[nso-csi]

231117 Weverse live (eng sub)

Taemin says that it snowed for the first time this year in korea today and asked if his manager saw it. he says that the scarf was gifted by the brand itself and he was thanking the brand for this scarf. cr.

I'm going to the airport because I have a schedule in Thailand. Even tho I left early, there's a lot of traffic because people are getting off work. Today's also friday! I envy the people getting off work, treat yourselves well~ I woke up today and worked out and had a meeting regarding the concert and left for the airport. I've been pretty busy lately. cr.

I might sound full of myself, but rather than fixed variety shows, I want to do youtube content, like uploading song/dance covers. cr.

Taemin: I don't even know if they'll invite me over to variety shows however rather thanwanting to become a regular on variety shows, I want something that actually suits me? something like youtube content or sth relating to dance? cr.

Fans: You don't have any vacation? aren't you tired? Taemin: I don't think I have any vacation for this year, I've really been working hard (without rest) this year~ cr.

Taemin reading a comment: no holiday this year? I won't have holidays this year til the end of year. cr.

Taemin: can you all write how old you are? I am curious.. I am really curious.. because it seems like I'm the only one speaking in honorific?? no one apart from me speak formally?? Every one is younger but no one calls me oppa, everyone was like 'taemin-ah' but of course i know t's because the fans want to feel closer to me that's why they don't speak with honorifics cr.

Taemin: what's funny is everyone talks to me casually even those younger than me 6"6 no one even says oppa to me 6^6 I was joking you can talk to me casually~ some people get mischievous because I said so I was joking! cr.

Alcohol? it's been so long since i drank. When was the last time? I'm not drinking recently, maybe I lost interest. cr.

Taemin said it's been a while since he drink alcohol and said the last time he drank was during the live in Japan cr.

I'm so thankful that so many people did the guilty challenge with me. i was worried that they might feel embarrassed/scold me but everyone did show their abs, so i was very relieved. cr.

Fortunately there are a lot of people that recognize me as an artist. i'm determined to walk my own path. cr.

Everyone's asking me to take care of them, tbh i can't take care of myself. cr.

People who exercise regularly always show up. Like Minho is everywhere. He probably does ab workouts in his sleep and showers while flexing his abs and when he picks up stuff he picks them up in a squat position. I think it's really cool that people can exercise routinely like that. I would rather live without abs and be able to eat whatever i want. During the concert i should show you my abs~ 6v6 shooting content with minho hyung would be fun. there's two types of people who exercise: those who enjoy working out, and those who whine and complain. i'm the second type 6v6. cr.

Taemin: Minho hyung must work out even sleeping n even taking a shower 😆 he has such healthy hobbies so cool~ but shall we just have drinks? let's give up let's eat what we want this life~! there are 2 types of people one working out happily the other doing it whining i'm the latter cr.

I know how hard the SM staff works, so I don't want to talk bad about SM. But there are times when I don't understand the decisions made by (upper management). even if I were to have an ordinary job, I'd be bound to have some sort of complaints. cr.

Everyone is working hard to make something great. "Euisoo hyung make lots of money" I think our company's salary isn't that high. But everyone works with so much passion. It's a company where you make little money but you work a lot. and i know how hard our fans support us. Everyone always talks about how shinee/taemin fans are so amazing and beautiful! Some people enter the company and run away because the reality didn't match their expectations. So the people who stay behind work hard. The company is expanding but there's no money, so i don't understand how it's getting bigger LOL What I want to say is everyone is working hard, so please know that. There are people who work hard behind the scenes. That's right, raise the salary of our staffs! We have the deepest history among entertainment agencies in korea, so raise our salaries to match our reputation! 6v6 cr.

[the-selfinsert]

just read both of ur jackpot fics, and the core interaction represented them both EXTREMELY well. well done. but my main point is the pure potential of the second one.

so, fatal gets a BIG mention in it- and considering my friend is kinda the biggest fatal fan in existence as of now, I have some liking to him aswell.

so, I thought up a 4 way dynamic between fatal, lb, nightmare and jackpot.

fatal and lb are sort of "partners", not in the sense that they actually talk really, but they interact and fight against jackpot and nightmare on occasion.

nightmare and jackpot try and locate fatal, but every time they do lb is there and plot twist- the only reason they DID track him down was because gaster set up a trap.

and so begins a little rivalry.

now don't get this wrong- fatal and lb aren't some heroes, it's just aligning with their goals and morals.

fatal creates copies of people and extracts their code instead of the original, he isnt just straight up evil.

so, we already have dynamics here. we have a sort of generic evil vs glitches in the system, or rulers vs underdogs.

nightmare is understandably confused when lb comes in to help fatal for the first time, not knowing who or what he is at all, since lb would be pretty unknown considering how 'basic' it is compared to other aus like swapfell, storyshift, etc.

jackpot is half-terrifed half-pissed since gaster is basically just core frisk but way smarter and more competent (he was literally the royal scientist and built the core BEFORE becoming omnipresent by shattering across the space time continuum)

fatal and lb, while I didn't exactly potray them as 'close', I'd say they hang out a bit sometimes, or even regularly. it's just that lb doesn't really agree with fatals main goal, so they aren't the bestest of buds. but that opens up the doorway for fatal character growth and letting go of his goal of brining back papyrus etc etc.

once fatal is in the middle/after his character arc, I believe lb and him can become actual buddies, and start putting up an actual threat to jackpot's empire.

now, if im gonna be honest here, my friend has taught me how stupidly op fatal is, so realistically he'd 1 shot jackpot and nightmare if he was competent. but nightmare can regen and jackpot can..replace parts?

anyhow, basically heres the little story idea.

jackpot and nightmare finally track down fatal, and go in together because they're utterly sick of him at this point.

lb jumps in as they try to attack, and faces off against jackpot, extreme character interaction potential here <-

fatal faces off against nightmare, same with character potential.

eventually, nightmare angers fatal enough with papyrus comments, and fatal goes beserk- crunching the entire au they're all in.

lb is protected by gaster transporting him out- but jackpot isn't so lucky. he escapes due to nightmare, but GOLLY does he get traumatised by what he saw.

this also ties in with his home timeline being shattered, if jackpot has some weird memory thingy which activates due to it then it could explain him being scared shitless alot better.

anyhow, this was mostly an excuse to spread a fatal and lb vs jackpot and nightmare agenda across the UT fandom.

ps: I just realised I've been talking like how I would write fanfics. god its become a habit lol

but anyway, once again- amazing work selfin. you cooked (like always)

question: how the fuck do you make fics above 1k words my longest fic (which was the mg vs shin one) is literally like 952

Ok, that's really interesting! I like the concept! I don't think I've ever seen Fatal and LB paired together, so that's a cool idea.

Now, if they were to do it (And Fatal were to become stable enough to focus on anything other that his Papyrus goal), then I think them opposing those 2 could for sure happen.

There would be a few hiccups and questions about some of the specifics and logistics, (And personally, as Jackpot's co-creator, I wouldn't necessarily want to write a full-blown "story" with him, that has a climax and all. I want him to be another toolkit in UTMV storytellers's toolbox, a new lego figure to add to the lore if you will, and doing a whole story beyond backstory and oneshots interferes with that a little bit), but overall it's certainly interesting enough to warrant consideration

As for how I write fics above 1k, I think the question is really funny. I always feel like the amount I write is too short, no matter what I write. But generally it's just kind of that, trying to prolong the pacing to make it feel more natural. I had to postpone Jackpot's crashout like 3 times because of it, LMAO. But yeah, I think it's just a learned skill really, and a personal writing preference.

First Prev

Masterpost

[angelpuns]

Not a vent, just thinking thoughts. For the past year-ish, I've been less..mobile? And by that I mean I've found it harder to stand for long periods of time/walk long distances. But I'm genuinely not sure if its because I am not as regularly mobile as I was previously ( I don't walk everywhere like I did in college/while I lived in the city ) or because BEING as mobile as I was before( especially in hs and college) and then suddenly no longer needing to do so to survive has just made my body decide ' okay we no longer need to push ourselves like this so we're gonna take all that accumulated badness and breakdown'.

And I'd love to say I've been keeping track of/documenting when its worse to see if its a once-in-a-while type thing or a steady decline but I am terrible at that because typically I'll only notice it once its really bad and I also will have okay days where I'm able to walk/stand more and then I'm like ' oh its the first reason' or ' oh it was all in my head actually ' SOOO yeah. And I haven't had a time where I'm like completely unable to walk or stand so my bets are on just not doing it enough. Part of my knees being fucked is cause of marching band though, that shit will wreck your knees :/

Anyway just thoughts I was thinking because my knee and hip are fucked after this weekend ;-; I drove the 8 hour round trip in the same position p much the whole time and was super tense which isn't super great and then I also went up and down 2 flights of stairs like 3-4 times every hour for 5-6ish hours and also slept on a camping cot so yeah I don't think any of that helped lmao.

Anyway I'll probably be fine after a couple of days, my hip is already a lot better its just my knee that's annoying, and I think it'll get better if I walk it off??? I wasn't paying close enough attention to figure out if the walking or sitting was making it better today so I guess I'll find out tomorrow :)

Wow this is a big post, sorry if you read thus far for some reason. I really just wanted to write this down for later, because its just about the only documentation I'll have about the knee thing later lmao

[elacular-kink]

Hicvember 18: 2(+) cases at once

Not especially happy with this one. My brain wasn't really braining today. Which is a shame, because the idea of multiple simultaneous cases of the hiccups is just...yes. Very yes. Luckily, I'll get a do-over on day 27.

For now though, have Kiran and Olivia annihilating Susanna from space.

Content: Hiccups, embarrassment, arousal

With Olivia regularly sitting next to me in the lecture we shared, I'd started noticing just how frequently she would catch the hiccups. I'd also noticed just how good she was at hiding them. If I hadn't learned about how important they were to Susanna, I think that most of the time I wouldn't even realize she had them. Even with cases that she later told me were in the upper half of her numbered scale, she was able to swallow them down to near silence, though that always made her body jolt violently.

...I was also lucky that Olivia was apparently used to being stared at while hiccuping, because knowing about Susanna's fetish had me doing a lot of examination, watching how her belly popped out, how her chest jolted back, and how her whole body would lurch sometimes.

Even though she'd told me it was alright for me to look, I still felt a shock of anxiety when her pencil tapped my fingers, and she showed me some writing in the margin of her notes: "You're more distracted than usual. You actually stopped writing."

Ah. That was...that wasn't good practice. I started taking notes again, hoping that Olivia might let me borrow hers to fill in what I'd missed. Once I felt like I'd gotten a good base to write about what the professor was saying now, I wrote in my margins back to her. "Thank you, Olivia."

She shrugged her shoulders, which then bounced again with a hiccup. "Why were you distracted though? You don't have to worry about me right now, this is, like, a three."

Once I'd finished another sentence I wrote back. "It's" I stopped after just one word, feeling my face redden, but I knew that Olivia would prefer that I be honest with her in just about all matters. "I have some thoughts concerning your hiccups and Susanna that we can get into after class."

"Sex thoughts?"

I just barely avoided squealing as I scribbled out the word "sex" on her notes. She shook with a few chuckles in between her hiccups. "YES, BUT DETAILS TO FOLLOW LATER!" That apparently worked for her, because she flashed me a thumbs up and went back to focusing on the lecture, which I did my best to do as well.

After class, Olivia took my hand and led me to a rather unremarkable patch of grass in the middle of the campus. "Oka–*uck*–ay, nobody's around. *hmk* What are your tho–*ok*–oughts?"

"Well, I..." It was strange how embarrassing it still was to talk about this, even with someone I knew would both understand and be understanding. "I woke up this morning feeling...um, multiple things. And one of those things was, um...hiccupy? A-as if I'm likely to catch a case. And I know that I can fairly reliably, um, induce hiccups in myself and—"

"Oh, you wan–*hnk*–wanna annihilate Su---sanna from space, huh?" I looked down at her and she shrugged. "That's one of th–*uck* the ways she ta–*hulk* talks about being turned on. *hmk*. I don't g---get it." I didn't get it either, but I understood enough to nod. Olivia hummed through a few hiccups before she nodded. "Yeah. I've got t---time. And anni---hillating her from space i–*ic*–is fun. You'll like it. *hmk*. Want me to te–*ulk* tell you how to do it r---really well?" I nodded rapidly again, and when I looked at her face, I saw what I'd learned to recognize as her genuine smile. "Awesome. *hmk* You'll learn quick."

I did learn quickly from Olivia's explanations, and a little planning and a few scary youtube videos later, I was in my own house, hiccuping away, a hand resting on my chest and Olivia sending me a secret phone call. "Susann–*uck*," I couldn't tell from the noises of skin and fabric exactly what was happening, but if I had to guess from their usual interactions, Olivia had likely just draped herself over Susanna's shoulders, resting her chin on her head.

"Olivia." Now that I'd learned to recognize it, even now that she'd been around it for so long, whenever Olivia (or anyone else) was hiccuping, I could hear the very slight tension in Susanna's voice. There were some more noises of movement. "Okay, we're, uh, going this way now I guess."

"Kiran se---seemed tired in the le–*ic* lecture today. You always che–*HEEK*–mmf, cheer her up."

"Ah. Not sure why. I'm not exactly a ray of sunsh—OW! What the fuck, no biting!" There was the brief sounds of a scuffle, and I couldn't help but laugh. Happily, that seemed to make my hiccups even worse.

For the brief rest of the call, Olivia and Susanna discussed banal topics, and it seemed like the latter didn't have any suspicions. I couldn't help bouncing on my toes when I knew they were nearing my house, and when they knocked on the door, I probably opened it suspiciously quickly, but at this point, I didn't care. "Hello Su–*HOOP!*" My face was so red, but hers was far redder, and I could see Olivia grinning from where she rested her chin on Susanna's head. "S-Susanna. Exc–*HIUK* Excuse me. I, um...*HMK*" I realized that I was smiling, but what else could I do as I looked back down at her? "Y-you've cau–*UCK*–aught me with a bi–*HIP* bit of a case o–*HUP* of the hiccups. *HIC-ULP!* Mmf!"

Susanna looked like she intended to say something, her jaw opening and closing, but before she could, I yelped when Olivia shoved her into me before wrapping her arms around us both and pushing us back into the house, shutting the door afterward. She didn't let go when she was done, so Susanna was squished between us tightly enough that I worried a bit about her ability to breathe. But even with the medium of an adorable woman between us, I could still feel every jolt of Olivia's stomach, and I was sure she could feel how every one of my hiccups wobbled me. "Oh look, *hmk*, Kiran's got th---the hiccups too. *hmk* How about that?"

Susanna wrestled herself free enough of us to at least have her head fully unblocked, though Olivia kept her hold on both of us, and I wasn't particularly helpful in letting her escape. "Yoooouuuu are so fucking evil." I couldn't help but giggle at how her voice buzzed with tension as she said that.

"Careful, you're ma–*uck* making Kiran laugh. I thi–*hnk* think that might ma–*hup* make her hiccups wo–*urk*–orse."

"Sh–*HIUK* she's not *HIP* wrong," I felt how flushed my face was and finally started actually helping, wrapping my arms around Susanna too to keep her even more trapped. "Whenever I *HEEK*–nnf! St-start to hi–*IC-CUP* l-like this *IC!*" I couldn't stop myself from giggling at having hiccuped through the word itself. "L-laughing se–*HEEK* seems like it ma–*IC* makes them wo–*HIURK*–orse."

"I swear you di–*ic* didn't have these wh---when we left the le–*hic* lecture hall *hmk*." Olivia tilted her head, her voice taking on a faux tone of confusion. "But he–*URK* here you are now, *hmk* all bouncy and *hmk* hiccupy like me."

Olivia opened an opportunity for one of the teases she'd shared with me, and I couldn't stop smiling as I took it. "M-mayb–*EEK* Maybe some of *HMK* your hiccups spi–*HIC*–spilled out of *HIUP* you and int–*HOOP* into me!" I felt more than heard Susanna moan against us, and my heart beat faster as I wondered what exactly she could feel pressed so close against my body like this.

"Oh shit," Olivia leaned down and rested her head on Susanna's again. "Better *hmk* be careful, Susanna. *hmk-lp* or both our c---cases might end u–*hup* spilling into you."

The sound that came out of Susanna at that made my whole body light on fire, and I loved feeling how that fire enveloped Susanna with each of either of our spasms. Olivia's hiccups might not have spilled over into me, but some of Susanna's fetish had, and getting to turn her on like this...

I never thought I'd be so happy about my crush liking other people. But "annihilating her from space" as a team was just perfect.

[hubristicassholefight]

Swordswoman Showdown Round 1 Part 2

Alanna of Trebond (The Song of the Lioness) vs Mu Nihuang (Nirvana in Fire/Langya Bang)

(Better here in a "preferred character" sense, not "who would win in a fight")

Propaganda below cut

Alanna of Trebond

Literal lady knight, has never lost a duel as King's Champion

Disguised herself as a boy to train as a knight and learn the sword. Practices with a giant sword to increase inductance. Finds (is found by?) a special magic sword. One of the best swords people in her country.

She was the first lady knight in Tortall in centuries and paved the way for other lady knights like Kel. She's also a shortstack hero who regularly kicks butt. Won several sword fighting tournaments against her male peers while disguised as a man.

Can't stand the idea of getting sent to a convent, so she switches places with her twin brother and disguises her gender to go off and become Tortall's first lady knight. Engages in much sword-wielding badassery, not just through inherent talent but through working twice as hard as the boys who skate by on their size and comparitive strength. In later Tamora Pierce books she shows up again as a mother, but even having kids doesn't stop her from going off and doing more heroic sword-swinging. H*ck yeah.

She’s her realm’s first Lady Knight in centuries and a genuine hero. She disguised herself as a man to earn her shield. She was the King’s Champion for decades; One of the first major women heros in YA fantasy, from the 1980! According to the author, if Alanna had the words for it, she would be gender fluid

disguised herself as a boy entirely to learn swords and become a knight, becomes the first lady knight in her country in centuries; Alanna is so iconic that decades of queer fans have seen themselves in her and any author signing is accompanied by a mob of sobbing millennials over how much finally meeting and thanking the author for writing Alanna meant to them

Mu Nihuang

She's introduced to the narrative riding to the gates of the capital at the head of a caravan. She sees two characters we've just spent a couple of scenes getting to know, grins with delight, draws her sword, jumps off her horse and engages them in a two-versus-one duel, handily defeating them after a short exchange of blows and promptly complimenting them that they've obviously been practicing, because she would have won much faster last time. She's the most eligible bachelorette at the Imperial Court due to her control of a personal army of several hundred loyal soldiers. She's a respected general, whose favoured tactic is to personally lead a cavalry unit to outflank the enemy on a daring raid to kill their general, at which point the superior discipline of her troops will win the day; I'd love to say more about the quiet tragedy of her deep love for Lin Shu and the way she circles around Mei Changsu for most of the story, full of love and respect and pain from past loss, but if I get into it I'll have to do the fandom's traditional ritual: lie down on the floor, try not to cry, and cry a lot.

She arrives on screen to duel two competent swordsmen to a standstill (while her former (current? unclear) fiancé pines piningly from a distance). She's highly ranked on the in-universe BuzzFeed listicle of Swordspeople Who Will Kick Your Ass. When she's manouvered into being the prize in a martial arts contest for her hand, she stipulates that the winner has to defeat her to truly win, which is generally recognised as Not Going To Happen; She's also extremely proficient with a polearm on horseback, being the Gandalf-at-Helm's-Deep to everyone else's Everyone-Else-at-Helm's-Deep in a climactice battle. Also, she is just. So very ready to overthrow the emperor. (He deserves it.)

[kiragecko]

Now that I'm approaching 1,500 followers, I have some data about how the experience shifts.¹ Starting at 500, because back when I had less than that, the site was ... different.²

500 followers -

a bad post may get no notes. A good one might hit 75.

Notifications of any type are exciting - many days I don't get any. I check each one by looking at the post, and reply to pretty much everyone who replies or tags.

I rarely get messages - I have a friend who sends one occasionally.

750 followers -

A bad post gets 2-3 notes. A good one might hit 200.

Notifications are exciting - I usually get a few while scrolling my dash, and come back to 2 digits when I get up in the morning. I check each reblog by looking at the post, and respond to all replies and pretty much everyone who tags.

I rarely get messages - I have a friend who sends one occasionally.

1000 followers -

A bad post gets 3-10 notes. A good one occasionally blows up, and just keeps circulating.

Notifications are exciting - the speed I get them while scrolling my dash tells me if posts are doing well. I check each reblog with tags/comments by looking at the post, and respond to all replies and people who say interesting things.

I rarely get messages - I have a friend, and an anon, who send one occasionally.

1,500 followers -

A bad post gets 6-20 notes. But somehow, I make more 'good' posts than I used to! Maybe once a month a post starts circulating - not going viral, but getting enough momentum that it keeps trickling notes back to me for the rest of the month. I regularly get over a hundred notes, even on weird stuff with niche appeal.

Notifications are actually getting normalized. I fought this happening, but I'm starting to skim over likes, a bit. I get a new like every few minutes. I usually only check reblogs if their tags interest me. I respond to various types of tags or replies only once - subsequent people are out of luck. Sometimes I get slightly annoyed with myself for reblogging something, because getting notes for THAT post doesn't provoke a sense of belonging. I'd rather people enjoy a DIFFERENT post with me. I'm spoiled by people regularly reblogging with good comments, despite the site culture seeming less and less interested in doing that.

I rarely get messages - I have a friend, and an anon, who send one occasionally.

-

I think the numbers are different for everyone. It depends on how zealous you are about blocking bots. What kind of people are interested in your posts, and how social that group of people is. Whether you reblog polls or not. Many many things change numbers and engagement.

But I can definitely feel that the way I'm interacting with tumblr is shifting as my followers go up. I'm not social enough to engage on the same level I used to. And it's not like my social skills have improved at all! Maybe my post writing skills, but I still don't have a CLUE what to do when people actually talk to me.

I can see why many popular blogs mostly only interact with close friends. Otherwise, Tumblr could become REALLY lonely - a sea of people, none of whom actually know you. I'm not at the point of needing to shut most people out, yet.³ But I can understand why it happens. That's a healthy way of dealing with things!

-

¹ I was always curious about this kind of stuff when I had less followers. I still am. I want to know what the experience is like for other blogs - both with more AND less followers than me!

² People actually sent asks and had reblog conversations. My amount of real interaction was MUCH higher a decade ago.

³ Especially since the blogs I think of as my friends ... do not seem to have any more social skills than I do. They are not carrying the conversational burdens that I'm unable to bear for me! We're all in this together.

[simulation-machine]

SIMS RELATED PROJECTS/UPDATES

My spring break is coming up in a week and holy crap do I have plans on plans on plans, especially since my summer is gonna be full of school + internship + HOPEFULLY friggin' graduating with a BA in Psychology so that I can start applying to grad schools.

Read more iffin' you'd like! It's long! Here's a picture of my golden retriever napping on her brother's food bowl to entice/entertain you:

god she is so precious i would literally kill for her

GOAL 1: MASTER GSHADE/ReSHADE

I know that some people are sticklers for this but my thing is that I had no gee-dee clue what I was doing with ReShade, whereas Gshade just kinda clicked and worked for me? That said I have a bunch of resources for learning ReShade so I might end up moving back to it at some point.

My main issue is figuring out the order of all the different effects. It obviously matters, I'm sure people smarter than me have tried to use presets only to be like "why tf does this look absolutely nothing like the baller screenshots this one cool Simblr has?" Annnd it turns out it's order + remembering to turn off certain graphic settings. Also photoshop, but that's gonna take a lot longer for me to figure out lol.

Like I'd been struggling to figure out why @gunthermunch's gorgeous Lithium preset wasn't looking as sexy as it did before annnnd it's because I forgot to turn Edge Smoothing off when switching to it. Jesus wept at how dippy I am sometimes.

Eventually, what I would like to do is maybe make my own preset at some point? I would be kind enough to show the effect order too if I did so. But this requires so, so much more shader knowledge than I currently have.

FUN FACT: My first ever degree was in art, I even went to a very fancy and private art school (School of the Art Institute of Chicago if you're curious)- I dropped out after one semester because uhhh that shit is expensive. Ended up finishing my degree at a much cheaper location in MN. That said, my art was 100% analog and 2D, and it turns out it did not translate super well into trying my hand at graphic art.

It's funny because I've been gifted really neat stuff for graphic art (like a really nice Wacom tablet and Adobe subscriptions), like people just expected my mixed-media ass would know what to do with it. NOPE! But yeah, Sims is sort of my excuse to try my hand at this stuff again, especially since I have a bit more energy now that my soul is not regularly being drained out of my body by customer service and tech support jobs.

GOAL 2: GET CRACKIN' ON ANOTHER DOOR

This one is hard because I am only on Gen 2 of the Orsons and it's sort of hard to justify starting up another story while that one is less than 1/5 of the way done.

THAT SAID, I don't plan on posting Another Door until I have a decent chunk of it done. Since it's not a casual gameplay story nor a legacy challenge, I plan on editing the bajeez out of the screenshots for it, really honing in on the aesthetic. I want it to look and feel very different from my random legacy challenge.

Fortunately, this story has been fucking up my sleep schedule for *months* now and I have a lot of the writing for it done. The hard part is translating that into the Sims, making sure I get the right poses and stuff, maybe even learning how to make some super easy CC (like, posters and stuff), and stuff related to GOAL 1 above.

What I'm saying is that it's going to take a bit. But I'm super serious about sharing it because it's my obsession and honestly the first time a story of my own design has possessed me in literal years.

Also, I want to make sure I have a significant backlog of the Orsons before I start seriously simming for it, because I don't want to screw over my favorite little pixel babies. This legacy challenge is going to be the one, I have done so much to keep my save files to keep it safe from harm (ask me how many backups I have of the save files. JK don't, the number is frankly silly).

GOAL 3: START YET ANOTHER MASSIVE CC PURGE

Y'all, my CC folder for this game is honestly an embarrassment. I go so hard on CC shopping because this community is stupid-talented and I like giving my pixel babies nice things and cool looks. When I'm bored and not quite in the mood for gameplay, I just like making neat-looking sims that I do absolutely nothing with because I love fucking around in CAS.

I have built my own PCs since I was 17 years old, and when I first built COMPUTERMACHINE (current rig) back in the autumn of 2018, it was with the goal that it would run Sims 4 flawlessly no matter what I did to it. It's got ridiculous amounts of RAM, I religiously update parts for it. And to be fair, even with the current 6,907,907,890 TB of CC I have atm it runs better than Sims 3 ever had with a measly 50 GB of CC.

But for me, it comes down to finding all the stuff I wanna use. Making myself get rid of the stuff I don't wanna use. Straight up yeeting the CC that I thought was going to look incredible that uh, didn't deliver.

I do CAS CC purges about once a year but have literally never done it for Build & Buy stuff, because OMG some of this shit I've had since 2014. Like when Sims 4 first came out. YIKES. My CAS CC obsession is notable but it's honestly nothing compared to my Build & Buy. Even before For Rent made building lots slow af, my PC was starting to take a solid minute to switch to different buy categories.

It would take a long af time so I want to make sure I have a bunch of content in the queue before I do it. It's gonna be a whole ass thing and be so, so boring to do. So I'm putting it off for when I have a ton of time to do it. Like, oh, my entire Spring Break?

GOAL 4: MAKE A FRIGGIN' RESOURCES LIST ALREADY

This would obviously need to wait until after GOAL 3 is completed, but I wanna make sure the awesome creators whose stuff I use get credit, and that people know where they can grab neat stuff. It would include not only CC but mods, Gshade/ReShade presets, and maybe even lots and sims I've downloaded from the gallery?

(Since I am super anti-paywall and very unapologetic and rude about it, I will also share where one could perhaps get some of these CCs without paying some dip a Trenta Starbucks Unicorn Frappucino amount of $$$)

It's ambitious as hell because *gestures vaguely at GOAL 3* but it would make things like doing WCIF asks and lookbooks so much easier.

Somewhat relatedly, I wanna make a navigation post, especially once Another Door starts getting posted. That story is gonna be a bit huge with multiple arcs that take place over the course of like, 14 years. Plus once the Orsons get to the 4th+ generation, it would be easier to track things down.

IN CONCLUSION...

I have been having so much fun sharing my silly little Sim adventures on Tumblr, so much more than I ever thought I would! You all have been so great to me, and all of this stuff is sort of a way for me to repay that. Ever since I stopped being able to be artistically creative ever since a really nasty depressive spell in 2017, Sims has been my #1 artistic outlet. And having people who are even somewhat entertained by my pixels is incredibly motivating.

Basically, if you read all of this, DAMN would you have been a rad livejournal follower of mine circa 2007. On the seriousness, however, thank you all so much for being rad and encouraging and sweet. I promise to do you all, if not proud, then at the very least not disappointed.

Time to hit the bong and take some pictures of Lou and Tatertot before taking my IRL doggos on a walk~