#in this house we say happy birthday to fictional characters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

windhamsrotunda · 1 year

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Pairing: Christian Cage x Female! Reader (in her late 20's) x Edge (WWE)

Synopsis: - influenced by the song "Guys My Age" by Hey Violet. You haven't seen your ex since you broke up with him a little over a year ago. As soon as your two older neighbors, Adam and Jay, have acknowledged you being single, you find yourself getting the attention you desired from the grown up's when you were once with your ex.

Rating: Mature (18+ Only! Minors dni)

Warnings: rpf (real person fiction), fluff, strong language, birthday sex (it's the reader's birthday), threesome, fluffy smut, Adam and Jay comfort/praise the reader, pet names (angel, our love, dove) age gap (as mentioned above, characters are in their late 20's and late 40's), dry humping / oral (m receiving) aftercare in the shower with Jay, etc.

Total Word Count: 3,005

Today was your very special day, your 28th birthday. A birthday you hope would be better than the last one. Your ex-boyfriend ruined your last birthday for you. Why? Because that pretentious asshole broke up with you right on the spot all over a little heated argument that occurred over a week ago the following year. You sat alone in your house, the house that was once lived in with another person, your ex-boyfriend.

A sigh bolted out of your chest as you contemplated on either going out by yourself for your birthday at a restaurant or staying home. You felt unloved ever since the "man of your dreams" left you in such an unexpected way which shattered your heart in a million pieces, but you had neighbors that you knew. Neighbors who were significantly older than you who'd probably take good care of you and spoil you rotten. It sounded weird about the thought of having a "friends with benefits" relationship with both of your hot neighbors Adam Copeland and Jay Reso, maybe you were desperate to get the right attention from the dilfs next door.

"Fuck it," a thought erupted through your brain cells as you found yourself wandering next door to Adam and Jay's house. When you made it to their front porch, you slowly raised your fist to knock on the brown wooden door waiting for one of them to answer. The next thing you knew, the door handle turned slightly and it flung open.

"Hi, y/n! Happy birthday!" Jay greeted you with arms enveloped around you.

"Thank you, Jay. Mind if I come in?" You crack a smile, moving strands of your hair out of your face.

He nodded in acknowledgment, "Don't mind at all, love." Placing a quick wet kiss on the surface of your hand, the random kiss made you blush like a mad woman.

"Thank you," thanking him once again, you took a big step inside of the spotless home. No one had their house this clean, you thought. As Jay closed the door behind you, you casually walked over to the couch and sat yourself down on it. The smell of candles filled the air, you quickly recognized the smell of the candle, lavender. Your favorite type of candle smell.

"Happy birthday, dear." you have heard Adam say from the other room, "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Thank you, Adam, but no thank you at the moment." you replied.

Jay grabbed his coffee cup that sat on the coffee table, "So, y/n, I heard you told Adam that you were single," he raised his cup up to his lips, beginning to drink out of his cup, his blue orbs twinkling.

"Yes," you flashed him another friendly smile, "I told him less than a week ago. And I'm not happy about it."

He gave you a pitiful look. A look that you could never forget.

"Awe sweetheart, please know you'll find another man who will love and appreciate you for who you are. Fuck that asshole of a boyfriend you had, we all know for a fact he wasn't being so good to you."

You rubbed the pad of your shoulder, looking up at the much older men, they were now both standing over you paying close attention to you. They looked at each other for a glimpse of a second before turning their attention back to you making your eyebrow raise in confusion.

"Is everything okay?" You abruptly ask, feeling as if they were up to something. First, the kiss on your hand from Jay once you walked into the house, then realizing that they put your favorite type of candle lit up on their coffee table.

"Oh yeah, everything is alright, it's just we have something to tell you that we were holding back for a while now." Adam's lips curled into a smirk at you, "please don't be alarmed once we tell you it."

"Me? Alarmed? No," you chuckled nervously by the thought of what they were about to tell you. "you can tell me anything."

Jay placed his hands deep in his front pockets, he let out a small sigh.

"A beautiful young woman like you needs to be loved, so since you're the birthday girl, me and Adam decided on our own terms that we would show you how much we love and care about you. We know your last birthday was ruined by the asshole boyfriend you've had, so why not do this?"

Jay gestures out a hand to you, you accept his hand in yours, he brings you up to your feet. He grazed over your thumb, his ocean blue eyes beaming right at you as you felt all of his weight slowly tower into you. A kiss was developed on your soft, small lips and hell did it surprise the living shit out of you. You tasted every ounce of the sugary taste that was on his lips from sipping his coffee, you could see from the corner of your eye that Adam was watching and getting a visible erection from his black skinny jeans.

"I need you." Jay suddenly announced in between kisses, slightly pulling himself away to look you in the eyes once more, his eyes asking: "Do you really want to do this?"

"Take me, please Jay." you plead in a blissful tone.

His hands were beginning to work the straps of your dress off, letting it hit the solid wooden floors. You stepped out of your dress, leaving yourself in your laced black bra and underwear.

"Oh my God, Adam. Isn't she stunning?" he asked his best friend of thirty years, earning a soft gasp from the ultimate opportunist.

"Yes. She's more than stunning, she is drop-dead gorgeous and it looks like we need to take good care of her." Adam spoke in a lustful, deep voice.

"Lay down on the couch," Jay demanded in a delicate manner, pointing at the couch you sat upon earlier.

You nodded in an attentive response, laying yourself down, stupidly blushing at their reactions and how slack-jawed they were. Adam walked over to you kneeling down next to you, pressing trails of kisses from the nape of your neck all the way down to your belly, making your body spasm in pleasure.

"Help me hold her in place while I take off her bra and panties for her. She is too fuckin' squirmy for me to handle by myself."

Jay held you down gently while Adam removed the remaining material off of your body. He signaled for Jay to start playing with himself as he straddled you in his clothed lap, you began to rock yourself back and forth on his knee, practically dry humping him.

"Such a pretty, pretty girl." he praised, "How did we get this lucky to have you naked in front of us?"

You got yourself off on his lap by the words he coherent, begging for more like a dog in heat. You could feel yourself on Adam's erection bulging through his pants, earning a low growl from the 49-year-old man.

"My god you're already wet?" he chuckled darkly, "We haven't gotten to the fun part yet, my love."

Jay was palming himself through the tight fabric of his black dress pants, a frustrated moan bubbled out of his chest. You were already wet for the two older men, a rope of wetness leisurely leaked out of your garden. Hearing Jay’s moans was like harmony to your ears, the sight of him touching himself by the fact of him wanting you had made your head fuzzy and unable to think straight forward or coherent clear sentences in ancient tongue. Along with Adam who had his head tilted back against the back of the couch, a fainted groan drew from his lungs right when your parted thighs brushed up against the head of his clothed cock.

‘’Need you inside of me,’’ a cry ruptured your lungs, your moonlit face falling into the nape of his neck.

‘’So needy,’’ Adam t’sked. ‘’Jay, get over here, It’s your turn to take over her little body.’’

As soon as he left your side, you couldn't hold yourself back from pouting. Your bottom pink lip was puffed out, impatient and eager to have sex with your dilf neighbors on your birthday. In desperation for something much more than dry humping Adam, you grabbed Jay by the hand and lured him onto the couch with you, pushing him down on his backside undoing his dress pants followed by his boxers. Once you freed him out of his cage, his aching, veiny length hit against his abdomen. Clear precum seeped out of the head of his cock, you wrapped your whole hand around him, your tongue darting against the side of his shaft, he grasped onto locks of your h/c hair and pushed you further down on him.

Adam's teeth grazed across his bottom lip watching your spit form on Jay's shaft, bobbing your head up and down as your other hand played with his balls until you were completely gagging softly around him.

"Ah, ah, fuck y/n. I'm gonna explode any minute. My god, do you take me well in that mouth of yours." a warning was given out to you, this was the sloppiest head you ever given a man besides your ex. Hearing him pant and moan from above you, he gripped onto the back of your head with knuckles turning a ghostly white, painting his seed in your hollowed mouth. Pulling away, you managed to swallow every last drop of his seed that went down your throat, a "that's our good girl," was spoken out of Jay. You knocked the breath out of his lungs, a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, his chest rising up and down.

Adam and Jay had taken turns with you, the threesome lasted for about an hour until all of your bodies were completely worn out. Orgasm after orgasm, breath after breath, moan after moan. Adam's hips thrusted forward, his length throbbing inside of you having your pussy in a vice grip. When he finished inside of you completely coating your walls with his white seed, a groan escalated out of him, he was still inside of you for a few seconds before pulling out. You saw an aesthetically pleasing starry night, eyes bulging out of your thick skull as you felt strong, tattooed arms cover your waist. You were in another world, your head fuzzed out, still shaking from the good sex he and Jay gave you for your birthday.

"Are you okay?" he asked you, slightly waving a hand in front of your face.

"Y-yeah," you breathed out, "I just can't believe how good the two of you were to me."

"It's always our pleasure." he planted a kiss on your forehead.

Jay exited out of the bathroom.

"Hey y/n, if you want to take a shower the bathroom is now open." he said with a gentle smile upon his face.

"Thank you, Jay and Adam."

You hoisted yourself off the couch, still feeling weak in your knees strolling over to the bathroom and entering it. You shut the door on your way in, the first thing you noticed was the shower had a huge shower head above with men's body wash and shampoos neatly stacked in rows on the new silver racks mounted to the corner of the white tiles of the shower wall. Pulling the curtain forward, you stepped in, twisting the knob of the shower to "Luke warm", the power of the shower head spurted down on your body and you tightly pulled the decorated curtains shut. A sigh of relief had echoed through the painted blue walls of the bathroom.

Running both hands through your wet hair, a knock on the door had startled you which made you jump out of your skin.

"Come in!" you exclaimed.

The sound of the door handle turning sounded a bit fainted to you, you heard the unzipping of pants and the next thing you knew, Jay had entered the shower with you.

Muscular arms had wrapped tightly around your waist, his chin resting upon your shoulder.

"What is Adam doing?" you blurted out, a chuckle came out of Captain Charisma.

"He's just laying down, honey. You completely got us fucked out. That is why he is probably sleeping by now." he jokingly replied to your random question, not minding your complete randomness at all laughing. "How about I wash you up, yeah?"

Leaning toward the mounted rack of the shower where their body washes and shampoos sat, he unscrewed the cap to the body wash.

"Hope you don't mind men's mint body wash."

"Don't mind at all, Jay." A smile tugged on your lips, he began to lather you in the body wash, the sensation rushed through you and the strong but addicting smell of the mint singed your nostrils.

You could feel it in your lungs, Jay's hands worked down your backside and all around your body making you feel the most comfortable. He hummed a little tune while he continued to wash your body making sure he got every ounce of your skin completely rinsed and cleaned. You turned around to be face-to-face with the 49 year old man, you rested your chin on his shoulder as the water continuously flowed down on both of your naked bodies.

"I haven't felt this much love and desire in over a year. A year seems like a lifetime." you close your eyes, cracking a smile once again.

He stroked your backside, slowly gliding his rough fingertips in an up and down motion.

"You deserve to be loved by someone who actually cares so damn much for you and who won't take you for granted." he proclaimed, "Me and Adam care about you a whole lot more than words can express. We wouldn't be doing all of this if we didn't love you."

Happy tears began to form in the crease of your e/c eyes. Overwhelmed by the love he showed you and the words he said to you, your fingertips swept underneath his jawline, pulling him into a feverish kiss.

"So glad to have you guys in my life." you nuzzle up against him.

"Us too, y/n. We are so happy to have you in our lives as well. We had so much fun with you today."

A few moments spared heavily making out in the shower with Jay until the bathroom was filled with nothing but gray fog from the hot water, he decided to turn it off. Reaching for two pearl white toned towels that were neatly folded on the back of the toilet he wrapped you securely in the towel. He whispered sweet nothings in your ear, which made you melt on the inside instantly.

"I love you so, so much y/n. You have no clue how much you mean to me and Adam." he would repeat until the words had lost their meaning to it.

A shade of pink appeared on the apples of your cheeks, awestruck and how lucky you were to have the two men to worship the ground you walked on, you were grateful for them in every aspect. You and Jay walked out of the bathroom with hands interlocked, Adam was sound asleep on the couch covered up with a heavy blanket and the feathery pillow resting on the back of his head. You glanced up at the clock, "11 p.m." my god you didn't know it was that late at night.

"I believe I should get going," you suggested, slipping your clothes back on and giving Jay a quick peck on the lips. "Thank you so much for having me over for my birthday. It was the best birthday a woman could ever ask for."

"You are welcome, dove. Please know you are always welcome to come over. Have a goodnight and happy birthday."

You let go of his hand, he waved goodbye and the two of you went your separate ways for the night. You were left with all smiles, no disappointment at all shown on your face. When you arrived home, a text message dinged through your phone. Opening the imessage, it read:

"Hey, just so you know we really enjoyed having you over. Me and Adam are beyond grateful for a girl like you and you deserve the entire world. Maybe this new chapter in your life was what you needed all of this time, spending quality time with us and not only that, but making you feel as good as we made you feel was the highlight of our day. Cheers to new beginnings." - Jay

The text message he sent to you just now had made you tear up a bit. Resting your head against the headboard of the bed, soon, you drifted off into a deep slumber with the day you spent with Jay and Adam in your thoughts and dreams.

Author's Note: Likes, Reblogs / Comments and Feedback are very much always appreciated from you guys! 💞

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storiesbyjes2g · 6 months

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3.49 What in the world

I texted Chi Chi and asked about dinner. Luckily, it was at proper dinnertime, not in the middle of the afternoon like we used to do it. That left plenty of time for a good rest and getting my head straight. I fell asleep immediately and woke up still troubled. Dating multiple women was harder than I imagined it would be. How did other dudes keep it straight? I wasn't cut out for it. Truthfully, I preferred meaningful relationships, despite still delaying one. Regardless of how I felt about everything, I had an engagement to keep, so I took one last deep breath and went downstairs to see if Dad was ready.

As we walked down the street, I saw him glancing at me out of the corner of my eye.

"What is it, Dad?"

"Ummm...I know I said I would never pry, but... Is she the one..."

"Chi Chi? No. We haven't even gone out yet."

I could tell he was relieved, though I wasn't sure why. Did he like Eleanor? Wouldn't it be crazy if both of us ended up with Chi Chi and Eleanor and lived together in their house? Ugh. I didn't get the opportunity to be grossed out by my parents' love life and I certainly didn't want to start now.

The younger ladies met us at the door with smiles and holiday cheer.

"Hey guys," Chi Chi shouted. "Happy Harvestfest! Come in, come in! Make yourselves at home!"

Karmine wasted no time stealing my attention.

"Luca! My birthday is in a few days are you gonna get me a present???"

Again, I was a deer in headlights. I barely understood what she said because she spoke so fast. And I didn't realize she was that old. Thankfully, Chi Chi saved me.

"No, he is not!" She turned her attention back to me. "Please don't get her anything. She'll have to sleep in the yard if we cram yet another thing in that room! Oh! Mr. Ali, have you met my daughter? This is Karmine! Karmy, say hi to Luca's daddy, Mr. Ali."

Instead of greeting Dad, she burst into laughter.

"Allie?? That's a girl's name!"

Chi Chi gasped.

"Karmine!! That is not nice!"

She tickled herself pretty good and was doubled over in laughter. It almost made me laugh too.

"It's alright," Dad said. "It's nothing I've never heard before."

"Well, I'm sorry," Chi Chi said. "Let's eat, shall we? I can't wait to see what you made, Luca!"

"It's just tofurkey with veggies inside."

"Oh! Well, I've definitely never had that before."

Karmine dashed through all of us, yelling, "I WANNA SIT NEXT TO LUCA!"

Seeing as I had no choice, I sat next to her. Dad sat next to me at the head of the table, and Chi Chi sat across from me. Eleanor came from wherever she was and sat at the opposite end of the table next to Karmine. What a lucky girl to still have her grandmother. I wished mine would have lived long enough for me to get to know her. My other grandparents were like fictional characters in stories I occasionally heard.

"Sorry I wasn't there to greet you," Eleanor said. "Thank you for cooking, Luca. This is a real treat!"

"I was glad to. I want to get better at cooking."

"You all can talk if you want to," Chi Chi said, "but I'm gonna dig in!"

It was funny how different families were at the holidays. Some were more formal and sang songs before eating while others went around the table saying what each one was grateful for. Others took great care to appease those pesky gnomes. Chi Chi and her crew were super casual and did none of the above. I didn't mind it, but it begged the question: What was the point of Harvestfest without observing its traditions?

My tofurkey came out good, if I may say so. Even if I doubted, all the moaning from across the table confirmed it. And then there was the cat. He jumped on the table as soon as I placed down the platter. Dad's eyes flicked toward me larger than I'd ever seen, and I echoed his sentiment. Good thing we had already served ourselves by the time he started walking all over the food. I saw the unease on Dad's face as he attempted to keep smiling while silently yelling out for help. Chi Chi and Eleanor said nothing and went on eating as if this was a regular occurrence. How were they okay with that thing shedding its hairs all over our food?? And to top it off, Chi Chi kept kissing it in the mouth! I was no stranger to fur baby kisses, but I never let Tofu kiss me in the mouth. Not even Mama, who loved dogs more than sims, kissed them on the mouth. The mouth! Really, Chi Chi?!

Apart from the cat fiasco, dinner went pretty well. I even caught Dad and Eleanor sneaking glances at each other a few times. Karmine held me hostage, and my brain hurt, trying to keep up with everything that came out of her mouth.

After dinner, Karmine got bored with me, I guess, and followed Eleanor and Dad into the living room. I wanted to give them space to talk, but wasn't sure where to go. Sitting alone in the dining room was lame, and I didn't see where Chi Chi went. I felt weird about snooping around their house to find her, so I just stood in the doorway, acting like part of the conversation but also trying to stay unattached. She found me, eventually, and pulled me into the hallway.

"You good?" she asked.

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm good. Thanks again for inviting us."

She nodded toward the bedroom we stood in front of.

"Let's talk."

I stifled a laugh as I wondered how many women's bedrooms I'd enter that day. The room was a good size and had a distinct sleeping area like mine and another space she used as a gym. I always thought I knew the least about Yasmine, but looking around Chi Chi's room, what did I really know about her? I mean, true, she told us her whole life story on the first day we met, but that didn't tell me anything about who she was currently. She was a professional athlete, but I didn't even know what sport she played.

"So like," she began, as she sat next to me on the bed, "what's your deal?"

"My...deal?"

"Yeah! Like, you're cute, you have a nice body, and you seem like a really nice guy... Why are you single?"

It had been a while since I'd been able to mess with someone, so I threw on a cheeky grin.

"How do you know I'm single?"

"I never see you with anyone, and you accept all my invitations!"

So much for being playful.

"Okay...you got me. I am single... It's complicated, but...well, the short answer is it's because I choose to be."

Seriously, Luca? You sound like some temple monk or something!

"Well, what I mean is I'm dating, but not looking for anything serious yet," I added.

She nodded.

"That doesn't sound so complicated."

If I told her the long version, maybe she wouldn't think so.

"What about you?" I asked. "What's your deal?"

"I'm kinda the same, I guess. I'm in my fun era right now. Ha ha! My husband was my first love and I'll always miss him, but we met and got married really young and Karmine came soon after. I loved our little family, of course, and I regret nothing, but I never really got a chance to live and discover myself, you know? So...yeah! For now, I just want to meet and mingle with as many sims as I can so when I'm ready to settle down again I don't have any shoulda coulda wouldas. I want more kids, so a serious relationship is definitely in my future. Just not yet."

It amazed me how many words could come out of her and Karmine in mere seconds. They never breathed!

"Now that we got that out of the way, you still owe me a date," she said, waggling her eyebrows.

I laughed.

"I do owe you a date."

I wasn't sure if I could ever get the image of her making out with the cat out of my head, but hopefully we'd still have fun...without kissing.

🤣

In Chi Chi and Eleanor's defense...

Let me tell you about this cat lol. (mini EA rant incoming!) This cat REALLY had to poop. Like, he had to go so bad, he risked everything and walked all over our dinner constantly! Luca would shoo him but he would not budge! He meowed and meowed and meowed...the poor thing was probably in pain he had to poop so much. So I finally investigated the house to see why this cat wouldn't leave us alone. The house has no litter box!! Why would EA create a household with a pet and place them in a house with no facilities? Like...really?? I'm so tired of them doing stuff like this.

Kitty kisses are brought to you in part by overlapping animations lol.

#ISBI challenge #sims 4 story #sims 4 gameplay #adolting #adolting gen 3 #luca winston murillo #ali murillo #xochitl luna #karmine luna #eleanor sullivan

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gaym0m · 1 year

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Okay so l'm really sad cause this girl I have been kinda seeing (and like a lot) is moving states today so imma write that but as Ellie and Beth :) no maggot mommy sorry guys 😭

I'll probably do fluff later.

Warnings: angst, cuss words. Kissing? Gonna do 2nd person cause head hurts. R knows guitar in Beth's part. And just owns some in Ellie’s part.

Beth

Knowing Beth since before she started to learn about music and guitars was a joyful ride.

It was even better when you knew how to play the guitar.

Living just a few blocks from eachother's apartment buildings, meant the two of you would meet almost very day

Ellie wasn’t too sure about this at first but you grew on her (and kept her sister out of trouble while she worked which was really good for her)

But it really wasn’t meant to last

Cause if it was I tagged this wrong (I didn’t im sorry)

As soon as Beth was 18 and Ellie had enough money saved, they planned to move. Not only had Ellie found an amazing husband (this is actually a Jay haters group. But I guessss I have to say he’s nice at first), she had her tattoo business up and running.

Ellie had to go to LA for a bigger market

And Beth had to follow, already applying to multiple music schools and being accepted into most of not all

You? Even if you wanted to follow them (god you wanted to follow them so much it make you physically ill) you simply couldn’t.

You loved Beth so so much, how could you not? Her humor, her taste in literally everything, her voice. . . Truly the list goes on.

But you had been accepted to a school across country, full ride (this means tuition and living paid for those not in America 😔✊) and far from home

It was supposed to be a good thing.

You were all achieving your dreams

So why did it feel like you couldn’t breath?

Why did your chest ache and long for something you’d long since given up?

Because love sucks. (Which is why we all obsess over fictional characters)

The day came so much sooner than you were ready.

All three of you shared a teary good bye, but once Ellie had entered the car, Beth’s arms wrapped tightly around you.

Her face sinking into your neck (as it had a thousand times before after a fight with her mom or her mom vs her sister)

It was a quiet plead for comfort.

Comfort that after that day you wouldn’t be able to provide her.

Her tears soaked your shirt and your tears in hers.

No words were spoken, it wasn’t really necessary when you two knew each-other so well.

Too soon, you had to pull away. Tear stained cheeks flushed red, and green eyes looked dull while locking with yours.

Without much of a second thought, you both leaned in.

Finally Sharing the kiss you both (unknowingly) had been longing for.

It wasn’t how you wanted it, and it wasn’t Beth’s happy ending either

But it was a last hurrah, as your two stories broke off into different paths.

It was as comforting as it was painful, with ideas of what could have been.

Ellie

Ellie had always been a sweetheart, despite her mother’s neglect and her forced motherhood towards Beth.

That was something you admired about her from the moment you meet.

Being the same age as her and with little to no real responsibility except to school, you leant her a hand with Beth.

You parents weren’t rich, but they were certainly workaholics and comfortable.

Which meant while you couldn’t just move them into your house, you could certainly drive them around in your car.

Or buy them groceries when Ellie was running low on money.

It still made you laugh at the memory of her swearing up and down that she would pay you back or return the favor while Beth stood behind her quietly mocking her and sending you a playful wink (one which you’d always return with a smirk)

Ellie adored how well you got along with her sister, and just how much you were willing to go out of your way for them.

Even gifting Beth one of your older guitars for her birthday (you can’t remember who was smiling the widest, little Beth with her guitar feeling like a rockstar or Ellie, watching her sister with the warmest blue eyes you’ve ever seen in your life)

Looking back, that’s when you first fell hard for her. Very eyes so warm and welcoming yet so full of love, pain and everything else.

Like two vacuums dragging you in until you couldn’t breath.

In a good way

One of your favorite memories was convincing Ellie to give you a tattoo after watching her practice on fake skin.

She wouldn’t stop saying no until you compromised, if it looked awful when it healed, she owed you a cover up.

Spoiler alert, it definitely wasn’t great.

She did give you that cover up though

And it looked amazing

Almost matching with her beautiful vine design.

But maybe you waited to long

Or you read it all wrong

Because it was a random Tuesday when she dropped the bomb

She meet a guy. . . And she really liked him.

At first it felt like nothing, a stupid fling at best in your mind.

But one date turned to two then three then weeks of dating followed by months.

Yet your stupidly held on to hope.

Years passed, Jay was still in the picture and while you tried to stay sane you could feel yourself quickly deteriorating.

Beth was quick to notice, always offering a sorry smile when you two locked eyes while Ellie and Jay shared a loving moment.

Yet another year passed, one you spent overworked in order to push the tattoo artist out of your head.

A year which Jay spent pulling Ellie deeper and deeper.

The day you found out about their engagement sent you in a quiet spiral.

Just minutes from home, in a bar with shots lined up waiting for you to finish the last four.

Beth found you first, helping you up and home.

She knew she shouldn’t have told you, after all you clearly were struggling.

But she figured now was better than later.

“Ellie and Jay are moving to LA, and I was hired as a guitar technician with a bad going on tour in a month. .”

Talk about two birds one stone.

Your heart shattered further

Tears forming into your eyes and spilling down your cheeks until you had no more tears to give.

You knew better than to even imagine having a chance now.

Beth tried her best to be there for you, but she was also busy with packing and coming to terms with separating from her sister (and mother figure)

Meanwhile you distracted yourself. Pulling even more shifts at work, packing and shipping all your stuff out to NYC.

With no real tears left to cry, teary eyes and long tight hugs were exchanged between you and Ellie.

Her lips pressed to your cheek before she promised to keep in touch.

Then just like that she was gone

And suddenly you had more tears to cry

You had more pain

But you also had acceptance

And a new road ahead, and away from those you loved for so long.

Ahh sorry for the angst, I am depresso buttt i promise fluff tonight or tomorrow. For now send me ask if you’d like lol.

#ellie evil dead rise #beth bixler #beth evil dead rise #beth evil dead rise x reader #ellie bixler #Ellie evil dead rise x reader

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the-invisible-queer · 7 months

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CAN'T YOU TAKE ONE DAY OFF OF YOUR STUPID JONAS BROTHERS OBSESSION AND DO SOMETHING NICE FOR MATT SIMMONS TODAY?!

FIRST OF ALL SUCK MY FUCKING DICK!

I usually delete negative or hate anons but this one has me fucking FUMING!

Who the fuck do you think you are demanding shit from me? I owe you nothing.

What the fuck is wrong with you? You're a fucking coward for going on anon but I have a good feeling of who you are and honestly consider yourself fucking blocked.

I had some stuff planned for Danny's upcoming birthday, and you're going to miss out because you decided to be a fucking CUNT.

I have posted that the Daniel Henney era is over. It's been over for months. Do I like that my brain works this way and I jump from fixation to fixation? No. I don't. But I follow where ever the serotonin leads.

I'm sorry to say Danny wasn't doing it anymore. And I felt so guilty that he wasn't making me happy anymore. Because I do genuinely love him as an actor.

FRIENDLY FUCKING REMINDER that you can fucking unfollow me if my "stupid Jonas Brothers obsession" is so goddamn annoying to you.

I'm sorry if something that brings me joy bothers you so much.

For fuck's sake if you've followed me for the past 3 months you saw how much I fought again the Jonas fixation. And I've gotten negative asks about it.

My blog is MY safe space. Not anyone else's. No one can tell me what to do and what to post. THIS IS MY GODDAMN FUCKING HOUSE!

Guess fucking WHAT I'm on a writing hiatus. Have been since August because I hit writer's block.

Don't you think if I had the inspiration to write about Matt I'D BE FUCKING DOING THAT?!?!?! Have a whole fic I started that's just sitting, collecting dust and everyday I don't have inspiration to write something for it I feel fucking guilty.

This "stupid Jonas Brothers obsession" is the ONLY fucking thing keeping me alive right now.

So fuck you. Eat my ass. Suck my dick. Die in a fucking hole.

ALSO ITS FUCKING THANKSGIVING, YOU CUNT!

I was with my family. I'm sorry I didn't take a break from festivities to post about a fucking fictional character.

I'm so fucking annoyed with this ask. How fucking entitled are you?

I don't give a shit if you meant this as a joke. Jokes are funny. This is not.

This is a rude fucking ask and I will not tolerate this shit.

You are a fucking asshole for DEMANDING that I do something for Matt Simmons.

You are a fucking asshole for going on anon like a fucking coward.

You are a fucking awful person for this.

And honestly I fully think Daniel would be disappointed that a fan of his is harassing people FOR NO FUCKING REASON!

For the record no one is racist for not being head over heels for Matt Simmons. The writers disrespectfully gave him very little to work with.

So little that if you aren't someone like us who paid attention to every fucking acting choice, piece of dialogue, and detail about him you would know very little - if anything - about him. Which we complained about all the time.

People are racist when they purposefully exclude him from posts about the whole team.

Learn the fucking difference.

Do yourself a favor and go fucking touch grass because it's not that deep that people aren't writing or making content about a character who has been dormant for almost 4 fucking years.

YOU go do something for Matt Simmons today.

And kindly go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

I hope we never cross paths again.

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respectthepetty · 1 year

Note

Hi hi! I was just doing a rewatch of last week’s episode of Bed Friend and kept noticing tiny things I unwillingly zeroed in on and need to shout about, and since you’re the ultimate Enjoyer of Details in Fictional Worlds, I hope you don’t mind if I send my thoughts your way.

First of all, and most importantly, and the thing about this episode that is the weirdest and most disconcerting to me: why the hell was the shirt Jade was wearing when he showed up at Uea’s place on his birthday the exact same one Uea was wearing during that flashback as he watched that child (is it a random child? Not gonna lie, at first I automatically thought it was King) celebrate his birthday while his mother abused him again? What is this show trying to tell me?!

Then—and I think this every time I come across this scene—I think it’s such an interesting choice that the very first time we see the Evil Uncle, he’s coming out of the one room Uea probably associates the worst things with in that house—the bathroom. What a way to introduce us to his character.

In that same scene, I also love the choice of having Uea knock over and destroy the picture frame showing the Evil Uncle, the mom and his sister. Without Uea. Because a) that tells us Uea isn’t really considered part of the family and they would rather be this happy family with the mom, the dad and the nice, sweet daughter and without the embarrassing homo son (at least when it comes to his mom), and b) this is exactly what Uea is destroying (both literally and figuratively) in that moment: the happy family they desperately try to pretend to be. (I can’t really speak for his sister here because she genuinely seems to love Uea, but this is definitely true for his mother, and at least to some extent surely also for the Evil Uncle.)

But also, because I study linguistics and Thai just keeps giving me new linguistic fodder to sink my teeth into, the way Uea talks to his sister fascinates me. Because when they talk to each other on the phone, Uea uses kha with her, not khab. Why does he do that?? I am frustrated, I am delighted, I am perplex. The only uses of kha by a person identifying as male that I knew of are to express queerness and to flirt with girls.

Anyway, you have reached the end of the rant. Congratulations! I am impressed you made it this far. Now I’ll let you get back to your regularly scheduled programming of thinking about colors. Thanks for reading!

(P. S. I was dumbstruck, not to say horrified, to find out you watch most shows on mute and I have Thoughts on it because you’re missing out on so much good stuff and musical choices and voice acting (all of which I might come back to at some point), but I get your reasoning and respect that not everyone is the same. I am still astonished, though.)

Anon, this took me a second because you mentioned such great details in Bed Friend that I've been seeing others discuss, and every time I was going to hit respond, someone wrote something else and I had more thoughts.

I loved your linguistics lesson because I know nothing about Thai. It is interesting that Uea uses that term with his sister, and I would like to know more about this. In a language enforced with honorifics, his intentional use of the term fascinates me as much as you if it denotes queerness. Anyone else feel confident in educating us more on this?

This show is doing a lot with the tiny details, including the full-circle moments and callbacks (which gives me hope that King is that kid from the very beginning even though several people have told me that is not how this works), but if you thought reading your comments was a feat, which it was far more of a treat, just wait until you see the dissertation awaiting you.

It's Uea's Birthday & He'll Cry If He Wants To

The shirts

Before I get to business, let me tell you about the business - ZARA! This shirt was part of its 2021 Playmobil collaboration, and the figurine is a tourist. There's even a black version, but he is wearing the opposite; he has the blue and white stripes on and his little person on his shirt is in the yellow rain jacket.

Now, to the shirts: My big-brained mutuals have thoughts about the shirts and the color yellow in Bed Friend. They believe Uea is actually a Yellow/Orange Oddity like Jade, while I think yellow represents happiness, and Uea's trying to cling to happiness even if he has to fake it.

Knowing that it's a Playmobil figurine (regardless of the date and the store) reinforces the child aspect of the shirt, but knowing it's a tourist, to me, puts a new spin on it. Uea is constantly being reminded of his childhood even though he keeps running from it, but Uea is also a tourist in his own life, merely observing what is happening rather than living. Even in the past, he is observing the kid celebrating his birthday with his parents instead of celebrating his with his own family. Perhaps this is another reason we see Julia Child's My Life in France in his house which recounts her time observing and living in other countries.

Jade is a source of happiness, but he is reminding Uea of his childhood, not just with the shirt, but with his entire presence. Jade is happy and innocent (of what we have seen so far), which is something Uea never got a chance to be. Jade brings happiness to Uea's door, but he also brings up memories that Uea is desperately trying to block out.

The Smiley Faces

Jade shows up in the Playmobil shirt of birthdays past, but also with a smiley face balloon, and we, unlike Jade, know what Uea's connection to smiley faces is:

Uea covers up a lot of his pain by acting fine and happy, but when he is alone with his thoughts, the smiley face is another vicious reminder of all the times he was robbed of happiness.

After the incident with King, where King's closeness to the back of Uea's neck triggered Uea, King apologized to Uea, yet even that apology was laced with a reminder of why Uea was bothered. A tiny handwritten smiley face shows up at the end of the message.

Jade and King don't see what Uea's sees. This is another layer to the "Uea is robbed of happiness" onion. Jade and King are sincerely trying to make Uea happy, but that vile smiley face reminds him of the insincerity of his stepfather and every other man who has just wanted to harm him.

The Family

@malepresentingleg gifted all of us with a comparison of the series versus the novel, and within it mentioned:

Uea's sister, Tonkao, is the biological child of his stepfather and mom

Whenever Uea's mom would lock him in the bathroom, his stepfather would try to get him out for the apparent reason

We already understood, as you mentioned, that the bathroom is a place for punishment and trauma for Uea

So for the stepfather to enter the scene by freely stepping out of it, something Uea could never do, when Uea is looking at a drawing of what his sister considers a happy family (just them), is a visual beatdown.

People are upset about the editing of this series, but when it is done well, it's a sucker punch. I actually paused the episode here because I was so disgusted when this bastard opened the door.

But we had a similar situation when Uea's mom first appeared on screen. Everything leading up to seeing her was a rush. Uea was panicked and worried. He was running out of his office and into the hospital with King hurrying after him. And then we got a slow-pan of this...

The Lion, The Witch, & The Audacity of This Bitch. She was chilling with the most disgusted face once she saw her son.

The first time we see her, not in a memory, but in Uea's present life, her introduction serves us an entire narrative before she even utters a word.

The next time Uea is in the hospital, he goes to get tested with King, and we feel his hesitation and anxiety. Not only is the situation stressful for him, but the last time he was in the hospital, he was being humiliated by his mother. The bathroom and the hospital aren't just places with bad memories; they are places of constant and current degradation.

And on top of that, we have Uea's sister calling him back home, a place drenched with his pain and shame, for his birthday. From the above master's level thesis I wrote, we already know what his birthday means for Uea (the biggest theft of his happiness), but he also hates when men try to hit on him through Jade, so I'm guessing he is just as bothered that his mother is requesting his presence (to ask for more money) by using his sister against him.

Tonkao considers him her family. Her drawing depicts that, and the picture on the table of them together is the only picture of Uea in the house, yet he is covered up with the other pictures.

For his stepfather, Uea is an object. For his mother, Uea is an ATM. They might be a family, but they aren't a family to him. And ironically, the cracks start with the mom, who abused her son for being gay.

And if there is one thing that this show is trying to tell us, it's that sometimes family ain't shit.

Can't wait to mute these men again and not hear one more dumb ass word out of their mouths in a few hours.

This office better start feeling French and overthrow their leadership while cutting off toxic family members or heads will roll!

👨‍👦‍👦HEADS 👨‍👦 WILL 👨 ROLL💀

#Bed Friend #A dissertation #A rant #A warning #Quit robbing people of happiness #Or someone is going to make like soda in the midwest #and POP!

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firstaidspray · 4 months

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OC Interview!!

Tagged by @adelaidedrubman to do an interview for Reverie. Well, for an oc, but I chose Reverie so this is what you get.

...

"An interview? Like, for a new job?" Reverie tilts her head. "I like my job in surgery, thanks. Don't want a job on your team, much as I like hanging around your office."

House scoffs. "Hire you for my team? A nurse? Please. No, this is an interview for a campaign for Princeton-Plainsboro, something about "good publicity." Don't think you're special, I had to do one too."

Rolling her eyes, Reverie takes a seat at the table. "Yeah, 'cause you're the picture perfect example of good publicity, House. 'Kay, so where do I start?"

"Just talk to the camera like a person," Cuddy interjects, popping out from behind said device. "Don't be shy. God knows he wasn't."

Reverie inhales sharply and stares at the camera with those eerily dark, almost-black brown eyes. "Fine. Fire away."

Name: Reverie. No, I don't have a last name. So don't ask again.

Nickname: Rev, Angel, some stuff House calls me that I'd rather not repeat.

Gender: Angel. (House: not a gender!) *sighs* Fine, I'm a girl.

Star Sign: Pisces. Birthday's coming up, you know. The 25th. Just a tip.

Personality Type: The first day of nursing school, they made us do these ridiculous tests, and apparently I'm an INFP. I don't really know what any of that shit means.

Height: 5’1. 5'4 with the halo. Which Cuddy doesn't let me wear to work anymore...

Orientation: Bisexual. And before you ask me for the fiftieth time, House, I've never had a threesome. (House: you're no fun!)

Nationality/Ethnicity: Aussie born and raised, now I'm in New Jersey.

Fave Fruit: Citrus, give me anything citrus. I'll take the limes out your Corona and suck 'em. House, keep your mouth shut on that.

Fave Season: I'm assuming you mean Northern Hemisphere, since I'm living in the great state of New Jersey now. Summer. Chase takes me surfing in the summer, we go to the beach a lot. It's warm. Whatever.

Fave Flower: Everyone around me is convinced this is a subtle psychological influence from playing Metal Gear Solid 3, but star of Bethlehem. House, keep your mouth shut. You can say you're not a video game dork but the fact that you attribute my love for a damn flower to a game is kind of contradictory, no?

Fave Scent: There's this Tyler Candle scent, Diva. I wash all my clothes and sheets in it, light candles of it. I made it Chase's favorite scent, too.

Coffee, Tea, or Hot Chocolate: FUCK HOT DRINKS.

Average Hours of Sleep: I'm a surgical assistant RN on call constantly. Answering this is like playing roulette.

Dog or Cat Person: I love all animals, so I like to say equal. I'm honestly more of a fish person, though. I keep begging Chase for a fish tank. When we get a bigger place, he says...

Dream Trip: Chase and I will return to Australia, and he'll take me diving in the Great Barrier Reef. We'll surf and comb the beach and explore parts of the country I never got to see growing up. Together.

Favorite Fictional/Real Character: Babydoll from Sucker Punch. I'd like to dress as her one day.

Number of Blankets You Sleep With: One, but Chase and I each have our own because if we try to share one I always steal it.

Random Fact: House and I race our motorcycles to work sometimes. I always beat him.

House peeks into the frame. "Okay, you may lie to the camera with cute stories about the beach and your little boyfriend, but that is one lie I will not let your smooth-talking, con artist self get away with. I have beaten you at least five times."

"They weren't lies, House. Some people are happy. And..hmm...to be fair, there was a tie once."

"A tie? A t-- no it wasn't!"

The two are about to break into an argument when Cuddy shuts off the camera and says, "Okay! That's enough! Reverie, why don't you take five and go find Chase?"

#my ocs #reverie #tag game #revchase #<- mentioned!!!!

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scribe-of-stories · 1 year

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15 Questions 15 Mutuals

Rules: Answer the questions as yourself or as an OC of your choice

The always friend shaped @vicstmichael tagged me, and you can read her lovely post here.

I'm going to be answering for both myself and Lexical's oldest OC, Samuel. (I'll be responding like this) meanwhile Sam like this.

The lightest of tags towards: @sunset-a-story @squarebracket-trick @valanke @pure-solomon @captain-kraken annnnd I know it says to tag 15 people but I've got other tag games so I'm going to save some mutual. Alternatively if 10 more individuals could do this so I don't become cursed that'd be grand.

1. Are you named after anyone?

I think I was named after one of my grandfathers, who was named after some biblical character. Someone who broke pillars? Or was that another guy? (To shorten a long story: Sam predates Lexical and is technically two older characters mixed together. One was an unplayed FATE character named Smith of Masks, who was a spooky manakin looking monster that was also a journalist. It wrote under the pen name "Sam Smith" as a loose reference to it's acronym [SoM] and the generic last name Smith [which was also already part of its name]. The other was a short story I wrote over on Reddit, but that has little to do with the name.)

(Meanwhile I was named after a Frenchman in space. Or two books of the bible. I claim the former, but my religious [secretly trekkie] parents claim the later.)

2. When was the last time you cried?

I don't know, not like I keep track of these things. Probably the last time I had a bone broken. (It was when Ashley gave him his birthday gift).

(Last night I was meditating and talking to myself and we felt emotional. It was a good cry.)

3. Do you have kids?

Biologically no, but there is a worryingly growing group of young and wyrd individuals that I keep either saving or having over for dinner. I, uh, well they know what they mean to me. I think.

(Nope, not yet at least. That said I had been working in some form of child care most of my career life.)

4. Do you use sarcasm?

I would Never do such a thing. Words have power after all, imagine if I didn't mean what I say. (See: Umbra wyrdling)

(All the time, though usually for me it walks the fine line between sarcasms and lying/gaslighting as a bit. I never let it go too far though, and only do it over un-important topics.)

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

How many limbs they have. Jokes aside, how they are presenting themselves: they way they walk, talk, stand, etc. Got worse/more noticeable recently.

(Usually their hair. I'm slightly face blind and find myself relying on the hair/dress of people I only slightly know to recognize them.)

6. What's your eye color?

It changes, but I think I was born with blue eyes? Can't exactly remember.

(Very Brown.)

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings any day of the week. Love me some sappy romance where everyone's just content at the end. Besides I see enough horror in my work life, don't want to bring that shit home. Hell it usually doesn't have trouble finding my house anyways.

(Both? Both is good. If I had to choose horror since I see that as being capable of exploring things a lot of fiction can't, but I wouldn't want everything I consume to end with "then everyone was bound to super hell for eternity".)

8. Any special talents?

Surviving things that should have killed me. My more magically inclined friends have taken to referring to me as a "Community College Wizard" so I guess I've got that going for me too.

(I've been told I'm a divergent thinker, so I think that's special. Also I'm fairly good at most video/board games. Might be linked, idk?)

9. Where were you born?

Dalas, Texas. Don't intend on going back any time soon though.

(South Carolina, though I moved to Kentucky before I started being old enough to remember things.)

10. What are your hobbies?

Reading. I've got this lovely pile of shitty novels I collect that I'm slowly working through. No rhyme or reason to what's in them, just slowly bought them on discount from local book stores. Romance is my favorite genre.

(Games, I love games. TTRPGs, video games, tabletop/board games. Anything with a rule system that I can learn and play with in unique ways. I'm usually drawn to things that are turn based, but the video game I have easily put the most time into would be Warframe. Also, uh, writing.)

11. Have you any pets?

I've got a half dozen Wyrdlings I have to babysit and at least 2 minor thought entities living in my house. Yes I consider all of them effectively Pets.

(Not currently, but I used to have a turtle named Ruto.)

12. What sports do you play/have played?

Used to place baseball back when I was a kid, but that fell off when I graduated.

(Back when I was a child my parents had me try nearly every form of sports there was. None of them stuck, and I never joined a school related team.)

13. How tall are you?

It changes, or at least I suspect it does. Around 5'8 last I checked but I swear I'm getting shorter.

(5'10)

14. Favorite subject in school?

Took a semester of forensics back in high school. It was taught by a couch who was just reading a chapter ahead of the class, but the topic was fascinating.

(Psychology/Philosophy in that order. I didn't properly start learning either till I was in college. Got some regrets that I didn't take more than 1 philosophy course; even more upset that I only ever took 1 writing course.)

15. Dream job?

What I'm doing now: private investigating. Though in a perfect world I'd deal with a few less monsters on a daily basis. I guess it's more interesting then just spying on people from inside a car. Some days I miss not knowing about the Wyrd; but other days balance it out.

(Still trying to figure that out. Ended my career as a behavioral therapist a while ago [moral/stress issues] and kinda now figuring out what I actually want to do. Would have said being a Therapist a while ago but I'm not sure.)

#writeblr #lexical earth #samuel smith #writeblr tag games

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imekitty · 10 months

Note

If you still do the writing ask game.

9, 26 and 32. If you don’t want to answer all, you can just choose one! I saw an ask saying it was your birthday a few days ago, so happy late birthday!

First, thank you for the birthday wish! ^^

(Weird Questions for Writers)

Honestly, you could send me an ask for a writing ask game from three years ago and I would still very happily answer it!

9. Do you believe in ghosts?

That is the question to ask the whole DP fandom, isn't it lol. So I myself have never seen/felt anything supernatural, but my mom and sisters have seen/felt/heard ghosts, and their stories are too bizarre for me to just discount. I also know that they aren't liars, so I can only say that I don't know if I believe in ghosts, but I'd like to believe that they're real? I'd like to believe that there's some proof of something beyond death in our world.

I've also had a bizarre Disney movie moment where a psychic told me that the reason I'm blocked from using my clairvoyant gifts (because I've been told by several people that I have a clairvoyant aura...somehow) is because my great great grandmother (my mom's dad's mom's mom) has a hold on me due to some generational trauma and we have only one picture of this woman and she looks exactly like me lol.

So ghosts...maybe?

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

There isn't a particular technique I do to get into a character's head. I am pretty naturally empathic, like I am able to discern how people are feeling or what they are thinking and I can often feel it in my own being. I'm also able to understand why people do the things they do, which is why I don't get too angry or impatient with people very often. I am also pretty good at talking people through their feelings or actions and helping them see other people or events in their lives from a new perspective.

My mom keeps saying I should be a therapist lol. But I think the closest I'll get to that is writing Ghost on the Couch.

Anyway, this seems to apply to fictional characters as well. I feel that I'm able to just connect with them easily and understand not only what they do but why they do it.

And I never regret it. :) I appreciate how fiction can help me gain a new understanding of the people around me.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

One line that just kind of stuck in my head ever since I read it was from Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. The plot of the novel is hard to explain succinctly, it's basically a horror metafiction about a house that has a big maze on the inside. It's not an easy read, the text starts going crazy in all directions because I think it's supposed to simulate the feeling of being in a labyrinth? I've only ever read it once and I don't actually want to read it ever again lol.

To give you an idea of why this book is difficult and frankly exhausting to read, here's a screenshot of the page with the line that I still think about:

I don't even remember what is going on at this point in the book but I remember the line "Picture that. In your dreams." Because there is just something so haunting about that line, something about how it's broken up by a period, not a comma, a full stop. That feeling of unease but also something so surreal, like twilight, the space between the administration of anesthesia and falling into dark unconsciousness.

It's just exactly the kind of atmosphere I try to create in my fics.

#imekitty ask #raders1001 #writing asks #ask game #thank you!

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i-lavabean · 2 months

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Birthday cake for the birthday girl

#my art #horizon forbidden west #art #aloy #illustration #hfw aloy #happy birthday Aloy #or Ay-lo-way if you're my minions #in this house we say happy birthday to fictional characters

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retvenkos · 2 years

Note

cym as.... random objects

MUTUALS — let me know if you want to be included or taken off!

absolutely screaming,,, i love how absolutely Unintelligible this one is going to be,,,, gonna scale down the scope to random things laying around in my house rn (which used to be my grandfather’s house, for context)

@murswrites — the under cabinet, electric can opener that my grandma installed on the kitchen cupboard in like,,,,, 1985 (i feel like you'd appreciate the utility asdfghjhgf, but also, she used to work at kmart and was always the first person on the block to get ~ fancy new appliances~ and you have the cool kid vibes)

@musicallisto — my grandfather’s copy of the bluejackets’ manual (14th edition) printed in roughly 1950-55 (it’s a book you’re given when you join the navy, and i’m not saying you support the u.s. military asdfgjhgfd but i feel like you’d appreciate the mystery of him keeping it even though he never spoke of the navy)

@scvrllet — my sisters absolutely MASSIVE hydroflask (128 oz) that no one has used since she moved

@mirclealignr — the (once gold painted) vintage, lion door knocker on the front door (that no one uses)

@swanimagines — the little, wooden “fairy door” that sits at the base of this massive tree in my backyard (i remember looking into the tiny, opaque window for hours when i was little and believing i saw fairies looking out at me)

@ughgclden — the super cheesy yellow shag carpet in my sisters bedroom closet that we still need to pull up (original to the house so,,,,, roughly installed in 1970-78)

@permanentreverie — my grandmother’s bookcase, filled with historical fiction, Christian Romance, prayer journals, and like,,,,, 8 different copies of the bible, all heavily annotated

@donnakenobi — my little sister’s bookcase filled with stuffed animals, each of which has a name, an entire backstory, a distinct personality, and (on many occasions) an accent

@amortensie — my grandma’s recipe book, filled with extra pages written by my great-grandma or great aunts

@anthonysharmaa — my incredibly heavy and incredibly sharp marble bookends that i always jokingly weaponize

@davey-in-a-minivan — my vhs copy of the prince of egypt and cats (1981)

@heliads — my busted up monopoly board that is missing like,,, half of its houses and hotels

@oceanspray5 — my mom’s collection of old photographs, spanning from 1980-2008

@noesapphic — the collection of jesus candles in my bathroom in case of power outage

@champagnesupernxvas — my sister’s astronomy and anthropology books

@juliastrojan — my character shoes from my theatre days

@teaand-dreams — my grandma’s massive collection of unused cards for every occasion imaginable (i WILL find a use for the “happy 16th birthday, granddaughter” and “happy bar mitzvah” cards istg)

@moonlit-imagines — my grandfather's collection of vhs western movies

@the-radio-star — my grandfather’s two (2) MASSIVE velvet paintings with the really thick, embossed frames (pick your poison - the tiger in the jungle or the building landscape that i think is supposed to be mexico)

@brokenandheadoverheels — my brother’s collection of old vinyls and his record player that is “broken but salvageable”

@locke-writes — my brother’s punching bag that once belonged to my uncle and still has the picture of some nameless nemesis on it (very funny, kinda mysterious...)

@missameliep— my mother’s recliner (this is very sacred, actually)

@biqherosix — my grandfather’s lock box that just has newspaper clippings of his father, siblings, and cousins, some of which whom i cannot name

#cym #mutuals #this one was a lot of fun idk what some of these mean other than 'you'd have to see it to understand' or 'it's funny you'd like it' or #'its sad you'd like it'#idk idk idk

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queenoffantasyland · 6 months

Text

So about whatshisname…

First off, I will admit this is kind of an intense overshare to just dump onto Tumblr, but I’m a millennial with a lot of emotions and this is what we do. In order to protect a semblance of anonymity, I have changed names and kept locations vague. But I am pouring this all into a Google Doc because I have still been processing how in less than a year a person went from a mild acquaintance to one of the most important people in my life and then it only took another year for him to become somebody that I used to know. They say hindsight is 20/20, but it still feels like I can see the traffic light but the blurred sunbursts of colored lights obscure the path ahead of me necessitating another lens to see things clearly.

So as the dulcet tones of Julie Andrews remind me: the beginning is a very good place to start. Being social has not been my strong suit. From about 2nd grade to my early 20s I straight-up didn’t have friends. On multiple occasions I was told I was “too much” and between repeated rejection from friendships, a cross-country move, and 4 middle schools later I understood that there were people that would allow me to sit at their table for lunch but did not want to engage with me socially once the final bell rang. No sleepovers, no birthday parties, no “let’s go to the movies and then get Taco Bell.” Likewise, if making friends was this unattainable– dating or flirting with guys in my teen years was completely off the table. But I had given myself the hope that I just needed to move back to California and go to college, where I’d find my sitcom-like circle of friends and the perfect guy and be happy.

College at first gave me hope but it was very clear, very soon, that I was the seventh wheel in the group. I had social engagements that I went to now but I was only included as the roommate of the effervescent Vocal Performance major that could flirt with the best of ‘em. Fortunately, my roommate's shitty boyfriend went to church with Daphne, who ran in different social circles but also liked talking about pop culture and wasn’t put off by the intensity of receiving a Powerpoint of TV recommendations. We stayed “periodically texting each other” friends even as I left the university I was attending. Being away from family and in an environment where my worst impulses were fully unregulated, and my deep loneliness had not been solved by leaving my small town prompted my mental health to spiral downward. So my parents had me transfer to a college on the East Coast to live with my sister as a hail mary attempt getting me to fit the plan every boomer parent sets out for their daughter: focus on your grades, go to college, meet someone to marry, get a good job, get a house, etc. It was at this new college that I entered a deep depression that was truly the darkest time of my life. It became clear that higher education was not for me, and I moved back to California to live with my parents and work full-time.

The only thing keeping me from my darkest thoughts and helping me hold on during this period was finding my people in online fandom communities. Finding other women out there who thought about fictional characters as often and as in-depth as me was a lifeline. I found people just as moved by the power of stories and a good romance. We were of varying ages and lived in various time zones, but we were kindred spirits. People who didn’t just tolerate me talking about Felicity Smoak or Elizabeth Swann for hours on end, but found enjoyment from it. People who didn’t think I was “too intense” for saying that our friendship meant so much to me a few weeks into knowing each other. It was in this safe space, that I brought Daphne,my one sorta-kinda friend from college, into fandom and bonded to where she is now one of my very best friends. To this day, I have women that I meant through tumblr or Twitter that are my lifeline that make all the out-of-pocket nonsense that fandom brings worth it.

Now I have friends for the first time since I was ten. Awesome! Shouldn't I be dating though too? I should’ve had a kiss that was not a part of a high school play with a closted gay kid by now, right? And even that kiss I had to be the initiator. That’s what women in their early 20s do. Get on those apps, go on dates, have some epic first love or a string of comically regrettable boyfriends to laugh about when you are older. I guess. So I hop onto OkCupid and play the swiping game during my breaks at my mall retail job, and find a guy that is Christian, into movies, and cute enough. We message for about a week and he says we should go on a date: a movie and dinner. I’m about to get my “has gone on an actual date and isn’t a prudish spinster” badge! I drive an hour to a strip mall by where he lives and we see The Big Short and eat overpriced burgers at a nearby gastropub. It’s all going perfect. He walks me to my car after dinner and when I think he’s going in for a hug he kisses me. My cheeks are inflamed with an immediate blush. He’s going in for a second kiss, but I have no idea what to do so I hug him and give a cute little wave as I flee into my car to drive to Daphne’s apartment to freak out over the whole thing over a cup of Coldstone. This should be magical, right? Why does the feeling of his lips on mine feel about the same as the high school theater kiss? I wrote it off in my head that I wasn’t expecting the kiss and that’s why it had no spark. Fast forward to the end of the second date, watching Creed and dinner at PF Chang’s, that I realized while this guy was nice enough I wasn’t actually interested in him. I was interested in fitting in and not being the weirdo that’s never had a guy kiss them even into my twenties. Neither of those things are reason enough to keep dating a guy that is essentially a prop in my coming-of-age checklist, so I texted him that I didn’t think things were going to work out for a third date. After those two dates, I put dating on the backburner and prioritized other aspects of my life: mental health, repairing family relationships, trying to achieve a semblance of financial independence, etc. Granted there were enough fictional or celebrity crushes over the years that in addition to the purchase of my first vibrator, did confirm that I was indeed attracted to guys; but dating was never a focus.

So in building my career and being closer to family, I move back to Texas in fall of 2017 and start a new job. This is where I meet Jared. To paint a picture,my sports-averse self was attracted to him even when he was discussing football. One of my fandom friends asked if there were cute guys at the new job that caught my fancy, to which I replied “The only dude remotely attractive is my freaking trainer and that’s not an option.” Since I’ve valued building a reputation of professionalism, his role as a trainer and later to a manager precluded any of that initial attraction from growing into anything else (as if I could flirt or be confident to act on it at the time but that’s not the point). I packed those butterflies into a box and shoved that box into the attic– to the point that I’d forget that box existed. There was the time when he was back in my department and noted that he saw my Bumble profile, didn’t swipe right because he didn’t want to cross those lines, but commented that I have a nice profile. His respectfulness and professionalism mixed with a bit of a compliment made me remember that box of butterflies in the attic, and then promptly shoved it back in the rafters. Reign it in, girl.

Fast forward a few years and he’s back in the department I work in again as an interim while they look for a new person to fill the manager role. I’m in the interview process to potentially get that role, which means I can relax a little in my current position and not be laser-focused on making sales every second I’m at work and actually talk to people. It’s at this time that one of my coworkers gives me the 411 on Jared. You know those coworkers who have the magical ability to get everyone they talk to to divulge their entire life story? This was her. So it’s at this time that I learn that he’s a lot closer to my age than I thought he was, that he also had family in church leadership like me, we both like nerdy pop culture shit, and that he’s tired of “dating around” and “wants to find a wife”. Keep in mind that the company where I work is kinda weird in how they sorta encourage people to date, married couples to both work there, etc. With all this in mind, I decided to take my mind off of the job interview I did for the manager role by chatting with Jared. As we both look out the window I comment on the sunset, and he responds with an anecdote of how during the last time he worked in this department he’d take a picture of the sunset every evening and send it to his girlfriend at the time “This sunset is almost as beautiful as you.” Externally, I tease him about how corny but smooth that line is. Inside, I’m melting. It’s such a sweet little romantic gesture that I have never gotten to experience, I’ve just read it in fanfic. I excuse myself to go cry in the bathroom as the realization of just how much I’d love to experience something like that, and potentially experience that with Jared. And thus the rafters give way, the box falls down from the attic and breaks open to release those 4 year old butterflies.

So I got the manager job the next day, and have about 2 weeks before I start my new role giving me very little to do at work except chat with Jared on the days we are scheduled together. He gives me his phone number in case I need his help as I adjust to the new role. After a few strictly work related texts, an actual friendship begins to form as text conversations stray to movie trailer reactions and other light but fun topics. He finds reasons to pop by my department’s office to say hi even though we work nowhere near each other. It is in one of those chats that we talk and I see that his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, his normal charismatic and jovial demeanor is dimmed in a way that only someone also good at veiling sadness with a happy face can tell. The middle of shift is not the time or place to call him out on it, but that evening I texted Jared to check in and let him know I am here for him for more than reacting to the latest episode of Moon Knight. He opens up to me about things he’s been struggling with and we proceed to have a text conversation for the next four and a half hours– topics ranging from mental health struggles and past traumas to the “three fictional characters to describe me” meme and comedians we enjoyed.It was definitely a turning point, where I truly felt we were getting to know each other and really connect. The fact that my deepest friendships were made in text conversations or DMs on Twitter made it easy for me to open up and be my most authentic self. And as these Sunday night text conversations continued, I knew that my crush was moving beyond infatuation.

At the end of that summer, I went on vacation: a day at Disneyland and then a girls’ trip in Lake Tahoe with some of my closest friends made through the Olicity fandom. I was in my favorite place in the entire world, and I still couldn’t stop thinking of him. In the hundreds of times I've been to Disneyland I’ve looked at the couples holding hands, wearing coordinating outfits, or kissing during World of Color and wistfully thought “One day.” And now as I walked through the Happiest Place on Earth, I couldn’t help but think of what it would be like to share it with Jared. I wasn’t able to help myself from texting throughout the day sharing pics of Avengers Campus and Galaxy’s Edge. At the end of the day, I saw a Chewbacca pen in one of the shops on Main Street USA and just had to buy it for him. I gave a teaser text with the gift and he freaked out a little that I’d get him something because apparently he’s extraordinarily bad at receiving gifts which I just found even more endearing. Once in Tahoe, I had the opportunity to catch my ladies up with the whole situation. They totally shipped us and encouraged me to be bold and make a move– sometimes guys are dumb and you have to say you like them with a neon sign. I thought my particular brand of nerd flirting was not that subtle. I mean in the “three fictional characters to describe me” meme discussion I told him he was a mixture of Nick Miller, Han Solo, and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, but I trusted my friends that were either married or had a serious boyfriend since this all was still very much uncharted waters for me. So while I knew I needed to be bold I wanted to invite him to a group setting where we could spend more time together outside of work before going on an outright date. When I got back from the girls’ trip, I invited him to my family’s Labor Day barbecue where he would basically meet my whole family and some of my sister’s friends from church to keep the whole thing still fairly lowkey. He was super stoked at the invite, since living hours away from family is rough on big holidays. He was a perfect gentleman and offered to pick me up to drive to my parents’ house together and offered to bring a bottle of wine to be a good guest. I informed neither me or my family drink (this will come up later) but that his presence was a gift unto itself. Before we walked into my parents’ house, I gave him the Chewbacca pen I got for him at Disneyland. His delighted laughter made my impulse buy totally worth it.

It was an amazing day. Good food, lots of laughter, and he fit in with my family so well. I had even warned my crazy aunt that I was bringing a guy that I was just friends with and to please be chill in hopes things could one day be more. Even she was on her best behavior, which made my mom joke if I could bring him every major holiday. It went literally perfectly. When it was time for him to go I had him drive me back to my apartment, even though as soon as he left I got in my car to go back to my parent’s house to gush about him with my mom and sister. Everyone loved him. He even texted a nice thank you for inviting him and that my family was so welcoming and he had a great time. I made the (only kind of a) joke with him about me separating my work and personal personas by being Maddison at work and Maddie with those who know and care about me, and that I enjoyed getting to be Maddie with him for a full day. To which he replied, he can see the difference and he really liked getting to know Maddie (with a blushing emoji at the end). At that point, I was far past a crush and this was becoming real feelings.

The following week, I was scrolling through Instagram and I got an ad for a string quartet concert playing movie scores from SciFi and Fantasy films being played in a candlelit venue. This was it. I literally couldn’t imagine a better first date for us. I talked about it with my friend in LA and she mentioned that these events sell out quickly so I should go ahead and get the tickets since they were relatively inexpensive. So with tickets already bought and after drafting the invite text and focus grouping it with like 8 different women to make sure I had the right levels of flirty but casual, I sent him an invite to the concert. He had the valid excuse of family being in town but in a second text asked if there were other dates. So hope was not lost yet at this point. I texted him the other dates but left the ball in his court. No word on the concert, but then he came over to my apartment to binge watch Andor. I ordered his favorite red velvet cake on DoorDash and as coached by my married friends I made the effort to gradually sit close together on the couch as each episode moved along. I distinctly remember being so frustrated that I couldn’t skip over the feelings confession part so we could just fast forward to cuddling on the couch watching this show because it just felt so right. Another night he texts me out of the blue that he’s taking stock of what’s good in his life and getting to know me and become friends with me is one of the best parts of his year. The happy tears come and it takes everything in me to not gush about how important he is to me and how much I care about him. We’re getting closer to the breaking point of my chill.

Shortly thereafter, our workplace is throwing this big annual party. My social battery was running low, so I left pretty early but as is our Sunday night tradition at this point I still text Jared before going to bed. He says the party was fun until it wasn't. His heart took a beating, but he’ll survive… he always does. I had never heard him sound this defeated and hurt before. My emotions are bubbling to the surface, but I have the good sense to text Daphne since she’s on the west coast time zone to figure out how to respond. I send her a truly embarrassing voice note of me sobbing and talking about how I hurt when he hurts and want to tell him how much I care about him and how he deserves so much better than people who would treat him poorly. And before I could truly embarrass myself and text all of this to him, Daphne tells me “Bitch, it’s 1am. Go to bed.” In the sanity of the morning, I can send a much more reserved “I’m so sorry. Sending hugs.” text instead of a geyser of emotion at, in hindsight, the worst timing possible. Things fall back into their rhythm, until one day I am in my car on my lunch break with my music library on shuffle and “Wrapped in Red” by Kelly Clarkson comes on. It’s October so arguably too soon for Christmas music, but I let it play because 1) that song is a bop and 2) the lyrics really start hitting.

I’ll never feel you

If I don’t tell you

This Christmas, I’m gonna risk it all

This Christmas, I’m not afraid to fall

So I’m at your door with nothing more

Than words I’ve never said

It’s at this point that I realize I am well past the point where I need to tell Jared how I feel so we both know where we stand. It’s no longer healthy for me to keep harboring these feelings to myself, and the next time there’s an emotional conversation I won’t have the restraint to keep it to myself. However, I don’t want to have this conversation at work and this is too big to have over text message even though that’d be infinitely easier. So conveniently another Marvel movie is coming out in theaters the following week. I ask him to the movie with a hint of flirtation but with platonic plausible deniability. He says yes. I get a little bolder and ask him to dinner beforehand, which he agrees and offers to pick me up from my apartment. Another good sign. One week, dozens of text conversations with friends talking through all the possibilities, and a hundred anxiety spirals later, and Monday night comes around. My outfit was meticulously planned– casual and in character with what I wear normally but the turtleneck has a cleavage cutout to bring a tasteful amount of “va va voom” . We keep mostly to small talk on the ride to the restaurant, and once we are seated the conversation deepens. I mention my limited dating history and get into topics previously mentioned in this essay. Jared opens up and reveals he was in a relationship that ended a few months ago abruptly with his girlfriend cheating on him with his close friend at the time. My heart sinks. I’m hurt he had to go through that, but I also know the result of the conversation I was planning for the car ride home is not going to have the result I want it to have. Fortunately, Wakanda Forever gave me plenty of excuses to cry in the theater. Regardless, the conversation still needs to be had so I start with confirming that the invite to the concert was me asking him out, and from there it all spills forth. The crush and friendship that developed to infatuation, that developed to real feelings, that I could see us being compatible and really working together, that he had everything I was looking for in a partner with the added bonus of majestic hair and being taller than me. I continued that even though he’s been dealing with a lot, it’s still my choice if I want to be there alongside him to shoulder those burdens. We are now pulled into the parking garage for my apartment. He reiterates that he is still processing all that he’s had to go through this year and that (this is a direct quote still seared into my soul) “if there’s a 5% chance that my baggage and what I’m going through could hurt you, I can’t take that risk.” I am doing all that I can not to burst into tears, and so to lighten the mood I say “Don’t read into the fact I got you a Christmas present, Etsy doesn’t do returns.” Which is a silly way to say I’ve been so head over heels for you I bought your Christmas present in fucking August, but I digress. He opens the car door, gives me a hug, and the thought isn’t lost on me that the first time I touch him is an ending not a beginning. And thus began my first true heartbreak.

Naturally, the following days made things worse somehow. I woke up feeling miserable and aching all over. At first I thought it was just a physical manifestation of my emotional turmoil, and forced myself to get out of bed with a pep talk of “You are a freaking professional and you’re not going to call out of work because a boy made you sad. Take a hot bath and pull yourself together.” Then after I proceeded to projectile vomit in the bathtub, I realized I actually had some kind of flu and did actually need to stay home. So I slept through most of Tuesday but was crying for most of the time I was awake. Of course this meant Wednesday was when I started my period, because adding period symptoms on to all of this is exactly what I need. Thus in a moment where I curled up on the floor, nose bleeding from blowing my nose too much, still crying, headache from all the crying, aches everywhere from the flu and Aunt Flo, and wallowing in self-pity that I got a little messy and made a “fishing for attention” post on my Close Friends instagram story. Just a quick slide with text about how I was sick of being sick and sick of crying all the fucking time. I’m not going to lie, I was (admittedly irrationally) irritated that I was feeling this miserable and he’s just getting to have a Wednesday. Lo and behold, I get a text from Jared: “Saw your IG story. How can I help?” – a level of obliviousness which nearly made me throw my phone across the room. At this point, I knew subtlety was not an option. I acknowledged that I had to stop reading between the lines and that he saw me as just a friend and that broke my heart–something I needed to process and he couldn’t help with.

I want to stress that I did not then nor do I now begrudge him for not returning romantic feelings towards me. He was not obligated to feel the same way. However, the bordering on overshare of feelings that I expressed made things abundantly clear where I stood on things and anything said or done at this point was regarded considering that mutual knowledge.

So here’s where the mixed signals began. He responds that he currently sees me as a friend and also he wasn’t ready for a relationship yet. Would he maybe see me differently when he is ready for a relationship? Who knows, it’s possible. And then some more stuff about how he’s sorry he caused me pain, blah blah blah. But my deluded hopeless romantic self still took the dangled maybe of who knows what will happen in the future and ran with it. “This is us at just six months of friendship, stay friends with him and we can be even closer once he heals from his cheating whore of an ex. Maybe if you get back on the bandwagon and lose weight you’ll look more like the girls he usually dates when he’s ready. This is all just bad timing, but maybe your story together isn’t done yet.” The last sentence was the only part of that spiral that was true. This is just a story that doesn’t have the original happy ending anticipated.

Meanwhile, our work Christmas party comes along and I have him pick me up because I’m a passenger princess who doesn’t like to drive outside of my 10 mile bubble but also to still keep the spark going and see where our friendship is at now. It’s a fun night of games and getting to know some of the other managers. There’s a solid group of friends in a similar age range as me that are actually really fun to hang out with. On the ride home, Jared talks about how it’s fun to see me come out of my shell and some of the others get to see me be “not as innocent as I appear”. He also talks about how the group of managers usually hang out on Sunday nights after work and that he’ll talk to the group to see if they’re cool with me joining the next time they go out. I’m honestly so excited at the prospect of a group of friends, I forget to spiral (at least until much later) about how that means our usual 9pm-1am Sunday night text convos must have been when he was out at a bar with friends and all that that implies.

Christmas comes along and he appreciates the thoughtful present I gave him of a coaster laser engraved with the design of his favorite football stadium and a homemade rice krispie treat. And since I gave him the heads up towards the end of Car Ride of Pain that I was getting him something, he had texted me earlier in December that after the hardest time searching he found the perfect present. On Christmas Eve, he shows up at my department on his day of PTO to give me my present. My coworkers are nosy so I wait until my lunch break to open it, which was smart because I teared up when I opened it. And it’s so thoughtful and sweet that I would’ve LOVED this gift as the first Christmas present from a boyfriend. I still love the gift but I’m also confused. So were my Twitter friends.

After Christmas I started hanging out with the group of managers and they were super chill and really welcoming. Towards the latter part of our first hang out there’s the round table topic of “what celebrity would want to have sex with? Man and woman.” One of the guys was debating between Henry Cavill and Jason Momoa and ended up picking Momoa. I joked “Solid pick. Momoa has more grabbable hair.” Jared and his stupid long hair turns to me and loudly says “Hmmmm. I’m learning some things about you.” I go red and my brain short circuits and I can’t think of a response beyond “Yep.” so that’s how I respond and leave it at that. AND THEN, he brings the topic back up after the “Made it home safe?” text, saying that he’s still thinking about my comment on grabbable hair. I quickly respond “So we’re going there?” trying to clarify what we are doing because this is decidedly not platonic. To which he replies, “I guess we are.” This time I did throw my phone across the room. Luckily, it landed in a to-be-folded pile of laundry. I typed and retyped a reply five times. Once my west coast friends got back to me that my idea to respond with “Everyone likes a hair grab. Why do you think I wear a high ponytail so often?” was too dirty, I decided to leave him “on read” and go to bed.

Meanwhile we still have long text conversations with serious topics like being broke af, and silly things like memes about Formula One racing (which I admittedly did get into to impress him but still legitimately enjoy it and have another friend to talk about it with). But now mixed with weirdly flirty stuff like “With the length of my hair right now, I look like Loki in Thor: Ragnarok when I get out of the shower”. Nerd flirting, but definitely flirting. Especially when I have admitted in a conversation when out with friends that I’ve read Tom Hiddleston/Reader fanfiction.

Then one day, I have a truly shitty and overwhelmingly stressful day at work. My parents were on vacation and my sister was on a work trip, so even after everything he was still next in line for who I wanted to talk to to process this. He talked me through the issue and how to best cope with it and then the conversation strayed. It was the first time since Car Ride of Pain that we actually acknowledged what was discussed. He was curious why I spoke to my feelings then. I discussed the times I wanted to bring it up earlier and he confirmed it was for the best that I did not then (especially the night of the big work party). He gave me advice about flirting on apps like Hinge and Bumble, it was kinda weird but I could use all the advice I could get. And then he offered another piece of “friendly advice”. To paraphrase, he recommended that I reconsider my decision not to drink alcohol and make sure I am doing it for me and not because of my upbringing; because guys on dates will worry that I don’t know how to relax and be loose around them if I do not have at least one drink on a date. He even admitted that he thought about what it would be like to date me but the fact that neither me or my family drinks was a problem because he could not see our lifestyles being compatible. Admittedly, my family does not drink for religious reasons. However, when I was old enough I knew I did not want to drink alcohol because of my poor impulse control regarding food and drink (even if that drink is Diet Dr Pepper). When I got to a restaurant, I don’t have a soda, I have seven. Consequently, I made the decision to not even open the door to drinking alcohol.

However, in a series of decisions I am embarrassed and genuinely not proud of, I took his words to heart and decided to experiment with alcohol. I framed it as wanting to build some confidence before I put myself back out there in the dating world, but really I wanted to show that I was fun and cool, and could live in his world. Had some spiked Simply Lemonade to test the waters which was not great but fine. Daphne recommended a rum and coke as a starter drink but when I tried it at home it was so gross that I had to brush my teeth three times after. And then when my friend group went out to our usual bar on Sunday night, I ordered the fruity drink the 22 year old in the group usually orders and inhaled it in about thirty seconds. So I got another. Trying to see what the buzz was really like, when really the biggest rush was the pleased look on his face when I ordered the second drink. In reality, alcohol just makes me sleepy (and want to cuddle but not exactly the venue for that). There was another work party that was BYOB and I brought some fruity Seagrams and when my boss commented this was the first of the parties that I drank at he joked that our friend group was corrupting me. Nearly a hundred bucks later, and the only thing close to a buzz was wanting to go to bed at 11pm one time, and I calculated that I didn’t actually enjoy alcohol at all. It finally dawned on me just how stupid drinking to impress a guy is, and just how terrible Jared’s advice was. That’s not the kind of advice you want from a potential romantic partner, and even more that’s not the kind of advice a good friend would give. In hindsight, I should’ve seen this straight away as a sign that this is not the kind of person to pursue nor the kind of person I should be friends with.

A while after the drinking debacle, Jared has been radio silent for a long time. When we interact at work on occasion, he’s noticeably distant and acting kind of weird. My instinct was telling me to reach out to him just to check that everything’s ok given his previous mental health struggles and also that he still has me (at this point in time) as a friend. Then he shows up to the Sunday night hangout for the first time in forever. A decent chunk of my friend group is chronically and comically late, so it’s me, Jared, and one of the managers with his girlfriend. Jared had stepped away for a phone call earlier in the evening for a while which was… weird, but I still ignored instincts. Then all of a sudden, I look in Jared’s direction and can’t help but see he has a picture of a girl on his lockscreen that is usually some car-related pic. At this point, I really thought I had fully moved on and was okay with being just friends. Even to the point that I was comfortable being frank with him in talking about the time period where I was halfway in love with him. But seeing the photo of the girl, and the fact that he never even dropped a text to make me aware he was dating somebody, made old wounds fresh again. I waved for the waitress to get my check and then it was a race against the clock to not start sobbing in the middle of this bar in front of my friends who know nothing about my history with Jared at this point. Literally as soon as I get my debit card back and sign the receipt, I walk as fast as I can without running to get out of my car and the tears come the instant I make it through the door. It really is a less than pleasant experience to finally be able to relate to Taylor Swift lyrics but he wasn't mine to lose and I really had been living the past several months for the hope of it all. And now that hope is shattered. He was ready to date again, and once again it was not me that he wanted. My romantic dream had always been that I would find someone that really got to know me, and would then decide that they wanted more of me in their life. Once again that did not happen. I opened myself to him in so many ways: the dark thoughts, the imperfections, my hyperfixations and the weird sense of humor that follows, and it was not a package he was interested in. So I cried and I cried that night and mourned the hope of what could have been because it wasn’t going to happen.

So let's see how being 1000% platonic friends with Jared goes. I’m at over 6,000 words in this saga and it’s 2am so I’m going to be more concise in this part. I get an awesome career opportunity to take more responsibility and have a chance to develop a team and demonstrate my leadership skills to senior management. My family and the majority of my friends were super excited for me. I explain the change to Jared and he goes “Huh. That’s an interesting choice.” And in that moment I couldn’t tell which hurt more: him not thinking that I’m going to be great at this and expressing that he’s excited for me or the fact that apparently I still value his opinion of me so damn much. Then it’s July and I’m making plans to celebrate my 30th birthday. In one of our many long text conversations, I had opened up to him about not have friends growing up and then even when I made friends they were long distance, so I was so excited to not just enjoy the festivities of a milestone birthday but be able to have a birthday with friends present that care about me and are happy to celebrate me. So I send the text to the group chat 3 weeks in advance (enough time to make plans around but not so far ahead people forget) with info for a birthday dinner at a nearby restaurant and then potentially seeing Barbie. I even made sure to schedule it after everyone’s shift would be over to ensure as many people as possible could come. Everyone begins to reply that they are coming, including Jared, and then two days later I get a “sorry I can’t go” text without further explanation. And from that point he basically dropped out of my life.

It was then the realization that I had avoided for a while hit. Some of my friends had said throughout all of this that he was putting me on a shelf but being nice enough about so he could always come back later when he needed the ego boost. I didn’t want to believe it and rationalized that couldn’t be the case because my long distance friends never met him and only knew half of the equation. But I now realize how right they were. Jared was going through a shitty time in his life when he got close to me, and in every conversation I complimented him.This made the pattern for him to talk to me when he was feeling down and my unconditional support and adoration made him feel better, and even after the feelings conversation that occurred in the Car Ride of Pain he could keep this pattern going with the tiniest bit of flirting. Then his life got better from the previous year, he’s no longer experiencing professional burnout and got himself a girlfriend again– making no need to go through the effort of maintaining a friendship with me.

So why write nearly 7000 words about this now? Well, it's definitely been a catharsis to be able to let this all out. But the catharsis was mainly needed, because I have been able to ignore all the hurt from July and the 18 months prior by simply not being around him and now I have a mandatory meeting where I see him once a week and have to act all cheery and professional.

On its own a birthday party does seem like a silly thing to end a friendship over, but it really was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was now clear, especially after writing all of this out, that as much as I had thought about him, paid attention to every detail of every conversation, etc. that he did not hold our conversations and our friendship in a remotely similar level of regard. Plainly, I deserve better from people I consider a friend. But in order to heal from the end of a friendship, I have to acknowledge that this all happened and it was a very important part of my life for some time.

Now that it’s written down, he can be just a story. An anecdote to note the end of my twenties. He can be one of the managers that works on the first floor and is neighbors with my boss and one of my friends. That’s it and that’s okay.

The End

#personal essay #not sure if oversharing on tumblr is the smartest move but here we go

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allsassnoclass · 8 months

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hazel!!!! i'm sending you 🧠🤘😈 along with my love 💙 -megs 💙

@igarbagecannoteven hi megs :) this got long so it's all under the cut!

send me a 🧠 for a long ramble about something i’m obsessed with lately

well well well. i'm going to talk about my character at the haunted house :) because i love her and i am obsessed with her and i have so much time to think about her while waiting for people to come into my tiny little oasis of a room. i am especially obsessed with her contradictions!!!! she is best friends with two outsiders but well-loved enough for the entire town to go absolutely crazy about her disappearance. the news stories we show in the haunt imply that she's in elementary school but her missing poster says she's 5'2 and shows a teenager (and also she's played by me, a 24 year old). she is dead but she also can never die. she knows everything going on but she can't properly remember her life (and also sean hasn't given me a journal to turn into her photo diary yet!). her disappearance is the catalyst for the entire storyline but only a handful of patrons actually get to hear about it from her. she's a daddy's girl and he becomes the secondary villain of the haunt because grief turns him crazy but the news stories mention parents plural yet there is no evidence of her mother at any other point in the haunt. her only character traits are that she's blonde and wears green but she's also the most complex character in the entire story. she's a paragon of feminine innocence but she has a guy's name. she has no agency but you can't get the full narrative without talking to her. her room in the haunt is the least scary room but it's a prison and she's trapped there for eternity because it's a memory but it's not even her memory!!!! she is fully reliant on two dudes (her dad or her best friend) to save her but they're both doing a terrible job and murdering a bunch of people instead. her life sucks!!!! but at least she might get to properly die at some point!!!!!

send me a 🤘 for a song rec

oooo let's see! Happy Birthday by Cooper Morrison is about being young but dreading getting older because you feel like things are never going to get better and that you're behind where you should be in life. also i met cooper once because he used to be in a band with/date a friend of mine from high school.

and because promoting women's music is important, Dessa released a new album recently and it's more pop focused than I like from her but I do really like the two songs from it that she had already released, one of which is "I Already Like You"

send me a 😈 for a hashtag hot take

People really, really need to not take songs lyrics as 100% truthful retellings of actual events in the singer's life. Many songs are inspired by personal experience, but there are always going to be aspects of fiction in them. Songwriters are creative storytellers, first and foremost, and they are storytellers who are writing from a specific perspective rather than writing an objectively truthful account. I've seen people prying into Olivia Rodrigo's life to find out who or what her songs are about, when the fact of the matter is that they're all going to have elements of fiction in them. She's telling a story, regardless of what the inspiration for that story was. Respect her privacy and stop trying to dig up her life to connect every line of a song to an actual event. This also really bothered me when All Too Well TV came out and everyone was taking the short film as gospel truth and hating on jake gyllenhaal to the extreme. Was the age gap weird and did he mistreat her? yeah probably. but that doesn't change the fact that ATW TV is a sensationalized retelling that she crafted into a story, and the short film especially is a double-fictionalized version of that story. Basically, everyone needs to be okay interpreting songs in their own way and they definitely need to make their peace with all songs being fictional to some degree.

#ask #megs #igarbagecannoteven #thanks for asking megs :)#slow day at the haunted house today. fast for everyone else but no one was finding my room #but a little girl came in (she's related to a makeup artist and one of our other actors) and she was like #''charli you're really pretty :)'' which was so sweet. like. honey i'm dead and i look dead but i'll pass that on to mari from makeup

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tdcloud · 2 years

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Happy October--Did you get your ticket to the Carnival? (Blog#11)

Happy October! It’s the best month of the year, and I’m not just saying that because my birthday is in a couple more days. This month kicks the MOST ass because spooky season is upon us! The time for horror movies, pumpkin spice everything, and blissfully cool weather is NOW! On top of all that seasonal fun, I hope to see some of you guys at Youmacon this year, too. It’s not being held over Halloween weekend this time, but November 3-6. Keep an eye out on my twitter and website for more information on where to find me and what sorts of goodies I’ll be carrying with me during my meet-and-greets. It’s going to be so much fun, and I can’t wait to see all of you Youma regulars at my last scheduled convention for the year.

Also, while we’re on the topic, be sure to check out my calendar of events as well as we near the end of 2022. I’ve already got one scheduled convention on the docket and several more will announce their AA’s within the next few months. I’m gunning for a pretty full docket in 2023, so cross your fingers that the lottery and jury gods work in my favor—and if you’ve got any convention around the Midwest that you’d like to see me attend, hit me up in my contact form or through Twitter. If it’s drivable and the AA applications are open, I’ll give it a shot!

But wait, there’s more! Man, October really is just chock-full of fun things, isn’t it? This month is also home to a really special event I run every year for my patrons over on Patreon. For this month’s blog, I figured I’d do some shameless promotion by going into detail on the awesome novella I wrote. Maybe it’ll inspire a few of you to head over to Patreon to check it out! The first chapter is up now, and the next ones go live every Saturday of this month, so if the thought of demons, goths, sexualized damnation, and 2008-era levels of Edge aren't enough to entice you, stick around and read a bit more. I think I’ll convince you in the end >:3

Let’s get to it!

Carnival, the working title for this project, began over a decade ago. I was sixteen, goth as all get-out, and prone to sneaking out of the house at 2am to walk to the nearby cemetery about two miles from my parents’ house, and to say that influenced my writing at the time would be an understatement. I enjoyed taking in the quiet that only seems to come out when everyone and everything is asleep, and given I grew up in the middle of a cornfield, there really wasn’t much danger to it—though I’m sure my parents wouldn’t agree had they ever found out XD A lot of my early years were spent soaking in my aesthetics and figuring out what inspired me. Gothic literature and the works of Oscar Wilde were huge inspirations for me back then, and when I realized I wanted to turn my nighttime wanderings into a story, I leaned on them both heavily.

Originally, Carnival was an eighteen-page scrap of fiction involving Damian Walker and a demon named Avery. They were both nothing-characters, just stand-ins for my own developing narrative voice in different skins, and the story itself went nowhere. There was no real plot, no real purpose. It told the story of Damian walking to a graveyard, meeting with the demon he’d met a while back, and flirting his way into a free trip to Hell. There were masks and masquerades, ballroom dancing, underage drinking, and brief, pointless encounters with other demons that went nowhere and did nothing in terms of furthering the story, deepening the characters, or, ultimately, enriching the narrative in any way.

You may think I’m being hard on myself, but honestly, it’s just the truth. I didn’t know how to write a proper story back then, and that included proper characters, proper character voice, plot progression, and everything in between. When I was young, I was almost criminally guilty of only “writing what I knew,” and when you’re sixteen and as green as they come, that meant I barely knew anything at all.

Every protagonist was me. All the other characters were caricatures of friends, enemies, and adults in my life at the time. It made for poorly written stories and empty, bland characters, but we all have to start somewhere, and Carnival, for all its flaws and juvenile aspects, was the first piece of creative fiction I’d ever tried writing outside of school, and was the longest thing I’d ever written for a good long while, too. It’s a bloated piece of fiction with an almost gratuitous amount of figurative language, little to no organic dialogue, and an almost aggressive level of disregard for proper story structure. It’s hard for me to read it now—though it's still published on Fictionpress, masochist that I am—but I owe it a lot for igniting my love of writing at an early age. The people who read it seemed to enjoy it, and their encouragement kept me on the writing path that I’m still on today.

Because of that, I decided to give it a second chance at life, and that brings us to where we are today. Carnival Redux, as I’ve taken to calling this version, is what I think Past Me would have wanted the story to be. If I’d had the skill level necessary to write it at that point in my life, it would have panned out like this. It still involves Damian and a demon—now named Adam since I like the name Avery too much and already have it earmarked for a different character in a different, much more impactful IP—and a trip to Hell where the demons dance with masks and everything feels like Carnivale. This time, however, Damian and Adam feel like very different characters, each with distinct personalities and contrasting desires that cause just as many problems as they solve. There’s an actual throughline of risk and danger, adversaries and false friends who do more than just chat for a moment and disappear into the ether, and the sort of mutual corruption and shared damnation you’d expect from a demonic-flavored queer novella—and hey, this time it actually has smut!

Our official summary is thus: Anyone who has ever lived in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere knows the infinite boredom endemic to such places: no mall, no movie theater, no hope. Damian Walker has lived his entire life in the middle of a cornfield with nothing but his imagination and penchant for the dark and dismal to keep him company. As the Village Goth, he’s ostracized enough to make socializing difficult at best, a chore at worst, and even the local community college fails to do much but remind him of how little he relates to those around him.

It’s probably because of those reasons that he keeps visiting the demon haunting the local cemetery each night—and why he's so eager to see actual Hell when offered a taste of the other side. And if the demon, Adam, never lets him leave? Well, that just adds to the fun, doesn't it?

But the story is, in general, the culmination of over a decade of me blue-balling myself from my first ever original IP, and the satisfactory resolution of all that tension in one ~70 page story.

Our story begins as it always does: in a graveyard and with a college-aged goth standing morosely among the tombstones. Life isn’t easy for a rural goth trapped in cornfield hell. Damian is disillusioned with life in general, disillusioned with the classes he’s expected to go to, and disillusioned with the idea that this is all life has to offer him. The fact that he knows a bonafide demon doesn’t help dissuade those impressions either. Adam exists. Hell exists. And yet nothing has come from any of that. Demons always want something, that’s pretty much a fact, but as far as Damian can tell, Adam seems content to just waste the nights talking and drinking magicked booze instead of corrupting Damian or stealing his soul away.

It’s annoying, to be honest, and Damian has enough. He puts his foot down and dares Adam to do something. Before he can say it twice, Adam ponies up and serves him a ticket straight to Hell.

It’s a simple story with more internal conflict than external and it serves up corruption of the protagonist in a pretty unique way. A big theme in this story revolves around the concept of Hell, both as a place and as an idea. The idea of “Hell is what you make it” comes up several times, both in the presentation of Hell through Damian’s perspective, and the eternal fear living within Adam over what his own personal idea of Hell could be, and how he might create it if he yields to certain temptations. Hell isn’t normally a Carnival. The demons aren’t all dressed in fancy clothing and donned with ornate masks. For Damian, his mortal mind can only comprehend so much. Hell is a masquerade and all of its trimmings are likewise disguised. It’s only in the cracks that he glimpses what Hell truly is, and he’s never left unscathed when he witnesses them. Compound all of those Hellish revelations with the subtle corruption Adam’s been dealing him over the course of their friendship and you’ve got a recipe for a very tasty relationship dynamic.

For all its simplicity, though, I’ve really tried to indulge along the way. This was a story I dreamt up when I was just a teenager so full of edge and angst that I didn’t know how else to handle it than create. For as much as I find my original word embarrassing, I can’t help but be proud of myself for being so enamored with my self-made environment that I spawned a work that big. I imagine most of my readers aren’t writers themselves, so I hope you can understand just how moved I was to spend months writing something that long. I never expected anyone to read it but me. I didn’t have an audience back then. I had no platform upon which I intended to publish it—fictionpress wasn’t a common haunt of mine, and I only posted my story onto it months later when I stumbled over the platform and decided hey, let’s try sharing this. I just—created for the sake of creating. I had a story in my head I couldn’t stand to let wither away inside my imagination.

Despite how easy I make it seem for myself now, writing is fucking hard. No matter how experienced you are, it’s always difficult. I was proud of myself for managing 150 words a night back then. That struggle isn’t invalidated by my ability to now write 5,000 in a day if I put my mind to it. It shows how far I’ve come, but I never would’ve gone anywhere if I hadn’t sat down and committed to putting my edgy musings into words over a decade ago. So, yeah. I’m really happy I got to rewrite this story and give it the modern face lift Past Me never would’ve expected to be capable of. It’s been a nice little love letter to myself, and it’s really made me proud of myself in ways I don’t normally feel when working on my current projects.

I’m sure I’ll cover more of my writer’s journey in future blog posts, so I won’t get into all of that much more here. Just know that this IP started me on the path you see me on now, and that if you feel the cringe or the 2008-era edge in this story as you read it, just know it’s dedicated to the rebellious teenage version of myself who pulled a lot of the shit Damian did and would have given anything—probably even her soul—to have someone like Adam appear from the darkness with promises of something far more decadent than any rural Indiana life could offer her.

Given this is a new story that no one has had the chance to read yet—beyond perhaps a really speedy patron or two—I’ve decided to eschew the normal Q&A segment that would typically be dedicated to questions on the story in favor of opening up the floor to general questions on anything and everything. People seem to be fairly curious about me, my work, and my methods, and this is a good time to address all of that before we dive into future blogs.

Questions come from Instagram, Twitter, and private messages this time!

Do you have any scents that remind you of your characters? I need some new candles for fall.

Hmm, that's an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve thought too much about how everyone smells in any great detail, though I do recall making it canonical that Khouri smells really good. I always figured he smells like spiced musk. It’s not a supremely masculine scent but not fragrant in the way most perfumes are. Like the best natural scent a person can have but with a hint of like, frankincense to it, or cardamom. Does that make sense? If you’ve ever been into incense, he’s like Dragon’s Blood.

I don’t have anything specific for the others, so I’ll just do them rapid-fire with my gut reactions.

Navidae: Navi is 100% scented like a box of potpourri. The man is all about imported spices, herbs, and fancy oils, so he’d smell exotic and head-turning. There’s a hint of something sharp in all that softness though, something almost metallic. It’s a good smell but might go straight to your head if you’re immersed in it for too long.

Sorin: Definitely musky, all those masculine scents like sandalwood and what not, but with sea salt and something crisp to cut through the heaviness. Wild yet open, I’d call it. It’s a regular, mundane sort of smell, but it’s comforting in its simplicity.

Ruari: Oh, he’s all about that “fragrant rot” scent I describe every time dead leaves are the topic du jour. He smells like pure wilderness, earthy tones, very grounding. He’s what you smell when you take up a handful of brown, crinkly leaves and bury your face in your palms and chilly Autumn air. If you find a candle like that, link me.

Corbet: Vellum, old, yellowed book pages, and cold-sweat. If you want something a little more pleasant/potentially a candle fragrance, he’d be mulled wine and dark berries.

Nines: Cologne and spearmint. He smells cold and it stings the nose a little. It’s sharp and a little intense but once you get used to it you’ll find it’s actually a very cleansing, stimulating smell. Keeps you focused.

Gabriel: Warm, freshly baked bread. He smells like a well-used kitchen in the middle of being well-used. Smells like home.

Louis: Flannel and campfire smoke. Herbal tea, homey and warm. He smells pretty good in my opinion, sorta like you know he’d give good hugs that you would want to prolong just to bury your nose in his shoulder to smell him for a bit.

O’Rinn: Sharp citrus, zippy and nose-tingling like when you drink Sunny-D. It puts a pep in your step and might elicit a sneeze or two if you’re not careful.

I hope you found that helpful XD I’m the sort of person who only buys candles that smell like cranberries and apples, so I did the best I could.

Did you have any other animal in mind in regards to Corbet and Tailan?

I’m not sure I entirely follow. Tailan was always going to be a hedgehog because Yougei, my partner, loves them and I always try to incorporate things I know he likes because I’m adorable like that. But if we’re going off vibes alone, Tailan should be a goddamn honey badger given how much attitude he’s got. Corbet… I’ve always had corvid thoughts in regards to him (Ruari is obviously a fox and has some outside-of-canon anecdotes related to one), but my friends and I have made jokes about Corbet being one of those fanged deer. He looks very harmless but you know that boy has teeth XD

What’s your favorite type of vampire in media?

What if I said Twilight? XD But no, I’d say my favorite type of vampire is probably a cross between the shit you see in Vampire: The Masquerade and Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. I love the romantic portrayal—though I can get down and dirty with the monstrous types too, 100%, just read Ossuary—and I adore the inherent eroticism that’s existed in them since Stoker’s Dracula. What I don’t like about those specific media portrayals of vampires is when the powers and special abilities they’re given get a bit too Much. Specifically, gangrels being werewolf!lite types of vampires doesn’t sit well with me. Just be a werewolf? And I’m not overly fond of how Rice’s vampires do magic and read minds. At some point, things get to be too Much for me, and I’d rather have something more restrained.

We’ll get into specifics on my DVerse vampires and all their abilities in future blog posts, but I think if you look at them you’ll see that all of their abilities and traits are fairly restrained with only one specific clan being capable of weird gifts, and those ones are few and far between for a reason. I think I like vampires best when they are humans-made-inhuman but with gifts that are curses when viewed in the right light. Minor pre-cognizance that bleeds into massive distrust and constant anxiety; high status and supreme beauty but with the lack of self-control that comes from inhuman greed and indulgence. I like double-edged swords and vampires that have to pay for their bad habits even after they stop breathing. Rice’s vampires definitely fall into that (I’m looking at you, Lestat), and then V:tM has the uniqueness and fun, almost personality-test sort of bloodlines to keep things fun and create interesting characters who are capable of interesting things.

How do you manage while writing multiple ongoing projects?

It varies, to be honest. Sometimes I find it very easy to hop around between projects—it’s not that dissimilar to my writing process when writing one singular thing, since I don’t always write linearly and will jump between chapters as the fancy comes to me, or within the same chapter as sections come into my head. I think that jumping between projects can help me maintain a constant stream of motivation to work since if one thing begins to bore me I can swap over to something more exciting, write on it until I’m bored, and then swap back, but a lot of that depends on me finding the current assortment of projects interesting for extended stretches of time. I keep very detailed chapter notes, so setting down and then picking back up a project after an extended absence isn’t very difficult, and I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing, so I don’t conflate the tones while writing.

But again, it’s boredom that’s the biggest difficulty for me. I can write a full novel within a few weeks if I only let myself work on it and nothing else, but that’s not a very common thing for me anymore. I think I write as fast as I do because I know I’ll get bored and want to work on the next idea if I don’t churn out the current thing as quickly as I possibly can. You guys probably can’t see it on your end, but the patreon offerings I’ve got going on right now trip me up a lot with this. I’ll write a chapter of Apotheosis, and the first few pages will be like pulling teeth until I’m excited and enjoying the project once more, but after the chapter’s done, I have to immediately switch to Carnival or whatever other thing I’m writing that month, when all I really want to do is work on the next Apotheosis chapter. Then it’s rinse and repeat with that next project. I get the job done, but it’s not always the best thing for my creative process.

It varies though, like I said before. Sometimes it’s a lot easier than all that, and that’s usually the case. It’s how I maintain my steady output and keep things fresh, even if I do get caught up in the weeds every now and again.

Would you like to someday write a really long novel? What would it be about?

Currently, the longest novel I have planned is the penultimate installment to the DVerse, Mortigena. I already released a chapter excerpt from it last month on patreon, since it was actually the first book in the series I began working on before I intended to make it a whole series. It’s slated right now to be 36 chapters long—a good 16 chapters longer than any other book I’ve ever published before—and while I got 100 or so pages into the book before realizing almost all of it will need rewriting to fit the newly created larger canon, those 100 pages didn’t even cover ⅓ of the book’s length. It’s going to be a 300-400k book once I get around to dedicating my full attention to it, and that’s likely the longest novel I can imagine writing right now.

For context, the longest work I’ve put out so far was Letifer which was 160k.

Now, as for what that book is about? Well, I’m sure I’ll cover more of the DVerse specifics in future blog posts, but the long and short of it is that Mortigena is the Charlatan installment of the series outlining the experiences of Cesare di Cambio, a Renaissance-turned vampire artist who is the epitome of his beleaguered bloodline. His sire was actually the first Charlatan, and the story itself outlines a lot of early DVerse history that is referenced throughout the earlier books. It’s a horror-mystery-romance full of murder, forgotten history, and the systematic onslaught of one city’s vampiric leadership structure.

Sharp-eyed readers and fans of the DVerse will have likely noticed that there are only 7 named vampire bloodlines and yet 8 books. Mortigena introduces us to the secret topic of the 8th book and lines everything up for the final installment, Dakethumos.

But back to your question: I don’t have the brain power currently to imagine future projects outside of my current workload of an 8-book series and all these random patreon standalones, so any other super long novel aspirations will likely come to me once I’ve put more of these vampire books behind me.

Which historical topics would you like to write about next?

Hmm, well, I currently have chapter notes written up for a future book about pirates that I’m really excited about! I’m a huge fan of the Golden Age of Piracy and went through a phase during quarantine where I researched that period of history as much as I could. That book project is 20+ chapters and therefore has been put on the back burner until I’ve got more free time under my belt. These vampire books really do eat up a lot of my longform content slots.

The vampire books in general also deal with a lot of my favorite periods in history. I’ve got one planned that takes place in Prohibition Chicago, 1970s New Orleans, a French ship bound for Louisiana in the mid-1700s (research the myth of the Casket Girls, you’ll have a nice teaser of what I’m playing off of then), Post-Renaissance Italy, and even a story that takes place prior to the year 1000 B.C.E.

I think outside of all the planned stuff, I’d like to someday write something set in the 1800s around a lighthouse, maybe something to do with selkie? Once I have more brain power to spare, I’d also like to revisit an old project I teased a while back that was essentially my attempt at playing around with classic noir tropes and settings. There’s also the current story notes I’m poking around with in my spare time utilizing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters—I’m going to make the world regret putting them in the public domain—and so far, I am planning the story as if it is time period accurate to the original Holmes universe, even if I’m writing it from the perspective of Sebastian Moran.

To be honest, I’d actually love to hear what sort of books/stories/concepts/themes/settings you guys would like to see me tackle in the future. My goal is always to write the sorts of things no one else is writing, in ways that no one else seems to approach them, so if it’s within my power or tickles my fancy, I’m always happy to think it over and add it to my list if it makes my imagination run wild. That was how I began writing Aubade, after all.

Why is Megle the best?

Adorably enough, this one is from Yougei himself! He’s very cute and all I can say to answer this question is that I’m only as good as the people I surround myself, the amazingly creative artists and editors and test readers who lend me their skills, and Yougei, specifically, for the support he’s given me since the day we first took up together back in 2016. Everything I do has always been for him, and the skills I’ve learned along the way have only been learned in hopes of bettering my stories so I can give him the sort of books he most loves reading.

So, if I’m the best, it’s only because you’re the best, Yogle <3 That’s all there is to it!

I do want to take a moment here to thank everyone for the questions. It’s probably the thing I look forward to most about these blog posts. I really love getting to engage with you guys and answer questions that otherwise wouldn’t get answered. My whole goal of starting this blog was to give everyone another avenue to engage with me, and it just makes me happy that it’s working out. I hope you all get just as much out of this as I do, and that hopefully it gets you excited for more of my stuff as I make my way through publication hell.

And I am in publication hell. I know I mentioned a couple months back that there might be a publication announcement coming soon. It’s taken a bit longer to finalize than anticipated—it always does, though, so I’m past being surprised by it at this point—but we’re nearly ready to set a date on the release of Infaust. I’m hoping to do something a little special with this release involving custom merch and special pre-order bundles, so get hyped! It’s going to be lit <3

I think that’s going to be all for this month—though really, the month has only just started, and there’s still so much on the way that it’d be a shame to frame it as a conclusion when this is clearly the beginning. If you haven’t yet, please hit up my Patreon to join us for the release of Carnival this Saturday and every Saturday in October. All tiers get to join in on the fun, and even just a $1 pledge helps out a ton in supporting me as I keep writing the stories you want to read. So, check it out, join in on the fun, and be sure to keep an eye out for all the other fun things happening this month. Youmacon is just around the corner, and I can’t wait to see some of you there!

Until next time!

T.D. Cloud

#author blog #carnival #woops im a couple days late here

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