#writing something every day for the entirety of July
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You’re a scary shadow monster who adopted a child- Part 3
If you’re new, you can start from the beginning here!
If you haven’t read it, you can find part 2 here!
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Many moon cycles passed, and the child remained in your care.
They were a curious creature, always eager to run around the numerous corridors and archways that constitute your territory. You indulged their inquisitiveness with fond acquiescence, allowing them to grasp one of your tactile sensories and sprint off to explore the sprawling mazes whenever they pleased, silently sending other sensories trailing behind them just in case.
Communication was still an issue- you couldn’t understand the sounds emitted by their major chemical sensory any more than they could comprehend the pheromones you released or the motions of your shadows. The main mode of information transmission between your kind involved intertwining your sensories until your shadows partially merged, but you were uncertain whether the human body could support this method of communication.
Still, your child was bright, and already the two of you had devised certain gestures that would convey particular phrases or feelings. They would draw on your tactile sensory, or mime the movements with their appendages, and you would reciprocate with your shadows.
A touch on your tactile sensory drew your attention to where your child was supported, with their rear against the ground and their centre of gravity braced against your core mass. They were playing with your shadows- they loved shaping your shadows into various shapes and moving them around while chattering animatedly to themselves. You couldn’t comprehend the purpose of such exercises, but you humoured them all the same, shifting your shadows to represent dragons and fairies and humans with large capes and long swords, all the while increasing the sensitivity of your auditory sensories to capture what you had long since identified as sounds of delight-joy-contentment.
Another touch. You extended more visual sensories, while the tactile sensory around your child’s appendage signalled Query?
Hungry, they signalled, food-request.
You complied immediately, moving your shadows out of the way to make room for them, only to have them lunge and grab at your shadows with a loud squeal. You trilled, broadcasting surprise-amusement-query, and you felt them vibrate in response, emitting high pitched squeals that you knew they made whenever they were enjoying themselves.
You raised your shadows, lifting your child up, up until their appendages were dangling in the air, and they squealed even louder, flailing their limbs in a poor imitation of what your shadows could do. Me-fly, they signalled, pheromones scenting the air with excitement-joy-wonder, me-fly-up-up-fly-fun-more.
It was impossible to refuse them.
It took a long time for your child to be sated, but eventually you lowered them back to the ground, shaky and breathless and doused with sweat. You weren’t too worried, however. Perhaps it was an effect of the aura of the magic that animated you, but your child had never gotten ill for the duration of their time with you, and all scrapes and bumps they made during their daily adventures had all healed without any complications.
By the time they had finished their food, their movement had become slow and sluggish, and their visual sensories had begun to droop with exhaustion. You’re familiar with their behaviour by now that you knew what would soon happen.
They didn’t protest when you gathered them up in your shadows, gently bringing them to your core mass. They pressed in closer to your mass, reaching out with their upper appendages to embrace more of you, and your core mass rippled with such intense emotion that you feared you would burst.
Slowly, carefully, you lay down sprawling sensories to detect for danger, drew the majority of your shadows back into your core mass, and joined your child in slumber.
Edit: part 4!!
#writing#creative writing#writing prompts#yes this is still a thing#plot bunnies came knocking and gave me a whole plotline#what was I supposed to do#ignore them?#nah fam#I actually wanted to progress the plot a little today but my brain really said fluff go brrrr#so fluff went brrrrr lmao#also just to clarify Sahdo is literally a huge shadow ball with retractable shadow limbs lmao#and Child is a human child#(yes they are called Child I have no imagination okay)#writing something every day for the entirety of July#July writing challenge#Day 3#Sahdo the shadow monster#reader insert
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Answer the questions and tag five fanfiction authors you know!
Thank you @metalbvcky. NPT for @mrs-illyrian-baby @doasyoudesireandlive @km-ffluv @labella420
🍓 How did you get into writing fanfiction?
As a teen I was a voracious reader and tried to write my own stuff based on other books I'd read. I also loved ST:TNG and wanted dearly to be in an episode and had lots of the books. I wrote my own ST stories with OC's (gratuitous self inserts), but they never went anywhere. In my late teens I read some Xena fanfic on the internet. But that was it for a great number of years.
At the beginning of 2021 I sat and watched the entirety of the MCU films in chronological order (I'd seen most of them before and was mainly a Thor gal.) I fell down the Stucky rabbithole. Deep. I decided to look up fanfic. AO3 was now a thing! I wrote (a very poor) Stucky fic and here we are, almost 3 years later
🍇How many fandoms have you written in?
As my ST stuff never made it further than my parent's old PC in the days of dial-up, I won't count it.
I've written for MCU, various Chris Evans and Seb Stan Characters and one fic for RWRB. I've been toying with writing a one-off Criminal Minds fic as a gift for a friend.
🍈How many years have you been writing fanfiction?
Three in July since I first published anything on AO3.
🍎Do you read or write more fanfiction?
I try to balance it out. If I have a period of hyperfocus writing I try to then go through a period of reading. I read on both Tumblr and AO3, so try to keep that even as well.
🍌What is one way you've improved as a writer?
Getting betas to pick me up on tense changes, overuse of words and rogue commas. Reading more. Practising. Writing outlines for longer stories so I don't go off-piste.
🍑Do you have any bad habits as a writer?
Getting bored half-way through a long fic, especially if the first few parts haven't had a lot of interaction. Which is why I try to write the whole thing before I start posting.
🍍 What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?
Engineering courses at MIT and, for a separate fic, Violet wands, including the ways to use them and the differnt types of accessories you can use with them. I even watched a Youtube video.
🍉What's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?
Any comment! Anything that gives me the validation I need!
🍐What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?
I wrote a transformation into Tsum-tsum fic that was both cracky and smutty. That's pretty niche.
🥭What is the hardest type of story for you to write?
Action scenes. I loathe them. I'm constantly wondering if they are long enough, and make sense.
🍏What is the easiest type?
Short things that are either PWP or fluffy slices of life.
🍑Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?
Mainly on my elderly laptop on G-Docs, and in every moment I can - normally afterwork before dinner and on Mondays when I don't have work.
🍋What is something you've been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?
There are a few characters and ships I haven't written that I'd like to. And I suppose I'd like to write a proper long, over 100k fic at some point.
🍇 what made you choose your username?
When I made my AO3 account I felt as though that at 40, and only really starting in Fandom in this way, I was late to the party, so that is who I became.
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I think there's something fascinating about the evolution of Darla as a character in the Buffyverse.
It's very common in the Buffy fandom to talk about the show almost as if it were fully planned out from the beginning or somehow emerged fully-formed one day in its entirety. To analyze Season 1 episodes as if the writers had already decided on the Heart/Mind/Spirit symbolism of the core Scooby Gang; to act as though a Season 5 retcon means that Spike was really in love with Buffy as early as Season 3's Lovers Walk; to suggest the constant changes in how the show deals with soul lore or vampires as a metaphor must mean that Giles and the Council were 'really' lying or ignorant in the first few seasons; to wonder what the Watchers Council introduced in Season 3 were doing in the show's first two seasons; to insist you can't really understand Season 1 until you've finished Season 7.
And, look, I totally get the temptation to do that sort of thing. It's unavoidable if you want to talk about the universe of the show as a real thing in its own right, or try to write fanfiction that takes every season seriously. It can be a useful and interesting way of thinking about the show. I've done it myself and will no doubt keep doing it.
But at the same time, it's very misleading if you want to think about the show as a constructed work of collaborative art: as a piece of fiction in constant conversation with itself, shaped and reshaped again and again over years by a team of different people. Which, to be clear, is what it actually is.
The real show is almost a piece of improv or some sort of conjuring act, with the writers and actors constantly juggling with new ideas and twists without any time to worry about how exactly everything fits together. With some episodes reportedly being written in only a handful of days and lore being continually changed and ignored as fits the current demands of the plot. Questions like "how does soul lore really work?" or "after Prophecy Girl who is the real Slayer anyway?" ultimately can't be answered, because there simply is no single truth to uncover. It depends entirely on the current episode.
And I think the ever-changing character of Darla provides the best illustration of that reality.
In the original unaired pilot, Julie Benz plays an unnamed vampire who is nonetheless pretty easy to identify with the Darla we'll see in the show proper. She has no links to Angel or Luke or the Master, because none of these characters even exist yet. Just like in Welcome to the Hellmouth, she lures an unsuspecting victim into the high school after dark before vamping out and killing him, but by the end of the episode she is dead: gruesomely dispatched (or as gruesomely as the pilot's limited special effects budget allowed) after Willow douses her with holy water.
The two parter Welcome to the Hellmouth / The Harvest expands on her role slightly. She has a name now, for one thing. She works for the Master, too, but she doesn't at all seem to be his favorite (she's very much subordinate to Luke in both these episodes), and there's no suggestion that she has any special connection to Angel. (Unsurprisingly, as the show's writers hadn't even decided to make Angel a vampire at this point.) And her ultimate fate at the end of this two-parter is unclear: just as in the pilot, Willow soaks her with holy water, and then she's ... gone? Nobody mentions her again, she's not in scenes with the Master in later episodes which logically she should be. I'm pretty sure that, just like in the pilot, we're meant to assume she's dead.
But then Darla gets her first big break. Angel is, it turns out, a vampire, and he needs some backstory to match. Julie Benz obviously made a decent enough impression in the first couple of episodes, and nothing she did or said quite ruled her out as Angel's sire, and we never quite see her die. So suddenly she's back, now the Master's favorite vampire, attacking Buffy's mother in her own home and sowing the seeds of mistrust between Buffy and Angel and ... oh, she's dead again. Bummer.
Except then in Season 2 Angel's role expands again -- he's not just Buffy's intermittently seen vampire boyfriend anymore, he's the focus of the whole season and he's going to appear in all but one episode. Of course, he's going to need more backstory (and we're all going to be treated to David Boreanaz's best Irish accent) so ... once again Darla rises from the ashes, albeit this time only in flashbacks. And the Darla we see in Becoming's flashbacks is once again an evolution of the character we last saw in Season 1's Angel. More confident, more complex. A character that it is honestly difficult to reconcile with the take on the character we saw last season, especially the one we swa in the show's first two episodes.
Anyway, Angel gets sent to hell in Season 2, but not before managing to (somehow) act his way into his own spin-off series. And yes, that means more flashbacks, and more Darla, and more retcons about the precise nature of her relationship with the Master, but ultimately it means the writers decide to bring Darla back from the dead at the end of the spin-off's first season (for, depending on exactly you count it, arguably the fourth time, though only the first in-universe). And this iteration of Darla -- both the human Darla we see in the beginning of Angel's second season, and the vampire she becomes again later that season -- is arguably the closest thing there is to a definitive take on the character. This is the Darla people mean when they talk about her on the show. Not the mid-level vampire of Welcome to the Hellmouth or the essentially single episode villain of Season 1's Angel, but the real deal. Darla at her most complicated and rich and alive, a Darla whose history is hopelessly entangled with that of her on-again, off-again lover Angel, a character who provides the driving force for the spin-off show's greatest season. A character who is, I think, one of the most interesting to ever appear on that show.
Then the last few episodes of Season 2 completely drop Darla and all trace of the arc she introduced. When she reappears next season (in just a handful of episodes) it's so that her character can be written out of the show via mystical and impossible-by-the show's-previous-rules pregnancy in order for men to feel sad about it (but not for very long), and afterwards everything generally goes to shit.
But then, that tells you quite a lot about the Buffyverse and its creators as well.
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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤSIBLING DYNAMICS WITH GWEN !! ♡ (˃͈ દ ˂͈ ༶ )
pairing: platonic!Gwen Stacy x fem!black!reader / mom!Jessica Drew x adopted!Gwen Stacy x reader.
genre: fluff! headcanons! a liiiiiiittle bit of angst! just a little bit 🤏🏾
warnings: english is not my first language, daddy issues, pregnancy ig, mentions of normal sibling violence
a.n: hello!! :3 this is the first day of my challenge of writing something everyday for the entirety of July! so yeah! this popped out on my head when i was having a conversation with my brother so i wanted to write it down! anyways, love y'all, be safe! <3 xoxo
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤPLEASE CONSIDER REBLOGGING!!
it started with Jess talking about Gwen all the time. you were jealous, yeah, but you wouldn't admit it. the girl was disinherited by her father over being spiderwoman, which was ridiculous. but you could relate, since your own father left your mother when he found out she was spiderwoman. but that's not the point. over the time, Gwen started visiting more, having more sleepovers, and all that stuff. until the day Jess came home asking how you would like a sister. obviously you already knew what she was talking about, so, yeah let's now go to the ✨ sibling dynamics ✨.
↳ when Gwen gets more comfortable, oh boy, poor Jess
↳ you two are a menace to this woman
↳ you're always fighting about something
↳ mostly because Gwen took something of yours, like a shirt or a hoodie
↳ she says they're more comfortable than hers and would die on this hill
↳ likes to go to your room and just lay on the floor while you do your stuff
↳ or just walk around and read a book, or sit on the ceiling and creep at you
|ㅤ "can you stop? you're freaking me out."
|ㅤ "nah. btw why do you have so many entries about hobie in your diary?"
|ㅤ "mOOOM"
|ㅤ "nO NO NO STOP"
↳ and then you'd throw a stapler at her
↳ if you knew how to cook, would definitely teach Gwen so she could go to the cookout at the Morales'
↳ Jess doesn't approve Miles to date Gwen but oh well
↳ you would be the BEST wingwoman for Gwen, always going out with her as a disguise
↳ hobie, pav, margo and miles would defo have a sleepover at your house when Mom™ is out in mission
|ㅤ "mom can the boys and Margo sleepover?"
|ㅤ "while i'm away? nuh uh!"
|ㅤ "but mom-"
|ㅤ "did your sister agree with that"
|ㅤ "uhm…"
|ㅤ "Y/N DID YOU AGREE WITH THE SLEEPOVER"
|ㅤ "YEAH MOM IT'S FINE"
↳ and she would give Gwen the most criminal offensive side eye ever given, but everything would work out fine (lie).
↳ she learned how to braid hair so you wouldn't have to do it by yourself, cause she saw how tiring it was for you to do your own braids
↳ you take care of each other's hair like, in general
↳ would only go to salons when really needed
↳ defo do each others nails
↳ (projecting w this one but 🤭) you like acrylic nails and she likes them short
↳ you would do all the prep for your nails and she would do like cool designs or pick the colors
↳ TALKING ABOUT COLORS
↳ y'all don't match outfits, you match the color schemes!!!!
|ㅤ "i wanna do red"
|ㅤ "nah let's go with purple, G"
|ㅤ "but red-"
↳ and there goes another argument :D
↳ Gwen has nightmares almost every night
↳ so it's common for you to go to her room in the middle of the night just to calm her down
↳ she would cry on your shoulder every time, and apologize a thousand times about waking you up
|ㅤ "ay, don't worry, G. you're my sister, I'm here for you"
↳ and she would cry even harder
↳ overall you're very protective over each other
↳ but you did chase her with a knife once... meh, another day another slay !
↳ she loves you more than anything
↳ and so do you <3
↳ mama Jess is just grateful for the blessings.
tagging: @ppinkkkiwi @elusive-honeydew
#gwen stacy#platonic gwen stacy#gwen stacy x you#gwen stacy x reader#mama jess atsv#jessica drew x reader#atsv x reader#sibling dynamics#moon writes!#fluff headcanons#31 days with moon!#writing challenge
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2023 Writing Wrap-Up
I'm a little late this time around since it's already 2024, but I haven't done a writing wrap-up since 2021 and I thought it would be fun to bring back!
So this year, I was on quite a roll for the first half of the year. And then July rolled around and I started slowing down until it came to a screeching halt. Not sure what happened. Maybe it's my ADHD and constantly shifting hyper-fixations to blame. But I gradually managed to come back around just in time to post something for Christmas, which I'm still working on finishing. However, my hiatus doesn't take away the pride I still have for what I was able to write during the year. And I look forward to writing more in 2024! So here's all I managed to finish/get a good start on and post during 2023.
A Kiss For A Drink: 6,740 words; one-shot
I actually started writing this back in 2020 or 2021, intended to be posted on Valentine's Day. And then I got a point where I couldn't finish it and let it sit for about 2 years. I finally came back with some inspiration and motivation and finished it just in time to post for Valentine's Day 2023! I'm really happy with how it came out. It was a fun idea that turned into a fun fic with a few laughs included, even if it is one of my least-viewed fics lol I had fun writing it too, which is all that really matters!
Lunacy Fringe: 62,690 words; 8/8 chapters
To say this fic suddenly came out of nowhere would be an understatement. I literally got inspired out of the blue while listening to an episode of the Therapy Gecko podcast and the next thing I knew, I was balls deep in a psychological thriller. I actually managed to write it in just over a month or so!! Which is really incredible for me, especially considering I didn't step away from it at all or lose inspiration before it was finished. I'm really proud of how it turned out, and I haven't really told anyone, but I am working on converting it into an original story and possibly self-publishing. It could end up being my very first original novel :) the feedback I got was far more positive than I'd expected, especially considering how I portrayed Beth. I'm overall so so happy with how it turned out!!
Longer Than A Heartbeat: 157,289 words; 29/29 chapters
Now this... this fic is one of my proudest pieces by far. I'll never get over how happy I am with how it turned out, and how I was actually able to finish it. For the last few years, every time I rewatched "28 Days Later," I couldn't stop thinking about how it would make such a good Bethyl fic, and how I wanted to convert it into a Bethyl fic that included Rick and Judith. I finally did it!! Technically, I wrote it in 2022, but I didn't completely finish it and post it until 2023. When I say I write for myself... this fic really proves it, because I go back and read chapters from it all the time just because it's so fun and I love how I wrote it. I was also pleasantly surprised by the reception and how people who hadn't ever watched "28 Days Later" enjoyed it! Not to mention, @boltthrutheheart made some incredible custom manips for me that I can never get over!!
hot girl summer (playing by the rules); 167k+ words, 16/30 chapters
Ah yes, here she is... the companion piece to the first 3 fics of "in for a penny, in for a pound" that I've been planning/contemplating ever since I did that first fic from Beth's POV for the series. I always wanted to show Beth's POV for all the major moments in the series, and then once I got started, I figured why not go all in and just do her POV for the entirety of the series thus far? It gives a little more insight into how she's feeling, why she does the things she does and says the things she says, and we also get to see exactly what she was doing all those times that Daryl couldn't help wondering about her (because I already knew in my head, but I thought it might be fun to share with everyone else). I also thought it would make the set-up for the next fic a little better, so we could try and understand Beth's motivations better and where she's at in her head. Of course, I got pretty into it and then hit a speed bump and then suddenly, lost all ability to write. It'll come back soon, though. I can't wait to finish this fic and move on to the next in the series, and eventually conclude Beth and Daryl's tumultuous journey in this fun little AU.
Small Miracles; 39k+ words, 6/10 chapters
This is the fic that finally pushed me back into being able to write. I had no plans of writing for BHF 2023, and then I suddenly had this strike of inspiration for a very weird idea and decided to go with it and try and finish it in time to post for Christmas. I did manage to finish about 1/3rd of the fic in time, but I'm still writing it and haven't lost motivation yet, so that's a good sign! It's also just really fun and kind of cathartic to do a new exploration of Beth's journey through the eyes of an older Beth who survived Grady, with that fun little supernatural twist added to it. I can't wait to finish this one, because I've had a lot of fun writing it and really look forward to seeing what people think of her entire journey and the way it will conclude.
To everyone who's read my fics, left feedback, kudos, bookmarks, or even helped me bounce ideas off and come up with plans for fics... thank you so much! I appreciate everyone in this little fandom so, so much. Y'all mean the world to me, and I am so grateful that we have this wonderful community in our own little corner of the internet. Happy New Year to you all, and I hope 2024 brings you nothing but blessings!
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For the Truth or Dare ask game: 🌵, 🔪, 🍦, 🎨
🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love
Sorry to disappoint but I do not have a link to share! I’m a puts-my-entire-music-library-on-shuffle-and-revel-in-the-chaotic-mixture girlie. When a song plays that reminds me of a particular book or pairing, I do add it to a playlist of that, however.
🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?
Well, during the research for this fic, google was literally giving me crisis hotlines at the top of the search results because I was searching things like “what does it feel like to be stabbed in the chest” “how long does it take to die from a stab wound to the chest” “how long can a person remain conscious after a stab wound to the chest” etc. etc. etc. I was making google very concerned lol.
But I don’t even know if that’s the weirdest, because those are kind of the standard “I swear I’m a writer not a murderer!” search queries. The weirdest was probably something like the time I was desperately trying to find out how long the voyage from Germany to New Orleans would have been via steamship in the mid 1860s and having to resort to a free trial of ancestry.com just so I could get the dang passenger lists in order to compare the arrival and departure times, or combing through agricultural advertisements in American newspapers in the 1860s (if I ever finish that dang chapter you’ll know why) or the fact that I’m currently reading a 400 page academic text on moneylending in Imperial Russia…
There’s a lot of weird niche research that goes into writing fic lmao.
🍦 ⇢ name three good things about a character you hate
Noooo how could you do this to me when all the characters I hate are very deserving of my hatred? Gah. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov came to mind immediately, so let’s see… um.
He has affection for Alyosha (but only because Alyosha is loving toward him, and he’s still an absolute jerk to Alyosha quite often)
He makes Pyotr Miusov miserable and it’s pretty hilarious.
He got extremely angry when Grushenka was referred to as a “brute creature” and defended her, so we do love to see that, even though he’s still a gross pathetic little creep when it comes to her.
🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it
Noooo there’s no way I can possibly pick a favourite when all of my fandoms are full of such incredibly talented artists!! But I guess the most impressive fanart project that comes immediately to mind for me is @gegengestalt’s Microsoft Paint—yeah, that’s right, you heard me correctly. Microsoft Paint—illustration of the entirety of tbk from start to finish. It’s amazing. https://www.tumblr.com/gegengestalt/717765289928015872/the-entirety-of-the-brothers-karamazov-in-mspaint?source=share
But yeah, gah, I am in absolute awe of all the fantastically talented artists in all of the fandoms I’m in. You guys are terrifyingly talented.
Thank you so much for the ask!!!
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The Archivist's Journal: Complete
Well, as complete as it's going to be at any rate. The original "journal entry a day for a year" project is now up at @thearchivistsjournal in its entirety and clocking in at just over 330,000 words.
To everyone who's read any of this story, whether keeping up with it as it updates, reading it archivally (pun intended), or just reading snippets in tag games: Thank you. I hope it brought you at least some small amount of joy
I don't know that I'll ever do a second draft/editing pass, given that the sort of raw "just a journal I was keeping"-ness of the whole thing is half the point. Or maybe I'm just too emotionally attached to what ended up being a far more personal project than I originally intended to bear making the cuts that proper editing would entail. Or maybe I'm simply too lazy and too eager to move on to the next thing.
Although if I'm being entirely honest, this is - in a way - the second editing pass that's up online.
Confession Time:
While it is true that The Archivist's Journal was written at a rate of one entry a day for a year (plus Days 365-380 all in one marathon writing session on the last day), the dates that the project ran from was from July 16, 2021 to July 15, 2022. On July 16, 2022 I made my first ever post on Tumblr and began putting The Archivist's Journal online one day at a time, with each entry going online on the anniversary of the day I originally wrote it.
There were some minor edits in this, but they were all of the nature of minor typographical fixes. Spelling errors, odd line breaks, words that were technically spelled right but not the one I meant, the occasional addition/subtraction/substitution of a word or phrase. That sort of thing. Nothing that actually changed the story, or even altered an individual scene.
I apologize if this has all come across as a misrepresentation of myself. The truth is, when I originally started this project it was something purely for myself and it wasn't until I was approaching the end that I realized that I had something that might possibly be worth sharing, even if only one person somewhere liked it. But I felt that the serial format of one entry a day keeping analogous between real time and story time so I kept the posts staggered in that way. Honestly, I don't think that I could have written this project and kept it up at the pace that I did if I'd also been trying to maintain an online presence at the time.
And speaking of the pace, that's perhaps the biggest reason I ended the story where I did rather than keeping it up indefinitely. Averaging around 800 words a day every single day straight when I also have a full-time job and other hobbies (even after cutting back on those hobbies in favor of writing) was not sustainable for me, and as much as Iove this project, I was burnt out by the end, mentally and emotionally (and physically given how it impacted my sleep schedule and ate the time I used to spend exercising). And then there was the weirder factor of the journal format combining with pandemic lockdowns/self-isolation to start to feel enough like a second life to make me mildly concerned for my mental health were it to keep going the way it was. As I said, it turned out to be an unexpectedly personal work, and the Archivist became far more of a self-insert (albeit obviously with certain traits idealized and certain flaws exaggerated) than originally intended.
So, what's next?
For the most part, continuing on with Empty Names as my current main focus project (once I finish up with my current writing hiatus to take care of various personal and IRL things). I don't particularly like working on two things at once. One day once Empty Names is finished (most likely a couple years from now, given my much more leisurely pace these days) I'd like to go back and revisit that "Untitled Solar Punk Witch Story" in some fashion. Assuming I don't get some other grand project idea before then.
That said, over the past year I have written a few sporadic entries for The Archivist's Journal. A sort of checking in every few months to see how that world and those characters are doing. I'll most likely post those as their anniversaries roll around to keep them in temporal sync with the rest of the online postings. These entries are more epilogue than sequel though, so Day 380 will remain the end of the "main story" of The Archivist's Journal.
So, yeah. That's all that. And again, I apologize for any misrepresentation of myself. While I don't know that I'll ever do anything quite like The Archivist's Journal again, it will always hold a special place for me. Among many other things, it taught me that writing is something I enjoy doing and that I wish to keep doing for a long time to come.
And if anyone happens to like what I write, that's pretty cool too.
Thanks for reading.
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rj's big sappy 2022 recap
when i started this dumb little blog, on july 9th, i was midway through writing an unambiguous love and rife with other ideas for more fics that i finally decided to bite the bullet and start writing. i'd been out of the fanfic writing game for a long time, and as a day 1 stranger things fan i knew how big the fandom already was, even before s4 came out in its entirety. but i was inspired to Just Start Writing Anyway. not to worry about notes, because yeah, it's oversaturated as all hell, but that means if numbers don't do well, there's an excuse, right? and i can just enjoy writing and posting and seeing what sticks.
but now here we are, nearly half a year later, with over 1.5k of you (!!!!!!!) and i am rejuvenated, i am inspired and i have never felt more love. so i'm gonna get real sappy and share that love with you all.
first and foremost, to the og's, @denim-mixtapes + @fanatictypist, i can't say anything more to you that i haven't already in the last nine years, other than thank you for reigniting the flame under my ass to get me here again. i love you both eternally.
to the other half of my brain, my platonic soulmate, @keerysquinn, i still cannot believe we had matching urls saved. i love us so much. thank you for being my muse, constantly inspiring and encouraging me, and making me feel less alone in this insane expanse of a fandom. thank you for always being my number 1 hype person, and being the best sister wife (gn) to our beloved scrunkly.
and on that note, to @bowerquinn and @hellfirehoe; the immediate friendship, guidance and support you both showed me from the moment i first started talking to you both is something truly special. i have never felt more welcome in a community than the way you made me feel from the moment we "met", and never more loved than through the absolute ferocity with which you guys have my back. i love the three of you immensely. slut squad 4 lyf <3
after having been in the [redacted] fandom for so long, i'd really lost touch in what i used to love the most about fandom, and on the surface there's so much flack that gets thrown around for what is and isn't "canon", what's "true" and what isn't, and so i had given up on my old love of crackshipping until anna and @heroeddiemunson once again reinvigorated new ways to interpret my favourite media since, i wanna say my old glee days?? i forgot how fun it is to just take two characters and explore their dynamics with little to no canon context. and that's had my creative juices flowing consistently for months now. i just have so much fun thinking about these things, and sharing them with people who get it, it truly never gets old.
speaking of bouncing ideas back and forth, i can't talk about the shit that's changed my life this year and not talk about busy streets and busy lives. while i've had stranger things-related fics that have reached insane numbers, and i am so very grateful for that, the small and mighty community that bsbl has formed is something i hold very close to my heart. i never thought i had it in me to write a longform story. to write believable angst, or slow burn, or even original characters that people would care about. that's why i've always only ever written fanfic. but the comments i get from bsbl chapters truly make me believe that i'm capable of far more than i'd thought before i started it. thank you for loving it as much as i do. <3
(also, while i do sincerely love and appreciate every sort of commentary on it, i do have to give an extra special dose of love to @reysorigins because their reviews on @reysorigins-library are, honest to whatever's out there, some of the most genuinely sincere ones to receive. seeing your own words recited back to you, singled out to praise them, is validating and inspiring in ways i can't put into words. thank you for what you do, rey <3)
it was never even meant to be the insanity that it now is. it started off as a dumb oneshot idea that i had no idea what direction it was headed in. then an inside joke in the jq server inspired me, and many others, to start bouncing more and more ideas about what ralph would be like in the modern world, and so a fic was born. a fic that's only 6 chapters deep so far and already 52k+ words. that's a whole novel!!! i daren't tag everyone who's contributed to bsbl bc a) it'd take so much searching back through multiple channels to make sure i included absolutely everyone, and i'd feel terrible if i missed anyone out; and b) if you're there for that, you're here anyway lol. so to everyone in the jq server, thank you for giving me the gift of the story that never stops giving back.
there are so many other friends i've made through the camaraderie of the writing community. again, at first it seemed oversaturated, like i was going to be just a drop in the ocean. but actually, that's not the case. it just means there's always going to be people who are willing to listen to your headcanons and hype them up with you. it's given me the confidence to - and i can't word this in any other way but i promise it isn't self-deprecating - just be really fucking annoying about the things that i enjoy. i've managed to find a corner of the internet that loves the things that i love as much as i do and in as big a way as i do.
and the inspiration i get from new friends goes even beyond writing! i've even been inspired to start learning how to make gifs now?? and not just compiling frames and putting them together, i'm learning all about colouring and rendering and blending scenes together. i've never been very visually creative, but i have so much to learn and i'm so excited to.
it's my 2023 goal to try and be more of an active friend to my mutuals. but i'm bad at reaching out lol. i would tag all of the mutuals i want to get to know better for accountability's sake but a) again i may forget people and feel real bad about it, and b) i don't want to annoy anyone with unwanted pings. but if we're moots, i am always down to talk more!!
2022 was always going to be a big year for me anyway. a couple of weeks ago, i celebrated a decade of my "second" life. but i've done other big things this year, too. i've been learning welsh and getting in touch with my own heritage. i've started to get over my fear of learning to drive. i applied for a promotion at work, didn't get it, but most importantly, i didn't let it get me down. it's just motivated me to get to somewhere better, where the talents i KNOW i have can actually be appreciated. if you'd have told me from ten years ago that, i'd have decked you lmao.
i couldn't have imagined at the start of the year that i'd pick up the one creative hobby i thought i was fully burned out from. but here we are. thank you for the last half-year-ish. whether you've been here for five months or five minutes, i appreciate your presence regardless. <3
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Day 312
I had purposely fried myself at work yesterday to the point where I just didn’t want to write yesterday. Like, I was supposed to be done at 4:30 p.m. and didn’t get off until past 6:30 p.m. My only saving grace was that I had decided (due to a different set of issues) to stay home rather than work on site.
To be clear this was a tactical decision on my part.
One that I can make, provided I boot my ass off at noon on Friday next week. I have emailed my manager to let her know what I did this week and now I am committed to not staying on longer than I have to.
By the way, I can hear people asking, why would you do something so foolish when you’re not paid overtime, and would your manager really let you take off early on Friday?
Yes, yes she would let me, I may not be at the high tier end in terms of pay, but I have great benefits and I use them.
As for the other question of… why?
Here’s the thing, due to staffing issues, I didn’t get my booking schedule or my therapists’ assignments until yesterday. There are over 60 clients to book for appointments and that schedule was for July. We’re already halfway through June so I had a choice to make.
See, I could just call as many people as possible until the end of my work day. And when you call someone, you’re not just calling them and arranging a date and time with them. You’re calling them, if you don’t get a hold of them, you send them an email, and then you note it in the client’s file that you did this. If you did get a hold of them, you find a date, book the date into the system and then note it into the client’s file. This takes brainpower and time, and I would be lucky if I got 25 clients called by the time my day ended. Frankly if you managed to call 25 clients it’s because a good number of them did not pick up the goddamn phone.
But the other choice was to make a quick email template that had all the information. I would then reserve a date and time for someone, and put it into the email, send it off and give them the weekend to respond back. This meant I wasn’t having a back and forth with someone over the telephone, I wasn’t having to take time to book an appointment right this second, and because it was a template it would take less time. Yes, it meant I had to stay over 2 hours longer to email every single person, but better 2 hours than 3 days of calling. Most importantly, I had touched every single person on my call list once before we closed for the weekend, which is better than just 25 of them.
If I’m lucky 80% of those people will answer back and most of them will take the date and time offered. I will probably be spending the entirety of my Monday listening to Amalee, Stupedium and whatever nerdcore singer on my playlist while digging myself out of roughly 50+ emails but it will be worth it. I swear.
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Was John H. Packard really one of the best surgeons in West Philly?
Warning: This article has a graphic description of medical injury. I know its brief, but I would rather put this notice here than not, just to let people know before they read this article in its entirety. [1]
Recently, I was going through documents recently transcribed by Library of Congress volunteers. On one of the pages, a soldier writes to William Oland Bourns, a reformer, poet, editor, and clergyman who edited a periodical titled The Soldier's Friend. He had a contest from 1865-1866, as noted by LOC, where soldiers and sailors of the Union Army who lost their "right arms by disability or amputation" during the war in the past five years were "invited to submit samples of their penmanship using their left hands." Anyway, the soldier writes, on one of the pages of his August 1865 letter that he was, in late July 1862, taken by a steamer from Richmond to a West Philadelphia hospital where a man named John H. Packard cared for him. [2]
He called Packard "one of the best surgeons there," with five pieces of his bone sawed out (yikes!), along with shattered bones removed. He was not discharged from the hospital until February 1863, at which time "Dr. Packard was very proud of the operation [and] he had my photograph taken showing the arm." Its not every day where a surgeon takes a photograph of the patient they did surgery on. The soldier's name is later revealed to be Martin V.B. Keller and he lived in Lancester County, Pennsylvania.
Now what about this Packard fellow? I found a man of the same description in the as listed as living in the eighth ward of Philadelphia. The 1870 census lists him as 30-year-old man living there with his wife Elizabeth, and children: 11-year-old Bessie, 10-year-old Charles, eight-year-old Frederick, five-year-old John, and one-year-old Francis. [3] The 1860 census is more substantial, [4] showing the same children and wife, but also three Irish servants 47-year-old Mary Hassan, 25-year-old Ellen McBride, and 22-year-old Bridget Welsh. More than this, it lists him as a physician!
The same is the case with a 1880 census, which calls him a physician too. [5] More than that, this record, on FamilySearch, linked to the page of a man named John Hooker Packard, who would be our man! Here is a screenshot of his profile:
Going through this profile, I found an 1850 census which shows that he is the son of Frederick Adolpus Packard, a president of something, the name of which I can't make out, and Elizabeth Dwight Hooker. [6] They are living in the Spruce Ward of Philly at the time and he is listed as a doctor! Beyond this, we know from various passport applications he made in the late 1890s and early 1900s that he was born in August 15, 1832 in Pennsylvania, as he asserted over and over. [7] In those documents, he often called himself a physician. While in 1901, he calls himself a "private citizen" in the passport application, in another the following he called himself a physician. He would die of heart disease in May 1907 in Atlantic City, Atlantic County, New Jersey.
But that's not all. According to FamilySearch, John Hooker Packard is my "4th cousin five times removed." What does that mean? Well, his father, Frederick Adolphus Packard, was the son of Reverend Asa Packard. Asa, was, in turn, the son of Jacob Packard. Jacob, was the son of Solomon, and Solomon was the son of Zaccheus and Sarah, who I've written about on this blog before. This may be a bit confusing, as it was to me, so perhaps a chart of the connections would help a little more:
Before I finished doing research, I decided to do a general search for his name... and what came up? A 1863 book he wrote titled A Manual Of Minor Surgery (later adopted by the U.S. Army), which the Amazon description called a "scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint...[which is] culturally important." Dr. Michael Echols & Dr. Doug Arbittier called him one of the "most prominent American surgeons of the last part of the 19th Century and a pioneer of modern American surgery," noting that he served as "acting assistant surgeon in two Union Army hospitals during the Civil War," with the latter proving Martin V.B. Keller's account as accurate. I was amazed to see an article in Anesthesiology journal in November 2001 on him by Ray J. Defalque, M.D.; Bernard Panning, M.D.; Amos J. Wright, M.L.S. In the article, they called him "an eminent Philadelphia surgeon" and how he switched from using chloroform to ether in 1864, contributing to use of anesthesia, while calling him "a pioneer of modern American surgery." Even so, they noted that in 1896, a finger of his became infected during one of his surgeries, leading him to develop septicemia, causing him to retire, and he "died from cardiorenal failure in Atlantic City in 1907." What I loved most of all about the article was not the content, but the fact that we got a photograph of him!
Some searches online find his writings in the digital collection of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, SNAC, and Harvard Library. Onward! I'm planning to write another post in the future which explores the lives of the three Irish servants, but this article is just a starting point before I get to that article. The answer to the question at the beginning of this article is "possibly," although I'm not sure anyone ever said he was the "best."
Notes
[1] This is a content warning rather than a trigger warnings, which apply to "sexual violence, oppressive language, gunshots, and representations of self-harm," along with other topics.
[2] Bourne, Wm. Oland. Wm. Oland Bourne Papers: Left-hand Penmanship contest; Soldier and sailor contributions; Series I $1,000 in prizes, awarded in; Entries 211-220. 1866. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss13375.00404/?q=packard&sp=26
[3] "United States Census, 1870", database with images, FamilySearch, 19 March 2020, John H Packard, 1870; line number 38, NARA M593, GS film number 000552920, digital folder number 004278863, image number 312, indexing project batch number N0163-6, record number 12037. Children are shown on next page.
[4] "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch, 11 November 2020, John H Packard, 1860; page 6, household ID 27, NARA M653, affiliate film number 1158, GS film number 805158, digital folder number 005171158, image number 10, indexing project batch number N01813-6, record number 218.
[5] "United States Census, 1880," database with images, FamilySearch, 13 November 2020, John H. Packard, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America; citing enumeration district ED 129, sheet 206C, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm 1,255,170.
[6] "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch, 24 December 2020, John Packard in household of Fredrick Packard, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States; citing family 746, line 47, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm 444781.
[7] "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch, 16 March 2018), John H Packard, 1893; citing Passport Application, Pennsylvania, United States, record number 2675, Passport Applications, 1795-1905., 408, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch, 16 March 2018), John H Packard, 1897; citing Passport Application, Pennsylvania, United States, record number 5934, Passport Applications, 1795-1905., 491, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch, 16 March 2018), John H Packard, 1901; citing Passport Application, Pennsylvania, United States, source certificate #45202, Passport Applications, 1795-1905., Roll 583, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch, : 16 March 2018), John H Packard, 1902; citing Passport Application, Pennsylvania, United States, source certificate #56681, Passport Applications, 1795-1905., Roll 600, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
Note: This was originally posted on Jan. 7, 2021 on the main Packed with Packards WordPress blog (it can also be found on the Wayback Machine here). My research is still ongoing, so some conclusions in this piece may change in the future.
© 2021-2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
#packards#genealogy#family search#family history#genealogy research#ancestry#servants#doctors#physicians#19th century#library of congress#libraries#atlantic city#pennsylvania#philly#philadelphia
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Party panic review
#Party panic review update#
#Party panic review full#
#Party panic review free#
During this time I'm going to come up with at least two new minigames that will be added to the game. I'm not happy with this, and I know a lot of people were looking forward to new minigames. There have not been any new minigames for the entirety of the time I've been working on the new game mode. I have one minigame half done a week ahead of schedule at the point of writing this, so I might be able to squeeze this in before the end of the month. Going to work on a progression system at some point before the Steam Summer sale. All these things are already complete, I just need to clean up a few things. This will NOT include any new content, but will have things like a new server browser, matchmaking/find me a game, in game chat, UI improvements, Controller/keyboard improvements.
#Party panic review update#
Prepare an update for Party Panic, with all the "quality of life" fixes and improvements I've made over the last few months. Here's a breakdown of the roadmap as I see it, as I work towards the release of Party Panic. So all in all, there's some really unfortunate timing that I wasn't aware about that means I can't/shouldn't release Party Panic June 1st, when I had hoped.Īfter thinking about this problem for all of last week, I think I've come up with a solution I'm happy (mostly) with, and hopefully you guys will be happy with as well. This is unacceptable.Ģ) There is the option to release a few days before the Summer Sale, but this seems like suicide for Party Panic's visibility, as Party Panic would get completely lost in the chaos, and can in no way complete with last years AAA GOTY on sale for 90% off or whatever other crazy deals there will be. Which means unless I do something there will have been no updates to Party Panic for 6 months. If I want to release Party Panic AND be included in the Summer Sale Party Panic needs to be released 37 days BEFORE the Summer Sale, or 30 days after.ģ7 days before would mean that I would need to release the in less than 14 days, which is absolutely impossible as that's not enough time to get release promo/marketing ready, and finalize the remaining things in the game.ģ0 days after the the Summer Sale brings us to the end of July. There are some complications with releasing Party Panic any time in June for a few reasons.ġ) Developers must wait 30 days between sale/discounts. Last year the Summer Sale was the last week in June, and went until the first week of July. I was right on track to meet that date, but as I was nailing down the details there was an issue that I (somehow) overlooked.Įveryone knows that every Summer Steam has a huge sale, and we're quickly coming up to this sale. May was set to be the "Pre-Release planning" month for Party Panic, where I would nail down dates, get in contact with marketing/promotional people and prepare for a big launch June 1st the best I can. This new game mode is very close to being done. This is because I shifted gears to work on a new game mode for Party Panic that got bigger and bigger as I worked on it, but in that process of creating something that (I think) is really cool, I kind of neglected the rest of the game.
#Party panic review full#
It's hard work and some days it feels like there's a lot of weight on my shoulders to deliver, but I have some big things prepared for the full Release, and the time leading up to it.Ĭurrently, the live version of Party Panic is from Feb 11th, nearly 3 months have gone by without any updates to main version. I want to make Party Panic the best game I possibly can, and I'm still working as hard as I can.
#Party panic review free#
I will continue to post what is happening and progress on the game in this thread! Feel free to post suggestions in this thread, or ideas for the board game mode!įor the sake of transparency, I want to explain what's going on with Party Panic and the plan for moving forward out of Early Access and into Release.
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You’re a scary shadow monster who adopted a child- Part 8
If you’re new, you can start from the beginning here!
If you haven’t read it, you can find part 7 here!
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“You’re wrong.”
Gerald stopped and pinched his spot between his eyebrows for what felt like the millionth time. This frickin’ kid.
“Look,” he ground out, mustering the last dregs of his patience, “It’s nice that your “friend” gave you food and cuddles and whatnot. It’s nice, it really is, but right now, if they catch us, they will kill us- don’t give me that look. Your friend is literally hunting us down right now, you don’t get to say anything.”
The kid pouted, but didn’t say anything. Gerald mentally awarded himself a point for the win.
The next couple of minutes passed by in silence, something that he was extremely grateful for. Less talking meant less strain from the soundless-charm, which meant he could focus more on avoiding shadow tentacles that wanted to eat him, which was always a good thing in his opinion.
Then a mass of smokey tentacle slammed in front of him and he froze, the glowing symbols on its surface burning themselves into the back of his eyes as he stared and stared and stared at the massive thing that furled and unfurled and rippled and flowed. His mind was a confusing blend of cold terror and sharp, electrifying adrenaline, of dull resignation and petrified denial. One thing rang clear and unmistakable in his head: he was going to die.
Then the thing moved, and he realised two things. One, he was still alive. Two, the tentacle was heading away from him, and it was moving without obvious intent.
He checked his charms again. Still intact.
The tentacle swooshed over his head and he ducked, heart pounding, fully conscious of the fact that the only reason they were still alive was because the monster didn’t know where they were.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the kid reach out, their hand peeking out of the protection of his invisibility cloak. Time slowed, his mouth opening to shout a warning too late, his racing mind uttering every single curse word in existence, and he saw the exact moment the monster’s tentacles picked up on the sight of the kid’s hand.
Tentacles exploded, swaths of pure darkness rocketing straight towards the two of them. Saying a mental goodbye to his ma, Gerald dropped all pretence of stealth and cast the strongest light spell he could manage, dropping the see-all charm in favour of boosting the strength of the spell. Light burst into existence, incandescent and humming with energy. The shadows reared back, pushed away by his magic, and Gerald grabbed the kid’s arm and ran.
Another terrifying screech from the monster, but Gerald would be delusional to think that his magic had hurt it in any way. Light- and light magic- can repel shadow monsters, but not harm them. Only Divine Light could do that, but the chances of Gerald stumbling upon one of the treasures stored in the treasure room of this dungeon while running for his life with a kid in tow is pretty slim, so unless the universe decided to throw him a bone and gift him with insane plot armour or something like that, he was on his own, with only his own magic to rely on, and he was super screwed.
Then his foot caught on something on the ground and he face-planted awkwardly onto the concrete, flailing his limbs to untangle them from his invisibility cloak. He sat up to find the culprit only to see a small golden box lying innocuously near his feet, and the kid was looking at him with the most terrified expression he’d ever seen.
#writing#creative writing#writing prompts#writing something every day for the entirety of July#July writing challenge#raise your hands who saw this coming#tomorrow's entry is going to be FUN#by fun I mean painful#but also fun#Sahdo the shadow monster#Day 10
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Hi! Welcome to a new One Direction fic fest! Twice Upon A Time!
This is a fest that will run for the entirety of 2022 where every month will have a classic tale as the prompt and all who are interested can write their own version with a 1D fandom twist. No sign-up required.
The prompts have already been chosen and are listed below, so you may start writing for as few or as many as you like at any time. You only need to post your fics in the associated collections by the required deadlines, which will be covered in the rules.
Below is the list of fairytale/folktale prompts for each month. There are also links to Wikipedia articles for every prompt in case you aren’t familiar or need a quick refresher.
January - Twelve Dancing Princesses
February - Tsuru no ongaeshi- The Crane
March - Snow White & Rose Red
April - Thumbelina
May - The Nightingale
June - The Swan Princess
July - Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten - Town Musicians of Bremen
August - The Ugly Duckling
September - Sleeping Beauty
October - The Princess & the Pea
November - Little Red Riding Hood
December - Cinderella
Rules and other details of our own Twice Upon A Time fest are below the cut.
If our fest doesn’t seem right for you but you still have your heart set on writing a fairytale AU, the Once Upon A Time Fic Fest can be found here. They have an entirely different set up and timeline than this fest which may be more to your liking. Their sign-ups begin Dec 19th and we are very excited for the fairy tale inspired fics which will post as a part of that fest as well!
Rules:
1. There is no age requirement. However, should you choose to participate, you alone are responsible for the content that you choose to post, interact with, and/or consume.
2. Fics must be tagged appropriately. Please don’t blindside anyone with something that could be triggering to them.
3. There is no minimum word count. Fics may be as long or as short as you like.
4. This is a One Direction fest so at least one member of the band must be a main character in the story.
5. Fics must be completed when posted. No WIPs.
6. This fest is not anonymous. Please feel free to post snippets or lines from your fic(s)!
7. Fics must be inspired by the fairytale or folktale that is the prompt for the given month you plan on posting.
The basics for posting:
Add your fic to the appropriate collection by 12 noon ET before the last day of the respective month for whichever prompts you’re writing for. (Details on the collections will be in a later post.)
Please make a fic post for your fics and tag the blog.
There will be a masterpost updated monthly with links to the newly published collection.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Please be sure your fic is in the collection before 12 am ET on the last day of each month. If your fic is not already in the collection when I go to publish the fics, then they won’t be approved to be in the collection. You may still post your fic and link it to the fest on Tumblr and I will reblog the fic post to the fest blog, it just won’t be in the collection.
Also remember: you aren’t required to participate every month. You may participate in as many or as few prompts as you like. You can start on any prompt as early as you want, but it should be finished and uploaded before the last day of the month it represents. All fics will post at 4pm ET on the last day of each month.
Once fics are posted, it is recommended you make a fic post. Be sure to tag @twiceuponatime in the fic post so I know it exists and can reblog it for you! (I also recommend you link to your fic post at the end of your fic in AO3. If you don’t know how to do this, please reach out and I will be happy to help you.)
I will also be making a masterpost for the fest which will be updated monthly with links to each prompt collection as they post, so please help reblog as you are able to spread the word and get excitement going for the fest.
I hope you’ll join me in reimagining these tales!
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meet me in the afterglow: first date
request from @felicitysmoaksx: i would like to see a continuation of the “i’m so stressed out during finals that i show up to the exam in my onesie and you tell me i look cute” university au. maybe like their first date?
read the original fic here
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Luke and Julie ended up at a 24-hour diner a few minutes off campus.
There was a light wind blowing through Julie's curls, and she was glad her onesie was so warm and fuzzy. Luke seemed perfectly at ease in his sleeve tank, but then again, she could feel his warm skin every time her wrist knocked against his arm.
Her hand was still loosely clasped in his. She expected it to be slightly awkward; she had just met Luke and this was unlike anything she had ever done before. In her past four years of studies, she didn't have much time for a social life, much less a boyfriend.
But there was no way she could've turned down his invite after the entirety of the situation.
When they reached the exterior of the diner, Julie spotted various empty booths. There were a few students who were quite obviously studying, what with their textbooks and highlighters strewn around the table, but it was generally quite empty.
Even though it was relatively empty, Julie was still hit with a wave of anxiety with being seen in this onesie by everyone in the diner. It was dumb, she knew that; she had completed her exam in front of people with this onesie and even walked across campus with it. But for some reason, she couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling.
When Luke moved forward to open the door, he stumbled back and realized Julie had stopped walking. Their intertwined hands pulled him to a stop.
He noticed Julie's worried eyes and moved closer, ducking his own head to catch her gaze. "Hey, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
God, Julie wanted to scream. This is not how their first date was supposed to be going.
"This is going to sound weird," Julie laughed nervously. "But I'm feeling super self-conscious about this onesie right about now."
Luke's facial features softened, and he stepped even closer. He let go of her hand to bring it up close to her face; Julie's breath hitched and he stopped his movements. "Julie, believe me when I say this, you look stunning in that onesie. Honestly, I’m too distracted with your beauty to even notice anymore.”
Her brain was short-circuiting and no words were coming to mind. His green gaze was so captivating, she couldn't look away. But they were standing outside the diner and she had to do something.
His hand that stopped mid-air dropped back down, outlining her arm through the onesie to intertwine their pinkies.
Julie felt her knees begin to shake.
She swallowed hard. “Well, I am pretty hungry.”
That was the most her incapacitated brain could come up with currently, but the comment sent a brightening smile to Luke’s lips.
“Great,” he added, once again pulling open the front door.
Julie took a deep breath to regain her confidence. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought; it only mattered how she felt. And if she was being honest, she felt pretty damn good after hearing what Luke had to say.
There was a sign at the front saying ‘seat yourself’ so Julie slid into a widow booth. Luke slid in across from her, his vibrant smile still on full display.
It had been quite some time since Julie went on a first date. It was also pretty obvious that she was out of her element, but Luke seemed perfectly okay with taking the lead.
“So, what’s your major, Julie?” He waited until their waitress came over to hand them menus and bring two glasses of water to ask his question. He was casually perusing the menu, but inside, he was dying to know more about this mysterious girl. “You mentioned something about an Evidence course?”
Julie glanced up from her menu with a soft smile. She hadn't really gotten a chance to celebrate the fact that she was officially finished her major, (however, she couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than a date with an incredibly cute and caring guy). "I was in Criminology. That was my last exam ever, actually."
Luke's eyes widened comically, a large grin spreading over his face. "Congratulations, that's amazing!" He cheered, reaching over to softly squeeze her wrist. "Wow, I should be taking you out to a five course meal — not this."
Julie's eyes snapped up to meet his. He was grinning and he looked confident, but Julie could see the underlying insecurity beneath. It was intriguing to see, given how comfortable he had been since they'd met. "This is perfect," she replied evenly, meeting his eye with assurance.
Luke matched her smile.
The waitress came back to take their order, smiling knowingly at the adorable couple. Luke ordered a chocolate milkshake with a cheeseburger and fries, while Julie also ordered a chocolate milkshake and a chicken caesar wrap with sweet potato fries.
“Perfect. I’ll put that order in right away and it’ll be out soon,” their waitress assured them with a bright smile.
“What about you?” Julie asked, straw between her lips. She didn’t miss the way Luke’s eyes flickered down for a nanosecond; it gave her all the confidence in the world. “Your major?”
Luke took a moment longer to reply (yes, he was composing himself, what about it?). “I’m actually a music major.”
Julie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I was just taking that course as a filler,” he explained. “That was my final exam too.”
Julie’s face lit up in excitement. “Doesn’t it feel great?”
“Unbelievable,” he chuckled. “A little scary because what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Julie’s smile dimmed a bit. She was in the same boat and she had been avoiding thinking about it for as long as possible. However, she was still young and there was always the possibility of going back to school (although, her current outfit and mental stability would argue against that).
“But we’re not going to think about that right now,” she replied with a coy smile.
Luke opened his mouth to rebut, but he was instead distracted by the mouthwatering scent of their food arriving. He was mesmerized, but Julie was straight up emotional about it; she truly thought she might cry.
“Oh God,” she mumbled, her senses completely overloaded. “It’s been so long since I’ve had proper food. Does coffee count as a food?”
Luke was already shoving fries into his mouth. “Definitely not,” he replied through a full mouth. It definitely wasn’t first date etiquette but Julie was so hungry, she couldn’t be bothered to notice. Not that she cared anyway, she was quickly gnawing down her wrap, nearly forgetting to breathe.
Once Julie was satisfied that her hunger was appropriately satiated and she could finally multi-task again, she took a sip of her milkshake and turned her attention to Luke once again. “So, music. How’d you get into it?”
Luke was momentarily surprised at the question, but he was more than happy to speak about it. Music was everything to him; he could talk about it all day. “Honestly, it kind of just happened. A cousin of mine used to have a guitar and we taught ourselves to play.”
“Are you any good?”
Julie meant it to come out teasingly, but it really ended up sounding more flirty than anything.
“Maybe you should find out.”
Luke very easily matched her tone and Julie found herself sweating before him.
“How do you propose I do that?”
Well, she may as well continue with the ruse. She had leaned forward in the booth, resting her chin in her hand.
“Lucky for you, I have a band.”
Julie’s brain immediately stopped all function.
He was attractive, he had amazing biceps, he was sweet and respectable and he was in a band?
“You — you’re in a band?” Julie cringed at the obvious fumble in her words. He can’t just drop that on her and expect her to be okay though.
An unconscious smile spread across his features. “My best friends and I are in a band. We try to play gigs whenever we can; you know, exposure.”
“Oh — you play gigs,” Julie swallowed. God, her throat was dry. “Does that mean you have original songs?”
Luke nodded again; he looked so excited. “My band calls me the Shakespeare of songwriting. Can’t help myself.”
Julie’s brain started screaming at her again: HE WRITES SONGS.
Julie grabbed her glass of water and drained it halfway. “That’s awesome. Uh — so, are you the guitarist?”
“Lead guitarist,” he smirked with pride. “I’m also the lead singer.”
Julie squeezed her water glass so tight, her knuckles turned white. Luke’s eyes dropped to her hand and his smirk only widened.
He was full-on torturing her now and he knew it.
“How the hell are you even real?”
Julie was never known for her subtlety. Luke should know that by now since she basically went off on him in the exam room already anyway. He wasn’t, however, expecting that random question.
His eyebrows rose in surprise, but Julie didn’t elaborate. Instead, she seemed to be almost glaring at him. He laughed, a hint of nervousness in his tone. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a guitar player in a band, you write songs and you sing them. You’re ridiculously sweet and kind and I haven’t seen any red flags yet, which is literally unbelievable nowadays. You’re somehow interested in me and you’re ridiculously hot. There must be something else going on here because there is no way in hell that this is real.”
Luke could only blink at her. He took a moment to mull over his next words before he relayed them with a frown.
“If you’re impressed by my kindness, which should just be basic human behaviour, then men clearly need to do better.”
Julie bit her lip as she sighed. “Sorry. That was a lot. I just mean—”
Luke interrupted. “You seem to be really surprised that someone like me could be interested in you and I just don’t understand,” he explained, brows furrowed together. “What you and I see is clearly different. I see someone intelligent and dedicated enough to her studies to block out everything else and get it done. I see someone beautiful, no matter what they're wearing. I see someone who doesn't think as highly of themselves as they should because I've only known you a few hours and that's enough for me to know that I want you in my life."
Now it was Julie's turn to blink.
"Sorry," Luke popped out a smirk, "That was a lot."
"Listen," Julie breathed, openly avoiding eye contact as she started her explanation. "I'm not, nor have I ever been, that successful in the dating department. This," she motioned between her and Luke, "Has never happened to me before and I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. So, I'm sorry if I'm butchering this."
Luke instantly reached forward to grab her hand. "You're not."
"Are you sure?" She laughed nervously. "I've given you more than one reason tonight to think I'm certifiably insane."
Luke looked up from their conjoined hands with an earnest smile. "I hate to break it to you, but it's going to take a lot more than that to drive me away."
Julie considered it for a moment. "You know what, I'm okay with that."
"Good," he laughed. He stood up from the booth. "I'll be right back."
Julie took this opportunity to momentarily reflect. In the span of twenty-four hours, she had gone through a range of emotions like something she'd never experienced before. But she had successfully completed her exams, and thus, completed her major. She could now take a break from school and decide how she wanted to proceed.
Somehow the worst week of her life ended up as one of the best.
Luke returned a few moments lately, shoving his wallet back into his back pocket. "Alright, we're all squared away. You ready to go?"
Julie nodded with a smile, easily following him outside. "Thanks for the meal, Luke. I needed it."
"Of course." He was unable to lose the grin from his face. "Hey, is it alright if I get your number?"
Julie almost tripped over herself in taking out her cellphone from the pocket of her onesie. They exchanged phone numbers with a smile.
"I live just around the corner over there," Julie motioned with her index finger. "But tonight was great, and I had a lot of fun."
Luke's eyebrows furrowed together. "Oh, that's great. But I'm walking you home."
"You don't need to do that," she replied automatically.
"I want to."
Well, Julie couldn't dispute that.
Luke once again reached for her hand and Julie led the way. She knew it would be an exceptionally short walk, but he kept the conversation going for all of it. It felt like he couldn't get enough of talking to her and it seriously made Julie's heart squeeze with affection.
When they reached the doorstep of Julie's building, she turned to him with nervous eyes.
"I would love to take you out again," Luke murmured quietly. The energy around them had suddenly changed and Julie was hyper aware of his thumb stroking her palm.
"I would love to see your band," she replied, because honestly, she still hadn't gotten that image out of her head.
An immediate grin broke out on Luke's face. "Then it's decided," his eyes softened once again as he took a step down. "Get some sleep, Julie. Celebrate your achievements by forty-seven hours of sleep."
"You know what?" Julie threw her head back in a laugh. "I think I just might."
His eyes were sparkling as he observed her laughing. It was the best sight he'd seen in ages.
Julie could see his hesitation and decided he'd done enough already (especially through her multiple freak-outs over the course of the day). With his small step down, he was finally at her height. She took a small step forward and pulled him closer with a soft hand of the back of his neck. She met his wide eyes as she moved closer and pulled a smile as she pressed her lips dangerously close to his lips.
She kept her hand where it was and only moved back to glance in his eyes. His own hand slid behind her back and she savoured every moment of his touch.
No words were needed. All they needed was the mere presence of each other.
Julie finally pulled away, throwing a shy smile in his direction. "Goodnight, Luke."
He was grinning the widest she'd seen since they met.
"Goodnight, Julie."
#julie and the phantoms#jatp#juke#juke fics#jatp fics#juke au#jatp au#luke patterson#julie molina#julie x luke#luke x julie
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On the cultural lore behind the late Hunter Exam Arc and the Testing Gates Arc.
Hi ! Today I want to talk a bit about Togashi’s use of mythology, legends and lore as a way to emphasize the narrative in his story.
It’s no secret that Togashi loves to use details and symbolism in his story, but I think the Testing Gates arc is the one arc that uses this writing technique the most. In only a few chapters, Togashi manages to reference and intertwine 3 different legends to highlight the message in his narrative : Gon’s rescue mission is emphasized by the legend of Orihime & Hikoboshi, the legend of Eurydice & Orpheus, and the legend of Izanami & Izanagi.
As you may know, the early part of Killua’s character arc reflects the Tanabata legend, and it’s reinforced by the fact that his birthday falls on July 7th, the day Tanabata is celebrated. I’m going to link this post that is better written than anything I could ever write on this, so I suggest reading this before reading this post ! I’ll still go over the general details of Tanabata below though.
The legend of Tanabata can be closely paralleled to Killua’s early story arc.
Orihime worked relentlessly for her father and weaved the most beautiful clothes. She was very, very talented and worked very hard for her father.
However, Orihime lamented the fact that because of her job, she couldn’t meet someone and fall in love. All she craved was human connection, and her working for her father kept her from meeting someone and falling in love.
Her father eventually allowed her to meet someone, Hikoboshi, and they instantly fell in love.
But sadly for her father, that meant that Orihime didn’t focus on her job anymore and only focused on appreciating her time with her lover.
In anger, her father decided to separate the two lovers and forbade them to meet. (don’t take this too literally - the Zoldyck family in its entirety represents Orihime’s father)
As you can see, Killua follows Orihime’s story pretty accurately. He used to work for his family as a skilled assassin, the most skilled one in the entire Zoldyck family’s history. However, Killua lamented the fact that because of this, he couldn’t make friends. That’s his primary reason for leaving the Zoldyck Mansion : see if he could make a friend. And then, he met Gon, and it was pretty much love at first sight. The two of them enjoyed their time together, joking around and sticking together most of the time, until the final phase of the Hunter Exam where Illumi forbids Killua from seeing Gon and manipulates him into going back to the Zoldyck Mansion.
This isn’t how the Tanabata legend ends, but this is where the other 2 legends I want to talk about come into play.
Gon, after being passed out for hours as a consequence of his fight with Hanzo, learns about Killua’s fight with his brother and completely flips out. He proceeds to confront Illumi about it directly and asserts that Killua is his friend and that he’ll bring him back no matter what. After this, Leorio, Kurapika and Gon make their way to the Zoldyck Mansion to get Killua back. As they arrive at the Mansion, the tour guide proceeds to explain one of the particularities of the Zoldyck Mansion : there’s a huge gate that can only be opened by brute force. Anyone can enter, as long as they go through this door. And this is where it gets interesting.
The tour guide mentions that this gate is called “黄泉への扉”, yomi he no tobira. The gate to Yomi.
But Tele, why the fuck are you mentioning this, you may ask.
Because 黄泉, Yomi, is the land of the dead. Togashi is expressing that this is the gate to Yomi, the gate to enter the land of the dead : the Zoldyck Mansion. The Zoldyck Mansion is directly compared to Yomi.
In Japanese mythology, Yomi is where all souls go after they die. No matter if you were good or bad, you’ll end up in Yomi. It’s not Heaven, it’s not Hell, it’s just…. A place where you end up rotting forever. It’s described as gloomy and dark, empty and cold. It’s not burning in hellfire, it’s just a place where you just sort of wander aimlessly, empty for the rest of eternity.
And this cold and gloomy, empty atmosphere can directly be correlated to the Zoldyck Mansion. The tour guide mentions that this is the gate to Yomi, because if you enter, you’ll never come back, but this applies more to Killua. Killua is in Yomi right now after a trauma-induced dissociative episode. He was forcefully sent back to the Mansion, and is now being tortured by his family. If Killua stays there, it’s obvious he’ll never come back psychologically from this. He’ll be trapped in this meaningless existence, cold and empty, devoid of any passion. A life his parents chose for him, a life he doesn’t want to live, a life as Zoldyck heir. He’ll be stuck in Yomi, the land of the dead, forever.
But Gon won’t let that happen. He planned this rescue mission because Killua opened up to him about who he wants to be. He doesn’t want to live according to his family’s plans for him anymore, he wants to live a life for himself and be free. And Gon wants to help him achieve that, because he saw the good in Killua. Which is why he insisted he’d rescue Killua himself and will drag him out of the Zoldyck Mansion. He’ll get him out of Yomi.
Which leads us to the story of Izanami and Izanagi. Yomi is commonly known as Izanami’s retreat after her death, so when you hear Yomi, you automatically associate it to Izanami. And there’s an interesting piece of lore when it comes to Yomi and Izanami : Izanagi’s rescue mission. Izanami died a horrible death after being burned giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi : she descended to Yomi. However, Izanagi, her husband (and brother but we don’t talk about that) found himself miserable. He missed her terribly and couldn’t live a life without her. That’s why he decided to make the trip to Yomi to get her back. Izanami ended up pleading to the Gods of Yomi to let her go back to Izanagi, and the Gods ended up making her an exception and allowing her to leave.
I’ll spare you the details but the story ends tragically with Izanagi trapping Izanami in Yomi forever, her ruling over it and the both of them pretty much getting divorced.
Anyways. What matters is that when you talk about Yomi, it’s automatically linked to Izanami, and Izanami is automatically linked to Izanagi and his rescue mission. A rescue mission that also happened in HxH. Just like Izanagi, Gon decided to take the trip to Yomi, as the tour guide said, to rescue Killua from eternal damnation and be reunited with him once again.
Additionally and still in the spirit of the Yomi lore, the etymology of Yomi (黄泉) is uncertain, but it is theorized that it could come from 山, yama, meaning mountain. Izanami was buried in the mountains and Yomi was thought to be located in the mountains in ancient society, which is leading me to believe this could be the reason why the Zoldyck Estate has a mountain. So it could simply be because the Zoldyck Mansion is referred to as Yomi, and Yomi was thought to be in the mountains : hence the Zoldycks living on a mountain, fitting the Yomi lore perfectly.
There’s one last interesting thing about Yomi. Since Yomi is not Hell, it’s not where peoples’ souls go to get punished but more of a place of eternal wander, it’s oftentimes related to the Greek Underworld also known as Hades. So usually, when japanese media refers to something as Yomi, translators choose to go with “Hades”, which is the translation choice Viz made here.
So by insinuating the Zoldyck Mansion is considered as Yomi, it also connects it to the Greek Underworld, since the two are deeply connected. And interestingly enough, the first thing that pops into my head when I think of the Underworld is Orpheus and Eurydice’s story.
Orpheus and Eurydice fell in love at first sight, and enjoyed all their living moments together, however, this provoked the jealousy of one man who despised Orpheus and desired Eurydice for himself. After multiple events including a chase through the woods, Eurydice got bit by a deadly snake and died, leaving Orpheus heartbroken and alone. He couldn’t do anything but grieve and he lost his will to live without his beloved. That’s when he decided to take a trip to the Underworld in an attempt to get Eurydice back. Orpheus, armed with his lyre and his voice, was pretty much protected by the Gods as he walked through the Underworld and sang his song of love to anyone who would listen. His song and story brought tears to Hades and Persephone’s eyes, and Hades eventually accepted to make a deal with Orpheus : Eurydice has to follow him and he must not look back under any circumstance as long as they’re in the Underworld, or she will be sent back there forever.
I’ll once again spare you the depressing details, but basically, Orpheus turned back because he couldn’t bear to not look at his beloved anymore, they got separated again and Orpheus ended up grieving his entire life, ending up being killed because of it.
So once again, here, there are similarities between Gon and Killua and Orpheus and Eurydice. Falling in love at first sight ; Illumi despising Gon and wanting Killua for himself and his family, thus ending up causing a separation and sending Killua to the Zoldyck Mansion ; Gon deciding to get Killua back. And for this one, there’s one interesting thing, and I thank @gallyl very much for telling me this, but it’s very important to note that Orpheus got Eurydice back because he sang songs of love and proved his devotion to Eurydice. Gon did the exact same thing. During those 7 chapters where Gon rescues Killua, the word friend is highlighted 7 times.
Gon, and therefore Togashi, makes it a point to emphasize that his rescue mission is solely based on his love for Killua. He’s doing it out of devotion and care for him. Just like Orpheus rescued Eurydice with his song of love and brought tears to everyone’s eyes, Gon managed to go through every hardship he faced by highlighting that Killua is his friend. That’s how he managed to convince Zebro to let him train to pass the gates, that’s how he got to Gotoh and to Canary, and eventually to Silva. Because he kept on saying that he’s doing this because of his love for Killua, which eventually softened all of these people and made them get on board with his rescue mission.
Another parallel is the fact that Hades strikes a deal with Orpheus with a condition, and should the condition be broken, Eurydice will return to the Underworld. Here, it’s slightly different but still under the same spirit. Silva strikes a deal with Killua, making him promise to never betray his friend, and that if he does… he will be unworthy of his friends and will have to return home.
There are also a few other references to the Underworld in the way Togashi portrays the Zoldyck Mansion and Silva and Kikyo, but I won’t get into it too much for fear of not being too objective and reaching, so I’ll just go over one. The Greek Underworld is kept by Cerberus, a gigantic 3 headed dog. And while Togashi didn’t make Mike a 3-headed dog, he did include 3 different dogs as gatekeepers of the Zoldyck Mansion, thus keeping a connection to the Cerberus lore.
So by making one random character talk about Yomi, the japanese underworld, Togashi calls back to those two myths : the japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi and the greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Togashi put imagery for both of these legends to emphasize that they are connected to the story, and as a way to further highlight the narrative of someone rescuing someone they deeply care about.
I never finished talking about Orihime and Hikoboshi’s story, so I’ll do it now! After being forbidden to meet, Orihime pleaded for her father to let her see Hikoboshi again, until he finally agreed to let them reunite on the 7th day of the 7th month. However, when they reunited for the first time, there was no bridge to cross for them to be able to meet. That’s when a flock of magpies came and promised to help the lovers reunite, creating a bridge between the two of them, and allowing them to finally reunite.
This is once again reminiscent of the Testing Gates arc. Killua asked his dad to be able to see Gon again, until he finally accepted. However, Gon found that it was hard to cross the metaphorical bridge that are all the hardships of the Zoldyck Mansion, until a bird finally helped him : Canary. Canaries are birds that symbolize happiness, freedom and that spread joy. On top of that, I could even reach a bit and highlight that magpies, the birds that reunited Orihime and Hikoboshi are mostly recognizable by their long black tail. Canary and Gotoh, butlers, are the main reason Gon managed to get to Killua, and butlers outfits are characterized with a longer back, reminiscent of a tail, detail that Togashi also put. So it’s easy with that to associate the butlers with the flock of magpie, since they’re the reason Gon managed to get back to Killua.
The Tanabata lore started from the moment we got introduced to Killua’s character up until Killua and Gon finally reunite, and this lore was complemented by 2 other legends that highlight this beautiful narrative of rescuing a loved one.
All 3 of these legends share common themes : they feature lovers who got separated for multiple reasons and one of them pleading to higher forces to let them have their lover back. There’s a common theme of love and devotion that ends up moving the higher forces and lets the person be reunited with their lover at last. All these missions were rescue missions done in the name of love : Orihime pleaded with her father out of love, Orpheus sang his song of love to plead to Hades to let him get Eurydice back, Izanami asked the Gods to let her come back to Izanagi. And Gon begged everyone to let him see his friend. He shouted on top of every rooftop that Killua was his friend and that he’s rescuing him out of love and devotion for him, and that’s exactly what made people help him get Killua back. It’s seeing Gon’s love that made people help him, just like in those legends.
So by giving us references to these legends, by making Gon and Killua follow the same tropes as these myths, Togashi is highlighting the beautiful narrative of Gon’s rescue mission. Togashi is putting little details and symbolism to give his story more depth and make us subconsciously link together a legend about lovers wanting to reunite after being separated, and two legends about people going on a rescue mission to save their loved ones.
Killua’s story follows the Tanabata legend closely, he meets Gon and it’s love at first sight, they are happy together, until they’re separated. Then he gets sent back to the Mansion, Yomi, the Underworld, which prompts Gon to organize a rescue mission out of love, just like Izanagi and Orpheus. It’s thanks to this love that he moved Zebro, Canary, Gotoh and finally Silva, just like Izanami’s pleads moved the Gods and allowed her to (almost) leave, and just like Orpheus’ love songs moved Hades. Finally, they are reunited by a bird, Canary, and a flock of magpies, the butlers, just like in the Tanabata legend. The lovers are reunited at last, after a long rescue mission.
I can already feel the panicked asks, “but Tele, all these tales end tragically, is Killua and Gon’s relationship broken forever? Are they going to die?”. No. HxH is not a retelling of common legends. It’s not accurately and faithfully translating myths into a manga. It’s using cultural references to emphasize some narratives, and here, it’s the narrative of two lovers going against all odds to reunite with each other once again after being separated. I’ll link you to this post by @/buzzykrueger that explained it better than I could, but don’t worry, I can promise you, Togashi will never head this way. HxH is not a retelling of old tales, and he loves to subvert common classical tropes. He already subverted them many, many times in his manga, and I can guarantee you that Killua and Gon will be fine in the end.
Also, yes, I’m referring to Killua and Gon as lovers in this post, because Togashi made the conscious choice to refer to 3 pieces of lore focused on romantic love.
Thank you for reading this ! If you’re interested, I’ll link all my references below! Also, Tumblr hates me and won’t let me appear in tags anymore, so reblogs are very appreciated. Ty for reading!
• On the general legend of Tanabata : here and here
• On Yomi : here and here
• On Izanami & Izanagi : here and here
• On Eurydice and Orpheus : here
#hxh#hxh meta#meta#my meta#killugon#idk why i even bother tagging tumblr hates me#reblogs r very appreciated!!
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Food for the Heart
My first July commission fic! Thanku to Chip for helping look things over <3
Soldier 76 & Reaper & Jesse McCree & F!Reader
Rating: General | Pre-Fall of Overwatch, fluff
Word Count: ~3500
Sometimes -- if you thought about it -- the fact that you had some of the highest security clearance in the entirety of the UN, as well as several major militaries, could make your palms sweat and your heart pound. Imposter syndrome sure was a bitch.
You would look out on all of the heroes and saviors and geniuses of the world, unsure of how you managed to fit in and even sit at the same table as Director Petras and Strike Commander Morrison himself.
People wouldn’t stop in the halls to salute you or turn to you for input. Many of your colleagues didn’t even seem to know your name. You were nothing but background to them, just the hand that delivered documents or typed along to broadcasts. It was enough to trick you into believing you didn’t belong.
But there was a reason you were sat at the table with the most influential people in the world. There was a reason that your office was in the same wing as the other heroes of Overwatch. And you had earned your place there -- a fact you had to remind yourself of over and over again as Commander Reyes and Commander Morrison swept by your desk every morning or as Captain Amari chatted with Lieutenant Wilhelm within earshot of your workspace. Occasionally, you would even come back from lunch to find that a cowboy and a ninja had commandeered your desktop and your office chair, respectively.
You were invisible to them. Silent and unassuming. Blending in so seamlessly to the environment that they didn’t seem to notice you were there -- which is how you heard everything. Listening was your job, after all. You were a linguist, responsible for interpreting and translating any documents or meetings or broadcasts that passed through the upper command chain. You had access to the highest security channels, writing down field notes and debriefs for anyone on base who needed them.
Fluent in 14 human languages and 3 Omnic communication systems, you were one of the most valuable assets Overwatch had. Your work during the crisis had earned you a rank and pension that looked like a mistake on all your paperwork. Surely someone as plain as you couldn’t be that powerful?
And the work hadn’t finished after the crisis. You had been swept along into the ranks and shipped off to Zurich to spend your days listening to every piece of information that needed your ears.
And you heard everything.
You heard Captain Amari talking about her daughter and Lieutenant Wilhelm lamenting his losses on the battlefield, Jesse McCree joking and ribbing with Agent Shimada, who barely ever responded when you were within earshot. You overheard Strike Commander Morrison laughing with his friends and hurling orders and sighing over paperwork, Commander Reyes growling and grumbling and occasionally giving a full-bellied laugh when someone made a fool of themselves.
But no one ever seemed to speak directly to you unless they were requesting something or saying thank you. Your days were spent surrounded by people who would lay down their lives for one another but didn’t even seem to notice as you came and went.
It was certainly lonely, being in an unfamiliar country on a foreign base, working long hours in the fruitless business of world peace. You would return to your tiny apartment in the evenings -- luxurious, but small -- and try and make the most of your life of prestige and success and heroism. You had made the space cozy and perfect since you found yourself with more money than you knew what to do with. Your family had retired to one of the nicest homes you could buy them, and you still couldn’t get rid of the stuff.
So you spent your evenings cooking and baking exquisite dishes with expensive ingredients. You had gotten rather good at it. Any time someone on base mentioned a dish that they liked, you made sure to jot it down for later. Every night you indulged in food from all over the world that you had made with your own two hands.
But you found yourself with a lot of leftovers.
You were all alone in Zurich, with just a few friends in other parts of the organization that you only got to see when the stars were perfectly aligned. There was no way you could eat all this food.
So you started leaving gifts for the high command.
Strike Commander Morrison was the one who had given you the idea to make the pie in the first place. He had complained about how much he missed the sweet from his hometown, and you had found a recipe that sounded like what he described.
You wrapped a few slices up as nicely as you could and slipped them onto his desk just before he came in one morning.
The only thing you hadn’t counted on was just how invisible you truly were.
Commander Morrison made a sound of surprise when he saw the sparkling clear wrapping paper and curled ribbons. He poked his head out of his office and glanced around. No one else had come in yet, and you were already hard at work transcribing some Omnic signals that had been intercepted.
He asked Captain Amari about it when she arrived a few minutes later.
“You can’t trust random packages that appear on your desk, Jack. You should have reported a security breach immediately. Where is it? We’ll have to send it down for examination.”
Commander Morrison looked sheepish. “I ate them already.”
Captain Amari whacked him upside the head.
“I skipped breakfast!” he whined. “And it was absolutely delicious. It tasted just like home.”
Hearing those words was enough. You didn’t care that the Strike Commander was a fool who didn’t seem to notice your presence. He had enjoyed your treat, and that was all the reward you needed.
You continued to leave sweets for the high command whenever you could. You were sure at some point they would realize it was you, but they never said anything.
Cookies. Sweet breads. Cakes. Candied fruits. Pastries. You were improving as a baker at an alarming rate, considering you had nothing to do in your free time but replicate the recipes all the soldiers on base missed from back home.
The Strike Commander, Lieutenant Wilhelm, and Agent McCree were the most shameless about indulging in your gifts. The other captains and officers partook as well. You had never even seen Agent Shimada eat, though he would gently wrap a small portion to take back to his quarters, and Torbjorn would always wrinkle his nose and scoff at the sweets, but you didn’t miss him slipping a few into his pockets for later.
Despite how much you were making and sharing, there was one person whom you never got the chance to cook for. Everyone else had mentioned a dessert offhand at some point or another, only to find the exact treat waiting for them the next day. Even Agent Shimada had mentioned a fluffy cheesecake once, though he took his portion back to his quarters to eat it. Only one person eluded your gifts, and you were patiently waiting for the opportunity to strike.
You were up to your neck in transcriptions when you finally got your chance. Something you could cook for Commander Reyes.
It was just him, Agent McCree, and the Strike Commander. You were tucked away at your desk as always, invisible to everyone but listening attentively.
“Can’t believe I was in Mexico for a week and spent the whole time camped out in the jungle. I would have killed somebody for a good churro.” Commander Reyes grumbled.
“You did kill people, boss. A lot of people.” Agent McCree had his boots on the table and was grinning around an unlit cigarillo.
“You watch your mouth,” the commander snapped, but his shoulders shook with laughter.
Churros. Authentic Mexican churros. You could certainly do your best to make some and leave them for the Blackwatch commander.
It only took a few tries to get them how you wanted them, and you strolled into the high command offices the following day with a beautifully wrapped box.
Commander Reyes didn’t have a desk in the command wing, but you knew he would be by early. You left the box on the same table Agent McCree was sitting at yesterday and got to work while you waited for everyone else to arrive.
Commander Morrison lit up in excitement when he saw the enormous box waiting on the table, but, after a peek inside, he realized who the sweets were for and didn’t take any. It would have been fine. You had made plenty enough for everyone.
Captain Amari wasn’t as enthusiastic as the Strike Commander, but she let her curiosity get the best of her and gently pried open the box as well. She smirked, and you could have sworn you saw her glance your way, but you were trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as you listened to a diplomatic summit presentation.
At last, Commander Reyes made his appearance. He didn’t hesitate to go straight for the box on the table, lifting the lid and inspecting the contents with an impassive expression. He was completely unreadable as you watched him out of the corner of your eye.
Delicately, he lifted one of the churros out of the box and took a bite. He chewed for a moment, brows furrowed. You wished he would say something. Instead, you saw the tension in his shoulders ease just a little, and you knew you had done an good job.
And that was the end of it -- so you thought. Commander Reyes shared the churros, and everyone else remarked that they were delicious. The rest of the day carried on as usual.
Until you found yourself alone again. Even when they were on base, it wasn’t uncommon for Commander Morrison and Captain Amari to spend most of the day away from their offices. But now, even the other captains and assistants were gone, and it was totally silent.
Commander Reyes strolled into the command wing with his hands in his pockets. You didn’t think anything of it until he came right up to your desk, taking a seat on the edge.
“They were delicious,” he said, watching you intently.
So he knew it was you. He had probably had known for a while. The Blackwatch commander rarely let anything slip by him.
“Thank you, Sir,” you answered, not able to look him in the eye. “When did you figure it out?”
“You made salted caramel cookies for McCree. Cheesecake for Shimada. I need to know who is eavesdropping on my agent’s conversations.”
You flinched at that. “I only had the best intentions.” You chewed your lip. “The gifts were meant to be harmless.”
Commander Reyes chuckled. “You sure harmed Jack’s diet. The man has a sweet tooth and no spine. Put a dessert in front of him, and he can’t say no.”
“He doesn’t need to be on a diet, anyway. You’re all built like Greek gods,” you rolled your eyes. Then the reality of what you had said set in, and you were panicking in your seat. Leaving treats for your superior officers was only mildly questionable. Ogling their physiques and daydreaming about their strong arms was far less appropriate.
“I mean no disrespect, Sir,” you started to ramble. “I spoke out of line, and it wasn’t my place to say anything. Please just forget I ever opened my mouth.”
Commander Reyes laughed again, fuller this time as he leaned back on your desk. “It’s clear you’ve heard everything said in this office. You think that’s going to get you in trouble?” He was right. Conversations among the officers were far from professional. You had heard your share of inappropriate comments and spicy stories.
You looked at your hands in your lap. This was overwhelming. You were so used to being invisible. Now, the commander was confronting you, watching you closely and chatting as if it was nothing. You weren’t sure you had ever exchanged casual conversation with the Blackwatch commander.
“Why do you hide?” he asked. “Leave everything in secret and never speak up? We all know by now, anyway.”
You didn’t really have an answer for him. Maybe you didn’t feel worthy? Maybe you were shy? Neither of those explanations felt quite right.
“I never meant to hide. When I made the pie for Commander Morrison, he didn’t even seem to consider that I could have been the one to leave it. I know I’m practically invisible around here, anyway.” You shrugged. No one paid attention to a quiet linguist. Your voice was only used to relay the messages of other people.
“You’re not invisible. Not to us. We see you every day. Maybe it’s time that you let us give you a gift, what do you say? We definitely should have shown our appreciation sooner.” Commander Reyes held out his hand, eyes kinder than you had ever seen.
“I don’t- What do you mean?” you asked.
Impatient as always, the commander simply grabbed your wrist and pulled you to your feet. “I’m the boss, so you’re coming with me.” He dragged you out of the offices and towards what you recognized to be the high command quarters. You couldn’t disobey a direct order from your superior, so you stumbled along as quickly as you could.
While your apartment was in a cute little residential building on the other end of base, the high command quarters were housed in a higher security building connected to the command center via a series of secure walkways. Reyes simply keyed in a code and ushered you across the glass skyway.
“Sir, I don’t believe I have clearance to access the command living quarters,” you tried to warn him.
“You have access as Jack’s guest.” He answered as if that would explain anything. Why would you be the Strike Commander’s guest?
Commander Reyes pulled to a stop in front of a door with a mailbox outside labeled 3001. He rapped his knuckles on the metal door, tapping his foot as there was the sound of scrambling inside, and the door slid open. Agent McCree was grinning on the other side.
“You came!” He stepped forward and pulled you into a bone-crushing hug, lifting you off the ground and setting you down inside what you assumed to be the Strike Commander’s quarters. “Jack and I were worried Gabe would scare you away.”
“He scared me, that’s for sure. What am I doing here?” You couldn’t keep yourself from looking around the apartment. It was nice, comfortable, with state-of-the-art appliances and plenty of space for more than one person. Much larger than your own apartment.
McCree looked offended. “You didn’t tell her anything? Did you just abduct her from her desk like some kind of madman?”
“No,” Gabe said at the exact same time you said, “Yes.”
The cowboy rolled his eyes. He took one of your hands in both of his and, with the most earnest expression, begged for your forgiveness. “The three of us wanted to say thank you for all the sweets you’ve been baking lately. Those churros were absolutely amazing, so we all pitched in to make dinner for you. Gabe was supposed to ask politely if you would join us. It would make my whole world if you did.”
You weren’t sure how you could say no to something so sweet. Agent McCree was certainly scruffy and rough around the edges at times, but you couldn’t deny he was a true gentleman, unlike his boss.
You nodded, and McCree pulled you in for another hug. “Atta girl! Jack should be back in just a moment. He had to borrow some stuff from Ana.”
Sure enough, the Strike Commander appeared just a moment late with an arm full of cookware and ingredients. He was dressed down to a faded t-shirt and his combat uniform pants with an apron. When he set everything down on the counter, you realized the apron was printed with the warning “hot stuff coming through,” and you couldn’t hide your snort of laughter.
“Ana got it for him as a gift. Jack has been our barbecue guy for the past five years now.” Reyes explained.
“I like it,” you grinned. “It’s accurate.”
You had never seen the Strike Commander blush. He fumbled with the container he was prying open. “Supper was supposed to be ready by the time you got here, but I don’t always keep cooking stuff here. We’ve got snacks and drinks, and Jesse will probably make you watch something terrible with him on the TV.”
You nodded. “Thank you for all of this, Sirs.”
“Woah, woah,” McCree held up his hands. “None of that shit around here. We do first names around here only, or embarrassing nicknames.”
You were extremely thankful for McCree- Jesse. He had a way of making you feel perfectly at ease even though you were so far out of your element. “Come on, I’m gonna show you some classic films while they cook.” He wrapped a hand around your waist and led you to the couch, flicking through the menu on the wall-sized screen. You had seen how much physical affection the high command shared, and you assumed it came from trust on the battlefield. But it seemed the comfort and intimacy extended to you as well.
“Do you need help in the kitchen?” You asked the Strike Commander.
“Absolutely not,” he winked at you. “You’ve cooked far too much for all of us, and it’s our turn to make it up to you. Your job is to keep Jesse out of the kitchen.”
The cowboy grinned at you. “They say I’m a hazard.”
You nodded. “I can see that.” Gathering all of your courage, you nestled into his side on the couch. He threw an arm around your shoulders easily and selected a movie. “What are we watching?”
“Seven Samurai. Genji showed it to me. Did you know that 1900’s cowboy movies and 1900’s samurai movies are like the same thing? He’s the only one who appreciates my Eastwood classics.”
Reyes chimed in from the kitchen. “For a bunch of assassins, it turns out my entire squadron is made up of nerds.”
“And you’re the Head Nerd. King of all Nerds.” Morrison knocked him with an elbow. “We’ve seen your Halloween costumes.”
Your eyebrows shot up. “Commander Reyes is a nerd?”
“Gabe,” Jesse corrected you, “is the biggest nerd of them all. He likes musicals.”
You were smiling widely now. You had been so lonely in Zurich, and now you were being included in teasing and movies and dinner with three of the most powerful men in Overwatch.
Comman- Gabe must have finished his part of the prep work because he sprawled out on the couch on your other side. It felt so nice to be sandwiched between them as the movie played. Jesse’s fingers absently played with your hair, and Gabe’s thigh pressed against your own.
Dinner didn’t take very long at all, and the four of you sat down at Jack’s dining table. There were casseroles, baked potatoes, roasted meat, and vegetables. You made sure to put a little bit of everything on your plate.
“I wasn’t sure what your favorites are, so we made a Morrison family dinner. A taste of the American Midwest.” Jack smiled sheepishly.
“It’s great!” you loved seeing this glimpse of the Strike Commander’s home.
“Next time, I’ll have to show you how we did it in LA,” Gabe was already digging in. “Jack’s Aunt Cindy is an excellent cook, but my sister knows how to make the best tamales.”
You were already putting together a menu based on what your family used to cook. It would be so much fun to treat them to the same meals you had grown up eating.
Jesse cocked his head. “I didn’t eat much as a kid that didn’t come out of a can or a box, but Ana has showed me how to make some things over the years. We’ll have to get her to cook one night.”
The implication that this was only the first of many more nights to come, your heart felt so warm and fuzzy. You tried to hide your blush as you ate.
After finishing dinner, you attempted to help wash up and found yourself forcibly removed from the kitchen by Gabe. “Stop trying to help and just let us treat you.”
And so you found yourself back snuggled up on the couch between them as the movie finished. They were so affectionate, pulling you against them and wrapping their arms around you. It felt natural. You had been working in the same office as them for years, hearing all of their conversations and watching them care for each other. Now, instead of an invisible bystander, you were a part of the family. But you had never truly been invisible. Clearly, everyone else had always considered you as one of them.
You must have dozed off at some point because Jack gently shook you awake. “Jesse can walk you back to your place,” he pushed a container of leftovers into your hand and wrapped you in a hug. “Don’t hide so much from now on, ok?”
You nodded. “Next time, you have to let me help cook.”
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