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let-me-luve-you · 3 years

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Crushed

Tom Holland x Twin!Sister

Summary: Reader has a crush on Harrison, but he brings home his new girlfriend

Warnings: Heartbreak, angst, feelings not reciprocated

A/N: This might be my last fic for a little bit. I’m working on me, but I do get random motivation to write and I like to take advantage of it and write when I’m in the mood. Please don’t ask me when I’ll have another fic out.

MASTERLIST BUY ME A COFFEE REDBUBBLE

When Tom brought Harrison home to hangout for the first time, you immediately had a crush. Over the years, you kept your feelings to yourself, but the intensity grew. You loved Harrison. You never told your twin brother and best friend, Tom. Harrison was your friend. He would hate you if he knew your true feelings.

Lately, Harrison has been acting more shy and sweet around you. He would text you everyday to check up on you while he was in France for a fashion show. With Harrison acting like that, you thought maybe he finally had feelings for you. So today, when Tom came into your room to tell you Harrison was back in town, you decided then that you would tell him how you feel.

Tom told you tonight you would be going for dinner and drinks with Harrison as well as Sam and Harryl. So you spent the day getting ready. You didn’t want it to look like you were trying too hard, but you wanted to look your best. Look good, feel good type of thing.

As you were getting ready to leave your bedroom, you heard Harrison greet Tom. You smiled as you listened to their banter. You walked down the hall to the living room to see Harrison’s back. You smiled as he turned to you.

“Y/N!” Harrison yelled as he came over to give you a hug. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been good. Just ready for a good night with good people.” You said with a wink. He laughed. You noticed a woman come stand next to Harrison. Harrison wrapped his arm around her shoulder. You felt your heart fall.

“Y/N, this is Grace. My girlfriend. Grace, this is Y/N, Tom’s little sister.” Harrison said. You faked a smile and said hello to her.

“It’s nice to meet you.” You said trying to hold in all emotions. Your heart was broken. Tom looked over at you concerned when he heard your tone change. You ignored him and continued to smile at the couple.

“Y/N I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. Harrison just adores you like you are his own sister.” Grace said. You felt like you had been stabbed in the heart.

“Should we head out? I'm getting hungry?” You said with a fake laugh.

“Let’s go.” Harrison said, guiding Grace to his car. “Y/N come ride with us.” Harrison yelled as he opened the back door for you. You nodded and moved to the car. After you got in and shut the door, you looked over to see Tom climbing in as well.

“Hope you don’t mind. Harry said he’s swinging by to grab Sam and Pads.” Tom said.

“Not at all.” Harrison smiled before driving off. You sat there quiet. You knew Tom knew something was up but you chose to ignore him. Grace and Harrison talked most of the ride anyways, so the need to input anything never occurred.

After getting to the restaurant and ordering drinks, you finally broke your silence, “so how long have you two been together?” You asked. You looked over at Harrison and noticed him shift uncomfortably.

“Unofficially, it’s been five months, officially it’s been four.” Grace answered and smiled at Haz. You froze. That’s when you noticed him acting different around you. You shook yourself out of thought and smiled at them. “I’m so happy for you.” You said.

Dinner was fine. You felt awkward the whole time since they were still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship and were constantly doing cutesy stuff and touching each other's arms or holding hands. When you finally arrived home, your chest felt so tight that you felt like you couldn’t breathe. You thanked Harrison and Grace for dinner before you ran off to your room. You locked it before burying yourself in your bed. You were trying to get your breathing under control and to hold back the tears. No boy was worth your tears. Not even stupid, adorable blonde ones.

You heard a knock on your door but chose to ignore it. You heard the knob jiggle and a soft grunt. Next thing you know, Tom is right there beside you pulling you into a hug. Before you broke down, you saw Harry and Sam standing at the edge of the bed.

“It’s not fair.” You sobbed as you turned into Tom’s chest. Tom squeezed you tighter and closed his eyes. It hurt him so much to see his twin in so much pain. He shushed you as he ran his hand up and down your back. Once you finally calmed down enough, Tom pulled you away from his chest, “what isn’t fair?”

“Life. Love. Everything.” You said as you pulled away to lay down with your back to your brothers. Tom wasn’t having it and turned you back around to look at him. You scoffed, but sat up and leaned against the headboard, holding the Spider-Man bear Tom gave you when he left to film Civil War.

“Tell us what happened? Because you were so excited to see Harrison and then all of a sudden you were acting like you didn’t want to be anywhere near him.” Sam said.

“I.. I was going to tell him how I felt about him today.” You felt tears at the back of your eyes again. Tom pulled you back into a hug.

“How do you feel about him?” Harry asked softly.

“I love him.” You said before crying even harder. Tom looked back to Sam and Harry with shocked eyes. Tom had told you about the times he was in love, but you’ve never spoken once about love.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked. “Did something happen between you? Did he try to date you and then get with Grace?”

You continued to cry. You couldn’t catch your breath long enough to try to stop crying. Tom kissed the top of your head as he rubbed up and down your back. “It’s okay y/n. Try to breathe for me. Try to calm down for me. I don’t want you to make yourself sick.” Tom said gently.

You took a few minutes focusing on Tom’s breathing and heartbeat. Trying to match yours to his. After finally calming down enough to talk, you were so exhausted. You kept your head on Tom’s chest and stayed hugging him as you finally started to tell your brothers everything.

“I’ve always had a crush on him. Then recently he started acting nicer to me. Not that he wasn’t before, but it felt different. He was also acting shy. I just got it in my head that he liked me too. So while he was gone, I worked on my confidence. When Tom said he was coming home, I figured why not tell him and get it over with. Then he introduced me to Grace.” You sighed. “Did you guys know?”

You felt Tom tense before whispering, “yes.” You nodded your head as you heard Harry agree with Tom and Sam say “no.”

“If I knew how you felt, I would have told you. Harrison didn’t really want to tell anyone yet. He wanted to see if it was going to work out. And he wanted to keep it from fans for a little while.” Tom said.

“I get it.” You said pulling away from Tom to lay down on your bed. You grabbed the Spider-Man bear again. “Love sucks. But I’ll get over it. If he’s happy with her, then I’m happy for him. I’m not going to sabotage it or anything.”

“That’s good to know.” Tom laughed. Sam and Harry each gave you a kiss on the head before leaving the room. “Really, are you okay?”

“No, but I will be.” You said honestly. Tom laid down beside you and grabbed the bear from you.

“I can’t believe you still have this.” Tom said with almost disbelief.

“Why would I get rid of it?” You asked him.

“I don’t know. Figured you would have put it in a box or gave it away. I got this as a joke since you said I probably didn’t actually get the part since Sony had been hacked.” Tom laughed at the memory.

“I love my bear. He’s the one I run to for comfort. Especially when I miss you when you're gone.” You said.

“I’m glad you have it.” He turned and smiled at you. He looked at your tear struck face and red, puffy eyes. He felt bad. “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about Grace.”

“It’s okay.” You whispered and looked down.

“If you ever feel like you need to talk, I’m here to listen. Always. I’ll never judge you.” He said.

“I was just afraid you would get mad at me since he was your best friend.” You said.

“Never.” He said, making you look at him. “I might have been upset, but I would never get mad at you or hate you for your feelings. Heck I dated someone you would occasionally hang out with.”

“I forgot about that.” You laughed.

“So never be afraid of me or my reaction. I’ll always try not to overreact.” He said. “If you want, I can tell Haz not to bring Grace over for a bit. That way you don’t have to see them together.”

“No, it’s okay. It’ll hurt for a bit, but maybe it’ll help me get over my crush.” You said.

“If you change your mind, let me know. I won’t tell him why she can’t come, but I’ll tell him.” Tom said. You smiled at him. “Now, do you want to watch a movie?”

“Gifted?” You asked sheepishly.

“Next time I see Chris, I’m telling him you are obsessed with him.” Tom taunted.

“NO!” You yelled. “I haven’t even met him yet. At least let me meet him before you embarrass me.”

“Okay, okay. Next time I know I’m going to see him, I’ll bring you with me. Then while you're standing right there, I’ll tell him.” You rolled your eyes as Tom laughed.

#tom holland #tom holland imagines #tom holland fanfic #tom holland fanfiction #brother!tom holland #brother!tom holland x sister!reader #tom holland one shot #tom holland au #tom holland x reader #tom holland x holland!reader #tom holland x sister #tom holland x sister!reader #holland!reader #holland!sister #tom holland rpf #y/n holland #tom holland twin #tom holland x twin!sister #tom holland angst

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1ddiscourseoftheday · 3 years

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Sat 29 May ‘21

Production director Krupa, who does tech as part of Louis’ live team, posted a video captioned “won’t be long now” showing a banner with Louis’ smiley on it behind a drumset, with voices audible behind the camera; seems like it was old, from the tour shows that happened in 2020, but we know LT Tour ‘22 is on everyone’s minds behind the scenes with pieces very much currently in the process of being shuffled and arranged and tickets being sold, so it makes sense people are posting about it even though it’s so far away. Anyway does the voice in the video say “Styles when I start the video don’t laugh”? It does sound like it but whoever is there doesn’t laugh and is pretty much inaudible so we’ll never really know who it was but fans ask; why is this yet another example of someone associated with Louis who doesn’t follow any of the other 1D boys (and why would they) except… Harry? hmmm. Well, regardless of that if the voice in the video really finishes up by yelling “bukkake” we don’t want to dig ANY further into THAT but I will choose to believe they are instead yelling “we’re cocky” cause well, they ARE! What are they doing here! Plus then we don’t have to uh get into that other thing (bukkake). Krupa, enjoying the response to all that, then posted a picture of the bass drum head with Doncaster postcode taped on that had been used on tour. Robert Harvey (the songwriter from yesterday) is also enjoying the high of Louis-related posting and fan attention and charmingly joked about people being there to see his workout content.

“You don’t see a lot of Nialls around,” said Niall, who is in business with a guy named Niall Horgan, while being interviewed by a guy named Niall Grey, and shares some of the ways people say his name- “Neil, Noel, Nigel,Howoon, Heran”, plus “some of the lads call me Nelly”. He also said he’s “in the studio again, writing the third album and this is feeling really good. Hopefully I can get it out, I don’t really know when. When the world is all vaccinated & ready to go, I’ll probably try and get out on the road again” (and he says he was in the studio yesterday, how does he have TIME with all the promo?) In today’s entry into the tell all we’re compiling one sentence at a time over years, Niall says that the reason he just sat there during the whole “pregnant lady going into labor” nickelodeon prank (played on a young 1D for televised laughs, HAHA watch Harry stress the fuck out-- hilarious! :| ) was that he realized it wasn’t real right off (and that he went and spoke to someone who told him to get back in there), but to be fair is it tell all material given that he says right in the original video post-reveal part that he knew? He also said, “I'm pretty carefree, I care less now. I used to be really agitated and wanted to be doing stuff all the time and it [2020] really gave me an opportunity to step back from things. You didn't have to be moving all the time to be yourself,” and that yes he DID spend some time with his special friend (Amelia) during quarantine, “we have been doing a lot of cooking, it made lockdown a lot simpler... I think I would have gone mad on my own,” and “it was good to be at home and chill out, I feel bad saying that with all that's going on in the world but it was a nice thing.” Anne Marie said about the video “I was driving because back in the day, there wasn't a lot of pictures of women driving a car. So I took the control- we did nearly die. It was all hills and stuff, going round the corner of a hill, and I couldn't turn it, so we nearly died” and “I LOVE US,” and Niall said "if you don't like it, don't listen to it" about the single; StreamOurSong trended.

And an unseen picture of Harry from his shoot with Tim Walker was posted; he’s sprouting from earth like a beautiful flower, just like the ones he is draped in, fantastic! And museums are reopening to display Harry’s clothes all over the place; first the grammy museum, now the Victoria and Albert in London has at last reopened their doors, allowing the masses in to see the famous JW Anderson patchwork cardigan in the, uh, wool. Everyone wants some of that Harry Styles™ magic for their business! Even indie rock musicians; duo Bachelor’s new music video is all about getting some of that Harry magic for themselves. The two play exaggerated caricatures of harries, who happen upon someone they mistake for Harry and kidnap him and keep him in their basement (where they force him to sing Stockholm Syndrome repeatedly? No! Truly a missed opportunity, disappointing). The video is “about the dark side of fandom” they say, SIGH. Well, they may have portrayed fandom in the worst possible light, but at least they threw some money at the women they were condescendingly mocking while they were at it, their fan made product budget must have been huge-- like c’mon, just those redbubble bedspreads cost a fortune!

#Louis tomlinson #harry styles #neil horoon #nigel horgan?#niall horan!#anne marie #krupa #amelia woolsey #all the love to my stringers today while I’m slightly hamstrung bless you xoxoxox to megan and to larrylimericks #who I truly can’t believe doesn’t get more attention you should go follow for like... this but much shorter AND rhyming #an upgrade probably I talk way too much #29 may 21

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chunkysoup22 · 3 years

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my controversial dsmp take is that it’s the first day of school. i wake up at 7 AM but the FACT is I can never get off of my mattress. The first thing I do is watch GeorgeNotFound’s ice challenge video, then I work on my hamilton au fanart of TNTduo. When I get up, I salute to the L’manburg flag hung on my wall. I sing, “I heard there was a special place, where men could go and emancipate the tyranny and bloodlust of their rulers..” Then I rush downstairs and pour myself a bowl of Antfrosted Flakes. After breakfast I start to get ready for school. I put on my clout goggles and striped LAFD beanie. Then I fasten my white bandana to my head and put on my Dream 20 million limited edition black fleece hoodie. I catch the bus just in time and put on Roadtrip on my phone, humming “20 hours in an old van Up the east coast, through the cold wind Drove 20 hours by the ocean Up the east coast, what a road trip.” The bus drops me off and when I enter the school doors, someone comes up to me and says “nice hoodie, DREAM STAN” and throws a cup of coffee at me, staining my clothes. “Honk you” I mutter under my breath, and I pull out Nightmare from my Dream Team custom backpack that i bought for $53 on Redbubble. They tremble before me begging me not to hurt them. i let them off with a warning and let them know that i have the power of DreamXD and CaptainSparklez by my side. During my morning classes I can barely keep my eyes open, the only thing preventing me from falling asleep is me secretly watching the current Benchtrio stream part 5 of their plan to kill Dream in prison from my phone under my desk. For lunch I order a dream burger and manage to pick it up from the local MrBeast Burger before the bell rings. I wolf the whole burger down while i run to class hoping I won’t be late. I apologize to the teacher, Mr. Wastaken, but he says it’s okay because it’s still just the first day of school. For todays class he teaches how to do a .08 sec boat clutch from the 5 Hunters VS 1 Speedrunner episode of Minecraft Manhunt. I try to pay attention but I can’t stop doodling the Las Nevadas crew in my notebook. After school is finally over, I go home and enter Quackity’s discord vc where everyone is calling out for Scatman’s world. I spend an hour doing homework while simultaneously switching tabs between Discord, Twitter, and the 5/5 Feralboys Speedrun vod, and watching SAD-ist’s Dawn of the 16th animation in the background. At 5:30 i boot up minecraft and enter the server ip for Bootwt prom’s second lobby. A mcyt hater hacks the server and starts saying “all of mcyttwt is going to superhell” Then Ranboo and Tubbo walk on stage holding the lgbt ally flag and then destroys the hacker with a single beam of light. everyone starts clapping and cheering. Then, a single message pops up on the screen: “WilburSoot has joined the game.” Wilbur walks onto stage to reveal a button sealed under a trap door. He says, “it was never meant to be” and the entire server explodes and becomes engulfed in flames. The server shuts down. Bootwt prom is over. After the prom, I participate in #Bootwtselfiday and immediately get 1.2k retweets and 64k likes. Then I read the entirety of Passerine while listening to Turn Back Time by Derivakat and cry. Finally, I go to bed with my minecraft manhunt shirt on listening to Roadtrip once again (slowed and reverb). As i hear Dream sing “People change like the tides in the ocean at least I think or am I dead wrong” i slowly drift into sleep, ready for a full night’s rest.

i can see hannah baker smiling at me

#im only posting this so tumblr can be enlightened to it #dsmp

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andawaywego · 4 years

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here are some important links for all things Damie of mine for The Haunting of Bly Manor.

you can read my prompt responses here or on ao3 right here!

somewhere that’s green: When Jamie finds a strange and unusual plant, it seems like things might actually get better.

But they don't.

Not even close.

[or: a Damie-style Little Shop of Horrors AU written by me and my wife]

my superhero AU to catch them if they fall is no longer posted. however, you can still check out the amazing art done for super!Dani by @dani-b-goode, which are available on Redbubble here and here!

how love burns through: “Some people, maybe, she has time to think and then Dani is kissing her again. Sighing with relief into Jamie’s mouth, giggling the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard and, okay. This is something she might be able to keep.”

[or: Jamie learns that some people might be worth the effort.]

our bodies possessed by light: “It’s been only a few days, yes, but there is something of a promise in Jamie’s eyes already. Something like: ‘I’m with you. I’m with you. It’s you. It’s us.’”

[or: Dani stops running long enough to get the girl.]

cherry-colored love (on and on and on): “‘And I know you already have a soulmate,’ she says to Jamie, the soft-eyed, North star love of her life, gone pale and careful. ‘But every time I touch you, I can’t help wishing it were me.’”

[Dani tries her best to hide from Fate. Too bad it finds her anyway.]

just give it time: "So: this is what it’s like to be marked, this is how it feels to belong to someone. Jamie thought it would hurt more. It doesn’t hurt at all. It doesn’t burn or ache or jab."

[Jamie doesn't believe in love. Right up until she does.]

your whole perspective gets hazy: “It’s not that the words aren’t true. They are. But the thought of ever actually allowing Dani to read them—to know that Jamie, her friend and colleague, has been having pornographic fantasies about her is disastrous.God, she’s really far gone, isn’t she?”

[or: that Atonement letter mishap Damie style]

and they were roommates: Jamie is lovesick and over it. Dani is semi-oblivious and has a boyfriend in America. Oh, and they're roommates. What could possibly go wrong?

[or: Jamie and Dani host their own teen angst variety show.]

one day at a time: "'This six feet thing is killing me, Jamie,' Dani says, voice cracking with emotion. 'If I don't touch you right this second, I think I'll actually go crazy.' And, well. Jamie knows the feeling."

[Quarantine is the worst. Having a hot neighbor helps.]

if the fates allow: Jamie hates Christmas and doesn't believe in love. Dani Clayton might be able to change that.

[or: a The Holiday AU]

shame on everyone (involved): Dani and Jamie getting together through Hannah's (reluctant) perspective.

it’s all or nothing: “‘I love you,’ Jamie says. ‘More than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. And I know it’s selfish...that it’s asking too much, but please...close the door for me. Because I can’t do this anymore.’

Dani’s fingers curl into Jamie’s hair. She’s crying and Jamie wants to kiss away each tear. ‘I can’t. I don’t know how,’ she admits, a sob breaking apart the words. ‘I don’t know what to do.’”

[or: a Married at First Sight AU that possibly only i want.]

what are friends for?: “I-I just don’t want things to be...weird between us,” Dani says, feeling her face get hot under Jamie’s bewildered gaze. “And they are.”

“I love that you think going down on me is going to make things less weird.”

[Dani hasn't been kissed in two years. Jamie offers to fix that. Things get weird.]

tales from the friend zone: Dani has a tendency to be a bit too honest when she drinks.

Jamie handles it about as well as you'd expect her to.

[or: how to get from the friend zone to the end zone.]

#i saw someone else do this and thought it was smart #so thanks to whoever that was #it is #the haunting of bly manor #damie

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fascinationuniformed · 2 years

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Big Patreon Updates!

Hello, friends.

READ IT ON PATREON HERE.

You may have noticed that all of the Tiers have been rewritten, improved, or otherwise changed.

I have been mulling this over for a long while and finally sat down on Friday (at a very nice local library) to both simplify and improve the offering. After a couple of years of doing this, I think I've got an idea of what people who are so very kind enough to enable me to make more and more sexy smexy content seem to want.

So, I have modified some of the tiers that felt... lackluster and have proved to be a colossal failure on my part, and improved the ones that have done really well. Any changes will NOT be retroactive, and anything I've posted in the past will remain available as it currently stands.

Again, this whole thing, the crowdsourcing of creative labour, is still new and strange to me. So if any of the changes are a big dumpster fire NO for you, please let me know.

But, to summarize, biggest changes:

1. Sketches: I have kept all my self-initiated work public to Patreons before I go and publish them. But I feel that this no longer functions in the current format. Now, the smallest Patreon support will be exclusively for sketches, and updates on my goings-on. Which means I will be posting a lot more content on the process of how I make things.

2. Finished Illustrations: I have made it obvious that I will always make my self-initiated and commissioned work freely available at some point. I make all of these for people to enjoy. But, as of now-ish, if you want to see the finished illustrations months before anyone else, you'll have to join the "Sneaky Peaky" tier. But to make it more attractive, I'll also be throwing in views of other work I am getting on to. For example, a fantasy adventure comic me and an artist friend are working on. And maybe even the script to my Power Rangers comic.

3. Chibi Commissions: I've added a new tier. Chibi commissions! Wooh. Kind of self-explanatory, that one.

4. Flash Fiction: I've been mulling this tier for a good while and have decided to keep it. Over February I got into the habit of writing short pieces of fiction prompted by photographs, roleplays or other material and it was really, really fun. As such, I'd like to offer people the chance to request written content in a more formal way.

Wait, there's more!

But that's not it.

There are a couple of things I am still working on that I want to add to Patreon, as well as to create some synergy with other platforms to give people more options. Personally, I do not trust a single platform and would rather join up with other folk to create our own website with content available to people. You know, as if it were 2007. But that is not something I can do now.

So, as I continue to review what Fascination Uniformed is for me and for you, here are some of the things you can expect this month:

Archive of Art, Stories and Captions: I know, I've been promising this one for a long time. But finally realized I was overthinking it. So, it will be a Dropbox link. It will have organized folders with all the work I've made publicly available, and perhaps some I've even forgotten to upload. This one will be a Patreon Tier at 5 of your local currency.

Videos and Timelapses: I've filmed myself drawing some things of the last year. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I don't. My main issue is that I am hopeless when it comes to video encoding, so the files always end up being HUGE and with crap quality. But maybe it is time to actually make use of these.

Merch: I am investigating whether to offer Pre-Orders for three bundles of prints, badges, and collected comic zines for people. This one I first need to test and see if people want. But, otherwise, I may open a RedBubble shop and see if people wanna get kinky prints for their walls. Dunno, it is an idea.

So... yeah. And, as usual, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas about my plans. I sort of sprung this one out of the blue, but I just had to make it happen. Finally.

Enough of me rambling.

#patreon #blog #big update

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not-so-mundane-after-all · 4 years

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Apparently Tumblr has a 100 links per post limit so not every fic will be linked here.

What you'll find here:

DC Titans (66 works)

His Dark Materials (8 works)

Marvel Cinematic Universe (2 works)

The CW Arrowverse (1 work)

Star Wars (1 work)

Harry Potter (1 work)

Riverdale (1 work)

The Shannara Chronicles (1 work)

And please check out my Redbubble shop for some amazing merch with my art!!!

Sebastian Sanger was a… complicated person to crack.

The Holy or The Broken Hallelujah - Graysonfam, fluff and angst, part of DC Titans Naughty or Nice 2022 Collection

The Grayson Family decides to drop by Clay's new house while on their way back from Metropolis. Things take a surprising turn when Uncle Clay offers to take them down a sweet memory lane.

Never Really Over - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, angst/hurt/comfort, post 4x04

She looks exhausted.

That's the first thing that catches Dick's eye when Bernard opens the door to the safe room and Rachel steps outside. [...] She turns around briefly, waving a hand at Sebastian who gives her a shy smile from the inside of the room and waves back, before she nods in thanks to Bernard and lets him seal the room shut again.

Bernard leaves them in a hurry to give them privacy and the silence starts stretching in the hall as the seconds pass.

Rachel seems like she doesn't quite want to step away from the door. Like something is keeping her there.

Someone.

Queen of The Night, Princess of Darkness - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson/Kory Anders, angst/hurt/comfort/AU

After making an impulsive decision to follow the vampire prince Dick Grayson on his late-night walk through Gotham City, vampire huntress Kory Anders makes a surprising and interesting discovery that shakes up her view on her target and the world she lives in.

-----

Inspired by and set in If You're Evil, I'll Forgive You, a Dickkory vampire AU written by my girls, ambeauty (Ceselle1024) and escapism-through-imagination (here_to_escape)

The Power of a Memory - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, angst, hurt/comfort, season 4 speculation/slight AU

When Rachel lost her powers, he offered his help immediately upon hearing the news. Said he had theories - and resources - and, if they are willing to let him, he'd like to test them out.

All in all, he seemed like a nice guy.

And yet, there's something about him that doesn't let Dick leave Rachel alone with him.

Partition - Dickkory, fluff and smut

After a boring night at a fancy charity gala in San Jose, Dick and Kory have some fun on their way back home. Things get... nasty, so...

Driver roll up the partition please.

It's Alright, Just Wait And See, Your String Of Lights Is Still Bright To Me - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, angst, comfort, pilot episode AU

Every time he keeps wondering why he even cares. These noble goals surely weren't what pushed him to wear this suit and take this mantle in the first place. No, it was that burning desire for revenge. That grief he didn't know how to deal with [...] That overwhelming rage he needed to let out somehow. [...]

But then he comes back to his apartment. He sees a slice of pizza left for him on the counter in the kitchen, a book abandoned on the couch. He sees a brand new drawing attached to the pinboard and soft yellow light filtering into the dark space of the living room from behind the bedroom door.

And he knows why.

[...]

It's like a switch has been flipped the second he steps through the threshold. He's no vengeance here, no rage or fear. He's the opposite of those things now, the other end of the spectrum.

For her, he has to be.

------

Pilot episode AU. What if Dick had met Rachel a lot sooner than when the story starts?

I Like Shiny Things - But I'd Marry You With Paper Rings - Dickkory, Graysonfam, fluff and humor

Dick and Kory are heading out for their first official date as a couple. Both are nervous as hell. Their kids are helping them prepare and providing a much-needed emotional support. Not that they have their own agenda in the whole thing or anything...

Hey, Angel - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Dickkory, fluff and angst, multichapter, part 2 of So Close, Worlds Apart series

"Hey, Angel.

Is it weird? Calling you that? I know you wouldn’t call yourself that, you wouldn’t even think of it. But here I am, sitting on my bed in this giant palace taken straight out of a fantasy book and that worn-out leather bag you always carried with you ever since we’ve met, now filled with a bunch of my stuff, is the first thing that made me smile, like really made me smile in five days. And not for the first time (and certainly not the last) I’m thinking - Angel. You’ve been my guardian angel since day one and you’re still doing your job even when I’m thousands of miles away from you. Talk about dedication."

----

While spending her time learning and training on Themyscira, Rachel feels homesick and longs to talk to her favorite person. She can't call him or text him, but Dick still provides her with a way to share her thoughts with him - all she needs is a sketchbook, a pencil and a few written down words.

He was counting the days - she is writing letters.

Counting Down The Days (Until I'm Whole Again) - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Dickkory, fluff and angst, multichapter, part 1 of So Close, Worlds Apart series

After Donna dies and Rachel goes away, Dick starts counting down the days until he sees them again and tries to live as if a piece of his heart isn't missing. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes... not so much.

Pre-game Meal - Dickkory, fluff, humor and heavy smut, one-shot

"Are you sure you don't have, let's say… five… ten more minutes?" She asks innocently as she gets closer, barely able to contain a smirk.

Dick instinctively moves closer as well, drawn to her orbit, feeling the temperature in the room rise up. "What do you have in mind?" He all but growls, his voice laced with heat.

Kory meets his heated gaze with a fire of her own, her lower lip caught between her teeth as her hand rests palm flat on his chest.

"Oh nothing, just…" She smooths over his shirt, effectively sending sparks over his skin underneath before her fingers wrap around his tie and she yanks him closer to herself. The second their bodies slam into each other and Kory angles herself so every inch of her is pressed against him, Dick knows he's a gone man - and she knows it too, because there's no way in hell she can't feel how hard he is already.

Her smile is nothing short of devilish when she holds him by his tie like he's on a tight leash. A very short leash. "I'm just going to make sure you're thinking of me while you're with her."

___

s03e08 AU. Kitchen scene rewrite.

Tellin' You The Way I Like It, How I Want It - Dickkory, fluff and heavy smut, one-shot

“So this is it?” Dick grunts out through gritted teeth, holding onto the armrests so hard his knuckles bleached. “You’re going to tease the living shit out of me but not let me get a taste? Out of spite?”

Kory graces him with a triumphant laugh. “You do not keep the Queen waiting, darling. But the Queen can keep you waiting as long as she pleases.”

_____

Dick's latest trip to Gotham lasted a bit longer than it was supposed to. His girlfriend welcomes him home in a very special way.

A Reason To Smile - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, dluff and angst and humor, one-shot

Rachel walks into the room and drops on his bed. "And you're… working out? At this hour?"

"Old habit." Dick says as he shakes the shirt out. "Training helps me take my mind off things."

"Hm." Rachel bites at her lower lip, seems to be considering something, weighing her options before she looks back at him and asks, "Can you teach me?"

Now he's the one raising a brow at her, frozen in the middle of getting dressed. "Teach you? Teach you what?"

"Yeah, you know… Self-defense for example."

-----

Neither of them can sleep. But together they find a way to chase away their troubles with some learning, some talking and a little bit of laughter. Set during 1x02.

Can't Fight The Moonlight - Dickkory, Graysonfam, DK smut, humor, angst, fluff, one-shot

After finally deciding to solidify their family, Dick and Kory started trying for a baby, but the process turned out to be surprisingly challenging. Tonight their evening plans had to be put on hold because The Church of Blood arrived in San Francisco and Titans had an important job to do.

And Titans job needs to be prioritized, right? Even when the party's boring as hell, your target is nowhere to be seen and the love of your life looks way too good in that fancy outfit they're wearing tonight.

Right.

Ready, Set, Don't Go - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Dickkory, fluff, angst, comfort, one-shot

Every time he looks at her he feels like he's seeing double. He sees this confident woman, happy and carefree, right on the edge of adulthood and then he sees a girl he'd met in Detroit, with mascara smudged from tears creating shadows under her eyes, terrified but stubborn as hell. And he's struggling to merge the two versions together, the images clash, the new is overtaking the old, change settles and becomes permanent.

And this change is the thing that brings dread into his bones.

-----

How do you deal with your kid growing up? Simple. When you're Dick Grayson - you don't.

Post season 3. During the roadtrip.

Come To Your Senses (Baby, Come Back Alive) - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff, angst, comfort, one-shot

After the purple rain stops and dust settles back over Gotham, the team reunites at Wayne Manor. But Rachel can't quite settle into the peace and quiet of the aftermath of their battles when she's pleauged by images of a dead body lying on wet pavement and blood sinking into the ground. She can't get rid of her grief, she can't push it down anymore, not even when the one she's grieving for is standing right in front of her.

A missing scene from season 3 finale.

If There's a Heaven (I Know The Angels Gotta Be Listening) - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff, light angst and comfort, one-shot

During her time on Themysicra, Rachel took a trip to the Underworld to find Donna's soul and guide it back to the land of the living. But she found someone else instead and now it's time for her to share the tale of that unforgettable experience. After all, she never thought she would get the chance to meet John and Mary Grayson.

Wicked Game - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Dickkory, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, DK smut, AU multi-chapter, a collaboration with @wonderbatwayne

Everybody plays a game. Every move counts, anyone, can be a player. Some play dirty, some play nice, everybody's got eyes on the main prize.

In a world of deception, money, and power, where women are forced to dance with the devil in the name of survival, where men need to break their oaths to do the right thing, Dick Grayson is on a mission to win. A man with a plan, with a goal and a target. Trigon Azarath needs to be eliminated by any means necessary. He's been playing a very long and calculated game, and it has to stop now.

But what happens when a little ballerina with raven hair and a guarded heart, a girl who shouldn't even exist for all he knows, spins the table on him like the pirouettes she does on stage? When a woman with green eyes and a bloody past sets his world ablaze instead of being just a step on the road to victory? Will sticking to the rules be worth the outcome?

It's a wicked game to play, indeed.

When I'm Dead And Gone, Will They Sing About Me? - Graysonfam, Dickkory, angst and hurt/comfort, one-shot, s3 finale fix-it

He should have known better than to push his luck. He should have seen the warning signs, listened to the pleading and begging of those around him who did see them from a mile away. There was a way to predict this, to prevent this from happening. This outcome was there right in front of him all the time, a trap at the finish line masqueraded as a grand prize and he simply refused to look through the veil of illusion.

So when the bullet hits his neck, time runs out.

-------

Season 3 fix it/3x12 & 3x13 rewrite. An introspection into Dick's mind during his death, reunions he didn't get but should have, him getting his shit together.

Till The Stars Burn Out - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, angst and hurt/comfort, one-shot

The feeling in his chest grows stronger and urges him to do something; slowly, Dick walks up to her, his hand instantly reaching to the small of her back, palm resting gently between her shoulder blades. "Okay, what's with the tears?" he asks softly, leaning in to catch sight of her face. "Rach?"

She turns away from him, clearly not wanting him to see her tears. But he did, he saw the wet trails marking her cheeks, gleaming silver in the moonlight. Trying to remain patient, even though worry is eating at him from the inside, he waits, counting down seconds passing in silence.

"I can't keep acting like nothing happened, Dick," Rachel says finally, shaking her head. "I can't do it."

-------

While the team is camping by the lake in the woods on their way back to San Francisco, Rachel struggles with the events of the past few days that took place in Gotham. A very necessary conversation. Post season 3.

Press Play - Dickkory, Graysonfam, fluff and humor, DK smut, one-shot

"Look," she sighs, running a hand through her thick curls. Her heartbeat is breaking all speed limits in this city combined, but she needs to get this thing off her chest, otherwise it will suffocate her. "I know we've decided to put pause on… whatever was going on between us, but it's becoming pretty clear we're having a problem sticking to that decision."

His voice is a low rumble coming from his chest, his warm breath brushing her cheek when he speaks, "So what do you suggest we should do about it, Princess?"

Post season 3. Dick and Kory had caught themselves slipping way too many times since coming back to San Francisco. It's time they talked this out before they combust.

There's Just This Waiting Game And I Don't Know How To Play - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Kory Anders and Rachel Roth, Dickkory, Graysonfam, angst and hurt/comfort, one-shot

"How… How is Rachel doing?"

Dick takes a deep breath, "To be honest, I don't know." He admits with a beating heart. "We can't really tell and it scares me. Physically everything seems to be fine, she's just resting, but… The power she holds can be too much sometimes. One of the reasons she went to Themyscira was to learn ways to control it, ways I'm not able to teach her. And bringing Donna back… it's the biggest thing she's ever done. She had never used that much power before and it nearly killed her. We patched her up but we can't help her regain her strength back, we can only sit and wait."

And he's already sick of waiting. He's tired, he's scared, he's not sure how much more he can take.

Season 3 AU (mostly 3x09). Rachel arrives in Gotham a little bit differently.

It's Like The Ground Beneath You Suddenly Gives Way - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, angst and hurt/comfort, one-shot

It's nothing new, her sneaking into Dick's bed at night, she can still hear his voice in her head as clear as it was yesterday, telling her she can always come to him if she needs to. And now it feels like she needs it more than ever before.

The nightmares came back and Rachel isn't strong enough to face them alone. They were different this time, but the ones she had experienced before pale in comparison.

Missing scene from season 3 finale

Lone Ranger, Please Come Home - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Dickkory, Graysonfam, angst and comfort, extended scene, one-shot

"Where are you going?"

Dick slows his step, then turns back to her, "I'm gonna go find him."

"You lost a lot of blood, you need to take it easy."

He throws a glance at his wound, calculating his chances. He's got worse in the past, the white lines of scars on his shoulder a proof of that. A bullet wound is nothing. "I'm alright."

Throwing her one last hard look he whips around and heads for the exit, his t-shirt wrapped around his hand. He needs to get going, he already wasted enough time for-

"What would I tell Rachel?"

3x06 scene rewrite

If You Come After Family, We Show No Mercy - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, angst, hurt/comfort, protectiveness, one-shot

"How is that little witch girl, by the way?"

Dick's hands go still, a jagged edge of the can almost digging into his finger. He stares at Crane, hoping his mask doesn't break. His hands grip the can tighter as a way to stop them from trembling. Outside he is a statue, silent and impenetrable, but inside the clouds are already gathering, ready to unleash the storm of a century. If this psychopath says even one more word...

Crane seems to see through that facade, for the corner of his mouth twitches slightly as it rises with satisfaction. "What was her name? Ah, right… Rachel."

3x04 AU.

Reignition - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Dickkory, angst & hurt/comfort, multichapter, part 3 of The White Raven series

The only way forward is back.

Dick is stuck in a coma because of the power that's surging through his veins - the power that rightfully belongs to his daughter. The mysterious white raven from his dreams takes him on a journey to reignite Rachel's spark - and learn a bit about her and himself in the process.

While he's trying to figure out his way back, his family is trying to deal with the aftermath and take care of him as well as they can, hoping against hope they'll find a way to wake him up.

The White Raven Part 3 - a sequel to Purification and Sacrifice.

Throw Me To The Wolves and I Will Return Leading The Pack - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff & light angst, one-shot

Dick just stays where he was, pressing a hand to his bruised ribs, not able to tear his eyes off the mysterious new arrival, his heart beating loudly in his chest.

Because he'd recognize those strings of black energy anywhere. Same as the chipped off black nail polish and that little ring with a small blue stone on her right hand that shines and glimmers when she reaches to her hood.

Based on the shots from the season 3 trailer.

Not the Last but One of Many - Dickkory, Graysonfam, angst & hurt/comfort, one-shot, Part 9 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

He can't think of it as their last kiss, because it isn't. It can't be. It's only one of many they have ahead of them - a whole lifetime they will spend together because he is not losing her today.

Kory is the only one who can finish Blackfire and put an end to this. But there's no way Dick is gonna let her turn this into a goodbye.

Tumblr Prompt.

Kisses | 10. goodbye kisses and 27. desperate kisses

Good Men and Women NOT Doing Nothing - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth and Garfield Logan, hurt/comfort & fluff, one-shot, Part 8 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

There's something different about Gar when he walks into the kitchen one morning and the reason behind it is deeper than Dick initially thought.

Tumblr prompt.

Touching | 12. pushing a strand of hair behind their ear

Reach For My Hand, Let My Voice Guide You Through The Darkness - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, angst & hurt/comfort, one-shot, Part 7 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

The space around him was pitch black. He couldn't see a thing, not even the outline of his fingers when he carefully lifted his hand in front of his face. It was time to figure out how he got here.

But that's the thing - he didn't remember much, the only thing his memory could reach was the feeling of the ground shaking beneath his feet and his own voice, hoarse and croaky, shouting at Rachel to run.

Oh God.

What happened to Rachel?

Tumblr prompt.

Touching | 28. feeling for each other in the dark

Can't Stop The Feeling - Garfield Logan and Conner Kent, friendship, humor & fluff, one-shot, Part 6 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

Conner has no clue about dancing. So Gar tries to teach him.

Tumblr prompt.

Hand-holding | 5. Platonic hand-holding

It's Good To Be Home - Graysonfam, fluff and humor, one-shot, Part 5 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

The Wayne Manor was truly breathtaking.

Rachel heard a few stories about the place from Dick and from Donna, she even got to sneak a glance at it through their memories but actually seeing it with her own eyes was a whole different experience.

The car slowed down rounding the fountain and her heartbeat sped up in her chest.

They were here.

Set in season 3.

Tumblr prompt.

Hugs | 13. Group hugs, Core Four

Heaven Is a Place on Earth - Dickkory, Graysonfam, fluff ans hurt comfort, one-shot, Part 4 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

Stargazing was really relaxing and helped with her shattered nerves but Kory knew deep down she needed something more.

Tumblr prompt.

Hand-holding | 43. raising the other’s hand to their lips to kiss it softly

Safe Haven - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, angst and hurt/comfort, one-shot, Part 3 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts

"The answer is simple, Grayson. Five years ago in this very place you took what's mine away from me. Now I'm taking what's yours."

2x07 AU

Tumblr prompt.

Touching | 8. shielding the other one with their body

Locked Myself In a Cage and Threw Away The Key (But Your Gentle Hands Had Set Me Free) - Dick Grayson and Garfield Logan, fluff and hurt/comfort, one-shot, Part 2 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts, also posted on Tumblr

It wasn't really the sight that made him feel this way, or the pain of the cut. It was the touch of the warm liquid creating a puddle inside his palm. The bitter smell of metal that hit his nostrils. The Tiger inside of him came awake, letting out a restless growl and started clawing at the walls of its cage, demanding to be set free.

Hand-holding | 33. bandaging the other’s hand and not quite letting go

Come On, Come On, Don't Leave Me Like This - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff and hurt/comfort, one-shot

It wasn't Donna who pushed Dawn out of the way of the falling electric pole.

It was Dick.

2x13 'Nightwing' AU

Us Birds Gotta Stick Together - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff and hurt/comfort, one-shot, Part 1 of Physical Affection - Tumblr Prompts [list], also posted on Tumblr

First he heard the scratch of steel breaking, then a loud thud and a cry of pain that turned his blood into ice.

Rachel.

Touching | 23. Carrying the other one in their arms.

Home Is Where The Heart Is - Core Four, fluff and hurt/comfort, one-shot

After a hard, emotional night, Kory wonders on what her new family means to her and how her life turned out to be the exact oposite of what she expected of it.

A Diamond Without Grinding And Pressure Is Just a Coal Stone - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson and Garfield Logan, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, angst and hurt/comfort, 2x03 AU

Something happened during that training session. Dick didn't see it, but he heard what Jason threw right in Rachel's face. And that was enough for him to put everything else aside and get to the bottom of this.

The Graysonfam List of Headcanons and Analysis - Graysonfam, fluff and hurt/comfort, also posted on Tumblr

A looong ass list of my headcanons, mixed with an analysis of some scenes, looking into the motives and behavior of the characters. It's in more or less chronological order and divides into groups: season 1 (+2x01), the time jump, season 2, season 3 hopes/predictions and future.

How can shopping be educational? - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, fluff and hurt/comfort, one-shot

Dick is trying to be a responsible parental figure, tho he has no clue how to achieve that. But adjusting to a new life can be difficult. And he's seriously running out of ideas.

Set during season 2 time jump.

Sacrifice - Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, Core Four, multi chapter, Part 2 of The White Raven

Five months after overcoming a supernatural desease that almost took Rachel's life, the Titans prepare for spending Christmas at the Wayne Manor. But just when everything seems to be going perfect, an unusual creature starts haunting Dick, bringing him new wave of nightmares about losing his daughter. Are those dreams just simple dreams or maybe they mean something more? Should he do something about it? Will he let them alter other important decisions he's planning to make this year?

Sequel to "Purification"

Look At How My Tears Ricochet - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, Team as Family; angst/hurt/comfort, 2x09 fix-it

What really should have happened when Dick told the team the truth about Jericho.

a.k.a. the hypocrisy of the OG Titans on full display and Core Four (mostly Rachel, but still) showing them what Family REALLY means.

Fireplace Insomnia - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, fluff, oneshot

First night at the Wayne Manor Rachel can't sleep. Turns out she's not the only one.

Timeless Love - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, multi chapter

Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together? Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.

Comfort Hoodie - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, fluff and angst, emotional hurt/comfort

When Dick gets recruited for a top secret Justice League mission he has to leave for a while. It shouldn't be a problem at all, but for Rachel missing him is a lot harder than it should be.

It's Been a Year (And I Still Love You) - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, angst & hurt/comfort, rated T because of heavy topics.

On the first anniversary of Melissa Roth's death Dick and Rachel go on a trip to Traverse City, Rachel's hometown. She gets the chance to deal with her unresolved grief while Dick has an opportunity to learn more about her childhood and life before their paths crossed.

Touch Worth More Than Words - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, missing scene from 2x13

"A familiar wave of protectiveness washed over him. Maybe at first he wanted to be left alone but now that she was here, he didn't want her to go. He was willing to put his aching body and grieving heart on hold because she was the one who needed care right now. She needed him, that's why she came here, even if she wasn't going to admit it. She needed him before too, but he wasn't there, too caught up in his own past and present to notice. And he sure as hell wasn't going to make the same mistake ever again."

From One to Ten, You're My Eleven -Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, fluff/hurt/comfort oneshot

Around 2 weeks after moving in the Tower, Rachel gets her period. Things are meant to be awkward when you're living with three guys... But thankfully one of them grew up with Donna Troy, so he knows what to do.

One Call Away - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson & Donna Troy; 2x09/10 AU

"Hey, Dick. I know we're not exactly on chatty terms, but Rachel went AWOL, before our flight to Chicago, so… I'm still in the city. I figure she'll turn up when she runs out of cash, but…I'm really starting to get worried. Just call me back, okay?"

What if timing was a little bit different and Dick got this call BEFORE the incident at the airport? Titans 2x09/10 AU.

Where Angels Fear To Tread - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth; fluff/angst oneshot

After falling from a collapsing building, Dick comes out without a scratch, but from Rachel's perspective, it looked like a certain death. Now it's up to him to make sure she doesn't fall apart thinking she had lost him forever.

Purification - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Graysonfam, multi chapter, Part 1 of The White Raven

When Rachel slowly falls ill, it's up to Dick and the team to figure out a way to save her. But when things are getting worse instead of getting better and the Titans fall short on ways to help, will they be able to find a solution, before this her mysterious condition gets better of her?

Happy Father's Day - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, fluff, one-shot

Dick celebrates his first Father's Day... Without even knowing it.

Someday We'll Find Each Other (Posted only on Tumblr) - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, unused wip

Dick time travels to the year 2005 and has a surprise encounted with a four-months old Rachel

Meet Me In The Afterglow - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, Season 2 Fix-It AU, Songfic based on a song "Afterglow" by Taylor Swift

"Hey, It's all me, in my head, I'm the one who burned us down, But it's not what I meant, I'm sorry that I hurt you, I don't wanna do, I don't wanna do this to you, I don't wanna lose, I don't wanna lose this with you, I need to say, hey, It's all me, just don't go... Meet me in the afterglow"

The battle was over, the enemy was dead. But what remained was a broken family and Dick was left to pick up the pieces.

My Heart Holds You When My Arms Cannot - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, multi-chapter covering the entire series, with added missing and extended scenes

When the boy from the circus she had only seen in her dreams before turns out to be a real person, Rachel slowly starts to learn that people linked by destiny will always find each other and there is no accidental meetings between kindred spirits. Dick Grayson is the man who saved her life, but over time he becomes so much more than that - a protector, a friend, a mentor and a teacher. And, to her biggest surprise - a father.

Careful What You Wish For - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, coda s02e12 "Faux Hawk", missing scene

After his escape from prison, Dick (maybe not-so-accidentally) stumbles upon the last two people he expected to see.

Peripeteia - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, set after season 2

After months of waiting it’s finally time to bring Donna back. Or try to, at least. The pressure starts to settle on Rachel, causing her to lose faith in herself. But who's better to help her than the one person who believes in her the most? Dick leaves for an emotional journey to reunite with the two people who mean the most to him.

First Man - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Songfic based on the song "First Man" by Camila Cabello.

"You were the first man that really loved me" Rachel is growing up and Dick can't do anything to stop it.

It's All Us Now - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, Season 2 Finale Fix-It AU

It's not until a small, pale, trembling hand - the same one that rested on his bicep just a moment ago - comes into his view and rests over Donna's heart, that everything starts to make sense. Because that hand is glowing, the soft purple light reflecting off the material of their suits, and when Dick lifts his gaze, he sees Rachel kneeling right beside them, with furrowed brow and eyes shut in concentration.

Fall On Me With All Your Light - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, coda s02e13 "Nightwing" + post season 2

Watching the plane take off is like sending a piece of his soul away. His heart grieves for his best friend and fills with worry for the one person who brought the meaning back to his life. He will need to learn how to live without them, for a while at least, but thankfully, the people who stand beside will help him get through it.

Dick struggles to say goodbye to the two people he loves the most, but thankfully those goodbyes aren't forever.

You Are The Best Thing That's Ever Been Mine - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, multi-chapter, set after season 1

A story about how meeting a strange kid one night in Detroit set Dick Grayson on a path to become something he never thought he would be - a father. A story about love stronger than blood.

Stand By Me - Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, two-shot, ch1 post s02e04 "Aqualad", ch2 post s02e13 "Nightwing"

After the death of their teammate and a childhood friend, Dick and Donna find comfort in each other thanks to a song from their past.

Something That Makes Saying Goodbye So Hard - Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, coda s02e04 "Aqualad", extended scene

Me and you? No goodbyes. Because goodbyes are too hard for her, Dick knows that all too well. But when Donna tries to sneak out of the Tower late at night, to spare herself the pain, he's there. Because he can't let her just leave like that.

Just The Way You Are - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, post s02e02 "Rose"

"Okay, Rachel. This is getting out of hand - we need to tell Dick." Gar spoke from his place on her bed as Rachel studied her reflection in her mirror. There was another set of claw marks on her back, right over the previous one that hasn't fully healed yet. And the new one was bigger, the cuts were deeper, more painful and bleeding.

I Don't Need The World When I Have You - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, set after season 1

Rachel has a nightmare and Dick is there to comfort her, simple as that.

Piece By Piece - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, songfic based on ans inspired by the song "Piece By Piece" by Kelly Clarkson

"Piece by piece, he restored my faith that a man can be kind, and a father should be great." A story about Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth and their road to becoming a family.

I Will Always Need You - Dick Grayson & Rachel Roth, set after season 1

Dick almost lost Rachel one time too many. All of that because his own mistakes. The events of the past 24 hours made him realize he never wants to lose this kid again.

One Word - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, series finale rewrite

"Wait!"

One word.

All it takes is one simple world to alter the course of her life forever.

Will freezes with his hand in the air, fingers ready to pinch the edges of the window together and close it. His eyes are blown open as he stares at her from the other side of it, confusion mixing with heartbreak.

"Lyra?" He whispers her name, his deep voice cracks and stumbles on the letters.

Lyra's heart is a wild horse in her chest.

"Just… wait."

-----------

Series ending rewrite. Lyra makes a decision that goes against everything she's been told. But her love for Will is worth it all.

'Cause We Survived The Great War - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, post 3x02

"Will."

Her voice. So small, so weak and yet the loudest sound around him. He hadn't heard her saying his name in so long he was almost afraid he'd forget how it sounds on her lips but the second it left her mouth, it brought the same sense of warmth into his bones it always did. Will never could find a proper name for that feeling, always struggled to identify it but now that she was here, finally with him after so many days apart, he knew what it was instantly.

It felt like coming home.

---

Post s03e02. After they escape Marisa's clutches and The Magisterium's bullets, Will and Lyra finally allow themselves to feel relief and reunite properly.

You And Me For Evermore - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, post canon AU

Lyra spends New Year's Eve in Will's World.

Not for the first time and not for the last time, Lyra had realized Will's world was… loud. But as overwhelming as this loud world was with its blinding lights, strange habits and fast-paced lifestyle, Lyra couldn't help but see beauty in it too.

Contains mentions of both show and books spoilers.

We're Lucky We Found Each Other - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, Lyra Belacqua and Lee Scoresby, season 2 finale fix-it AU

Lyra brings more resistance against Marisa and Serafina gets to Lee on time. Things go a little bit (or a lot) differently.

Season 2 Finale fix-it AU

Nothing Else Matters - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, romantic friendship, fluff and hurt/comfort, extended scene + post season 2 AU

At that moment, his task, this whole war, all of that ceased to matter. Only Lyra mattered. He's going to find her or he will die trying. He decided right then and there that he would find her and save her, and he would never let anyone tear them apart again.

The More That You Say, The Less I Know - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, romantic friendship, pre-relationship, fluff and hurt/comfort, extended and alternate scenes

The events of episode 2x06 "Malice" told from Lyra's perspective, with some... changes and adjustments

Promise - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, romantic friendship, pre-relationship, fluff and hurt/comfort, extended and alternate scenes

Set during 2x05, "The Scholar". The aftermath of the heist scene.

Eyes Up - Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry, romantic fluff, pre-relationship, romantic friendship

Set after 2x04. The next day Will and Lyra come back to The Tower of The Angels to look for a way to treat Will's wound. They find a bunch of other stuff instead and share a rather special moment.

A Miracle - Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Avengers: Endgame Fix-It

She wakes up in the shallow water...

The One Thing I Thought I Could Never Be - Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Avengers: Endgame Fix-It

Tony knew that was it for him. It was his finish line and he made peace with it.

So how the hell was he still alive, he had no idea.

Home - SUPERGIRL, Kara Danvers & Clark Kent, Elseworlds AU, written pre-crossover, also posted on Tumblr

She looked at him and saw pride in his eyes. She hoped he could see how proud of him she was. They've had a lot of ups and downs, together and seperately, but they came back stronger from all of it... On a peacefull night in Smallville, Kara and Clark look back at their relationship, what it meant for them back then, and what it means for them right now.

Welcome Back, My Friend - Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, post Original Trilogy

She felt it when it happened. A sudden change in the Force. It was like high pressured air filled her lungs in an instant and she could finally breathe again. The weight she has been wearing on her shoulders for 20 years was gone in a second and she felt a sense of peace in her heart.

Let Me Help You - Harry Potter & Hermione Granger, Deathly Hallows Part 1, extended dance scene

Anakin Skywalker died in peace. In light.

You Are a Troy To My Garbriella (only posted on Tumblr - Betty Cooper/Archie Andrews, set during season 2. Inspired by songs from High School Musical Movies

Harry's protective instincts kick in as he sees Hermione being so hurt and sad. So he decides to do something about it.

An Useperatable Duo (only posted on Tumblr) - Amberlee & Ander Ellesidil.

It’s Betty’s 17th birthday and the gang gets together to watch old videos from her childhood. One video in particular gets everyones attention...

Amberle didn’t become a tree. Instead she saved the Ellcrys without sacrificing herself. So it starts when the battle is over, Amberle, Allanon and Will and in the Sanctuary and Ander comes there. (Shitty summary but it was one of the very first things I've ever posted so bare with me. That's why it's on the bottom of this list)

#fanfiction masterlist #masterpost #dc titans #dcu titans #marvel #mcu #clintasha #arrowverse #supergirl #harry potter #riverdale #the shannara chronicles

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monster-bait · 4 years

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Humbled and Grateful

We’re officially at the end of August!

This has honestly been a bit of a surreal month...Monster Bait turned 1 year old mid-month, after writing almost nothing the whole month of July, August produced a 20k word story, in addition to some other fun stuff, and tomorrow is the official launch of my Etsy, Redbubble, and Patreon!

I’m excited and nervous and still glaring at the unopened $300 sticker machine that’s been sitting on my sofa for a week, but eventually I’ll have sticker mail outs for the $5 Patreon level to complete, so I guess I have to open it eventually.

I set a year 1 August goal for myself about seven months ago with no real expectation of reaching it, but it gave me something to strive for...and as of tonight, this blog has surpassed it by a little over 200 followers, and I’m just astounded that there are this many of you interested in my trash! lol

Astounded and grateful and so incredibly appreciative. I can’t wait to create more stories in year 2, to get to know you guys a bit better through commissions and asks and inbox randomness. Tomorrow on Patreon I’ll be posting part 1 of the ghost story I’ve been itching to write, and I hope some of you come along for the ride.

Thanks so much for a year of wonderful support, and stay tuned for tomorrow morning when I post all of the links to the sites I’ve been finalizing today!

Also! Spotted Dick Anon: I am HAUNTED by your silence. What happened?! Did they message you again?! These are the things that keep me up at night folks. Please don’t slip into the ether like Knotted Weenie Anon!

#monsterbait answers #blogiversary

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lingthusiasm · 4 years

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Transcript Episode 44: Schwa, the most versatile English vowel

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 44: Schwa, the most versatile English vowel. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 44 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about schwa and stress. First, we made our LingComm grant goal! We’re now giving out three grants to linguistics communication projects. The deadline for those applications is the 1st of June wherever you are, which is very soon, so make sure to get those applications in. That’s 2020, in case you’re listening from the future.

Lauren: We’re actually giving out four. We are giving out more than we originally planned, thanks to Claire Bowern funding a fourth LingComm grant on a project that looks at minoritised languages.

Gretchen: Those grant applications are due on June 1st, 2020. If you’re interested in applying for that, go to the website lingcomm.org. That’s “comm” with two Ms. You’ll see all the details there.

Lauren: If you’re listening to this deep in the future, you can go to lingcomm.org to see what great projects we funded.

Gretchen: Indeed you can.

Lauren: We now have new Lingthusiasm merch. We have little badges for you to wear through Redbubble, which is really exciting. They’re super cute.

Gretchen: Interesting! I think I would call those “pins” or maybe “buttons.” Whatever you call them, they are round circular things that you can pin on your clothes or backpacks that say fun linguistics things on them.

Lauren: Hm. I’d call them “button badges” as well.

Gretchen: I think “buttons” is kind of ambiguous because you don’t know if that’s a kind of button you use that you sew into your clothing or that you pin into your clothing. Maybe I like “pins”? Anyway, you can get these at lingthusiasm.com/merch along with more sticker designs and other Lingthusiasm merch like scarves with the International Phonetic Alphabet on them and other fun things like that.

Lauren: This month’s Patreon bonus episode is about numbers. We look at different counting systems, different number systems, and what using your fingers to count says about you. You can get access to this and 38 other bonus episodes at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: Okay. I have a puzzle for us.

Lauren: Awesome. I love a puzzle.

Gretchen: I’m gonna give you a few words, then you can tell me what they have in common. Our words are “about.”

Lauren: “About.”

Gretchen: “Broken.”

Lauren: “Broken.”

Gretchen: And “council.”

Lauren: “Council.”

Gretchen: Any thoughts for what they have in common?

Lauren: My immediate thought was I’m sad we don’t have Lingthusiasm think time music.

Gretchen: We do have theme music. Maybe we could play it a bit again.

Lauren: Hm. Ah. “About, broken, council” – they all start with different letters. They all have different letters in them. I’m assuming it’s not something about what they mean. They’re all two syllables long.

Gretchen: That’s true. I should give you a couple more examples that also have this thing in common to see if that helps.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: We have “about, broken, council, potato,” and “support.”

Lauren: Oh, “potato.” The goes my two-syllable theory. Definitely nothing semantic about their meaning. They still all have completely different letters. You’ve actually made it harder with more data, Gretchen. Harder. That’s not useful.

Gretchen: The thing we wanna think about is not just what letters are in them but what sounds are in them.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Is there any sound that all five of these words have in common?

Lauren: If I look at the spelling, they all have completely different vowels. They don’t even have the same vowels. But if I listen to how they’re spoken, think about “about, broken,” and “council,” [Gasp] “potato,” and “support,” they all have schwa.

Gretchen: They all have schwa, which I know is your favourite vowel. I have created this quiz just for you.

Lauren: Excellent. Thank you so much. They all have this /ə/ sound. It’s the coolest little letter that doesn’t exist as a written letter in English. It’s one of the coolest sounds in English. I love it. We’re doing a whole episode. It’s schwa time.

Gretchen: It’s schwa time. So, /əbɑʊt/ has that /ə/ in the first syllable. /bɹoʊkən/ has that /ə/ in the second syllable. /kɑʊnsəl/ has that /ə/ there – /pətɛɪtoʊ/ /səpoɹt/. There’s the /ə/ going all the way through. Here’s your second quiz. There’s a special thing about this particular set of five words. They all have schwa in them, but they all have something else that’s different about them.

Lauren: They’re all spelt with the actual different vowels. When I learnt that schwa was the sound that hid across all of the vowels – it doesn’t matter what one you write, if it’s in an unstressed syllable, and we’ll talk about that, it becomes a schwa – it explained to me why I find writing some words so difficult. If you don’t know how to spell “potato” and someone says /pətɛɪtoʊ/, that could be a P-A, that could be a P-U. It’s really hard to tell. But all of those are written with different vowels but sound the same in speech.

Gretchen: Yeah! You get words like /dɛfənɪtli/, which was one of these words that I didn’t know how to spell for the longest time. It would give me this red underline and I was like, “Why? This looks totally reasonable to me!” Then, I had to learn that the schwa – /dɛfənɪtli/ – the schwa there wasn’t spelled with an A, it was spelled with an I. You really can’t tell in English because every single vowel letter can represent this particular vowel sound, which is really frustrating when you’re a kid learning how to spell and yet is really cool when you’re a linguist because it’s one of these mysterious things that once you notice it, it’s everywhere. Yet, you can go your whole life without noticing it.

Lauren: We talked about all the vowels back in Episode 17 with vowel gymnastics and how, unlike consonants, vowels exist in this space and they all shift around like a multi-dimensional slide trombone. I guess that’s why we went with “gymnastics” as an analogy instead of “multi-dimensional trombones.”

Gretchen: I mean, if someone wants to design a multi-dimensional trombone for me, I’ll take it.

Lauren: We talked a teeny bit about schwa in that episode, but I have been wanting to do an episode all about schwa for ages. Here we are. Exciting times.

Gretchen: I think we should also mention what schwa looks like when it’s written in the International Phonetic Alphabet because it is part of your icon or your whole icon on various different websites, is it not?

Lauren: Yes. If you’ve ever seen the upside-down E looking thing that is the Superlinguo logo, that is the sch – so schwa is interesting in that it has a name. It also has, like all of the vowels, a representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet. That representation looks like an upside-down E. I’m not normally one of these people that has lots of opinions about fonts, but when it comes to how it’s written, it is not an upside-down E. This is something I’m very fussy about.

Gretchen: What is the difference between a schwa and an upside-down lowercase E? Please tell the class because I don’t know.

Lauren: If you turn it back up the other way, it looks really unproportioned. It’s like the top of the E is just way too high up. It looks all weirdly stretched.

Gretchen: So, the thicknesses of the letters and so on are weirdly stretched? Is that the thing?

Lauren: Yeah. The height of that little loopy bit of the E, if you turn it back the other way and try and use it as an E, looks a bit – it just makes it look like the E is gonna fall over. It’s really wobbly.

Gretchen: Okay. I feel like we need to point this out that you know this because you made schwa cookie cutters.

Lauren: Yes. I designed and 3-D printed a schwa cookie cutter a few years ago for Christmas gingerbread.

Gretchen: Then, a very helpful person on the internet said, “Couldn’t you just have used an E cookie cutter and turned the cookies upside-down?” and you were like, “No, no, no, because the thickness is different.”

Lauren: No. You absolutely cannot.

Gretchen: I feel like, historically speaking, it probably was an upside-down E though because I know a lot of the IPA symbols are upside-down versions or rotated versions of existing letters because that way they didn’t have to typeset new letters back in the metal printing days. But I believe you that, now that we have digital formats, schwa can have slightly different line thicknesses.

Lauren: Yes. It has its own representation. It has a name that not many other vowels have names. Technically, it’s a mid-central vowel, which just means it’s just in the centre. It’s not high. It’s not low. It’s not front. It’s not back. It’s not any of these dimensions that we talk about. It’s just the most /ə/ vowel that exists, which is why everything ends up going towards it when it’s not stressed because it’s the least exciting thing to do with your mouth. There’s actually a Wikipedia entry for the mid-central vowel – that /ə/ vowel – but schwa is so iconic there’s also a separate Wikipedia page just to talk about it as “schwa.” This is how strong its brand is.

Gretchen: Schwa’s brand is strong. Especially for the vowels, normally if we talk about vowels, we talk about /i/ or /ɛ/ or /ʊ/. You just say the name of the vowel – or sometimes people say the name of the symbol. Like, “small cap I” or –

Lauren: “Open O.”

Gretchen: “Open O” or something like this. Schwa has got this name that doesn’t refer to the shape of its symbol, it’s got its own name. The thing that’s always tormented me about the name “schwa” is, like, it’s a cool name. I will grant you this. But it doesn’t have schwa itself in the name.

Lauren: This is true and very disappointing.

Gretchen: Other symbols, like “theta” – /θɛɪtʌ/ has a theta in it. Great. We’re doing a great job. Good job, theta. Schwa does not have a schwa in it, and I find that kind of disappointing.

Lauren: Disappointing.

Gretchen: However, I looked up the history of the name “schwa.” Apparently, “schwa” used to have a schwa in it and then it stopped, which I now think is even better. The word “schwa” is from the Hebrew /ʃva/ for which the classical pronunciation was apparently /ʃəwa/.

Lauren: Ah, so before modern Hebrew, it had a schwa in it. It was like /ʃəwa/?

Gretchen: Exactly. /ʃwa/, /ʃəwa/ – maybe we should start calling it /ʃəwa/ because then it would have a /ʃəwa/ in it.

Lauren: Amazing. I think one of the things I like about the name of schwa is that the name itself encapsulates its history.

Gretchen: Yeah. Initially /ʃva/ or /ʃəwa/ is the name of one of the sets of dots that indicates this sound – because Hebrew writing, along with Arabic, are normally written with just the consonants. Then, if you want to indicate what the vowels are, you can add these extra little dots and bits above and below the consonants which, most of the time, aren’t used but are sometimes used for children or for contexts where you wanna be super precise. One of the names of these sets of dots indicating the vowels is /ʃəwa/, which was used to indicate either the /ə/ sound, the schwa sound itself, or /ɛɪ/, which in most languages the /ɛɪ/ sound is written with what English calls a letter E. If you think of the /ɛː/ as in /kæfɛɪ/ or /foɹtɛɪ/, those Es are that /ɛɪ/ sound. This kind of explains to me why it’s an upside-down E and not an upside-down literally any other vowel because every vowel letter can become a schwa sound because in this origin it could be used for either one of these two sounds.

Lauren: Nifty. Even though it’s pronounced /ʃva/ in modern Hebrew, the spelling of “schwa” itself is actually from the German spelling for it. I think this was one of the reasons I like the name “schwa” is that it encapsulates its history being borrowed from Hebrew orthography. Then, in the 19th Century, a lot of German linguists used it for that sound. That S-C-H spelling is the German spelling rather than any other language. Most satisfyingly, it was first used by a guy called Schmeller who has his name spelt S-C-H as well.

Gretchen: Johann Andreas Schmeller, who also used the schwa. Maybe that’s why he liked it.

Lauren: It became big in the 19th Century and definitely by the end of the 19th Century/Early 20th Century it was being used in texts to represent that sound.

Gretchen: Schwa is also very common in German. A lot of words that end in E in German have that E pronounced as a schwa. The name what in English would be Gabe – the German name /gaːbə/ – that /ə/ at the end is also a schwa.

Lauren: It definitely pops up in a lot of languages because it’s quite efficient.

Gretchen: You also get this optional schwa sound with Es at the end of the word in French. You can have /lɔ̃ːg/ but also /lɔ̃ːgə/, which is the word for “long.” There’s an E there that can be optionally pronounced. When it is pronounced, it’s pronounced kind of like schwa. This gets to something interesting because German and French have these schwas that are spelled with the letter E at the end of a lot of their words. English, instead, has these completely silent Es at the end of a lot of its words.

Lauren: The bane of all children learning to read in English – the silent E.

Gretchen: Oooh, “bane.” There’s an example! Words like “bane” and “fame” and “fine” and “bone” and “meme” – that one is not one that I learned when I was in Grade 4 spelling class. There’re all these words that end in silent E in English. The rule that I learned when I was in Grade 5 spelling class was the silent E makes the vowel say its own name.

Lauren: Oh, I like that. I never learnt that. That’s very handy, trying to get your head around the rules of reading English.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s really nice.

Lauren: I’m really jealous that I never learnt that very efficient way of thinking about what E was doing.

Gretchen: But it’s a rule that’s kind of unsatisfying to me as a linguist now because why should adding an extra vowel to the end of the word change how the vowel in the middle of the word is being pronounced? That’s something that I found unsatisfying as a budding linguist. What sort of process is that?

Lauren: I am going – I mean, I know the answer. But if I had not known the answer, I would’ve taken a wild guess at it being retrospectively attempting to make sense of a historical process by pretending that there’s some kind of reason for it.

Gretchen: I mean, that’s not not what’s going on.

Lauren: The reason why they had to retrospectively come up with this rule is because the E used to be pronounced. It used to be pronounced as our friend schwa. They weren’t just one syllable words. The were two syllable words. It was /banə/ – “bane” – and /famə/ and /hamə/.

Gretchen: Oh, so the schwa actually used to be pronounced there. You’d get, instead of “fine,” like /fɪnə/. Instead of “fame,” /famə/. Instead of “home,” /hoʊmə/ or something like that.

Lauren: Yes. You had two syllables instead of one syllable that we have now for “fine,” “fame,” “home.” Those syllables started with a consonant, ended with a vowel. Then, over time, that schwa comes off at the end. It’s not as easy to always pronounce it – a bit like with the French example. In French at the moment, you can pronounce it, or you don’t have to. It’s starting to erode away at the end of a word. That was the process that happened in English.

Gretchen: Right. This is really interesting because in English and in other Germanic languages as well there’s a difference between the kinds of vowels that you can have in a syllable where there’s a consonant at the end and in a syllable where there isn’t. We have English words “hid” and “hide,” which have /ɪ/ and /ɑɪ/ in them both between H and D. But there’s a word like “hi,” but there isn’t a word in English /hɪ/ or /fɪ/ or /kɪ/ or /mɪ/ even though all of these can be perfectly good as long as there’s another consonant in them.

Lauren: This is where the rules of English syllables interact with the rules of what sounds can go into them. We used to have two syllables in words like “fine” and “fame,” and now we have one. That little E sits there to remind us as a written fossil even though we don’t pronounce it anymore.

Gretchen: It reminds us that the vowel that’s in this first syllable, which is now the only syllable, is the kind that can exist without a consonant after it. Because we can have a word like /hɑɪ/ and not a word like /hɪ/, if there’s that E at the end – you have /hɑɪd/ or something – then that reminds us – and by “us” I mean people who know this history, which is not most modern contemporary English speakers – that this is the kind of word that has the vowel that can exist in open syllables.

Lauren: For the rest of us, it’s just a handy way to spell properly.

Gretchen: There was a special reason why it was schwa that was so easily lost at the end of all of these words like “fine” and “home” and “hide.” That’s because schwa is what’s known as a “reduced vowel.” It’s physically produced for a shorter amount of time than a full vowel like /ɑɪ/ or /i/ or even /ɪ/.

Lauren: It’s what allows us to just sneak it in really quickly in syllables that we’re not really focusing on.

Gretchen: If we produce some syllables faster or quieter than other ones, those faster or quieter symbols tend to also have schwas.

Lauren: This is why schwa crops up in all of these words regardless of what vowel they’re spelt with. I’m pretty sure Lauren who really struggled to spell words because she couldn’t distinguish the vowel because it was being pronounced with schwa when she was learning to spell would’ve said, “Why don’t we just spell all the words with schwa and be done with it?” That wouldn’t be the most practical solution.

Gretchen: The problem is, if we respell English to be consistent and every time we say schwa we write schwa, it works in the short term because we have this transparent relationship between the sound and spelling, which is nice. But the annoying thing – this fact that you can write any English vowel letter for the sound schwa – is also a fact about the structure of English. There are all these words that are related to each other where we can see that relationship more clearly based on the spelling than we can sometimes with the pronunciation. The spelling can help us notice when words are related to each other. If we take up a word pair like “acid” and “acidity” –

Lauren: “Acid” and “acidity.” Well, that -ity bit on the end of “acid” that turns it into “acidity” also changes the vowel to a schwa.

Gretchen: Yeah. /æsɪd/ and /əsɪdəti/ – in the first one we have /æ/ as the first vowel and in the second one we have /ə/. Yet, it still seems pretty intuitive that these words are related to each other. It’s just that when we do have this -ity on the end, we pronounce the main word – instead of /æsɪd/, we say /əsɪd/.

Lauren: It would be inconvenient in the even medium turn to lose the relationship between, say, “courage” and “courageous” just because we have that -ous on the end of “courageous.”

Gretchen: It’s the same thing there. /kʌɹəd͡ʒ/ – the second syllable -age, there’s a schwa. But /kʌɹɛɪd͡ʒəs/ – now there’s a different vowel there. It’s just because we’ve added the -ous on the end. Yet, it’s nice that these two words that are very clearly related to each other still look the same.

Lauren: I guess it’s particularly true as well of those word pairs in English that only differ because of stress. Like /ˈɹɛˌkəɹd/ and /ˌɹəˈkoɹd/ – only different because of stress. Then, we’d be spelling them differently because each one has a schwa in the opposite place.

Gretchen: /ˈɹɛˌkəɹd/ – the schwa is in the /-əɹd/. /ˌɹəˈkoɹd/ – your schwa is in the /ɹə-/. You’d have to /ʃwap/ the – swap the [stutters] /ʃwaz/ – /ʃwap/ the /ʃwʌz/? Wow. That’s really hard to say. Swap the schwas. You wouldn’t know what vowel to recover from the syllable once you started stressing it. It’s the same thing with -ity and -ous. When you make “acid” into “acidity” and “courage” into “courageous,” instead of stressing the /æ/ and the /kəɹ/, you’re stressing the /ɪd/ and the /æd͡ʒ/, if you will.

Lauren: Adding the extra bit to the word shifts where the stress is.

Gretchen: It’s these unstressed syllables where schwa – not every unstressed syllable in English is a schwa, but a heck of a lot of them are.

Lauren: I think we’ll keep the spelling system as it is.

Gretchen: This was something that always used to come up for me back when I used to teach Intro to Linguistics. People would be trying to write things in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the very first time, so they’d go through each word, and they’d say it really slowly and carefully. What that would mean is that instead of saying /əsɪdəti/, they’d say something like /æsɪdɪti/. Okay. Or, instead of saying /kʌɹəd͡ʒ/, /kʌɹɛɪd͡ʒəs/, they’d have /kʌɹɛɪd͡ʒʌs/, /kʌɹɹɛd͡ʒ/.

Lauren: They’ve gone back to stressing every syllable, so the schwas evaporate.

Gretchen: Right! They’d write these words and they’d have no schwas in them all over the place. You’d have to say, “You can say this word like this -- if you’re really saying it slowly and carefully, and you were saying each syllable at once maybe to help someone spell it, you do have the full vowel there some level,” psychologically, for a lot of people, especially because of the spelling that’s influencing you to tell you it’s there. But in normal speech at a regular pace, most of the time you do say schwas a lot. It’s an interesting tension where many of our schwas actually represent a sound that we could recover if you say the word slowly and carefully enough, which is also a reason to keep the spelling where it is because there is some psychological reality to the non-schwa version as well.

Lauren: This discussion is very English-focused, I should say, because it’s something that English seems to do in particular in terms of having this kind of stress and this reducing to schwa on unstressed syllables. In fact, it’s a fairly prominent feature of the English accent. I imagine it’s something that gets transferred when English speakers are learning to speak other languages. It’s probably the closest I’ve come to having the ability to understand what the English accent in other languages must sound like to native speakers of those languages. They must just think that we’re failing to hear vowels all over the place.

Gretchen: “Why do all of your vowels become the same vowel?” I think the inverse is also the case is that it’s one of the trickiest things for people who are learning English from a language that doesn’t do this, which is most of them, to do is be constantly trying to hit this vowel that I don’t even have. “Don’t you want your vowels to all be very distinct from each other?” Schwa or not schwa is this very English thing. The stress part about it being very important which syllable’s stressed and which part of which word is stressed – that’s also a very English thing. I find the most interesting place to notice how important stress is in English is when it comes to poetry.

Lauren: Sure. Because a lot of poetry relies on having certain numbers of syllables. Using stress is one way to explore the rhythm of a poem or a poetic construction.

Gretchen: Right. Some of the oldest English Mother Goose rhymes, nursery rhymes, have a consistent number of stressed bits per line rather than a consistent number of syllables. If you have something like “Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock.” There’s three stress bits per line, but the number of syllables is quite different. The same thing with limericks in English, it’s not that there’s the same number of syllables in each line, it’s that the stress pattern is you have to have three stressed syllables, three stressed syllables, two stress, two stress, three stress. You can do that with a varying number of actual syllables in it. Something like, “There once was a man from Nantucket,” three stresses – “once,” “man,” “tuck.” Nine syllables. But “A tutor who tooted the flute,” also three stress – “tu,” “too,” “flute.” That’s eight syllables. And “A wonderful bird is the pelican,” ten syllables but still three stresses.

Lauren: It’s funny. My brain is so tuned to listening to the stress in these, I actually found it hard to count the syllables as you were going because I was so tuned into the limerick structure of stress.

Gretchen: A lot of very English-y poetry styles, as long as you get the stress right, you can really mess with the syllables because English pays a lot of attention to the stress. Whereas, in French, they don’t have this individual, unpredictable stress at the word level the way English does at all. There’s no /ˈɹɛˌkəɹd/ versus /ˌɹəˈkoɹd/ in French. Everything just gets a bit of stress at the end of the phrase or sentence or utterance or whatever you’re saying. You might say something like “Bonjour,” but you could also say, “Bonjour, comment ça va?” and you just stress the “jour” or the “va.” You don’t have to go anywhere in between and stress anything else. This means that French poetry can’t do this stress counting thing because there’s no stresses for them to count.

Lauren: Ah. Normally, I spend a lot of time going, “Oh, poor English speakers. They’re missing out.” But poor French speakers! They’re missing out on limericks.

Gretchen: I really don’t know how you do a limerick in French. I think you’d have to pick a number of syllables that is approximately equivalent and just do that.

Lauren: We talked about this schwa-syllable relationship being very English-focused for this episode, but it’s not the only language in which schwa appears and is a little bit easy to drop once you have reduced the pronunciation of schwa. French was one example you had. In Indo-Aryan languages as well – these are the languages of the same Into-European family as English but they’re over on the Indian subcontinent, so Hindi. I know about this because I had to learn Nepali. They have schwa as a vowel. A bit like the Hebrew writing system, for this vowel in particular, they just don’t write it down. You have to know when to pronounce this vowel by memorising. For some languages in the family it’s just gone altogether. It’s another example of how schwa in some languages can be really eroded. But not in all languages.

Gretchen: This is actually true in Miꞌkmaq as well, which is an Algonquian language spoken in Eastern Canada. In their writing system they use the apostrophe to represent the schwa sound, but the apostrophe is only added when the schwa is quote-unquote “unpredictable.” If you can predict the schwa, then you just put in the schwa where you know it’s supposed to go because as a speaker you say it. Of course, I am not very good – I don’t speak Miꞌkmaq so I’m not particularly good at predicting where it goes.

Lauren: Unpredictable schwa is almost cooler than unstressed schwa.

Gretchen: You can kind of predict it. Speakers actually know how to do it properly, but it’s not always represented in the writing system which is, I guess, something it has in common with Nepali.

Lauren: Schwa has so many cheeky personalities.

Gretchen: Schwa also shows up in English – speaking of being cheeky – as the vowel sound that people end up producing, if you’re an English speaker, when you’re trying not to make any vowel sound at all. If you’re trying to say the sound that the letter B makes, but you don’t wanna say B, you just wanna say that sound by itself, you probably end up with /bə/, which is still a vowel, it’s just schwa. Because that’s the least vowel you can make.

Lauren: Just adding a little bit so you can get that /bə/ across.

Gretchen: Yeah. It also shows up sometimes in people’s names. I knew somebody called /ksɛnjə/ and a lot of English speakers couldn’t pronounce that /ksə/, the KS, at the beginning of her name, so a lot of people ended up saying /kəsɛnjə/ by inserting a little schwa between because that was how they were able to keep both the K and the S.

Lauren: Very handy. Although, I like unpredictable schwa in Miꞌkmaq, one of the best things about schwa popping up in the particular context of unstressed syllables in English means that schwa is set up for being just a really great source of jokes because, when it comes to English, schwa is never stressed. I think that’s a life motto we can all get behind.

Gretchen: This means that there are people who’ve made t-shirts saying, “I want to be a schwa, it’s never stressed.”

Lauren: There’s a great photo from Sandy Abuadas who has made cookies for her students with schwa on them so that her students’ finals will be stressless.

Gretchen: I love it! It’s so good.

Lauren: It was very cute.

Gretchen: I think the stress part – in the technical sense, there’s this very tempting pun with the stress part in the vernacular sense.

Lauren: I think because it’s a sound that is everywhere and ubiquitous but, until you study linguistics, you don’t know that it is all around you. Not only is it around you, but it has its own symbol and it has its own name. I think that’s why it’s a classic linguist iconography to have fun with.

Gretchen: I hope that learning about schwa has not been stressful!

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found at @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to over 30 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards. Recent bonus episodes include synaesthesia, numbers, teaching linguistics, and a robo-generated episode of Lingthusiasm. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#lingthusiasm #language #linguistics #episode 44 #transcripts #podcast #schwa #IPA #International Phonetic Alphabet #stress #merch #never stressed

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clevercatchphrase · 3 years

Text

2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

ON TO 2021!

I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

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