Anyone else in this thread experiencing anguish and existential dread

illicit affairs

buddie | E | chapter 1 of 8(ish) | 3k | just a boy helping his boy bestie figure out gay sex, with a side of infidelity This is how it starts: Buck goes on a date with Tommy. How it goes from there, Eddie can't even begin to explain.

Chapter 1: born from just one single glance

It’s in the aftermath, when Bobby and Athena are safe and being checked over and the 118 plus family and friends is piled in the waiting room as usual — they all have their preferred chairs with how often they’re here — that Eddie’s unfocused mild interest in this new guy who his friends trust, turns to sharp notice. 

Eddie has to step away to call Carla, to let her know they got Athena and Bobby, to assure her that he’s fine, Buck’s fine, they’re all fine. And then he spares an extra moment to text Marisol because he knows she’ll see the news soon, if she hasn’t already, and will worry.

After, when he returns to the waiting room, Tommy’s in his seat. Eddie doesn’t really have a specific one he favors so much as he always takes one next to Buck. So, it follows that, Tommy is now sitting beside Buck. 

When Eddie left, Buck’d been pale-faced, and shaky in a way he wasn’t when Bobby was missing and he had a goal to focus on. Eddie hadn’t wanted to leave him, but it was Buck who’d said didn’t he need to call Carla? Let Chris know they’re okay?

Eddie pauses across the room and regards the scene before him. Tommy is leaned in, chatting to Buck, making wide, expressive gestures with his hands as he does. Buck’s still more grey than pink in the cheeks and one hand is clutching the arm of his chair, but he’s stopped picking at the patch of peeling paint he’s about tripled in size over their past handful of waiting room residences and there’s a hint of a smile curling the side of his mouth, which had been a grim line before, waiting for the doctor to report back on Bobby and Athena, waiting to be allowed to see them. 

“He’s in good hands.”

Eddie starts at Hen’s words. She appears from behind him carrying two paper cups of what Eddie understands from experience is the worst coffee known to man. He used to force it down because caffeine is caffeine, but he can’t anymore. It reminds him too much of the three minutes and seventeen seconds that were some of the worst of his life.

read on ao3

If it’s not [REDACTED] material you plan on covering further on in Pieces, would you mind talking about why Hemlock is so jealous of Rosalie? It seems like every time she’s “on screen” she’s making some sort of jab at Rosie concerning either Astarion/Rosalie’s past relationship, or Astarion and Hemlocks (insinuated?) carnal activities, but hardly anyone ever comments on it. Like poor Hemmie practically spat the fact Astarion comes to her bed in Rosalie’s face during Chapter 12 in front of Shadowheart but no one acknowledges that she’s constantly trying to make Rose upset with this info. Is it just the power of the Ascendant that Hemlock is drawn to and makes her wish she was on Rosalie’s level (in Astarion’s eyes), or is it the bond between vampire and spawn that makes her act like this?

Hey anon! Thank you for the question! I'll try to answer you as best I can without spoilers :)

Firstly, the reason no one ever comments on Hemlock's behaviour or the buckwild things she says is because.... they all find it kind of cringe :') In my mind, by this point in the timeline, this party and Tav have encountered Gortash, Orin, Cazador, Raphael, Mizora, the Emperor's bullshit... not to mention any villains Rose encountered in her post game life, and in Avernus. They've had their fair share of villain speeches! They're used to it! They feel like water off a duck's back at this point! It's easier to simply not acknowledge it, than engage.

(Rose talks about the social energy it takes to interact with evil people in another fic I've written, she's just like "more than anything, it's exhausting to act like I value their opinions and pretend I care".)

Hemlock also thinks her and Rosalie are fighting over an Ascended Astarion... they're not. Rose doesn't want Ascended Astarion. So when Hemlock's like, "yeah, did I mention we fucked", Rose is just like "...and? you and every other person in that house. happy for you, i guess?" Like yes, it does sting a little in the sense that it shows how much Astarion has changed... but it's kind of missing the real mark? And most of Rose's friends know her well enough to know that, but especially Shadowheart, who walked round that awful dungeon with her.

That being said, Rose is more petty with Hemlock when they're alone and no one's there to judge her, but that's more because of the Feeblemind than anything.

As for Hemlock's motivations, it's unfortunately a mixture of all of the things you list above. Astarion's spawn are all people he recruited post-Ascendency, so all of them buy into his spiel to some extent. Hemlock, in particular, is a person who was already evil-aligned before she became a vampire. She was promised a lot of power and a position of supposed equals (where have we heard that before?) I do think, if she doesn't have feelings for Astarion, or may now have started to reach a point where some of the sheen of this hot, all-powerful vampire man has been tarnished, she does at least want the peak ascendency romance: the glamour, the debauchery, and the power that comes with it (she is, essentially, a Tav that picks all the pro-evil plan lines in the dialogue tree and means it).

Instead, she's forced to live a circumscribed and domesticated life, because of some girl she's never met, who Astarion waxes lyrical about whenever he has a free moment to pause for breath. In Chapter 13, I reveal that all the spawn have to live according to Rose's dictate of 'no harm' - notice that Astarion enforces that perfectly on all the people he can literally command, meanwhile he is the only person with freedom in that situation, and he can act however he likes and keeps 'messing it up uwu'. He thinks he's being 'good' and doing vampirism 'well', but what it actually is is just hypocrisy, and a way to continue to exercise power over those he controls, to some extent. Hemlock is someone who actually wants to be an evil vampire, or even a Cazador, and can't, because she's not given the free will with which to do so.

So Hemlock has this mixture of 'I am actually in love with this man and want what he promised me'; or 'I was in love with this fantasy and now I'm facing the reality, after having sold my soul, and even if I hate it here now I'm trapped, I want to find any way to salvage this so I've got to continue pretending he's right'; 'I fucking hate this woman who I'm constantly compared to and can never live up to, even though, to my mind, she sounds fucking stupid'; ....AND then there's the bond between vampire and servant. Hemlock tells Rose that she's already under orders not to displease Astarion - I fully believe that order has been in place for a long time. This Astarion words commands and orders in a way that means the spawn have the illusion of cooperation and free choice, which basically means he makes the spawn complicit in their own oppression. He'll say something like "because you've upset me, you should go to the dungeon cells and starve yourself and not move, while you think about what you've done" - that's still, to all intents and purposes, an order (especially when you're already under orders not to displease him).

Hemlock says a lot of what she says to Rosalie because it's easier to hate the woman who 'ruined her life' and 'prevents Astarion from reaching his full potential', rather than examine anything too closely and realise she's ruined her life herself. If she stops buying into the vampirism she chose, she's fucked bc it's not like she can leave it, so better to hate anything else but being a spawn.

It's just also unfortunate, that she thinks the way to hurt Rose is to brag about sleeping with Astarion. But then, the only version of Astarion Hemlock has ever known is obsessed with sex, so why wouldn't she think the woman who loves him wouldn't be as well?

I hope that makes sense! Sorry, this ended up being very long!

i think one of my biggest gripes with TSATS is the sentence structure and the way that things are phrased.

Sentence structure: the book is CONSTANTLY using ", and", or "then", or "but" instead of splitting up a phrase into two separate sentences. Once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it. In some places it works fine, but right out the gate, as the first line of chapter one, it 1) caught my attention in a negative way and 2) felt immediately clunky and awkward.

The way that the book demonstrates action also feels unnatural and doesn't flow as well as it could. Things are described as happening "now", such as when Kayla takes her lolipop out of her mouth and holds it at her side, the book narrates it as "now holding the lolipop at her side". We didn't SEE that action occur, we're just being described the RESULT of the action, does that make sense? As a reader, you want to SEE the action, you want to SEE her tug the lolipop out of her mouth, see her hand hang by her side as her expression pinches with anxiety over the discussion. We don't want to just be told that "now" her lolipop is out of her mouth, y'know?

There are also sentences that just feel flat out unedited, phrases that have too many words for what they want to accomplish, or with a structure that doesn't make sense - like on page 56, the sentence "They raced up the steps to the platform, Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, though that was mostly due to Will having to get his land legs again."

First of all - why are they running up the platform? In the previous line, where we're told their cab driver got them to the station with 6 minutes to spare, the specific choice of saying "to spare" makes it sound like there is plenty of time to make it to their train. In the sentences after, we even learn that Nico and Will wound up waiting for their train anyway, so, the fact that they're running when Will feels sick reads...weird, to me. If I was car sick, and then somebody forced me to run for no reason, I would not be a happy camper.

Second of all - The addition of the final third of the sentence, after the second comma, should be it's own phrase. It should be given it's own space, like "(though that was mostly because Will didn't have his land legs back yet)." because it's not important information, just an offhanded comment Nico is making.

Third of all - "though that was mostly due to" and "having to get his" are clunky and wordy. It could've just been "Nico easily outrunning his boyfriend, who didn't have his land legs back yet." It's a smoother sentence that doesn't get bogged down by the extra words.

And that's just one instance. This book is LOADED with moments like this, where action will get lost in a sentence's wordiness. The book tries to be quick and snappy, in Riordan's style, but it fails because it can't quite nail down the phrasing.

There are also moments where the only thing the characters are interacting with is each other, only grinning, grimacing, sighing, glancing at one another, etc etc, instead of doing actions while they speak. Fidgeting with their hands, shifting from side to side, looking away at their surroundings, that kind of stuff is how you convey a MOOD. Body language is important when writing character conversations!! Is somebody relaxed, or are their shoulders tensed up, arms folded across their chest with their muscles flexed, leaning back on one leg with their body halfway tilted away, as if they were ready to flee at a moment's notice? These are the kind of details that I'm missing in TSATS, the kind of things that feel like they're missing.

I also have a lot of gripes with the dialogue itself.

People don't talk like they do in TSATS. The content of what they're saying is realistic enough, sure, yeah, but the specific way that a lot of the dialogue is phrased? It doesn't feel natural. Try reading some of the sentences out loud without editing any of the words. It doesn't sound the way a human being SPEAKS.

THAT'S what I mean when I say these characters are OOC. The way that they're speaking is uncomfortable and feels as if they're being used as a puppet, or a mouthpiece for what somebody ELSE wants them to say.

BRAND! NEW! CHARLIE! REF! LET'S GOOOOO

i HATED the old one so much it was literally in two completely different styles both of which were horrendously out of date and missing a bunch of key details and UUUGH. i was so embarrassed to have it up and have people looking at it but this is SO MUCH BETTER. and hopefully it'll stick around for longer :)

I'm not going to put anything up publicly, because my mama didn't raise no person vulnerable enough to be a beginner in public, but I started teaching myself to draw for the nth time about five days ago and it's been going much better than it ever has before.

me when i could say im going to do one thing and just see it through but my contrarian nature and sheer sense of audacity compel me to do the exact opposite for the fourteenth time this season

Mayta Knight day 4 - Loss

this is one of those comics you can easily tell was unscripted but 1. the loss of one’s self is probably one of my favorite themes ever and 2. i infect everything i draw with fluff (apparently)

bonus:

me, every night for the past three weeks: oh im feelin good rn! and i had a good day today!! im definitely not gonna lie awake filled with anxiety and dread over my future tonight :D

me, lying in bed 20 minutes later looping famous last words: by talos this cant be happening

I know we love Bri but I read an interview where they asked if he thought about going back to Chrissy after he met Anita and he said “there was a thought” but it was impossible bc he’d fallen for Anita and idk like 😵‍💫 mans didn’t try to save his marriage at all? That’s…😬

I know the interview excerpt you’re referring to, but going by other sources, I don’t think that was quite the case. We know from another interview that Brian lived alone for a while in 1988 after his marriage broke up for good because he said he was in denial that he was in love with Anita, thought the feelings would pass if he just sat around on his own, and he felt very guilty (which, yeah, was justified lol). That means he didn’t actually break up with Chrissy and go running to Anita—it sounds like the marriage ended and he didn’t think he’d get back with Anita at all, and there’s an interview with her from 1988 in which she apparently teared up and confirmed they were broken up.

The timeline and sequence of events aren’t totally clear, because a lot was still kept behind closed doors, but it seems like there was a time when Brian got caught, broke up with Anita, and did try to return to his marriage (there’s another interview where Anita said Brian was very lovely “but unfortunately, there is a Mrs. May”, so that was obviously after she knew he was married and at a time when she wasn’t with him anymore). When Brian said it was “impossible” because he fell in love with someone else, that could mean a couple things. He could’ve meant that he went back to Chrissy like, “I’m so sorry, I’m finished with her, let’s try to start over” (because remember, he didn’t actually want to get divorced) and Chrissy turned around and said, “Nope, this is the last straw, I can’t do this anymore, we’re finished.” We have no idea what her side of the story is and never will, but it would be very believable and understandable if she wouldn’t accept her husband’s apologies after a public affair. Or, maybe Brian broke up with Anita and he and Chrissy did agree to try to make it work because neither wanted to get divorced and there were children involved, but after however many months, they realized they couldn’t move on from what happened, or ignore any of their other problems that made their marriage on the brink of falling apart before Anita, and things would never be the same so they just couldn’t possibly stay together. I think that’s a very likely scenario, too. You can agree to try to make things work, but if a bad event fundamentally breaks a relationship, that won’t last. I don’t think it’s uncommon for couples to try to patch things up after an affair tbh, but break up later because the hurt feelings don’t heal.

(I’ve also wondered how the death of Harold May in 1987 might’ve influenced this…Harold was the one who shamed Brian for not marrying Chrissy to begin with, and Brian said it was “unfinished business” between him and his father when he died. Harold likely knew what was going on—did that influence Brian to try to go back to Chrissy? Did she temporarily swallow her pride and be there by his side when his father died, as support? We’ll never know.)

So yeah, there’s a lot we don’t know about this situation, as much as the tabloids exploited it, but it seems like every time you dig deeper and really examine the quotes we have, things were more complicated than they initially appear.

TOP TEN OUATIW RELATIONSHIPS (AS VOTED BY MY FOLLOWERS)

#7: anastasia & the jabberwocky

google am i on the aro spectrum or am i just a teenager

Yay rpg maker stuff :3. I should make more updates that aren’t just little concept doodles cause I have gotten a couple rooms to work, but eh. The game itself is still in like the getting the whole map figured out stage, then I’ll have to go through and plan where story specific events will happen, what characters appear where, major puzzles, whether or not there will be a battle system, etc etc. but I do have a lot of things down and have figured out how the program works for the most part! You guys get to see the map planning page early hehe, also the little girl character (who I still need to figure out the name of whoops—)

Anyway, these two are some main characters, Layne and Reid. I don’t wanna spoil too much about them, but they are also med school students and test subjects like Miran. Layne is the one with their hair to their right and spiky ends, Reid is the one with their hair over their left eye and a rounder style.

Ok yeah that’s it bye—

Very inspired to do literally everything!! (⬅️ guy who repeatedly sets himself up for failure)

The Defenders (1972) #46

my partner is most likely an egg as he has been saying things like "i wish i was a lesbian" "i wish i had been born a girl" "i hate having a dick" "all my built characters in rpgs are women" "feminine clothing is so much more interesting than masculine clothing" "if i was a girl would you love me more" "I'm sorry I'm not a girl" like babe I'm starting to think you are. it's been 7 years of this.