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panur · 9 months

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Radovid Joins the Hansa

At the Radskier discord we are Goncharov-ing what Radovid-joins-the-hansa (aka: Hansovid) AU would be like and here's some of the ideas shared so far:

the exact details on HOW this happens are not set in stone (Did Radovid escape before Vizimir got offed, leaving Pip and Siggi without a convenient spare? After? More importantly, does he have the annuity??), but some headcanons are:

Art major nerd perk, Radovid knows a lot about slightly more practical things, like art, history and architecture and sometimes weird law facts that he personally found interesting

barding- under Jaskier's tutelage, Radovid's playing has improved dramatically, which is great because unlike jaskier who is kind of recognizable, Radovid can more easily go into towns as a perfectly average, unremarkable bard, making getting items/information while keeping anonymity (they usually pair him up w Regis for safety reasons)

Very good at looking dumb and pretty and quite pathetic which makes people underestimate him more

Courtly training so he's polite and educated… and good at remembering faces and names.

THE ONE NORMAL PERSON IN THIS GROUP. Radovid often ends up being the most sensible/practical person in a situation simply by process of elimination. Radovid will read a potion saying 'drink me' and...not do it. He'll see spoopy shit and walk the fuck out. He's the guy who asks who's on the other side before opening to sus knocking.

he's very bad at athletic stuff and takes awhile to build stamina, but at least this time everyone's got horses and boots so it balances out

Radovid is not good at self defense BUT does have some concept of swordsmanship/archery… from like like 20 years ago. He is, however, decided not to be a burden and not to get left behind. He's especially invested in protecting Jaskier- who Radovid is horrified to find- is even more useless than he himself is (bitch you live like this??).; Because Radovid has common sense and self preservation instincts, things jaskier is mostly lacking).

he eventually starts getting lessons from Cahir and Milva when time permits, and healing stuff from Regis. He's got excellent memory and attention to detail, but remains average at swordsmanship/archery.

he is, however, fairly good with a crossbow (no the wrist ones from TW3, the bigger ones ).

he also gets a cute ponytail/braid and smiles more! (original art by naumaxia-art)

Still too weaksauce for the path?

we've named him 'Faro', after a type of Cintran beer

He's a Polish Tatra Sheepdog and was acquired by the group when Geralt was handling a monster infestation. Unfortunately neither the puppo's owners, nor his sheep were spared, but puppo not only survived, but saved Jask and Radovid and became extremely protective of them.

I imagine the acquisition goes something like:

Geralt: absolutely not. Radovid: I'm calling for a vote! Milva: You. You're calling for a vote? Radovid: why not? is this not a democracy? Radovid: I'm of course voting to keep him. Jaskier: I second the vote to keep the very handsome boy! Angoulême: come on Geralt, we'd never have found where the Barghest were coming from without him, AND he saved your bard from walking straight into it. Jaskier: yes Geralt, he saved your bard! Geralt: fine, then I vote no. Milva: I'm not taking care of any more mutts than I have to Radovid: he's clearly purebred! Cahir: still no. Geralt: see? We are done here Angoulême: *the little shit* nunca hasn't voted yet. Geralt: *sigh* Regis, can you please tell them so we can leave? Regis: Geralt: Regis. Geralt: Regis, no Regis: *trying not to smile like he's entirely charmed* … well, he is a very handsome boy.

In the end Regis suggest they at least try to get him to civilization so he can be adopted by a good family, but in the week it takes to get to it, Faro proves himself the MVP, not only will it defend the weakest party members, but it's a vert smart dog who will deter wolves/and will bodily shepherd jaskier away from dangerous areas/items as needed.

the one and only drawback is that Jaskier and Radovid can no longer have obnoxiously loud sex since Faro gets stressed thinking they're getting hurt and will try to intervene, effectively cockblocking them.

Finally Geralt gets some (relative) #blessedsilence

Geralt: *hugging the dog* I'm so sorry i ever doubted you

feel free to add to this!

#it's free real estate prompt just tag me so i can read

#radskier #hansa radovid #hansovid #jaskier #radovid the stern #the witcher #witcher netflix #not canon but should be #prancing plotbunnies #it's free real estate prompt just tag me so i can read #AU'S AND UA'S MAKE PANUR A HAPPY GIRL

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recurring-polynya · 2 months

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Idk if you’ve answered this question (sorry if you have) before, but how do you think Renji & Rukia first met ? What do you think their life was like originally before Soul Society ?

Pardon me if I'm reading this wrong, but...Rukia and Renji's first meeting is enshrined pretty thoroughly in canon? She rescued him from a water heist that was about to turn disastrous.

This is from Chapter 98/Episode 32: A Star and a Stray Dog, which is the first place you should be looking if you're interested in pre-canon Renruki lore.

As to the second part of your question...you mean before they died? What sort of lives did they have in the World of the Living?

I'm gonna pontificate, so I'll throw that under a cut

First off, I am fascinated with the fact that Kubo gives us nothing about what anyone's living life was like. On one hand, I would like to know everyone's pre-history, but on the other, I'm glad he didn't, like as a literary choice. The slate is supposed to be wiped clean. It doesn't matter. It's maddening, but also correct.

It's also one of those places that is just ✨fanfic free real estate✨ in terms of I think everyone should make up their own version for their blorbos, so of course I have them for Renji and Rukia. I have absolutely nothing to support these, they are just what I felt in my heart.

I have actually talked about Renji's beforedeath quite a bit, here and there in various fanfics, usual under the conceit that, particularly in their Inuzuri days, he would sometimes blurt out some half-remembered thing and then promptly forget it again. Here an excerpt from Chapter 3 of go places:

It’s an Alive Memory, Rukia is nearly certain. Most souls get them. All the boys did, from time to time. To Renji, it’s just brain dust. Whatever it is in Soul Society that makes people forget their lives also makes this memory detritus slippery to hold onto. Renji won’t think of this later, or attach any importance to this conversation. The funny thing is, after ten years of watching him stumble through these moments, Rukia probably has a better idea of what Renji’s life was like than he does. He lived on a farm of some sort. A small one, or at least his family grew a lot of their own food. He died of a fever. Nearly all of his Alive Memories involve his mother. Rukia is almost positive that Renji’s mother is the one who taught him to write. The sewing scissors were likely hers. In Rukia’s imagination, Renji’s mother is very tall and beautiful and kind. Rukia doesn’t need to use her imagination to know that Renji loved his mother very much.

Just to offer a little more detail--doing the math out, where Bleach starts in the early 00s, Rukia and Renji have been separated for 40 years and knew each other for 10 years before that, it would make a lot of sense for both of them to have died in WWII. However, I like to think that time is very wobbly, especially in the outer Rukon, so I like to make their deaths a little earlier-- specifically, I think that Renji died in the 1918 flu pandemic, which may have contributed to getting a plague spirit for a zanpakutou. That being said, my general vibe for his childhood is based on Kanta, the neighbor kid from My Neighbor Totoro, which takes place in the 50s. In any case, he had a pretty small and unremarkable life in rural Japan, aside from the fact that he was loved very much, which will never be unremarkable, no matter how common it may be.

I have written less about Rukia's beforedeath, mostly because she was too young when she died to have any phantom memories. [Note: I know there are some theories out there, based on some arcane clues that Kubo has dropped that Rukia may not actually be a normal soul and may be related to Hell. That's...fine. While I'm never going to say no to a storyline that centers Rukia, I really do hope that it comes to naught. Ichigo has enough Crazy Origin going on and I like the Rukia's backstory the way it is, so I'm just going to ignore all of that for the sake of this post]. Ahem! So, infant death is not anything surprising, or even really interesting, but what makes Rukia's kind of compelling is the fact that her much-older sister died at the same time. To me, this indicates either a natural disaster or a death-by-violence.

As I said above, there are infinity ways you can go with this, but to me, there were two important things I wanted to capture 1) given Renji's descriptions of Rukia having an inherent grace and nobility, and the idea that something about Hisana caught Byakuya's eye, I thought that maybe they should have been noble, and 2) I wanted them to live by the sea. I do not actually remember how I landed on this, but in the 1850s, a bunch of sea fortresses were constructed to protect Japan by attack from sea (see here for more detail). This was the tail end of the Edo period and I liked the idea that maybe Rukia came from an old samurai family, and her father was sent to oversee one of these coastal forts. Did they die in a bombardment? A bad storm? The Kanto earthquake? I never got that far. I'm not even sure if this is a realistic scenario, if they had civilians living there, etc, this was just a half-thought-out thing I came up with for a bonus chapter of a fanfic that someone requested once. The one other detail from that that I came up with and stand by is that I think there were more siblings in their family between Hisana and Rukia. I also like that this idea that makes Rukia somewhat older than Renji, even though the math is impossible and the points are made up anyway.

#rukia kuchiki #renji abarai #beforedeath is a great companion word to afterlife which i just made up for this post but i hope it catches on

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ericas-spop-blog · 2 months

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The Portal and Perfect Worlds

(And kicking this out of my drafts because I don't feel like marking it up with screenshots. Um. Should be read as canon-compiant headcanon for the most part.)

When the portal machine is connected to the Sword and turned on, it taps into the pool of magic that has been accumulating in the Heart for the last 1000 years. But, since the proper channels have not been activated, that release is uncontrolled.

Or, well, mostly uncontrolled. Because the magic of Etheria is first and foremost tied to people; when the magical nuke is set off, and the world is wiped clean, the subconscious of the people most intimately tied to the Heart reflexively attempt to rebuild it, with varying levels of influence:

Madame Razz. ????? Seems to exist outside of portal!Etheria, and is able to manipulate it in ways even Adora can't. Has seen this before. [Kind of very worriesome, actually].

Adora. Bearer of the Sword, Key to the Heart, and Eye of the Storm Adora is linked to the Sword, and the Sword is the conduit between the Heart and the portal. She is the center of the storm, and most of the power is flowing through her. She is (nearly) the sole architect of the portal!Horde, and has a large degree of freedom to navigate and access other locations in the portal world.

Angela. Queen of Brightmoon, First Among Equals Angela is the most powerful of the "normal" Runestone Princesses, and is the primary creator of portal!Brightmoon, although her control and freedom of movement is less absolute than Adora's.

Frosta, Mermista, Perfuma. Lesser Stars We don't see them, but there's no reason not to believe the rest of the Runestone Princesses didn't have their own perfect worlds.

Glimmer. Princess in Training, Her Mother's Daughter Glimmer's Runestone connection is a gift from her mother, so it is unsurprising that she remains trapped in Angella's orbit, reshaped to fit her mother's fantasy. But because she does have a link to the Moonstone (and because being mommy/daddy's little girl forever is not what she wants), the fantasy's hold on her is incomplete. She sees the gaps in it, all the little places where it doesn't make sense, the ways it doesn't make her happy, even thought everyone says it should.

Scorpia. The Unawakened Scorpia's connection to the Heart is very thin - her bond with the Garnet is almost entirely dormant - but it is still there. She can't override or split Adora's vision of The Horde, but she can shape the small corners that Adora did not care to fill. She retains her dislike of Adora, but more interestingly - portal!Scorpia introduces herself. In the fantasy, she isn't the "Covered in Force Captain Orientation" Scorpion Princess; she isn't clingy or needy or overbearing. She's just a normal person, safe and included and unremarkable; confident and happy with her place in the world. (even if there's a nagging sense that something's missing).

Entrapta. Wild-Type Princess Entrapta isn't tied to the Heart, but she's still connected to Etheria's magic. That - and the fact she isn't close enough to any of the more powerful princesses to be drawn into their orbit - is enough to get her her one-room protective bubble of I Can't Fail At People If I Never Meet Them. (We can assume a similar tiny world for Spinnetossa and other wild-types.)

Micah, Bow, et all. Normies and Scrubs The little people don't get much say in the fantasies they find themselves entangled in, but they're none-the-less important, because the portal can't create fake people. It can drastically rewrite them - it can turn Shadow Weaver into a doting mentor - but there needs to be someone for the fantasy to latch onto (someone who will remember the dance they were puppeted through when all this is over).

Catra. Not Herself. Knows It. Of all the non-princesses seen in portal!Etheria, Catra is somewhat notable, if only for the violence with which she (once able) rejects the fantasy. So, first off - this is not because she has any special level of power over the portal world; All she did was complete a circuit. It no more granted her control over what happened next than hitting a light switch grants me divine control over photons. She's not even unique in having her true personality break through as Adora loses her grip on the fantasy/pulls attention to it's decomposition - Scorpia and Lonnie experience pretty much the same thing. The difference is purely in that, while the others are mostly frightened and confused, Catra is incandescently, burn-the-world-down furious. Because she knows this. She knows exactly what it is to be a prop in Adora's fantasies, to be forced to pretend that everything is fine("you said you didn't care about things like that."), everything is perfect, simple("I wish that things could be simple [again]."), even when the world is broken and coming down around their ears("The way they used to be."). Adora demands she help fix things, but has never confronted how they were broken. Is it any wonder that she is done with letting Adora control her? Letting Adora win?

Errata/Headcanons:

The show never explains wtf is actually going on with Razz, and I love that. She's an extremely weird, extremely powerful immortal, and that's all we're supposed to know.

Razz's aggressive prodding was 100% necessary to snap Adora out of the fantasy. Without someone else breaking the illusion - and providing the explicit goal of Fixing Things - Adora would have just kept doubling down as the world fell apart around her.

There was never a version of portal!Brightmoon that meaningfully accounted for the Horde(it wouldn't be Perfect if it did). Adora is being sincere when she says they don't remember it because it fell into the void; she just drew a reasonable but incorrect conclusion from the little she knew. (in the same way that Angela believing portal!Micah was fabrication was reasonable, but wrong.)

Portal!Brightmoon is as much a fantasy as the portal!Horde was. While it feels more like a want-of-a-nail alternate history, that's emergent from Angela being a more grounded person, who's fantasy is more could have been than should have been.

To repeat: Glimmer is not unhappy in portal!Brightmoon (because that would run counter to what Angella wants for her) - but it's not her perfect world. What Glimmer wants, more than anything else, is to escape her mother's shadow and her father's ghost, and become her own person. Being mommy and daddy's baby girl forever would be anathema to her full self.

Glimmer's reaction to Adora confirming Micah is 'gone' in the real world isn't sad - it's grim. She asked because she knows something's not right; that she doesn't actually know this man the world tells her to adore.

I'd say Glimmer is responsible for Bow being in portal!Brightmoon, but Angela is responsible for casting him as the "good boy" his dads wanted him to be.

(This implies that Angela knows about his dads and their expectations! My preferred head-canon is when a random kid showed up at Brightmoon she, you know, did some digging, and knows about his family. She's a good enough person to not out him to his folks...but maybe not quite good enough not to wish that her daughter's bestie was the safe, controllable person his dads thought he was.)

Catra is the most explicitly angry about it, but Lonnie's discomfort/disgust when the portal world is brought up is probably pretty typical of folks who got cast as 'extras' - having your self-identity sublimated into what someone else wanted you to be is ... it's not going to be a super fun experience for most folks.

#spop #long post #person headcanon #The Portal #Season 3

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fio-renze · 7 months

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November 27 - Day 2 Success/Sin

A knock came at the door.

Not unusual in the life of a standard door, but certainly strange in the life of this door. Tinnaire had permission to enter on a whim, as did Xylaes because he’d lived in it for about a year and the enchantment remembered him; even Garren was an approved user — not that he knew, or had ever tested it — but a knock meant someone had to have entered her tent at the camp, tried the door and not been permitted entry.

Fiorenze poked her head over the landing in the perfect penthouse demiplane and stared at the offending illusory barrier for a long moment before descending down the gilded stairs that lead down from her bedroom space down to the open concept living room and kitchen.

The knock came again, slightly more impatient.

Her hand hovered above the arcane knob, the bite of the magic tingling just at the edge of her reach. If she stayed on this side of the threshold, she was untouchable. Unless it was disenchanted, then that was its own problem. Her breath left her in a huff as she grasped the false metal and opened the door.

A young elven courier with an unremarkable face and stature faced her, standing inside her mostly empty camp tent, scrolls and parcel in hand, “Miss Sunmote.”

She stood a little straighter, her careful and well trained expression shifting from a stoic, unsurprised enigmatic nothing to a pleasant, winsome and disarming smile. The apartment shuddered behind her, quietly resonating in the presence of another great illusion.

It was incredible work, truly. Outside the Dream, away from her penthouse, something she wouldn’t have been able to clock — but they were here, and he was there just beyond the door that he had touched.

“Grand Magister. A pleasure,” her tone lilted to cover the lie, “do come in. I’d heard others of your ilk had come through to help in the fight, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect you.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it as he stepped inside. They’d always played the same game well. To his credit he glanced around the demiplane, immediately trying to read the bones of the arcane web that had wove it. “And I will admit that this is an impressive feat of magic. Yours?”

“Pyraelia. She was always the one you needed to court for intellect and ability, not me,” a truth freely given. Fiorenze pulled her long silk dressing gown tighter around her form, “She did teach me how to alter it to fit my own tastes, though.”

His illusion melted away as he huffed a quiet, short laugh, “This place is your taste? Hard to believe.”

“It was at one point! I lived here for a few years, just off the Royal Exchange,” she drifted further back toward one of the couches, a stately piece of fine Sin’dorei silk and gently curving wood supports. The original had cost more than a year’s wage, she’d taken out a loan under a false name to afford it. “There are memories here that are still very much to my tastes.”

“When you were pretending to be Miss Sunbinder?” His fingers pressed into the stone wall, tracing a ley thred.

She hoped the mystery of the magic’s frame was eating him alive. He’d unravel it if left here too long, that was its own dangerous game, “Yes, when I was pretending to be Miss Sunbinder. It seems a fitting illusion, all things considered.”

Rommath exhaled behind his cowl and finally tore his eyes away from his reading, “Your sister wrote to me about your situation, and your debt.”

A life of service for two lives stolen before their time. Her nails sank into the upholstery lightly at the referenced sin and the shadows grew longer in the false light, “Surprising. I made my choices, Rommath. Even if I had fought the claim my standing was going to be damaged in the Court and I didn’t think she would go for it all. Pyraelia knows this.”

“And I suspect she realizes that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, nor did my refusal to release you from your sentence. I’ll admit to disappointment that you didn’t come to me first to settle it; I would have rather kept you in that vipers nest — you were successful for me there, and it has been difficult to find someone to replace you,” he folded his tattooed arms together in front of his chest as he regarded her, the match starting up again.

That she could work with, her footing a little more certain. The lights brightened back up in response to the shift, “A shame my attempt to slip the noose didn’t work the way I wished, but your hand has always been a bit too stubborn to be forced. What did you come here for? They’re going to think I ate that poor courier boy alive if you stay here for too long.”

He glanced up at the ceiling as it lifted a bit, ignoring her prying in order to do some of his own, “You’re able to shift this construction easily here.”

She’d noticed that too, annoyingly. “Arcane magic has been responding to me more fluidly, yes. The Dream, as a plane, is an odd place. I’m sure others are noticing the effect it has on the magic, too.”

“Not everyone, no. It’s the same here as it is in the waking world, for me,” a truth freely given. His gaze shifted back to her, “Curious.” That fleeting moment of consideration passed before he dove back in, “I’m here to offer you a choice, Fiorenze.”

Of course he was.

@daily-writing-challenge / @kharrisdawndancer (Tinnaire), @xylaes and @garrennorassin mentioned.

#novemberdwc2023 #novemberday22023 #fio-renze #to be continued!

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wishingforatypewriter · 16 days

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Thanks for tagging me, @orangepanic!

20 Questions for Fic Writers

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 58 and counting!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 177,456. Not a whole lot, but I suppose it makes sense since I usually write shorter fics.

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently, I write for Legend of Korra and occasionally Avatar the Last Airbender. However, prior to my Ao3 days, I wrote for a few other fandoms (mostly anime related).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Her Caldera Sunrise - A fluffy little oneshot about Ty Lee taking care of Azula when she gets sick while they're tracking the avatar.

2. Friendly Fires - Another fluffy little oneshot (I'm beginning to see a trend here) about Azula comforting Ty Lee after she gets stung by a flaming man-o-war on Ember Island.

3. The Successor - A fic centered on all the messy mother-daughter, mentor-protege, and not-quite-sister dynamics between Opal, Suyin, and Kuvira leading up to Kuvira's departure from Zaofu. It follows the timeline and events of books 2 and 3 of LOK, but it's really character and relationship driven.

4. The Weight of Empire - A collection of oneshots about Kuvira, Baatar, their relationship in all of its stages, and to a lesser extent, the Earth Empire.

5. House of the Flaming Boar - A multichapter AU about a happily married Lin Beifong and Lightning Bolt Zolt taking in young Mako and Bolin after their parents die. It's a mostly lighthearted family fic, with some splashes of angst.

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes! I'm a little behind on them right now, but I try to respond whenever I can!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably Suitcases, in which twenty-something year old Lin tries to break things off with Zolt, even though she doesn't really want to.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Hmm...I do write a lot of fluff, so this is a bit difficult. I think I'll go with The Road to Zaofu, my Suyin/Baatar Sr. origin story, because Baatar Sr. gets his happily ever after.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not really. I don't think I'm relevant enough in the fandom to get hate lol. However, I did once get a very angry tumblr anon accusing me of fascism because I portrayed Kuvira as a sympathetic character.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Occasionally. More so for certain ships than for others. When I do write smut, it's generally unremarkable, and pretty vanilla. But I'm proud that I can write it at all now without feeling so embarrassed that I think I might faint.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Not typically, and never for my current fandom. When I was in high school, though, I wrote a Naruto/Fairy Tail crossover where Natsu and Sakura were distant relatives.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? You know, someone asked for my permission to translate one of my older fics years ago, and I said yes, but I don't remember if I ever saw the translated work.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not yet, but there may be something coming up in the future!

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? All my ships are dear to me in different ways, but I think I have to say Linzolt!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I am determined to finish just about everything I have on Ao3...it just might take a while. Please be patient with me lol.

16. What are your writing strengths? Hmm...I think dialogue, concision, and interiority are my biggest strengths.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Description, description, description. Also, endings and managing conflicts and complex plot events in the story.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I think it's really cool whenever I see it in other people's fics, but I don't believe it's something I'd try in my own.

19. First fandom you wrote for? My first ever fandom was Kim Possible back when I was like ten.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Hmm...I am a little fond of all of my fics, having written them and all. But if I had to choose, I'd say either The Matriarch (because Suyin is a lot more fun if you let her be ruthless) or Black Sun (because I love the concept of politically savvy Ty Lee).

I'm tagging @linnorabeifong, @nyamadermont, @chiefbeifongcanrailme, @oldandirrelevant and anyone who wants to participate!

#tag game #personal #my fics

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moondal514 · 9 months

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aftg :) 📓

hi rory!

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this wip on here yet or not but last year I made this plot outline for an au based on the book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Catherine Webb. It’s pretty long (which is why I haven’t written it lol).

Trigger warning for excessive reincarnation/time loop-style major character death (Andrew dies a lot, often very young) and for mentions of child abuse and csa, per Andrew’s canonical trauma

So Andrew, Neil, and a few other characters are what are called “Ouroborans,” someone who is reborn into their same life over and over again. Per the rules of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August universe, Ouroborans lived as normal babies until their 4th birthday. Then they get regain what memories of their previous turns at life they remember. Andrew is a special sort of Ouroboran because he remembers everything about every turn of his life he has ever taken thanks to his eidetic memory.

My idea for the fic is that it would be mostly from Andrew’s pov with occasional interludes from Neil.

Andrew’s 1st turn at his life is actually pretty good. He’s adopted at 4 by a pleasant but unremarkable conservative couple. The couple adopted him because they were infertile but thought that having a child was the sort of thing they’re supposed to do cuz blah blah heteronormativity or whatever. They’re not really all that interested in Andrew besides just being able to say that he’s their child and Andrew isn’t really interested in them. And so, he lives a pretty normal, albeit closeted, boring life. Unfortunately he dies young in an accident in college.

In his next life, he gets his memories back at 4 and subsequently becomes way too weird of a child for said conservative couple to adopt. He’s sent right back into the system and so begins his shitty foster care experience. From there Andrew reincarnates often because he usually dies very young from abuse, neglect, and/or straight up accidents. The oldest he lives is usually ~13 years (he doesn’t make it past living a few months with the Spears if he makes it that far) and he is never able to replicate that first life because he becomes a very strange (read: traumatized) child once he gets his memories back and it’s too off-putting for most families to want to adopt him.

This changes when Andrew meets Renee, also an Ouroboran. He learns there’s a whole community of people like him (though he learns that he’s weird for being able to perfectly remember all of his lives, as most Ouroborans only remember basic details about their past lives, but that doesn't surprise him because he already knew that his memory is weird). Of course Andrew’s a cynical little fuck and at first thinks Renee is a quack, so she flat-out stabs him like a badass and gives him a time and place to meet up with her his next life, which he does. Andrew doesn’t really care for any of the others in the Ouroboran community but he likes Renee because he thinks she’s cool. Unfortunately he falls out of contact with her when she gets adopted by Stephanie Walker.

Renee’s presence in Andrew’s life keeps him alive through that time period of his first few months living with the Spears, so for the first time, he lives long enough to learn about Aaron’s existence (which happens similarly to canon). What happens next is a montage of Andrew’s next few lives where he keeps dying in the process of trying to find ways to keep Aaron away from the Spear house. Eventually Andrew decides that the best way he can keep Aaron safe is remove himself from the equation, so he puts himself into juvie. There he meets Betsy, working as a therapist for juvie kids, and learns that she too is an Ouroboran. He strikes up a friendship with her and gets some real therapy for the 1st time in his many lives.

From there, things proceed as canon (except Andrew doesn’t tell Luther about Drake cuz in this au he ain’t telling anyone shit about his abuse) until Tilda’s car accident. Andrew dies in the car with her.

In Andrew’s next life after that, he goes looking for Betsy as soon as he can and basically her influence via phone keeps him alive long enough for things to mostly proceed as canon (with a couple exceptions: Andrew does his best to manipulate events, with Betsy's help, so that Aaron is out of Tilda's care as soon as possible and with the Hemmicks. Andrew also manages to not get arrested for defending Nicky) until PSU. During Andrew’s 1st year, Riko flat-out kills Andrew to get Kevin.

So for a while Andrew’s lives proceed mostly in this same fashion. PSU is the point at which Andrew’s lives get stuck at. If he lived long enough to make it to college, he can’t stop himself from making a deal with Kevin and every time he manages to get himself killed by Riko.

And then: enter Neil.

I’m stopping there because this outline is very long lol

Send me a “📓” emoji and I’ll tell you about a fic wip

#ask tag #mostlymaudlin #moonie writes #aftg

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zielenna · 6 months

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12 and 17 :)

Hi! :)

I think you heard most of this already, but here goes.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Quite a few! I tend to avoid books I am not confident I will enjoy, but it still happened. First one was Lee Mandelo's Summer Sons, which I only read 70 pages of. And you know, that one is on me, I should have known that a novel marketed as a follow-up to Dream Thieves would not be great, but I thought it would make a decent breezy summer reading, and I was compelled by the premise of estranged friends, ghosts, campus politics, southern gothic, and blood magic. And to be fair, the campus part was almost solid; I do believe that the author had been in a graduate program. But the prose was so clunky! It was possibly the worst-written book I read in the last couple of years. It wasn't just unremarkable, it was so bad that I had difficulty parsing it, and I am quite sure that wasn't intentional.

Unfortunately, my quest for a novel with ghosts intervening between estranged friends led me to another disappointment, Bryan Washington's Family Meal. I was mostly bothered by two things. First, there was much of "therapy-speak," both in dialogue and in narration. People told one another that the other person didn't get to say X to them, and apologized each other for trauma dumping. Second, possibly as a result of the author's other stylistic choices (spare, simple prose; limited access to characters' interiority), the descriptions of various locales and characters' actions were dominated by proper nouns - so I knew the exact demographic make-up of every neighborhood they drove through, I knew the names of Japanese ingredients they cooked with, and I knew that the love interest was Thai and used they/them pronouns - but I couldn't tell you anything about their personality. This made the novel feel rather flat.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Well, because I am so picky, I am rarely positively surprised… Zola's Bête humaine surprised me with how well it was constructed. I can't recall it in detail as it's been a while since I read it, but I remember being impressed with how intricately the various plotlines were interconnected, how self-contained each chapter felt, and how effectively they cumulated. It felt very clean, like a classical tragedy. The novel also had a very striking center, towards which the plot and the characters gravitated, and from which the violence which the novel examined had originated. Funnily enough, Zola seems not to have been aware of it, as the novel explicitly provides a different account of the original crime - one which accords with his ideas about heredity, but isn't really persuasive.

Other than that, I was surprised by how much enjoyed Esther Yi's Y/N (it was even more to my taste than I expected) and, frankly, the Chaucer texts that I read this fall. I don't recall having a strong response to him in my undergrad, and it took me long weeks in the summer to read Troilus and Criseyde when I was assigned it in my second year. But now I had a really good time!

Actually, it was every easy for me to compate Y/N to Family Meal, which reinforced my opinions of both.

Y/N, a character's first impression of Seoul: "I drew aside the little curtain at my window. The proportions were startling. Row after row of perfectly rectangular apartment towers—thirty floors on average—obscured my view of a mountain range. Entire families were sitting on leather couches as high up as mountains. When the Han River appeared alongside the elevated track of the highway, I was shocked by its breadth. The river was a giant black snake with a muscular back, winding through the constructed landscape with a calm magnanimity I found menacing."

Family Meal, a character's first impression of Tokyo: "The publisher flew me to Tokyo to work with Hana on her edits. We’d been given a three-month deadline. But she and I spent most of our days in tiny dives around her neighborhood instead. We rode bikes past the financial district. We ate dinner with her ex-boyfriend, a stocky guy with dyed hair who blushed at the sight of me. The rest of the time, I slumped in the sento beside my rental in Setagaya, wading in the bathwater beside salarymen and shop owners and bankers."

I told you that what struck me in Y/N was its resistance to cliche. And that is a stylistic choice I sympathize with more than with the transparency of Family Meal.

#thelibraryiscool #readings #sooo much hating on family meal. so much.#to be fair i do think that the depiction of the inciting traumatic incident was effective #but even the fact that there was an inciting traumatic incident...

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curs3dn0va · 3 months

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TW: death, substance use, pick me behaviour, and backstabbing, swearing

After my ex-something left I was in such bad state I actually got internalized in a mental hospital for a while, I can only descrive it as a limbo of trying to face the complete void in my life that he left behind, I've heard some people with addictions say that recovery takes away your "personality" because all that you defined as "yourself" was or was a part of your addiction. That's sort of what I went through when he left, I was't even half a person, everything I liked and anjoyed was highly linked to him, and same with my friends... or the people I was friendly to, they reminded me of the person I was around him, so I stopped talking to them... but I did have someone I knew from before him: lets call her B (it does stand for bitch but I'm getting ahead of myself).

B and I had a long friendship together, we met in elementary school, she was a year younger but it was a Montessory system (look it up) so we were in the same room and often "worked" together. As I had mentioned before I was severly bullied during elementary school, it started as teasing because of my glasses and grew as the years went by, and even though B was my only friend -that I remember at least- I wasn't hers, and in the end we were in different grades. In my las year of elementary school, B transferred to another school, and that's the year that the bullying got truly horrible. But we reconnected... well, I reconnected. You see, I was always the one begging to hang out, and being autistic and very lonely I would call her a lot, I would ring her house like 10 times if necessary, but as soon as a concice "no" was given I would stop, the thing is that B would make excuses and I was a problem solver, so we would be talking fo a while about all the reasons she couldn't hang out, and then I would be sad. She was my only friend, and probably my favorite person (remember, I also have bpd) which is a heavy burden for a child, so I don't really blame her for trying to get rid of me in a very subtle way that I was just not getting.

Enter middleschool and I start making other firends, B and I are still in contact and out parents are friends so my mom recommends my school and she enter on my second year, I immediatetly adopt her into my friend group and things progress nicely, I do worry about her a bit, because with the years I have come to love her like a sister, and I wanted her to make her own friends from her grade so that she wouldn't be lonely when we graduated, and she kind of managed. Middleschool was an okay time for our friendship, at least that I can recall, but I was still the one always reaching out, always the first texts, always the first call.

We kept in touch during highschool, although she was an overachiever and I was in 4 different highschools... well, I kept in touch. And then my ex happened, and 4 years later, I knew there was one person I could call who predated that whole fiasco, B and I had just drifted apart for those years, and I wanted to see how she was. B was happy to hear from me, and our friendship resumed -hell, she even visited me in the looney bin- her life started to get hectic with her uni graduation coming soon, so I did all I could to help (because that all I knew how to do). Those were some fun few months... and then we went to this party, very unremarkable really, we drank a little and made fun of some people, her friends asked her when she was getting a boyfriend and she responded "Who needs a boyfriend whe I have Nova?" and pretended to faint into my arms, it was a joke that we used to make mostly because I was very protective and attentive, and she wasn't interested in anyone, until we were playing ping pong. I went to get us some pie because our ride was about to arrive and we wanted pie, when I came back to our game some dude was playing with her, I approached and he said "oh I just want to teach her" and I shrugged, told B our ride was coming and sat down to eat my pie. We left and everything was fine, she crashed in my couch and that was that.

Next day B told me about the guy, her friends know him from some other friends and -her friends- told her he asked for her number, she seemed excited aod I wanted to know about it, and she explained that he was actually her type while showing me a picture of the party, I was very baffled since when we were making fun on people we had said "who the fuck brings a suit to a party? that's so pretentious" and there he was... the guy in the suit was "her type". I tried my best to be supportive, but I have to admit that having come from a very toxic situation myself I was not the "omg he did the bearest minimum??????? MARRY HIM", even less for B. I would've killed for her. I wanted someone who worshipped the ground she walked on, and he was... a bare minimum kinda guy. B had never been in a relationship before, so everything to her was "so original" and "very thoughtful", and when I didn't share her enthusiasm she would get short with me. One night after watching Midsommar (great movie btw, highly recommend) I drunkely said "I just really wish I could pick up all the shitty ways a man can hurt you out of my brain and put them on yours, just so that you'd know in dvance" we looked at eachother, I don't remember what she said anymore, but I did make it clear that I was sorry for coming across as unsupportive, but I was just trying to look out for her, and she understood.

He ended up being a scumbag, the most shocking part is that no one but me saw it coming, I was there to comfort B every time he would bail on a date, but those were rapidly becoming the only times we would talk. I had made another friend at this time, he was really cool and we hung out often, but B was very consumed in her relationship, and when it ended she was acting like "I really get what you meant now" and "men are really trash", which I didn't care much about, but I had been starting to get myself out there and trying to date, this is when the "jokes" about me being better than a boyfriend whent from "Jokes" to just presenting me to people as her boyfriend (I used to look very femme back then, but no one would laugh anymore). The trouble began when I met this boy, let's call him L (for "leeching piece of shit") and he was a karmic twin flame for me, I confirmed it every way I could, but he really was my twin flame, and so I went feral for L, at least for a month, then I realized my traumas ran far too deep for a relationship so intense so soon, so we just became friends, and it was all platonic from then on with him.

Why is a random idiot I met relevant? well because B made him relelvant. I will admit that I had also just started using weed to cope with my trauma, I moved out of my house with L as roommates, and I don't remember all the things I did, but the things I do remember doing were shitty. And after a while of me running around trying to contact her, B cut me off from her life over a pretty silly argument. But this is not the thing that blew our friendship appart, because I'm sure in her eyes I deserved it. No, what blew it up happened a few months later.

My grandmother was an amazing woman, she took in my grandpa's children (including my mom) and raised them as her own, she moved to a state she knew nothing about just to help my mom take care of me while she focused on her studies, she took care of my older half-sister's (my father's side) children while she was in the hospital in a high risk pregnancy, plus me because my mom was the one looking after my older half-sister in the hospital. My granmother was a saint, if people started praying to her instead of god we would see a resurgeance of miracles. Anyways, she diead in April 26, 2023. It was a hectic day to say the least, my mom and I were a mess, but I had to stay strong because my mom is the type to shut down during emergencies. And at the funeral there were many things happening, it was stressful. And then in walks in, with a group of people, that fucking narcicistic Bitch, comes right to where my mom and I are standing, the group of people hug me and my mom, but she only hugs my mom and then looks down as the group makes awkward conversation.

Who is even that sick? I don't even think I could pull a stunt like that at someone's loved one's funeral, which should tell you a lot because I am a truly sick fuck, but going to my ex-bestie's grandmother's funeral, the grandmother that I know raised them because she also took care of me when we were little, and not eve offer a "I'm very sorry for your loss"? What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You? How fucking pathetic do you have to be to go top someone's funeral to attract attention?

This is what B looked like: (fictionalized dialogue)

atendee: "how do you know the deceaced?"

Bitch: "Oh, that my ex-bestfriend's grandmother"

atendee: "oh... have you come to make amends? to show support in such a vulnerable time?"

Bitch: "what? psh no, I just want to cause emotional distress under the guise of coming to offer support to my ex-besties mother, she's also like my own mother and probably loves me more than that loser she has as an offspring, anyways I have to go parade my new hair in front of the casket brb"

And dear reader... you want to know what the worst part is? I lent her some books that I haven't trusted myself to pick up since I'm afraid to gauge her fucking eyes out with a spoon, so I sent her a text and she said "oh yeah, you can pick them up whenever! btw I have a boyfriend now!". I am not kidding you dear reader. This delutional piece of human waste actually gave me an update on her life as if I would... what? be happy for her???? SHE RUINED MY GRANDMOTHER'S FUNERAL AND SHE WANTS ME TO BE HAPPY FOR HER? I hope she get's cheated on, dumped, ran over by a car 3 times and survives but lives with chronic pain, becomes addicted to pain medication, and lives a miserable life away from me. Am I evil for wishing something so horrific to someone? yeah, but not evil enough to go to her grandmother's funeral and not ever make aye contact. Fuck you Bitch. If you read this I hope you contact me so I can insult you to your stupid fucking face.

*I want to set aside a space for the poeple that B tried to make me drop from my life but I kept around because I love them and they are worth every second: my mans S, you're a real one; My buddy L2, I'm sorrry I already used your initial fro someone sucky, but I wanted to thank you since despite not having seen eachother in months you were working at a parmacy my mom went, saw her crying and came by to the funeral even though it was very late and you had just gotten done with work; and last but not least, my amazing Boyfirend, who came running after work and stayed as late as he could. I am so greatful to all of these people for making the funeral bearable. I love all of you.

#childhood best friends #backstabber #traumadump #pick me girl #vent post #tw

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gwilin-stay-winnin · 1 year

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Gwilin of the Day: "Just Sorta There" Gwilin

Today's Gwilin of the day is brought to you by: angrymermaids on ao3!

Underdressed

Published: Aug 3, 2014 (almost ten fucking years ago. i should call this one "Relic" Gwilin)

Rated: Teen+

Length: ~2500 words

Featuring: Male Dragonborn OC

Set in: Ivarstead

REVIEW

Though Gwilin is not the focus of this short story, the author paints a flattering picture of him in the form of a prettyboy who possesses the perfect amount of understated perkiness and neediness. Gwilin is very sweet with this Altmer he's spent the night with, and helpful towards him when he finds out his horse has been stolen. He literally gives him the shirt off his back when Calmerion, the author's OC, needs to head up to High Hrothgar and lacks the necessary garments. Other than this act of kindness, however, the author really didn't do much with Gwilin in this fic.

The way he's depicted is almost girl-like in how flat of a character he comes across as. His demureness, to me, was palatable, and disappointing: it feels very similar to how I remember a lot of female characters being written circa 2014 (and some still to this day). This makes his interactions with Calmerion feel mostly unremarkable –not to mention heteronormative– to me. Just because these two characters are not soulmates doesn't mean there wasn't something more meaningful or, at the very least, more sensuous, that could've been illustrated to have come from their encounter.

Moment that my mind chose to fixate on: Didn't really gravitate towards any part of this story. My mind sort of hummed a little at the vague tone with which Calmerion recalled his attraction to Gwilin, like he was just some pretty little thing he liked to bounce around his mind, I guess? Meh.

I. Compellingness

Not a compelling Gwilin at all. 2/10

II. Swagger

The way in which Gwilin sort of owned his clinginess toward Calmerion imbued him with a trace of self-love swag, I suppose. 3/10

III. Talent

At one point, he gives his male companion some rolls but it is unclear whether he baked them or not. Thus, this Gwilin seems talentless. Very sad... 1/10

IV. Backstory

None to speak of. However, this is a very short story, so no tally here. __/10

V. Pleasure of Reading

The writing was okay. Nothing special, for the most part. However, if you've ever read really bad writing, you know that this isn't something to take for granted. 6/10

VI. Horniness

Decently horny Gwilin. The mentions of the hickies he left on this guy's neck were a silver lining in the story. 7/10

Final Tally

autistic ass

gives this Gwilin a 3/10!

#gotd #3/10 #noperfs #it hurt me to rate him this low i want you guys to know that

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icouldntthinkofabetternamesook · 2 years

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The Magnus Archives #007-The Piper

This one was so good. There is so much thematic juiciness.

We have been getting lots of teases for future plot threads lately. Things Jon knows are important in some way or another and draws the audience's attention to. Not just things I know will be important due to later episodes. We haven't gotten much of the Archives Staff, but threads are being set up to be pulled. Also, who wants to bet this statement was where it was because Gertrude was dealing with Joseph?

The show has officially left behind having the statement giver be the protagonist who nearly escapes in favor of having the statement giver be standing to the side of the victim. This means we get a lot more people dying gruesome deaths than before. On one hand, the statement giver is more generic and less interesting. On the other, it makes the monsters more scary, because less people get away. In retrospect, Page Turner really was a weird episode torn between two modes of storytelling.

As a milestone, this is the first statement set in the distant past and the first to center on an actual historical figure. Both keep the story fresh while expanding on the world we hear about.

The Men

We got anti-war ideology, poetry, music, fractured fairytale aesthetics, and eldritch personifications of war. Not a bad haul.

Setting this story on WWI rather than WWII is a wonderful choice. WWI is often framed as a brutal, meaningless war, one with no glory and no reason. WWII is usually framed with a hero dynamic. You can’t talk about WWII without discussing Nazis and the horrors they commited. WWI can simply be discussed in the horror of the trench soldier. Clarence has no idea that an even worse war is just around the corner but we do. The dramatic irony makes his statement hurt even more.

Clarence Berry is a forgotten, unremarkable soldier from WWI, getting through all four years horribly burned but mostly intact. While Wilfred is rich and eventually famous, Clarence is experienced and practical. It becomes apparent that keeping your head down and missing out on glory is the preferable fate. There's no heroes in war, just the dead and the diying. The field hospital is overstaffed, hurried and awful. People die fast easy and meanigless. Those who get dragged too deep in the war don’t get out. Clarence cites some common myths about the glory of war at the start, before the story starts going deeper into just how horrifying every facet of trench warfare is. It's as if Clarence starts out trying to soften the reality and talk about it glancingly, before the truth becomes unavoidable.

The perspective of the forgotten is highlighted by juxtaposing Clarence with Wilfred Owen. Very little of Wilfred Owen's life is actually explored in favor of an outside perspective and a lack of any glorification. His poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare contrasted the public perception of war and the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets. Only five of Wilfred's poems were published before his death, one in fragmentary form. However, most of them were published posthumously. Historians have theorized about the possibility of him being a homosexual. His death is the focus of the statement.

Wilfred has a symbolically loaded character arc. He starts out as a rich man looking for the glory and beauty of war. He finds it. The beauty and glory of war is slaughter and suffering. Wilfred is found alive and shell shocked-covered in blood, left alone on the field for two weeks. He gets to live, to share and spread that horror. He gets to go home. He does not get to survive. He lives at the monster's grace, and then is ultimately incapable of escaping the war. Clarence remarks on Wilfred’s desire to be remembered at the beginning. There’s something intimate and fitting about getting what you wanted, when you no longer want it.

The War

I love fractured fairy tales. The Pied Piper fairy tale has nothing to do with war. Only slaughter and the death of innocents. Clarence draws a direct line between the Piper and the Pied Piper of Hamlin, despite the lack of commonalities other than pipe music. The touch of actually having someone from Hamlin who never gets to do anything is a nice little flourish. Clarence is skirting right on the edge of a fairytale, but he never gets to confront it. The source of information he considers is from the other side of the war, separated by language and culture.

The statement prioritizes the focus of the foot soldier and never validates nationalism. Never giving respect to the notion that they're fighting for anything rather than just dying senselessly. We never see a high command or any patriotism. Soldiers are either the children led away for their parents' debt or rats drowned at the pleasure of their countrymen. Either way they are small things killed for the reasons of others.

Absolutely nothing about this war is portrayed as having any even remote upside except surviving it. You spend years suffering in a dirty hole, getting maimed, sent back out, dying wearing no one cares and maybe you only get out horribly scarred for life. There is no glory. There is no fighting it. There is only senseless slaughter.

The Piper itself is a beautiful horror. A being with three faces and so many arms. A face to bleed, a face to scream and a face to draw in others, tempt them and lead them astray. Those who search for beauty hear the music it plays, a haunting tune of bagpipes and pan pipes. Bagpipes have a long history of being used in war, while pan pipes are associated with the Greek god Pan, who had the mythic ability of panic, a piercing scream that struck fear into all that heard it, sending them fleeing the battlefield. Another myth concerning the pan pipes is Pan pursuing a woman who does not desire him, and when she turns her body into reeds, he simply breaks them off and uses what's left of her as she sees fit. Both myths are brutal, violent, and fit so very well with the Piper drawing innocents in for slaughter.

The scariest part of the Piper is the one saluting arm. The ones playing and begging for mercy are understandable in their own way. Fighting and pleading, that’s fine. Saluting your own death, throwing away your life for some greater ambivalent notion of a country that does not care about you. Dying for a lie feels worse than dying for nothing.

This is the clearest description of the monster we’ve heard thus far. Not them was only ever seen in shadow, while the Anglerfish was always hidden so as to only see the lure. It manages to perfectly balance horrifying imagery with beautiful stylization. I could look at it for hours and always find something more.

The monster is beautiful and the war is horrifying. The fantastical elements enhance the horror of the mundane, while still allowing them to speak for themselves. Wonderful.

#tma #mine

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gammija · 3 years

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How the Web helped Magnus mark his Archive

Have you ever seen people talk about how the Web was involved with getting Jon marked, but didn’t feel like going through every episode to find every little reference to spindly spidery legs? Well, worry no more! Because in this list I’m going to do just that. With quotes, ‘cause I never half-ass theories on tma

In chronological(ish) order, ranging from: - Undeniably Spider-involved - Suspiciously Web-adjacent - (and Web!Tapes propaganda) Let’s go!

- 22, 123: Prentiss being in Carlos Vittery’s basement

Martin may be the one who lead Prentiss to the Institute, but only because Prentiss was hanging out in Vittery’s cobwebbed basement, for an unknown reason:

022 Colony Martin: “I turned on my torch and shone it around, but was disappointed to see that all those spider webs that I remembered seemed old and unremarkable. If there were spiders there, none were easily seen, and… for a second I thought that the only interesting part of my return trip was that it would land me in prison if I wasn’t careful. Then, I heard movement. From the other side of the basement.”

The same Vittery who had already told Annabelle about his experiences:

123 Web Development Jon: “I-It’s apparently a list of people whose names appeared in the various pieces of text Mr. Cox was pasting into the code. It’s unclear if they were meant to be users or victims, but I cannot help but note that there seem to be the names of several statement givers who found their way to the Institute, including noted arachnophobe Carlos Vittery.”

Which might mean nothing if it weren’t for:

- 38, 40: A spider lets Prentiss be found

Not only does a spider cause Jon to knock down the wall to where Prentiss was hiding in the tunnels...

038 Lost and Found Sasha: “A spider?” Jon: “Yeah. I tried to kill it…. the shelf collapsed.”

...But according to Tim’s speculation:

040 Human Remains Tim: “I think they were almost all in the Archives. I have a theory, actually. I think they weren’t ready to attack when you found the tunnels.”

Which, if true, means that if the wall hadn’t been broken, Prentiss might’ve attacked with bigger force and killed Jon outright, instead of neatly marking him.

- 35, all of s2: A Web table lets a Stranger into the Institute

Although it’s never said who or what ordered the table to be delivered, the addition of the Web lighter with it makes it easy to guess. As Jonah says in 160: the Not!Them mark turned out not to have been necessary because of the Unknowing, but this was certainly a nice back-up to have.

- 80: Jon steps out for a smoke

Giving Jonah the opportunity to brutal pipe murder Jurgen.

080 The Librarian Jon: “I’m going to have a cigarette. Don’t… Don’t.” [...] [SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] [...] Jon: “Sorry, I’ve been quit for five years now, but th -”

While nothing in the actual text of the episode points to Web involvement, addictions like smoking fall under their domain. Add to that the recent gift of that lighter, and Jon saying he didn’t smoke anymore, it’s certainly suspicious.

- (91: Daisy only went to the Institute when she got the tapes

Okay, this one is mostly web!tapes propaganda, but I think it’s compelling web!tapes propaganda. I’d link the post I made about this earlier, but it has simply vanished from this universe, as far as tumblr is concerned... In any case:

091 The Coming Storm Daisy: “You ask me to take a tape over to this murdering freak, and I’m all set to tear you a new one for it. But then I get the cassette in my hand, and suddenly all I want to do is deliver his tapes, and spill my guts.”

If it’s from Jon, not only would this be the furthest reaching compulsion by far, in only in season 2 no less, but it would also be the only one that is transmitted via the tapes/another person outside of the Institute(Basira) instead of just Jon speaking directly to the person. While, if it’s the Web’s doing, making someone want to do something they don’t realize is weird at the time, is totally in their wheelhouse! And it’d make them responsible for convincing Daisy that Jon’s a monster, ergo, his Hunt mark.)

- 121: Oliver was sent by the Web

121 Far Away Oliver Banks: “Honestly, I’m still not exactly sure why I’m here. But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asks.”

Aka, the man who told Jon what he needed to hear to wake up, nice and alive and marked by both the Stranger and the End, when he hadn’t been able to for 6 months.

- (130: The Web leads Jon to Jared)

130 Meat Jon: “I found this tape tucked in a corner of my desk drawer, covered in cobwebs. I suppose subtlety has gone out the window a bit, and the question is now simply… how much I trust the Spider to have my best interests at heart.”

Not only did this one tape lead Jon to get his Flesh mark, which Jonah had conked up by getting Jared to the Institute too soon, but arguably it also made Jon confident enough to go into the Buried. Which the rib didn’t even help with! What did help though, was...

- (134: Tape recorders and Martin got Jon out of the Buried)

Even if you don’t believe that the tapes are from the Web, there’s still this conversation:

134 Time of Revelation Peter: “What does – puzzle me though, and I mean that genuinely, is – why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin while Jon was in there.” - Martin: “I don’t know. And I just – felt like it might help. He’s always recording, and I thought it – it might help him… find his way out.” Peter: “Interesting. Were you compelled?” - Martin: “I don’t know. Maybe? I-I, I definitely wanted to do it. [But] I’m not sure where the idea came from. Peter: “You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous.”

Implanting ideas in someone’s mind, specifically making them want to do something, without them knowing that the idea is coming from outside, is something the Web isn’t a stranger to (056, 059). It might also be the Eye, but wouldn’t Martin know what an Eye compulsion would feel like, by now? On a meta level, it’s a curious thing to point out. Would anyone have protested if Martin got the idea of the tapes on his own?

And there you have it! 8 instances of arachnid involvement. There are more small mentions of Web-like interference with Jon here and there in other episodes, and of course his first Fear mark in 081, but these are the ones that seem to very clearly point towards the Mother of Puppets, or some of her avatars, having helped Jonah in bringing about the end of the world. There’s still the question of why, what their ‘plan’ is now, but I’m sure we’ll find out about that soon enough - Dare I say, March 25th or earlier, even

#tma #the magnus archives #tma s4 #magnuspod #the web #web!tapes #tma theory #tma meta #text post #if anyone somehow has a link to the post I mean with daisy and the tapes and 91 PLEASE send it my way #it is gone from my tumblrs pov #hopefully this helps anyone?#i mostly talk to the people in ea and they are just as deep into the theories as i am #but i sometimes see posts that remind me that thats a minority of people #magnus archives #now back to work. woe is me #also as always feel free to add or correct me if you feel so inclined

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amyisherenowitsokay · 3 years

Note

You know what just to SPICE it up a bit imma say zadr too bitch

This bitch tryna give me arthritis smdh. Making me out myself for my dual-ship on main, can't even believe a bitch.

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

1. How did they first meet?

School. We must never forget the infamous handcuffs scene.

2. What was their first impression of each other?

Pure, unrivaled loathing.

3. Did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

Gaz said "kiss already" and throws things at them when they're getting too far away from "I want you dead" territory and well into "you want to fuck me so bad and it makes you look stupid" territory. Professor Membrane thinks they're adorable.

4. Who felt romantic feelings first?

Dib. Hormones get the best of us all. You can only be obsessed with someone so long before motivations get blurry.

5. Did either of them try to resist their feelings?

Zim would nearly break his PAK and commit accidental die trying to delete the emotions or install an emotional inhibitor. Dib would have a full mental breakdown trying to sort through it, which would manifest poorly in his behavior and negatively impact his ability to engage in their usual altercations. Pro tip: if you are painfully attracted to someone, being in a position where they pin you to the asphalt or lean over your desk to hiss insults at you is a bad idea.

6. If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think?

I stand by what I said on my ZAGR post in that Zim doesn't know what a soulmate is, or the concept of a soul, but given this is in regards to his arch-nemesis instead of a creature he's mostly indifferent too, he'd be pissed at the insinuation he was in any way bound to Dib. Dib's fragile psyche would not survive the revelation.

7. What would their lives be like if they had never met?

Really empty. Their rivalry and parallel situations regarding neglectful authority figures is what keeps them going for so many years.

GENERAL

1. Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?

As someone who thinks Zim doesn't understand even the concept of not being a possessive jackass, I think Zim just sort of concludes after awhile that, regardless of Dib's feelings, or even Zim's own feelings, whatever they have makes them wholly and entirely each other's. Just completely and hilariously misunderstanding the concept of a relationship, but still being incredibly presumptive in assuming they already have one. He also doesn't let Dib know of this revelation either, so eventually Dib explodes about his crush, and Zim's like "we are already together???? moron???" Dib could argue, and he kind of wants to, but he also never expected Zim to reciprocate, so he just sort of nods and is like "you know what, sure" and that's the end of it. They do not have an anniversary, but Dib's not really like that, and Zim doesn't know anniversaries are a thing anyways.

2. Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?

Again, stealing from my own ZAGR post, but I don't think Zim's really a 'date' person who would plan out that sort of thing. Dib is an awkward moron with arguably worse social skills than even Zim, and mentally comes to the conclusion that dragging Zim on investigations is basically like a date, and Zim doesn't bitch about it anymore than expected, therefore he is a master of romance, so it's fine.

3. What was their first kiss like?

Awkward, and quick. Dib is not a great communicator, nor is he great at explaining things like human demonstrations of affection, especially not when Zim's scowling impatiently at him through is fumbling and stuttering. He just goes for it, and it's quick and he misses his mouth almost. Zim is extremely surprised, especially when Dib makes terrible excuses about needing to be elsewhere and flees. Zim does his own research, and their second kiss is predated by a lecture about being better than Dib at everything/Dib being bad at everything. It is much more successful, even if afterwards Dib instigates a fight about Zim's tongue being weird.

4. Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?

First everything, except kiss. Gretchen kissed Dib in high school as a dare. Zim will never forgive her for it.

5. What’s their height difference? Age difference?

I'd die to make them the same height, but I think the image of Zim being average height while Dib is a gangly big boi is just too funny. Zim would be pissed, and Dib would be so smug but so uncoordinated.

6. What’s their relationship with each other’s families?

Gaz interacts with them as minimally as possible, because they are loud and gross and annoying, but she's okay with Zim overall. They have a mutual understanding that Dib is stupid, completely reckless, and requires constant supervision to keep him from getting eaten by a ghoul or something. Gaz does genuinely trust him to skewer anything that tries to kill her brother, but she also knows that Dib isn't the only one with 0 sense of self-preservation. Dib was initially wary of Professor Membrane's reaction, because his dad is sort of unpredictable when it comes to his only son, but the Professor's only commentary is that he is glad his son finally made it official with his 'little green friend.' Dib then realizes that the implication in that perpetual comment about Zim had air quotes around that "friend" part all along.

Dib thinks Gir's gross and loud and doesn't get him, but he likes to team up with him and/or use him as a means to annoy Zim. The Base hates him, because now there's two morons with no sense of self-preservation that it needs to keep track of. Minimoose and Dib are bros.

7. Who takes the lead in social situations?

Zim, if only because he is arguably more 'charming' than Dib's fumbling attempts at communication with non-paranormal parties.

8. Who gets jealous easier?

Zim. Dib I think would have his 'HTTYD Hiccup moment' as he gets older, but still has that ingrained low self-esteem from years of ridicule and abuse. He is completely oblivious to the new attention he gets. Zim, however, is not. Dib never really notices the cause of his weird snarling and clinginess, but he shrugs it off as Zim just being weird and continues with whatever he was doing.

9. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear?

Zim is a slut, I will die on this hill.

LOVE

1. Who said “I love you” first?

Dib. He says it casually, in the dark, when they're on a stake-out to find some wood goblin or something. He says it like he's talking about something plane and unremarkable.

I think a ZADR relationship would need Zim to be a lot more independent in terms of researching how romantic relationships 'work,' since Dib's not a great communicator, and there's an ingrained rivalry that will never dissolve between them, no matter how many times they kiss, so Zim would be a lot more motivated to figure things out on his own. He would, in this circumstance, know the weight of Dib's way-too-casual admittance, and it would be a huge shock to him. He'd be pretty shaken about it for awhile, and Dib's not bothered when he doesn't reply. Dib would be pretty sure Zim would never admit it, but he does, eventually, because he refuses to be a coward about it.

2. What are their primary love languages?

Verbal affirmations. With their self-esteems firmly in the toilet in Zim's kitchen, being able to have someone validate them who they respect would mean a lot to them.

3. Who uses cheesy pick-up lines?

Dib. He uses it to start fights with Zim about linguistics and metaphors. Also, he's 99.9% positive Zim secretly is flattered by it, but hates that he is.

4. How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA?

Zim is very clingy, but Dib's too on the move to really pin down for a good cuddle frequently. He's twitchy and his minds always racing, but every once in a while when Zim's completely fed up, or Dib's running on fumes but still forcing himself on, Zim will all but pin him to a cushioned surface and force him to sleep. Neither of them are PDA people.

5. Who initiates kisses?

Zim. Dib's really shy about it, and also normally too distracted to pay Zim the attention he so obviously deserves, and often misses Zim's 'signals.'

6. Who’s the big and little spoon?

PAK not comfy against sternum. It's also easier to force Dib to sleep if he's the big spoon, because he can pin his limbs.

7. What are their favorite things to do together?

Paranormal investigations, and morally ambiguous and/or largely dangerous experiments.

8. Who’s better at comforting the other?

Dib, which is hilarious, because he's about as smooth as a cheese grater, but he is very attuned to the person he's been obsessed with for years, and he can also relate to a lot of his issues. While Zim usually shrugs off the sentimentality and the empathy, dismissing it as 'pity,' the affirmation means a lot to him.

9. Who’s more protective?

Zim. He has to anticipate his lover's stupidity to make sure he stays alive to hunt ghosts another day.

10. Do they prefer verbal or physical affection?

Verbal. Hormones are real, but there's something that eases the sting of years of abusive in a crooning praise or a sincere compliment.

11. What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

https://open.spotify.com/track/3IvUhEVbbA81QnEVhsFHiH?si=b3c5787c9ff14105

12. What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

It is primarily age-old insults that lack the bite and sincerity they once had.

13. Who remembers the little things?

Dib. Zim isn't inattentive by any means, cataloguing all of Dib's weird habits and nuances and what not, but for all the compensating Zim does to keep Dib safe and healthy, Dib reciprocates in meaningful gestures. He remembers to pack Zim-friendly snacks on their road trips and ways to keep Gir entertained, if they have to bring him. He always checks the weather and has an extra coat, just in case. Never makes Zim feel bad about needing to check, just one more time, to see if he got any incoming messages from home.

DOMESTIC LIFE

1. If they get married, who proposes?

Dib.

2. What’s the wedding like? Who attends?

It's just Gaz, Minimoose, and Gir. Membrane is too far away to attend, but that was deliberate. Dib didn't want his tendency to make things about 'the Membrane line' effect the intimacy and importance of the ceremony. Also, Zim insists on incorporating some Irken rituals into it, so it'd be hard to make excuses and explanations to why Zim wants Dib to fuck with his weird pink backpack during their wedding.

3. How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like?

No kiddos. Neither of them would be interested, even if it was biologically possible.

4. Do they have any pets?

Seriously, Gir counts, right?

5. Who’s the stricter parent?

Dib. Zim refuses to parent Gir when Dib is more inclined to do it, since he's more irritated by it.

6. Who worries the most?

Dib has perpetual anxiety. So does Zim, but he masks it better.

7. Who kills the bugs in the house?

Dib, to prevent the gooey grossness that is Gir's bug-breath.

8. How do they celebrate holidays?

Just with Gaz.

9. Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning?

Zim will strap Dib to a bed himself to get him to go the fuck to sleep, because it's been over 48 hours you insufferable human, and--!

10. Who’s the better cook?

Dib's idea of cooking is a microwave, salt, and pepper. Zim is forced to learn the wonders of human food to keep his idiot from dying of malnutrition.

11. Who likes to dance?

Gir.

#my hand #is deceased #invader zim #ZADR #asks #Zim #Dib #amyisherenowansweringyou

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stevenbasic · 3 years

Photo

Looking at the IG of one of the new applicants, Dr J thinks: What's this one's story?

About a year ago, huh..?

...

The reunion was in full swing, and Angie sipped the straw of her vodka tonic, alone for the moment at the edge of the crowd, watching him. She’d come into the evening like she did into most crowds: thinking she was the smartest person in the room. True, it’s not like she’d ended up top of her class - it’d been ten years since graduating from Middlesex High with these morons - or had found herself at a top-tier college. She totally could have, she always thought, if she had really wanted to. She just never put in the effort, it hadn’t meant enough to her. But she could have been valedictorian, for sure, right? And gone to an ivy-league? She just never set her mind to it, she told herself. Plus, back then, she didn’t have the tits...

Angie Wade was, certainly, what most people would call a “late bloomer”. Not only had her academic and career successes mainly come after her teen years in High School - she’d graduated with Honors from Bowling Green, got her Masters, and now managed two (soon to be three) branches of KLG Bank - but her figure had taken some time to come in, also. When she had graduated, she had been a mostly forgettable member of the drama club, the thin, unremarkable brunette with the big forehead. But, soon, things changed. Since high school she’d put on - haha - nearly thirty pounds, the majority of it generously deposited into the fleshy curves she’d squeezed into this low-cut black top and tight, tight knee-length white skirt. She wanted these people - him especially - to see what had become of Angie Wade, to realize what they had missed. And, the evening had gone predictably. Most of the girls, even some she’d been friendly with in school, either wanted nothing to do with her or treated her with snobby derision - fuck them. Because every guy she’d spoken to tonight had been very keen to chat. Most had given her at least a fleeting glance down her top, and many could barely keep from staring. But she hadn’t talked to AJ Shaw yet....

...and he was right over there.

...

AJ stood at the banquet hall’s bar, idly stirring his bacardi and coke, while Megan Rommety chatted animatedly in his left ear. He’d learned, among a prattling twenty minutes’ worth of other things, that she was a recent divorcee (“her decision”, to hear her tell it) She was trying to flirt with him, he had no doubt. He had been excited about coming to this thing, the 10-year reunion for his Middlesex High School Class. He still hung out, pretty regularly, with some friends from the football team; he’d even hired a couple to work on his construction team. He still touched base with old girlfriends from time-to-time, Facebook or wherever; it was cool to see them with kids and flirt with them behind their husbands’ backs. But maybe there’d be some people from out of town to catch up with. Like Megan here: they’d been in a couple classes together, she’d dated a friend of his, been on the tennis team. She was nice to see, for the first few minutes, but now she was beginning to overstay her welcome in the seat next to him. “...anyway, after I kicked Brad out, I sold the house and bought my own condo down by the lake,” Megan was saying, stirring the ice cube in her chardonnay, “sooooo nice. Real hardwood floors, a view. You just have to come see it! In fact, kids are at my mom’s tonight and…” WHoahhh...Who was THAT?

“Yeah, I uh….” he said Wearing a black, low-cut top that revealed an impressive bulge of soft, creamy cleavage, she was smiling over at him, from across the room. In fact, “smile” might have been too soft of a word. There was something dramatic about the look she was giving him, something….yikes. His stomach fluttered and everything Megan was saying was being droned out, dissolving to just a buzz on his left. Taking a sip of her drink, this woman held his eye contact for an uncomfortably long time, before she began to strut over towards him. My god, AJ thought, that is a strut. Straight back and proud, each step in her killer heels brought a new jiggle to her chest and an extra sway to her hips in her tight, white skirt. This was a woman who knew how to walk, he could see that for sure, and draw eyes to herself. Was this someone from his class?? He had forgotten that he was in the middle of a sentence, a conversation. Hell, he practically forgot where he was. He’d kinda found that happening, recently. Pretty women seemed to throw him off base more easily than they used to. Ones with boobs, especially. “Hiya, remember me?” she said, sidling up to the bar and unceremoniously boxing Megan out. He tried to keep his eyes up, on her face, on her wide, wide smile. He knew he would look like an asshole if his eyes dropped to her tits….but it was a struggle. “I…uh” he began, as his mind began to work. He was usually so good at this! He felt like he knew everybody from his class, or at least everyone important. Especially the hot ones! But he was having trouble remembering this one, her name. Her face was sorta familiar, but he certainly didn’t recognize those curves from high school. “Uhmmmm…”

“Angie Wade?” Megan interjected, from half-behind the newcomer.

Oh yeah, Angela Wade.

“Angie Wade?” AJ finally managed, lights beginning to click on, “You were in drama club, right?” “That’s me!” Angie beamed, biting her lower lip flirtatiously, “You DO remember me!” He...he did remember her, yes, Angie. But certainly not like this. The Angie Wade he remembered had been...skinny. Maybe not quite a dork, but not someone with whom he’d ever associate. If he recalled, his friends had told him she’d been an admirer of his. God, if he’d known she’d grow up into this...wow, she really grew a pair. “Excuse me,” Megan piped in, pushing her short, coiffed-blonde hair behind her ear, “We...were in the middle of a conversation?” Obviously annoyed, Megan could see how AJ’s attention had suddenly been drawn to Angie Wade and her big new tits. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Angie responded, not bothering to hide a note of condescension. She shifted to unblock Megan from the conversation, a move that just brought her closer to AJ’s left side, and in fact let her press her big right breast into his left arm. She felt him shudder, almost imperceptibly, but tried to keep her smile to herself.

Angie glanced Megan up and down with a coy smirk before turning back to AJ. “So...Nice suit! You look great,” she said, knowing men’s weaknesses for flattery, “Seems like you’re doing well?” “Um, yeah! Thanks!,” AJ replied, wincing as he heard the weird enthusiasm in his voice. He can’t come across as creepy, just talking to this girl ‘cuz she’s built. He knew he had to maintain himself, his composure. “I’ve been good,” he continued, “Staying busy with work and-” Angie cut him off. “Yeah, I saw that your company has a bid in to renovate the stadium downtown,” she said, letting her eyes sparkle in admiration. Men loved that. “That’s soooo great…” They also loved this bimbo talk, she’d learned. “Yeah well, it’s um… an exciting project,” He finished lamely, glancing over at Megan, whose glare had gone icy. What was he doing? This was rude. He should try to involve Megan some more, but found himself just really not wanting to. “But enough about me,” he said to Angie, admiring the dramatically dark makeup around her eyes, “How are you doing?” “I’m doing SO, SO good!” Angie sang, right hand reaching behind AJ’s back, resting on a shoulder. Megan scoffed, watching as her left hand then found his knee. What a tramp. “‘So so good’?” Megan finally snapped, the derision in her voice unmistakable, “Last I heard you were working at Hooters. Brad said he saw you th-” “Oh, did he? Brad, your husband?” Angie smiled, turning finally to address Megan, smile big and white.

“Ex...husband…” Megan said, voice quickly fading.

“Hm. Well, did Brad mention that he used to come in every Tuesday and Thursday for lunch, with guys from work, or sometimes just by himself?” Angie continued, a new edge to her voice, “And when I moved to just weekends, he started showing up then, too?” She smiled as she saw Megan’s eyes go wide. She loved doing this shit to prissy bitches like Megan, when they thought they could flex. “Did Brad tell you that he always asked to be sat in my section, and when I finally left he’d asked the other girls about me? Where I went? Asked for my number?”

Megan’s jaw had started to quiver, and Angie had to keep herself from laughing. She remembered Brad, though it had been awhile. Guys from their old high school had often come to Hooters to drool, whether it was over her or younger girls like Shanette or Missy. Brad had been no different. “I guess he just saw something he liked…. “ Angie concluded, straightening her shoulders and pushing her boobs forward - which drew a glance from AJ, she noticed. “Maybe something he didn’t have at home?” “Holy shit y-you bitch,” Megan sputtered, doing her best to sound appalled but glancing down at her own modest bust, unable to keep from feeling a little inadequate. Yes, Brad had been “a boob guy”... Ignoring the insult with practiced aplomb, Angie turned back to AJ, catching him looking down her top. “Besides, you don’t mind...do you AJ?” she asked him, squeezing her right breast more firmly into his nicely-muscled arm, rubbing his broad shoulder through his suit jacket, “That I used to work at Hooters?” “Um, uh, what?” he stammered, uncomfortable with the tense exchange that had just happened between these two girls, feeling weird that he’d just sat here, passively. How was he supposed to answer this? “No...not at all,” he managed, “I think, uh, service work is perfectly dignified…” “See?” Angie giggled, still rubbing his shoulder and rewarding him with an extra bit of boob, “Good boy.” Angie giggled again, so pleased with herself. Megan, for herself, looked aghast, watching AJ - who she always thought was a pretty well-put-together guy - fall for this bimbo’s simple little tricks. God, what a pair of tits can do... “I…” “..was just leaving” Angie finished for her, fixing her with a bright white smile and withering stare. She watched as Megan took her drink and stood from her stool. “You gonna go call Brad?” she added, for good measure, “Tell him Angie from Hooters said hello.” “Tell him yourself,” Megan sneered, and then turned to him, “And, AJ, nice talking to you. Have fun with the Titty Monster.” With that she stomped off, and Angie’s smile curled.

“‘Titty Monster’”, Angie repeated, chuckling to herself, “That’s rich. I think I’ll use that.” She bit her lip, narrowed her eyes. “So….” she began, turning all her attention back on AJ, her high school crush. She almost couldn’t believe it herself: here she was, little Angie Wade, proudly claiming Aaron Joseph Shaw for herself, just because she could. It was like wrapping him around her little finger. “Can I have a seat?” “Oh, uh, yeah,” AJ replied, shaking his head. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t even said goodbye to Megan. “Of course…”

AJ half-stood, chivalrously, as if to help Angie up into Megan’s now-empty chair. He sat back, finally, and began to order them both a drink from the bartender with the dramatic mustache.

“Two vodka tonics, please,” Angie had insisted, speaking over him with a will that made his loins clinch.

From there, the flirting began in earnest, disguised by a conversation about their jobs. Angie avoided divulging too much about her situation, her successes at the bank. She knew the male ego could be a fragile thing, and she didn’t want to scare him away. AJ seemed to be a successful guy himself, in his own way, but boys tended to like their girls dumb, and she could play that up a bit when she needed to. So, no mention of the degrees, no mention of the awards. Instead, she had leaned forward towards him just enough to open her cleavage for his approval.

God, she has great tits, he thought to himself, marveling at their swell and mass, and I’m really getting to be a tit-guy these days. His eyes just could not keep themselves from falling down her top, and she seemed not to mind in the least. In fact, after their second drink together, her hand had found its way back to his knee and seemed to give him an encouraging squeeze every time his gaze strayed to her chest. She...she actually likes that I’m looking at her tits, he finally convinced himself, and had slowly started to relax.

After another drink, Angie finally sat up, stock straight, and slowly stretched her shoulders back to look around the room. Some of their old classmates had begun to leave, and the room was less abuzz than it had been. Predictably, his eyes had gone straight to her chest, and shot away before she met his gaze again. She waited for him to talk, knowing exactly what he wanted.

“So, it looks like things are starting to quiet down here,” he finally asked, “do you, uh, need a ride?”

Bingo. “No, I drove myself,” she answered, watching his face, seeing the old gears turning.

“Well, I was thinking about, y’know,” he began again, poking at the remaining ice in his drink, “heading back to my loft, downtown, if you wanted to, like, come with me…?” Angie smiled, and leaned in towards him, squeezing her arms together in a dramatic show of cleavage. “Hmmm, well,” she purred, watching his eyes struggle to maintain her gaze, “how about you come to my place tonight sweetie. It’s closer....”

At that, she leaned in to his ear, and whispered into it with a voice thick with seduction. “And I still have my Hooters outfit at home. I can try it on for you….see if it still fits?”

============================================

Angie attacks! A little GITJ tangent thread being co-written with AgeoftheGiantess, who you may know from GTScity. Look for her story to continue.

Next post, our first entry by new contributor Joyce Julep, available at my Patreon

#Growing Into the Job

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heyheydidjaknow · 3 years

Text

I do not have a decent title for this. I’m also not even going to bother with an image (even though I know it would generate more traffic) because I’m not going to steal someone’s shit. It’s about 3500 words, so have fun with that.

Chapter 1

Dying is not fun.

I do not know if you knew that until last night. Maybe you figured that since it was romanticized so much that it would not suck as much as it so clearly and obviously did. Maybe you dreamed of dying relatively peacefully, surrounded by your loved ones. Alas, those dreams were dashed last night when you, oh so wise Y/N, decided that you were going to try baking and forgot the most essential step; taking the thing out of the oven. You remember that night so clearly, the screams of your family begging for their lives still bouncing around in your ears like a torturous golf ball that made a habit of forcing itself into your throat, the feeling of your hair catching alight as your skin bubbled and charred, and rational thought became a foreign concept. You do not remember if you had died from a heart attack or hyperthermia or smoke inhalation, but you had a general idea that, yes, that night had been your last on Earth.

So, where the fuck are you?

You pull yourself into a sitting position, your back pressed against something hard as your eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness. The air smells like rotten food and exhaust engines as you pull yourself off the concrete, looking around the alleyway that you had found yourself in. It’s small, narrow, unremarkable in every way, with graffiti covered dumpsters near the entrance. Dazed, confused, generally out of sorts, you make your way to the entrance, patting yourself down for injuries you did not seem to have.

You rub the side of your face with your hand. ‘My head is killing me.’ You slip your hand into your jacket pocket, feeling a key and a piece of paper. ‘God damn it is cold in this alley.’ You zip up your jacket, walking out into the open as you pull the note out, beginning to read.

“Dear Y/N,” you mumble as you read, “we are pleased to inform you of your acceptance into our transference program, yadda yadda yadda, whoopdeedoo…” You skim ahead of some introductory jargon before getting near to the point of the note. “From this point forward, enjoy your permanent residence at ten West.. fifteenth street… apartment number six two two… New York, New York?” You blink. ‘I… that’s not my address.’ You pull out the key. ‘Wait, hold on.’ Your eyebrows furrowed. ‘New York? Wait, I was dead, wasn’t I?’ Your eyes become unfocused. ‘I don’t live anywhere near NYC. Where am I?’ You look around for some sort of landmark, street name, anything to give you some idea of where you are.

You hear a car squeal to a stop on the street corner in front of you, snapping you out of your stupor. As identical men start climbing out of the back of the vehicle, all marching deliberately towards you, a fifteen-year-old girl, your immediate reaction is to run like hell. Unfortunately for you, apparently your speed was not comparable to that of the men who quickly apprehend you, scooping you up and dragging you kicking and screaming into a van. You hear vaguely familiar voices outside, but your focus is less on the mayhem and more on the more pressing matter of getting yourself out of the van. You pound at the door, feel for any sort of locks on the inside, something, anything to get you out of the van, still screaming your head off as you hope whoever was outside had the common sense to call nine one one. You feel your eyelids droop as your breathing slows, your voice dying as your pounding becomes less intense. You slide to you knees, eyes closing even as you mentally scream at yourself to get up, keep at it. You passed out.

You wake up laid on the floor this time, the pulsing of electricity above your head almost soothing as you open your eyes. You stagger to your feet, looking around your well-lit enclosure, pink florescent lights lining the ceiling and walls like arteries. After taking note of your new bruises and checking to see if you still have your few personal belongings—you do—you ran over to the door, eyes fixated on the mind boggling, ridiculous scene taking place in front of you.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ You back away from the slot in the door, trying to process the blatant larping headassery. You had not thought that you would honestly be able to say that, apparently, you were kidnapped by the mother fucking Kraang, yet, in some stroke of tomfuckery on behalf of whatever deity controls your universe, you have, obviously, been kidnapped by some seriously hardcore cosplayers. If nothing else, you must admire the obviously advanced set up.

You run your fingers through your hair, chuckling almost manically. “So,” you say to yourself aloud, “I got kidnapped by TMNT fanboys. Great. Fantastic, even!” You pace around the room, throwing your hands up in exasperation. “I guess this makes me April O'Neil, then? Cool.” Your voice is extremely tight as you shake with intense, mostly negative emotions. “So, I’m somewhere in New York, kidnapped by the Kraang in the worst convention ever. Let me guess,” you laugh, losing your mind a little as you speak to nobody. “I’m gonna have a run in with the Teenage Fucking Ninja Turtles next, right?”

As if on que, you hear laser blasts and shinking metal. The high pitched beeping on an alarm sounded as you heard people—‘Male, teenagers… fuck my life,’— talking about power or something as their footsteps approach your room. You pound on the door. “Hey! Over here!”

You see a brown set of eyes look in through the window. Your suspicions are confirmed; ‘Definitely TMNT larping.’

“We found her,” the owner of said eyes, the one cosplaying as Donatello, calls to the others. Lasers shoot by his head as he turns to stare death in the eyes.

“We’ll hold them off. You pick the lock.” ‘Leonardo.’ You breathe a soft sigh of relief; if nothing else, you are apparently on the side of the people trying to get you out in this game. You hear footsteps going towards the firing.

“Don’t worry,” “Donatello” reassures you, voice tight with apparent anxiety, “I’ll have you out of there in a second!”

“Thanks, Donnie.” You give him a half-hearted thumbs up, trying to see what he was doing through the window. “Take your time.”

His eyebrows furrow. “Wait, how do you know my name?”

You sigh. “Look, man, I don’t know the script for the first episode by heart. You’re gonna have to cut me some slack for not being off-book.”

“Off—what?” He stares at you blankly.

You purse your lips. “I’ll explain if you let me out,” you promise. “Just pick the lock before the blue one gives you shit.”

“Oh, right! The lock!” He nods, grasping onto the logical thing you say and leaning down to start working on the alien technology. He pulls the cover off a control panel by your door, starting to fiddle with the wires.

You lean against the door, watching him work curiously. You hear the battle cries of “Michelangelo” and the toppling of robots as he works, clearly focused on his task. You zone out again. “This is some serious shit,” you mumble.

He mutters in frustration. The one dressed as Raph marches over, more impatient. “Oh for the love of—get out of my way,” he snarls, proceeding to take a very real looking sai out and stabbing the panel with a very in-character ferocity. You almost feel the urge to applaud the acting, and you might if this weren’t such a high stakes situation.

The door in front of you and behind you open at the same time and, deciding against getting captured again—you remember something about hanging from a helicopter in that scenario and you want nothing to do with that—you run alongside the turtles like your life depends on it, stumbling to a halt once you reach outside and slamming the doors closed behind you, blocking it with your back.

Your feet scramble to gain some traction on the cement. “Donnie,” you snap, almost impressed by the force used to pound against the doors, “put your staff in the handles of the door. We gotta go ASAP.”

“Wait, hold up.” The one dressed as Raph jabs his thumb towards you. “How do you know his name?”

You groan. “For fucks- it’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not fucking Happy Sugar Life. Get the thing in the thing before the vine thing kills us!”

“The what?” Donnie and Raph seem much more confused than before, staring at you inquisitively and angrily respectively.

“Uh, guys?” Mikey pointed. “I think she means that vine thing.”

From the shadows emerges a towering creature made of plant life, its vinelike limbs draping across the ground like roots as it rears its ugly head. Its exposed, pulsating heart pressed against what remains of the creature’s ribcage. “You did this to me,” It growls. “Now you’re going to pay!”

“It’s-“

You cut Leo off. “Snake guy. Mutated into a weed. If you wanna kill it, go for the heart.”

He looked back at you, joining the other two pairs of piercing stares. “Cut that out.”

“Then don’t monologue and kill it before it has mobility!”

“On it.” Raph charges at its lumbering form, and within moments, it falls to the ground in a heap.

The pounding against the door is getting more intense. “Donnie! Staff!”

“Right!” He runs over, sliding his staff in between the door handles.

You stumble forward, the pounding already starting to crack the wood. “Alright, now we can leave.” Without waiting for the others, you sprint away from the building like your life depends on it. The others, clearly confused, follow.

You got a fair few city blocks away before you slow down, breathing heavy and palms stamped with the outline of the key you were holding desperately onto. “You run really fast for cosplayers,” you pant, “with all the- the paint and all.”

“Yeah, about that.” Donatello stops next to you, a thousand questions apparently swimming around in his head. “How do you know our names?” His mouth moves a mile a minute. “How did you know the weakness of that vine creature? What do you mean, cosplay? Who are you? Who were they?”

You cut him off. “One question at a time, hot stuff. Deep breathes.”

His pupils dilate. “H-hot stuff?”

Leo cuts in. “How did you know what we were—uh—cosplaying?” he asks tentatively.

“Odd time to cut the act, but alright.” Your heart rate lowers to a decent pace as your mind still struggles to comprehend what had just happened. You slow your breathing. “I mean,” you explain, gesturing with your hands, “it’s TMNT. It’s iconic.”

“Iconic?” He nods. “Well, since you know so much about it, then why don’t we test your knowledge? To see if you’re a real fan..”

“Y-you think I’m hot?”

“I don’t see the point, but I’m down.” You shrug, deciding to ignore the melting turtle for a second. “Shoot.”

He thinks for a moment. “Who’s the main character?”

You shrug. “You four, I guess.”

Mikey jumped in. “What’s the theme song?”

“Gonna have to be more specific there, buddy.”

“Is it really a great idea to just talk out here in the open?” Raph crossed his arms across his front.

“Probably not.” You look around. “Unless you have a map on you, I’d suggest we go back to your lair.”

“Our—what kind of stalker—”

“Look, honey,” you sigh, “if we’re going to go over every aspect of their lives that I know about we’re going to be here for a long time. For our purposes, just assume I know everything I need to know, and if you’re curious about specifics, we’ll go on a case-by-case basis.” You start walking down the sidewalk. “I’m guessing you guys hang out in the sewer, right?” You feel almost tempted to say that they’re just flat out psychotic, their blatant conviction in their own characters almost frightening. ‘I’ve heard of kinning,’ you think, pulling up a manhole cover you see at the end of an alley and wincing at the smell, ‘but this is ridiculous.’ You blink at the surprising lack of weight.

“Yeah.” Mikey—no, the Michelangelo cosplayer—walked over, already hopping in. “Our show must be super popular, right? Who’s the favorite character? How long have we been running?”

“Oh, you guys are—” You stop talking. “Wait, what year is it?” You start climbing down.

“Two thousand and twelve. Why?”

You step off the ladder, starting to walk behind him as he lead the way. “Well, it’s not tweny twelve where I’m from. It’s twenty twenty.”

“Wait, hold up.” He turns around to face you as he walks. “You’re from the future? That is so freakin awesome!”

You rub the back of your neck, trying to ignore the smell. “I mean,” you confess, “being from the future would be cooler if I was from a better time, I think.” ‘I wonder where they—’ You shake your head. “But, If we were running on the same time, I’d only be seven, I think, so it’s pretty cool I get to be here, I guess.”

“Dude, totally!” He turns a corner. “Our first day up top and we meet a time traveler?”

“Technically,” a voice from behind you makes you jump, “if what she’s saying is true, she somehow also knows interdimensional travel as well.”

‘Mother fucking ninj—cosplayers, focus. Don’t let them pull you in too.’ “Well, I really wouldn’t say—”

“Guys, is there not a clearly bigger concern on our hands?” You were already getting sick of not hearing footsteps. “Like, say, I don’t know, the fact she’s claiming we’re fictional characters?”

“Look, man,” you roll your eyes, “I already said I’m more than happy to answer any questions I can. In fact,” you continued, stopping in your tracks as you stared the red—clad turtle in the eye, “I’ll even stay put until we sort this whole situation out.”

“Fine by me.” Leo and Raph both face you, eyes boring into your soul as you stand there awkwardly.

“Let’s start off with the basics.” Leo’s tone is awfully light compared to his blatant skepticism. “What is everyone’s name?”

You force yourself not to roll your eyes again. “You’re all Hamatos.” You point at the tall one with the gap in his teeth. “That one’s Donatello, the yellow one next to him is Michelangelo, you,” you point at the red one with the broader shoulders, “are Raphael, and the sensei appointed leader is Leonardo. Easy.”

Leonardo nods. “Okay, you got the easy one.” It is at times like these when you wish you could read people. “What are we?”

“Teenage mutant ninja turtles.” You don’t have to hesitate.

“How did we become the way we are?”

“Splinter had a Kraang run in and you got ooze on you. Last thing you touched before you transformed was a person, so you became turtle/human hybrids.” You rest a hand on your hip. “Oh, happy birthday, by the way.”

A sea of blank faces face you. “Wait, you know who those things are?” Donatello is the first to speak after a pregnant pause.

“Well, yeah.” You shrug, the reality of the situation not yet dawning on you. “They almost take over the world in at least two season finales.

“They what?”

“Yeah.” You stick your hands in your pockets, fingering the key and note, confused by their apparent horror. “I mean, I’m still on the season three finale, but alien invasion is this show’s bread and butter for the most part.”

“I- what?” Raphael appears to be having a stroke. “What- bre- I- huh? What the-“

“Is he okay?” You look, completely unconcerned, at Donatello, who is swaying on his feet.

“Alien.. invasion…”

You blink, walking over to him and placing your hand on his cheek. You were surprised at the feeling of skin under your palm. ‘Not face paint..’ You look his incredibly pale face over curiously. ‘Not a mask…’ “Oh.” Your fingers slide down and off his jaw, falling slackly. “You weren’t joking, were you?”

If nothing else, he seems less concerned than he did a second ago.

Leonardo—‘The actual—hold on a minute.’—grabs your shoulder. “This isn’t a joke.” His face is stone. “You’re being serious, right?”

You felt blood drain out of your face. “Sadly? Yes.” You force yourself to take deep breaths so as to not pass out. “But, on the bright side,” you smiled weakly, “I can guarantee your survival for at least a few months.”

“What do you mean a few months?” Raphael is shaking as he yells, his voice roar echoing in the enclosed space. “How is it only—what the hell?”

“The show only ran over the course of an in-universe year.” You fight to keep your voice steady as dread seizes your throat. “I don’t know what happens after the year is up, or if it even lasts the whole year.”

“So we have less than twelve months to live?”

“This is so not cool.” Michelangelo is having a bit of a mental breakdown. “So, so not cool.”

“Hey, it’s not a guarantee!” You put your hands up reassuringly. “That’s just how long the show runs. Besides, it’s a kid’s show. There’s no way they’d kill off the main characters.”

“The hell they—who the hell is they?”

“Nickelodeon.”

“What the fuck is Nickelodeon?”

You groan. “Look, I’m just saying that you four are definitely going to survive the next few months!” Your voice rises easily to his volume. “I don’t know what happens after those months are up! I haven’t gotten to that point!”

“Why the hell not?”

You ran your fingers through your hair, laughing incredulously. “What, do you think I knew I was going to meet the IRL Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and had a chance to plan accordingly? No!” You throw your hands up in the air. “I died last night and now I’m here! Hell, I don’t even know where the fuck I’m going to go, fuck knowing who’s going to get the fucking axe between now and the series finale!”

“Will you two both cut it out?” Leo snapped, shutting you two up.

You put your hands up, still fuming and glaring at Raphael. He responds in kind.

“What’s your name?” He looked at you.

“Y/N. Y/N L/N.” Your breathing slows slightly.

“Alright. Y/N, you said you’ve seen up to season three, right?”

“Yeah.” You nod.

“Meaning you know what’s going to happen in the next few months, right?”

You nod at the leader.

He thinks for a moment. “Then we need to stay in contact. If what you’re saying is true, your knowledge of our show could be extremely valuable to us.”

You rub your eyes with your hands, sighing, trying to cool down. “I can do that.” You put your hands down. “If nothing else, I’m more than happy to offer up emotional support. The next few months are going to be extremely physically and emotionally difficult for you guys.”

Donnie pipes up. “Do you have a place to stay?”

You pull out the piece of paper. “I have an address and key, but I don’t know my way around NYC.” You smile slightly at the unintentional rhyme. “Do you guys know where ten west fifteenth street—wait, it’s your guys’ first day.” You nod. “I forgot.”

“It’s alright.” Donatello is oddly quick saying that. “I-if you want, I—we can help you find it.”

You rub your arm, your previous indignance replaced with extreme embarrassment at your previous actions. “Nah, it’s alright,” you reassure him. “I’m sure I can find a map or something.”

“It’s really not safe to just wander around New York so late.”

You pause at that. “That is an extremely good point.” You nod. “Alright. But I owe you guys dinner or something for trusting me this far. Also,” you smile teasingly, “what you’re currently eating is legitimately revolting.”

“Amen to that.” Raphael, if nothing else, seems to have calmed down.

Mikey hopped in. “Oh, we just found this crazy awesome food—”

“I can order pizza,” you reassure him.

He punches the air excitedly. “Let’s go!”

“If you want, you can sleep on the couch for tonight,” Leonardo offers. “It’s going to get light pretty soon, and we really shouldn’t be seen.”

You shrug. “Works for me.

As you follow the teenagers down the sewer, conversating as you walk, you take a moment to reflect on all that has happened so far. A part of you, oddly enough, is almost excited by the prospect of spending time with these guys. But a stronger, darker part reminds you sweetly of the dangers you knew lay ahead.

You close your eyes. ‘I’m never going to see my family again, am I?’

How that is the least of your worries, you don’t know.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 2

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mediaevalmusereads · 3 years

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Silver in the Wood. By Emily Tesh. New York: Tor, 2019.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: fantasy novella

Part of a Series? Yes, The Greenhollow Duology #1

Summary: There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads. When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: violence, blood, body horror

Overview: I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this book, but I love fantasy and folklore, so here we are. While I do think that Silver in the Wood had the beginnings of a good novella, I ultimately wanted more out of it. I wanted more atmosphere and more human(ish) connection, and instead, I feel like most of what I was reading was surface-level in order to accommodate the shortened length of the book as a whole. The lore was definitely fun, and I loved the dryads and all the wiles of the forest, but unfortunately, this book only gets 3 stars from me.

Writing: Tesh had a difficult job in that she had to fit a grand fantasy story into a short amount of space. In my opinion, the length is mostly what holds her back. I felt like I was being told a lot of things, rather than shown, and mostly because there just wasn’t room to delve deeper into the characters’ emotions, the feeling of the setting, etc. For example, I remember being told again and again that Henry Silver was flirting with Tobias Finch, but I never got descriptions of longing gazes, lingering touches, or anything else that would show me attraction between the two characters. As a result, I didn’t quite feel like there was chemistry between the two.

The same can be said for the rest of the novella, I think. We’re told that Tobias lives in a forest, and it’s old and spooky, but while there were some nice descriptors here and there, I didn’t feel like the setting was a character in its own right. I wanted the age and the magic of the forest to feel more threatening, more wily. Instead, I felt like the forest was reduced to “just trees” on account on the lack of description of how the forest makes people feel.

But barring all that, I think Tesh does a fairly good job of making her sentences flow together well. The prose is easy to read and moves at a fairly quick pace, and I think if you’re into skimming, you can definitely do that.

Plot: The plot of this novella follows 400 year old “wild man” Tobias Finch, who must rescue his crush, Henry Silver (a “practical folklorist”) from the grips of Finch’s former lover/associate, Fabian (an immortal, mischievous forest sprite, of sorts). To be honest, I thought this story had potential, but it ultimately ended up feeling flat for me for a number of reasons: A.) there’s no real buildup of emotions between Tobias and Silver, and B.) the lore behind Fabian and Tobias’s past is not given enough weight or room to breathe.

The plot of this novella also takes something of an awkward turn near the end when the story goes from enchanting forest fairy tale to the formation of a kind of “monster hunting agency.” It’s at this point that time skips around and doesn’t add too much to the story; characters just seem to be waiting. If Tesh really wanted time to pass and make it more meaningful, I think devoting that space to exploring feelings of loneliness and sadness would have worked. But as it stands, this novella feels a little awkward and the plot without much shape. It’s not helped by the fact that the ending tries to insert some grander message of self-healing and finding one’s freedom that I didn’t pick up on throughout the rest of the novella.

Characters: Tobias, our main protagonist, is a 400 year old “wild man” bound to the forest. I wanted to find him more interesting than I did - for a wild man, he didn’t seem all that much different from a regular human (except for maybe his untamed hair and age). I wanted Tobias to be a little more otherworldly than he was, and if Tesh was really interested in the tumultuous feelings Tobias had with the forest, I think some of that angst could have come through more consistently.

Henry Silver is a “practical folklorist” and love interest of Tobias. While I did think Silver was charming (I loved his over-eager desire to collect folk tales and use them to impress Tobias), I think more could have been done to make him feel like a proper love interest. I had trouble seeing the chemistry between him and Tobias - in fact, it seems like Silver falls for Tobias the instant he sees him, and there’s no longing that would suggest they have a desire for one another.

Silver’s mother shows up later in the novella, and while I liked her feistiness, I don’t think she was necessary for the plot. Most of what she does is kick Tobias into action before practically disappearing, and I think that purpose could have been served by a dryad or else the Silver family relationship (and family business) be made more important to the plot.

Dryads were charming, but not very useful for much other than “flavor.” I liked the mischief of Bramble, but she never does much to make her feel like a character in her own right. Other dryads are present, but one exists mainly to be killed (in a scene which doesn’t feel like it belongs in the story, as most of the main plot isn’t centered on managing dryads or protecting villagers from them).

Perhaps the biggest disappointment was Fabian, the main antagonist. Fabian wasn’t on page much, and I don’t think talking about the villain does much to make me think that the villain is some formidable foe. I would have liked to see more angst between Fabian and Tobias, as well as some episodes early on where maybe Tobias is preparing for Fabian’s arrival, or maybe dealing with the fallout of one of Fabian’s earlier escapades. In short, Fabian was talked up a lot, but I didn’t feel like he was exceptionally dangerous when we actually got to see him.

TL;DR: Silver in the Wood is a charming fantasy novella, but ultimately doesn’t enchant readers with a strong sense of place. While the lore is bound to impress fairy tale enthusiasts, the rushed plot, surface-level romance, and lack of strong character development makes this story feel underdeveloped.

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