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yamayuandadu · 8 months

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Consulting the convoluted history of supernatural foxes, or why is Tsukasa like that

I know I said you should only expect one long Touhou-themed research article per month, and that the next one will be focused on Ten Desires, but due to unforeseen circumstances a bonus one jumped into the queue. For this reason, you will unexpectedly have the opportunity to learn more about the historical and religious context of the belief in kuda-gitsune, or “tube foxes”, as well as their various forerunners. Tsukasa is clearly topical thanks to Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, and I basically skipped covering Unconnected Marketeers in 2021 save for pointing out some banal tidbits, so I hope this is a welcome surprise. The post contains spoilers for the new game, obviously.

Obviously, in order to properly cover the kuda-gitsune, it is necessary to start with a short history of foxes in Japanese culture through history, especially in esoteric Buddhism. Early history: the Chinese background Early Japanese sources pertaining to foxes show strong Chinese influence. There was an extensive preexisting system of fox beliefs to draw from in continental literature, dating back at least to the Han dynasty (note that while the well known story of Daji is set much earlier, its modern form only really goes back to the Song dynasty). This is way too complex of a topic to discuss here in full, sadly, so I will limit myself to the particularly interesting tidbits.

A multi-tailed fox in the classic Chinese encyclopedia Gujin Tushu Jicheng (wikimedia commons)

It will suffice to say that historically the fox was perceived in China as a liminal being, and could be associated with pursuits regarded as ethically dubious, ranging from theft and banditry to instigating rebellions and promoting divisive religious views (so, for example during the reigns of firmly pro-Taoist emperors, Buddhist monks could be associated with foxes). Literary texts focused on supernatural foxes emphasized their shapeshifting abilities. In contrast with some of the other well attested supernatural beings in Chinese tradition, they could take a range of human forms, appearing as men and women of virtually any age. Often they favored mimicking people who lived on the margins of society, like bandits, courtesans or migrant laborers. It was also emphasized that they displayed a considerable degree of disregard for authority. The fact these animals lived essentially alongside humans without being domesticated definitely played a role in the formation of this image.

A contemporary statue of Bixia, a deity in the past associated with fox beliefs (wikimedia commons)

At the same time, foxes enjoyed a degree of popularity as objects of semi-official cult, still practiced here and there in China in modern times, for example in Boluo in Shaanxi. The religious role of foxes was reflected in, among other things, the development of terms like hushen (狐神) “fox deity”, or huxian (狐仙), “fox immortal”. The belief in such “celestial foxes” (tianhu, 天狐) was relatively common, and there is even a legend according to which there was a formalized way for the animals to transcend to higher states of existence, with the goddess Bixia making them undergo the supernatural fox version of the well known imperial examinations. If they failed they were condemned to live as “wild foxes” (yehu, 野狐) with no hope of transcendence. There are also accounts of foxes pursuing the status of a xian through illicit means, through a combination of praying to the Big Dipper and draining people’s energy, as documented by He Xiu in the 1700s. Note foxes were already portrayed as worshiping the Big Dipper during the reign of the Tang dynasty, but back then it was only believed this let them transform into humans.

The ambiguity of foxes is evident in the Japanese perception of these animals too. Supernatural foxes are probably among the best known youkai, and especially considering this is a post about Touhou I do not think the basics need to be discussed in much detail. They were believed to shapeshift and to steal vital energy, much like in China. Their positive role as messengers of Inari, a kami associated with agriculture, is generally well known too. The earliest sources documenting encounters with supernatural foxes are obviously, as expected, the earliest chronicles like the Nihon Shoki, where they mostly appear as omens. By the Heian period these animals are well established in the written record. For instance, Nakatomi Harae Kunge includes “evil magic due to heavenly and earthly foxes” among phenomena which require ritual purification. In addition to the tales imported from China being in circulation, some setsuwa written in Japan involved shape shifting foxes. However, supernatural foxes only gained greater prominence in the Japanese middle ages due to the growth of relevance of two deities they were associated with, Inari and Dakiniten. The latter is more relevant to the topic of this article.

Foxes, Dakiniten and tengu

Part of a hanging scroll depicting Dakiniten riding on a fox (wikimedia commons, via MET; cropped for the ease of viewing)

The connection between foxes and Dakiniten reflected their associations with the dakinis, a class of demons in Buddhism. Originally the dakinis were associated with jackals instead, but Chinese Buddhist authors presumed that the animal mentioned in this context is basically identicial with more familiar foxes, and that belief reached Japan as well. It was strong enough for Dakinite, the dakini par excellence, to be regularly depicted riding on the back of a fox. Dakiniten was originally a regular dakini, according to Bernard Faure specifically one who appears in Heian period Enmaten mandalas (Enmaten is related to but not quite the same as the better known king Enma, for the development of two distinct reflections of Yama in Buddhism see here). However, she eventually developed into a full blown deva in her own right, and her prominence was so great that it basically resulted in the decline of references to the generic dakinis in Buddhist literature in Japan. She was particularly popular in the Shingon school of Buddhism, and at the peak of her relevance played a role in royal ascension rituals, developing a connection with Amaterasu in the process (Amaterasu acquired many peculiar connections through the Japanese middle ages, it was par the course). A Tendai treatise equates her with Matarajin instead, though. An interesting phenomenon related to Dakiniten is the occasional fusion of beliefs pertaining to foxes and tengu, which might have originated in the similarity of the terms tengu and the Japanese term for the already mentioned “heavenly foxes”, tenko. Its best attested examples include the inclusion of tengu in mandalas focused on Dakiniten as her acolytes. However, a different deity ultimately exemplifies this even better. Iizuna Gongen and "iizuna magic"

Iizuna Gongen riding on the back of a fox (Museum of Fine Arts Boston; link to the source is temporarily dead, the image is reproduced here for educational purposes only)

The indisputable center of the network of connections between foxes and tengu is Iizuna Gongen (飯綱権現), depicted as a tengu riding on a fox. As you can probably guess, he was a (vague) basis for Megumu, as evidenced by the similarity of the names. While many other aspects of his character aren’t really touched upon in the game, I’d hazard a guess he’s also the reason why ZUN decided to include a kuda-gitsune in the same game as Megumu - the evidence lines up exceptionally well, as you’ll see.

Originally Iizuna Gongen was simply the deity of Mount Iizuna (飯綱山), located in the modern Nagano prefecture. Near the end of the Japanese middle ages he spread to other areas, likely thanks to traveling shugenja (also known as yamabushi), mountain ascetics belonging to a religious tradition known as Shugendō. Two aspects of his character are particularly pronounced, his role as a martial deity and his association with foxes.

I was unable to determine when Iizuna Gongen’s connection to foxes originally developed, but it was strong enough to lead to the use of the alternate name Chira Tenko (智羅天狐; “Chira the heavenly fox”) to refer to him. Foxes also appear in a legend describing his origin. It states that he was one of the eighteen children of an Indian king, and arrived in Japan alongside nine of his siblings on the back of a white fox during the reign of emperor Kinmei (the remaining eight went to China and became monks on Mount Tiantai). His connection to foxes is also reaffirmed in an Edo period treatise, Reflections on Inari Shrine (稲荷神社考, Inari jinja kō), which declares that names such as Iizuna Gongen and Matarajin (sic!) are used in the worship of wild foxes to hide the true nature of the invoked entities. The author further states that the true form of “these matarajin (plural) and wild foxes” is that of a three-faced and six-armed deity, which curiously has more to do with early Matarajin tradition than with Iizuna Gongen as far as I can tell. The two were not really closely associated otherwise, but it’s worth noting that apparently shugenja perceived them both as similar tengu-like deities.

The key feature of conventional iconography of Iizuna Gongen, the fox mount, has nothing to do with Matarajin strictly speaking, and likely reflects the influence of Dakiniten. However, the animal in this context developed its own unique identity thanks to the presence of foxes in a type of ritual focused on Iizuna Gongen, which could itself be referred to as iizuna. The shugenja community centered on the worship of Iizuna Gongen was not very formalized, which led to poor understanding of their practice among outsiders, with the term iizuna basically acquiring the vague meaning along the lines of “magic”. and rather poor reputation. These rites are where the kuda-gitsune comes into play. Kuda-gitsune in iizuna magic and beyond

The kuda-gitsune, as depicted in Shōzan Chomon Kishū by Miyoshi Shōzan (Waseda University History Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

At first glance, kuda-gitsune is just one of many local variants of the standard supernatural fox, similarly to the likes of ninko, osaki-gitsune or nogitsune. The etymology of its name is straightforward. I’m sure you can guess what the second half means, while kuda (管) in this context refers to a bamboo tube. You’d think the name would basically guarantee it was universally accepted that’s how one could carry such a critter undetected, but apparently there was an alternate explanation, namely that it was invisible. I have not seen any further discussion of this in literature, but I assume this might be connected to shikigami beliefs, as these quite often are described as invisible. Do not quote me on that, though. Even more bizarrely, there is no consensus that the animal meant was always a fox. According to Bernard Faure it is distinctly possible the term referred to a weasel. Kuda-gitsune could be described as a type of shikigami, but note that this term had a much broader meaning in real life than in Touhou, and referred to basically any supernatural being which acted as an extension of the powers attributed to “ritual specialists” (祈祷師) such as onmyōji, shugenja or Buddhist monks. In Buddhist context, the analogous term could be gohō dōji (護法童子; “Dharma-protecting lads”), though there are also cases where gohō and shikigami are contrasted with each other. The shikigami category didn’t just consist of animated papercraft and animal spirits typically designated as such in popculture. Even the twelve heavenly generals defending the “medicine Buddha” Yakushi could be labeled as shikigami. Obviously, kuda-gitsune is closer to the familiar meaning of this term than to Buddhist deities, though. People relying on kuda-gitsune were referred to as kitsune-tsukai (狐使い), which can be loosely translated as “fox tamer”, and it is said they were often shugenja. Given the popularity of the associated deity among them this shouldn’t really be a surprise. Various supernatural abilities were ascribed to the kuda-gitsune. The ability to possess people attributed to other supernatural foxes was the domain of kuda-gitsune too. Apparently people afflicted by it were compelled to eat nothing but raw miso. Purportedly they were bringers of wealth - but said wealth did not necessarily come from legitimate sources. That, in turn, could lead to distrust or outright ostracism of people allegedly relying on foxes to acquire wealth. They also provided aid in divination, and could supposedly reveal past, present and future alike this way. However, they could look into the soul of anyone using them this way and learn their secrets. Bernard Faure notes that occasionally it was said that they even could even be utilized to kill enemies who attempted casting spells on their owner. Shigeru Mizuki's kuda-gitsune

Kuda-gitsune, as depicted by Shigeru Mizuki (reproduced here for educational purposes only)

While there isn’t much information about kuda-gitsune in scholarship, especially scholarship available online in English, they received extensive coverage in various books about youkai written by Shigeru Mizuki, famous for arguably canonizing the modern concept of youkai. Note that while I am a fan of Mizuki's works, his encyclopedias are best understood as something closer to Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, complete with some dubious sourcing and possible fabrications. However, ultimately modern media about youkai, including Touhou, owes much to him, and arguably he continued the tradition of night parade scrolls which often invented new creatures wholesale, so it strikes me as entirely fair game to summarize what he has to say too. Shigeru Mizuki cited the Edo period writer Matsura Seizan as an authority on kuda-gitsune. He states ccording to the latter, certain ascetics (yamabushi) were provided with these critters upon finishing their training on Mount Kinpu and Mount Ōmine. In his account cited by Mizuki there are a lot of details I haven’t seen elsewhere. The storage tubes after which kuda-gitsune are named apparently had to be inscribed with a certain sanskrit phrase (left unspecified, tragically) so that the animals didn’t have to be fed. However, releasing them and giving it food was necessary to gain their help in divination. There was a downside to this - kuda-gitsune were apparently hard to place back in containment once released without the help of a seasoned specialist. Also, they refused to provide anything of value unless fed well, and they had quite the appetite. Mizuki cites the particularly disastrous case of an ascetic who kept multiple kuda-gitsune in a single tube, and eventually couldn’t pay for enough food for his collection since the animals kept multiplying inside. According to Mizuki it was believed that a kuda-gitsune could be gifted by its owner to another person, but the creature would come back if it was not satisfied with the food provided by the latter. If the original “fox tamer” dies before passing their kuda-gitsune to someone else, it will instead go to the Ōji Inari shrine located in what is now the the Kita ward of Tokyo.

Conclusion: Tsukasa and her forerunners

In theory I could’ve kept pointing out “see, it’s just like Tsukasa!” in virtually every single paragraph of this article. To answer the question from the title, evidently she is like that because that's how foxes have been in folklore both Japan and China for centuries. It is not really hard to see that ZUN is genuinely great at research when he wants to be, and Tsukasa's character is remarkably accurate to her real life forerunners, both as an adaptation of kuda-gitsune specifically and as a representation of the broader tradition which lead to the portrayal of foxes as supernatural creatures of questionable moral character. She engages in morally dubious “get rich quick schemes”, she definitely provides advice (of variable quality), and her self-declared ability from her omake bio pretty clearly reflects skills actually ascribed to the kuda-gitsune in folklore. In the newest game the ability to provide information is clearly in the spotlight - Tsukasa seems to be reasonably knowledgeable (she brings up Kojiki in a line aimed at Hisami, among other things), and other characters generally agree she’d be more useful doing something else than fighting. I do not think there’s any real reason to doubt this is what is meant. I think it can even be safely assumed that Zanmu’s decision to pressure Tsukasa to partake in her assassination bluff is rooted in genuine tradition. I’m obviously not going to say that Tsukasa reaches the platonic ideal of Okina, the quintessential character aimed at fans who like research, who largely seems to exist to get people to dig deeper for sources explaining the dozens of religious allusions in her dialogue, spell cards and design, but I do think it’s worth appreciating that the series reached a stage where even the minor animal youkai can be enjoyed as multilayered representation of centuries worth of genuine folklore and mythology. Bibliography -Bernard Faure, Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 1-3 -Michael Daniel Foster, The Book of Yokai. Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore -Berthe Jansen and Nobumi Iyanaga, Dākini (Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism) -Xiaofei Kang, The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China -Shigeru Mizuki’s assorted writings on kuda-gitsune (collected online here)

#touhou #touhou project #tsukasa kudamaki #kudamaki tsukasa

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doubleddenden · 3 months

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The topic of Palworld is pretty charged, but often times I see people be shamed for liking it because the CEO tweeted stuff about NFTs and the company using AI art in a separate game. Acting as if that's the most damning thing ever for a gaming company in an industry filled with similar people.

Make no mistake, I dislike both AI art and nfts, but do you realize how many gaming companies have involvement with that?

To begin with, Pokémon used AI art in a promotional piece for Pokémon Go in September, and nobody gave a shit because uwu Pikachu. The Pokémon Company also put a job listing some months back seeking an expert in NFTs. That's not quite damning evidence, but if I were a betting man, no "NFT expert" will willingly say "yeah nfts suck are bad for the environment, man, I'll take my paycheck and fuck off now." There's also a strong argument to be made that Pokémon has stolen ideas from fakemon artists (Finizen and Palafin, Scovillain, Dipplin, etc) and other franchises (kaiju movies, Dragon Quest, Megaman, final fantasy, western cartoons and food mascots, etc), a dubious legal statement that claims they own all fan art from the remixes and fakemon made on youtube to the pikachu your kid drew at breakfast; they have yet to apologize for the state of Scarlet and Violet while charging full price to millions of paying customers for a clearly unfinished and barely functioning game (which i did enjoy, but you can't tell me it was finished baking when it struggles not to shit itself just to run), and a bunch of other things people shit on Palworld for, but A. It's Pokémon so people don't care and think it's fine, and B. That's not the point of this post.

You know who else does NFTs and AI art? (Yes I heard Muscle Man from Regular Show in my head just now, too, moving along)

Square Enix sold several of their IPs for NFTs and claims to have used AI art "a minimum amount" in Foam Stars, yet I see nobody yelling for boycotts of Final Fantasy 14, 16, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Life is Strange, etc etc etc.

Sony has invested in both, they want to implement AI into gaming, and has a patent for nfts to be used in games and consoles, yet there's no movement to throw out your playstations.

Bandai Namco- you know, that company with a hand in pretty much most anime games on the market and popular games such as the Dark Souls games? They have a game called RYU that's essentially a virtual pet game that uses the blockchain, and its AI driven, among other projects. Yet there's no outcry to stop playing the many, MANY games they brand with. This also includes quite a few Nintendo games (btw they just partnered together to form a special studio quite recently) like Smash Wii U/3ds and New Pokémon Snap. Nobody gives a shit though.

Android, Microsoft, Google, Apple- I don't even need to explain those, they have whole teams dedicated to both. Even popular VPN companies accept crypto.

I'm just saying an awful lot of you guys that scream and shit bloody murder about Palworld's company being involved with that shit are either the biggest "It's okay when my favs do it" type of hypocrites, or you're sorely ignorant to just how evil and greedy most corporations are. You'll be hard pressed to find a game company with popular AND fun games that DOESN'T have some interest in either, let alone movie and show studios. That's the awful reality we live in.

You have 2 options

1. You basically stop doing anything involving most modern tech, including throwing out your pc and smart phone. You could probably live a comfortable life with tech circa 2010, but you have to be aware that any thing you buy may go towards a cause you don't like.

2. You accept that people can enjoy a product while not necessarily agreeing with the CEO of said product. Most CEOs tend to be jackasses anyway, that's kind of the shared trait they all have. You can also discourage companies from using them while understanding it is everywhere.

Palworld at the end of the day is just a toy, that's it. From the looks of it, it's not even actually hurting anyone, and it seems like the company at least treats their employees pretty decently- at least according to a few things I've seen here and there that seems rather progressive for a Japanese studio (with room for doubt obviously, it's a company after all and as we've established, they're all evil). At the least its not like when people supported Hogwarts Legacy and directly put money into JKR's wallet so she can openly hurt more Trans women. In fact, the only people seemingly hurt in all of this Palworld drama are obsessed Pokémon stans that can't accept a parody, or the Pokémon Company themselves, who rightly deserve some punching up tbh.

You can just say you dislike the game, that's fine, I totally get that. Even though I personally think The Pokémon Company deserves a few nut shots after the way they've treated fans these last few years with the state of their games (and you know, stealing ideas from fans without credit), I can see why someone would be turned away from a parody that's literally meant to be Pokémon with guns. I can totally understand all of that, personally I'd prefer if the game was MORE like Pokémon with turn based combat.

But if you're going to defend Pokémon because you think its perfectly innocent because of Wooloo or something like that, just be sure you're aware you're defending the World's Richest Franchise and their own attempts at AI and NFTs while calling out an indie company (a real one thats learning as they go, not the fake "We're totally indie" franchise that hasn't been indie since gen 3) for having a ceo that also seems interested in the same stuff. And remember, you don't become number 1 without hurting people somehow (we could dig up receipts about certain partners Pokémon has teamed up with, such as Tencent with Unite, but I'd rather not right now.)

Just saying. I don't think you're an irredeemable person for still liking Pikachu, cuz I do too believe it or not. I've been a life long fan and still have fun with the games despite the clear scummy business practices towards their paying customers. Just maybe extend that courtesy to the millions of players just trying to have fun in this awful, putrid, shithole planet that just keeps getting worse and worse with each passing day.

Plus... you know, think about it. Do you think Pokémon would ever get around to making a gunless Palworld? Probably not. Do you think Palworld would exist if The Pokémon Company and Nintendo were the slightest bit chill about Pokémon fan projects like SEGA is with Sonic? Also probably not. From what I've read, the devs just wanted to make a fun game that happens to mostly be ARK with Pokémon adjacent monsters. That's not really a bad thing, all things considered, and it seems like the worst they've done is reference official Pokémon when making their own models.

Palworld being successful is actually beneficial to Pokémon fans, as well. It'll never really truly compete, but it has outsold Legends Arceus in terms of units sold (not as much financially because Palworld was only $30 plus a sale recently, but still impressive), and it is enough that Game Freak is aware of its existence. Let Palworld light a fire under their ass, and maybe GF will actually finish their next game before releasing it for full price (and no, we're not bringing up the tired imaginary ball and chain game devs, game freak owns 1/3rd lf the franchise and can easily take methods to get more dev time, they just haven't because money). Just saying, at least the Paldevs were honest enough to sell it in early access for half the price.

#palworld

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popponn · 4 months

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coincidences and flickers.

ii - blank papers.

notes: fem!burnout artist!reader x pro-player!isagi yoichi ; pro player / post canon au ; self-depreciating thoughts towards one's own work ; fluff, with slight angst (burnout) with a happy ending (a slight hurt/comfort) ; unreliable narrator. a.n. at the end; f!reader but could be read as gn.

summary: you never thought you would find yourself next to isagi yoichi again. yet, like a deja vu, it happened once more.

prev. ; series masterlist. ; next

Going outside, viewing a bright cheerful day filled with fresh air and sounds of laughter around you, several sayings crossed your mind before you finally stopped yourself upon a cafe. Sitting on one of the bar stools and facing yourself towards the people who passed by you from beyond the window, you sat quietly.

The first comment came from yourself, heavily uttered out in your mind, it said, “Ah. Shit. It’s going nowhere.”

Right in front of you, beside a half-empty cup of coffee, was your opened sketchbook filled with unfinished scribbles all over. In some parts, there were hastily drawn squares that illustrated the canvases you would use for your work. Inside those squares were sketches no longer visible, most of their parts were crossed out almost violently under a tangled mess of scratchy lines. Looking at this without your pencil touching the paper, you just wanted to slump down right on top of the table. Thankfully, however, you still remembered what it meant to be appropriate in the middle of a crowded public place.

The second was not quite a comment, actually. It was part of an old professor’s lecture from your student days, a memory that had aged by a few years already. It was said in an empty hall that would soon be used to exhibit students’ works within a few months, right in front of said students. Your professor resembled a smirking, merciless wolf ready to ruin and devour as he stood upright, dressed in black that was more suitable for a funeral than a class.

“The theme is ‘beauty’. Please remember to make it a worthwhile piece. Of course, how you interpret those themes is up in your decisions and angles,” he said. Somehow, those motivating words felt haunting. You remembered how most students paled as the tongue that had ruined so much self-esteem during its career as both a critique and a teacher went on.

“Feel free to show off with size and numbers as much as your space and creativity allow it. I do have high hopes for each of you. After all, ‘beauty’ is one of the most attractive things for an artist, no?”

—sitting at the cafe, years after graduation and even more after that exhibition, you could hardly remember what you drew. Did that professor also leave a scathing so bad your memory repressed it?

Then, the third comment came in the form of your friend, a few glasses behind from being a blackout drunk, but certainly a few glasses too much to still have a filter placed on his mouth. A thick accent laced his slurred voice as he continued his supposed lecture about art and career. “Don’t you get it?! We are artists, but we are human too! Love what you make everyone!!!” he said passionately while standing on top of the restaurant table half naked, his cartoon t-shirt nowhere in sight.

Everyone, just as drunk or a bit less, cheered and agreed with him simultaneously. The stench of fellow art graduates and victims of capitalism’s passions, or perhaps repressed stress, filled the room. From your seat, as the unfortunate yet responsible sober friend of that night’s reunion—chosen via a rigged game of rock paper scissors—could only watch in amusement. Shouting again, your friend stated, “Art is rooted in our emotions as a human! It’s the heart—the heart! Don’t forget that! Express yourself!!!”

Afterward, it spiraled down into even more of a jumbled oration that you couldn’t quite remember. But, certainly, you would wonder if your current self was the one seated there that night. What would this version of you think of those sentences?

Your answer came immediately in the form of a scoff that escaped your mouth bitterly.

“Beautiful things, love, and emotion… huh?” you repeated while staring down at your sketchbook once again. Letting go of your pencil, you buried your face in your palms,“…what am I doing right now then?”

Is there a point for an ‘artist’ who felt nothing when doing something they were supposed to feel so much emotion for?

Is it even okay for someone to make something even when it is not even worthwhile?

“Ugh,” you groaned hoarsely into your hand. Lifting up your face you heaved out one long sigh. As of the moment, you should try again to brainstorm a concept for the needed pieces. Also, you still had illustration work to do. There was no time to whine and feel down. It felt immature, truthfully.

You glared down at the messy, filled-up page of yours. This was the product of your choice, so you had to go on. If the worst comes to worst, you would just consult your client and draw it out as needed. It felt almost like a chokehold that dug itself right inside your trachea, but you reminded yourself once again. “It is work,” you whispered to yourself, “you just have to—”

“Excuse me,” a voice stopped your mutterings right on its track, asking, “is this seat taken?”

You spared a second to berate yourself, once again reminding yourself you were in public that going out was probably the wrong choice for that moment. Then, you faced to your right, answering the voice with a smile, “It is not, please feel free—”

Then, in a manner of a dramatic deja vu, you found the very familiar face of Isagi Yoichi, dressed in casual boyish clothing, right next to you. He paused as he too realized who you were, freezing just as he was about to sit on the stool beside you with a cup of cold drink in his hand.

“Ah.”

“Oh.”

Like a pair of two surprised barely-acquaintances you were, you and Isagi stared at each other in a mix of surprise and recognition. His eyes looked a few shades darker under the shadow of his black cap, however, through tresses that peeked out from under there, you noticed how the bluish tone of his hair got accentuated even further. Dressed in a casual white sweater and grey pants, those hues of his stood out even further.

He looked slightly different compared to the man you met that night, shying away from the party and leaning against the wall. But, even more so, he looked different from the ‘him’ you viewed through the screen three days ago.

A player who truly deserved the titles of ‘Ace’ and ‘Star’ in his name. Someone who without a doubt carried so much passion for what he loves that it couldn’t help but steal your breath away for numerous reasons. It was hilarious in a way, how replaying that one of many matches where Isagi Yoichi played–out of curiosity and a slight remembrance of his name–ended up with your heart thumping almost wildly in your studio.

It was supposed to be a background voice, yet you watched that match with too much enthusiasm, feeling both envious and wishful every time Isagi Yoichi’s face came onto the screen.

Ah–you took in an inconspicuous deep breath–this is no time to think of some soccer match.

Reverting your focus back to the matter at hand, you silently took comfort in the fact that most customers surrounding you either had their ears plugged or were too into their own conversations to care about two people gawking at each other. Forcing your bewilderment within a tidy gulp, you immediately put on your best pleasantry. “What…a surprise to see you here, Isagi. And as I was saying, it is not occupied. Please feel free to have it.”

Quickly enough, the male in front of you followed your cue. Pulling the chair and sitting himself beside you, Isagi offered you a nod that could pass as a half bow as he greeted you by name. “I, uh… didn't expect to see you here too. It’s nice to see you again!”

You nodded back to him, albeit much more slowly, “Indeed, to think I will be able to meet and converse like this with a national soccer superstar, your fans must be seething.”

Isagi chuckled bashfully at your remark, the tense line on his shoulder loosening, “You talk as if you are no one yourself.”

“Having a few websites and prints displaying my name is certainly incomparable to you, please,” you shrugged, turning in your seat slightly to find a more comfortable position to converse with him, “though I am honored to have you know me.”

“Well, I did end up finding out a bit more about you after that party…” Isagi said as put down his iced drink. An iced tea of some kind, if its color was any indication. While your attention shifted slightly towards his drink, Isagi continued a tad bit too miserably, “…but to think you listen to my comments about your painting like that…”

Isagi’s smile crooked ever so slightly, a teasing tone mingled with one that said ‘How could you?’ as light as it should be for a small talk poking. You raised both of your eyebrows as a reply, smiling, “In my defense, you didn’t ask.”

“Hey, I think I did,” Isagi took a sip from his drink. His right cheek twitched. “I definitely did and you just answered vaguely.”

“Then, you probably asked just as vaguely,” you covered your grin with your hand, poorly playing up a faux misery to cover up your growing mirth, “after all, there is no way for a mere painter and illustrator like me to just brag in front of you, Ace Striker.”

“You are…” taking notice of your insistence, Isagi gave up with a sigh. Then, staring at his drink as if he was remembering that party, he continued, “Still that night…”

Hearing him trailing off, you too recalled the condemning comments you spat out that night. “I was… truthfully I just had some shame with that piece of mine. Pardon my manner,” you reasoned, truthfully unsure of how much of it was true.

“Ah, no, I don’t mean it like that, I mean!” Isagi hurriedly added, “I mean, yeah, that happened, but if I know it was your painting…”

Isagi seemed to hesitate to continue his words. You did wonder on what he wanted to say, but letting an awkwardness rise when the both of you still clearly wanted to sit in this spot would be in poor taste. Brushing it off with a wave, you attempted to finish the topic at hand with a good note. “As they say, what happened, happened. So, putting all those aside,” you turned your face fully towards Isagi, starting the conversation from the top once again. “What brings you here?”

If Isagi did notice the shift in conversation, he certainly didn’t bother to mask it. His eyes stayed on you for a moment, but after a brief, nearly unnoticeable moment of silence, Isagi replied to you as he took off his cap, putting it down on the table, “I, well, taking a drink, I guess? I’m supposed to meet up with a friend but…”

As your company furrowed his eyebrows despite holding his smile, you scoffed amiably, leaning your cheek on your palm. “Did they cancel out of the blue?” you asked, out of experience,

“Yeah, his girlfriend and something about an urgent matter,” Isagi said in a way that told you whoever this friend was, it wasn’t exactly a surprising thing for that person to pull. You attempted to cover up your pity at that. Isagi, with hair slightly disheveled by his cap, returned the same question back to you. The forced smile etched on his lips visibly softened as he asked, “How about you, though?”

You took one deep breath as you thought up a response. Answering honestly would just bring the two of you back to the very topic you attempted to run away from–your drawing. But, with a sketchbook being opened in broad daylight like this in front of you, lying would be plain stupid.

You held back a groan. Your headache was probably caused by a rotting mind rather than whatever you thought it was before. This conversation had turned into a devil’s loop.

However, still taking proper manners and such into account, you lightly tapped said sketchbook, “As you can see, work, in a way. I need a change of scenery to try and get new ideas. But, as of now… you could say I’m taking a little break.”

It certainly put so many things mildly, but that answer should do. The last thing you wanted to do would be to express your frustration once again and repeat that night with the same person. Therefore, calling ‘this’ a ‘break’ would suffice.

“Ah, I see,” Isagi’s eyes moved to your sketches. Then, they moved between you and those scribbles a more few times, before with a somewhat timid kind of curiosity, Isagi hummed, “Uh, you don’t have to but… mind if I take a look? At those drawings?”

How you wished you could snap that thing shut and run away.

“Sure,” you pushed it towards him. You hoped your hands didn’t shake. Keeping up your demeanor, you added in a joking manner, “But they are still very messy though–” they are a mess “–I hope you won’t mind.”

“I definitely won’t!” Isagi responded with a grin that carried with it a mysterious confidence. He sounded even more sure than you were. As he flipped the book back to its first page, you immediately bit your tongue. You reminded yourself to appear friendly. “I found some of your work online and I really like them!”

A light flutter touched you upon hearing his praise. It did sound genuine, even if you probably would have thought otherwise. Though, probably, if you looked at your older artworks, you could say that it was made with your whole heart at the very least. Unlike most things you had put out recently.

Idly tracing the pencil you had laid down, you replied, “I’m glad you like them.”

You managed to stop yourself from saying more, somehow, despite the bitter words already hanging at the exit of your mouth. Pushing those words aside, you eventually decided to continue to follow the lines on the pencil’s body once again, feeling the familiar and artificial smoothness on it.

“Woah,” Isagi gaped quietly, turning the pages slowly. You took notice that it was pages of still life studies you did. Just from the number of details on them alone, it was apparent they had been made some long time ago–before the overwhelming weight that made the task of simply opening your sketchbook unpleasant came into your days. There was no way you could muster enough will to put in that much effort.

You stared at those sketches deeply, wondering if you enjoyed making them then. Under your own breath, you murmured, ”Those stuffs, eh…”

“You really are amazing…” Isagi praises easily as he continues to flip through the pages, mouth agape slightly as if your drawings truly were masterpieces. “You are so good.”

Truthfully, the more praise you heard, the more you wondered how you should react. Donning on faux gratitude and humor felt wrong. It truly did lighten your heart to hear it. Hearing that someone spared even a second to appreciate something you make has always been nice. But, even so–

Those drawings were from a time when drawing was easy and filled with love. The you who had walked past that time and looked back at it with nothing but envy had no right to accept those praises. In a way, perhaps you never did deserve those praises.

Many people deserve that title of a ‘pro’ more. They who draw better than you could ever hope to be, they who love drawing much more deeply than you.

You, who dared to say you were in love with your craft once before falling silent this soon–

You have no right to accept those words.

Your fingers drew to a pause, you put a second of consideration before deciding to put that pencil back into your back. “You praise me too much,” you replied, thankful for his kind words nonetheless. However, still unwilling to dwell too much on your drawing, you tried to shift the focus towards Isagi once again, “Also, I’m a bit curious, but do you mind if I ask something?”

“Hm?” Isagi’s head lifted up slightly, removing his attention from your sketchbook for a moment. “Sure, I think. What is it?”

“I thought soccer practice is an everyday thing for pros like you. Are you on break?” you asked casually.

“You could say that,” Isagi said, “two weeks off for a bit before we go back to the usual.”

“I see…” you noted down. Then, the memory of a video you watched a few days ago came to the surface of your mind for the second time. It was a video you played to fill the background silence at your studio, however the cheers of crowds and the close-ups of Isagi Yoichi’s face were played enough times to have an impression of their own. “Still, seeing how hotblooded and passionate you are on the field, I would have thought you would be practicing alone instead of drinking coffee…”

“Wha–” Isagi, unexpectedly, spluttered at your sudden statement.

You blinked. Your hand flew to cover your mouth the moment you realized what you just muttered out loud, “Oh my–I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude–”

“No, no! It’s fine!” Isagi shook both of his hands quickly. The two of you truly were lucky that no one paid attention to your interactions or it would be embarrassing–you noted, your face turning as if you just sucked on something sour. “I mean, I usually kind of do? It’s just, a break is necessary sometimes, you know–those stuffs. And really, it just surprised me for you to say that out of the blue so…aha ha ha…”

As the blue-haired male laughed bashfully, you couldn’t help but to follow it with a hesitant guffaw of your own. Letting the sudden jolt between the two of you dissipate, you soon added, “I truly do mean it as praise, though. Even someone who doesn’t know anything about soccer like me couldn’t help but admire you when you play.”

While you were very much aware of how you worded it out like mere flattery, you truly did mean every bit of your word. Even through a screen, watching a play of something that felt worlds away from yours, seeing someone putting on such a wide victorious grin and focused gaze was a ‘something’. Three days ago, seeing that replay in the silence of your own room, sitting right in front of a blank canvas, it truly was a sight.

“Your dedication and such… I will call you a talented genius, but it was definitely more than that…” you vividly remembered how his eyes shone within those footages. Even outside of the field, the glint that stole your breath that day still held itself across his blue eyes that were right in front of you. “...you are a sight to behold, Isagi Yoichi.”

Isagi’s mouth hung open. Nervously, he rubbed the back of his neck as it morphed into a bright smile–boyish, bashful, yet full of pride that you had come to associate with him after watching that match. And, you supposed, after watching the proof of his hard work, he truly deserved to feel that pride.

“Thanks,” Isagi said, saying your name quietly in gratitude. His eyes escaped towards your sketchbook for a moment, “I think I could say the same about you too, though, you know.”

You blinked. “...Huh?”

“That painting that night and all these sketches,” Isagi continued to flip through the sketchbook, finally arriving on the messiest page of all, yet still looking at it as if it was worthy of something beyond a series of unfinished scribbles and less, “I’m no expert at paintings and drawings too, but I could feel how much of your heart and seriousness you put in it.”

“... is… that so…?” you did not expect to hear such praise. Was it a praise?

Was trying to put your all enough when it amounted to nothing eventually?

When it turned out to be meaningless and–

“Your drawings–” Isagi faced towards you, leaning forward slightly as his eyes crescented, a genuine and sincere glimmer still carrying itself in them, “–I really like them!”

For once, you stilled as you listened to Isagi Yoichi’s compliment.

It was simple and, undoubtedly, very subjective. There was no praise on how he understood it nor on how he thought everything came together. You wondered if this was because you hadn’t heard or tried to seek any opinion of your drawings for a while. Or perhaps it was because you drowned every single one of them with your own comparison and sentiments. You couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. However, you knew that it stilled you because–

It was simply an ‘I like them’.

For once, however, you couldn’t feel any disgust towards yourself or your drawings coming up. Your brain couldn’t come up with any reason or anything–it stayed silent, as you could only nod and utter out a quiet acceptance. When push comes to shove, who were you to discredit a feeling of ‘liking’?

“...thank you, Isagi,” you nod, looking away back to the window across you with a smile you knew was too shaky and big, feeling lightheaded and flustered, “I’m glad you like them.”

The cafe was bustling and Isagi had returned to your drawings, smiling even as he replied to you with a relaxed manner, “Same to you!”

Yet again, you found yourself unable to reply to that. Letting the conversation died there somehow felt right, oddly enough. Your shoulder relaxed as you took a deep breath once more. In the back of your mind, the grating weight was still there and you knew it would come back much sooner than you hoped it to be. But, for that moment, it was enough.

Sitting next to Isagi Yoichi–whose fervor had gained your respect–who praised you with such sincerity, it was enough for you to think that at that very moment–

It is okay for you to draw, despite everything.

Isagi turned to the next page as you stayed silent, finding yourself only being able to stare blankly at the air between the two of you. “Ah,” Isagi came to a pair of blank pages, clean and unblemished by anything.

“It seems you reached the end, Isagi,” you lightly said, offering a hand to take back the book.

“Yeah,” Isagi closed it and took it to your hand with a satisfied look, “thanks! It was great!”

“...you really praise me too much,” you repeated once more, this time acknowledging how it felt lighter to say it. “However, thank you. I’m glad you like those studies and idea roughs.”

“...studies…? …roughs?” a pair of blue eyes looked at you in confusion, the owner clearly blurting those words out of question and unfamiliarity.

You couldn’t help but to laugh at that, “The drawings you have seen. They are studies and roughs. An observation drawn on paper and… a messy note of ideas in drawing form, I suppose.”

“Oh–I see, I think I got it!” Isagi said, brightly in understanding, before then shifting slightly in his seat and taking a sip from his drink. “I never heard of those terms before–or maybe I just forgot it after high school, haha…”

You chuckled in sympathy. “It’s okay. I barely remember any rules of soccer either. I do know you can’t use your hand unless you are a goalkeeper, but other than that, I don’t think I even know what offside is.”

With faces turned towards each other, you could clearly see Isagi’s eye crinkling in humor. It was a good look on him, you noted. The lines of laughter on someone’s face always have their own charm visually, you know after all these years, however, it truly suits his face.

“Then, should I tell you?” Isagi offered, quiet rhetorically as he didn’t miss a bit to continue, “So, basically it’s–”

VRRRRT–

Which he would if it wasn’t for the sudden sound of vibration coming from his pocket. Both you and Isagi glanced down. Isagi made an apologetic face that was jumbled along with a grimace and a subtle irritation, earning a nod and an amused smile from you.

Another deja vu. It seemed like that this meeting would end soon too, you thought silently, vacantly looking at the empty pages in your hand. It didn’t feel good. The empty pang where you knew excitement should thrum was still very much there. It still felt like a hole that was simply there to make you suffer.

But, for once, it didn’t feel as terrible as it usually was–you noted. Perhaps, you could fill those pages with something ‘likable’ soon enough.

“Hey, yeah. It’s me. What is it, man?” Isagi picked up the phone with a tone much more casual than the one he used with you. A bit rougher and clearly more impolite too, you realized. “Huh? What–suddenly? Dude. Come on you just dipped out on me–you can’t just–”

You looked away as Isagi seemed to get exasperated not long into the phone call. Remembering your empty cup of coffee, you wondered if you should order another drink or perhaps move on, either back home or somewhere for dinner. You would definitely have to turn back to your work, though, either way. Your teeth felt like biting your tongue ever so slightly at that reminder, though you probably should indeed go home.

However, before that, you did feel like you had to do something beforehand.

Peering over at the phone Isagi’s hand, you wondered how should you go over it.

“Um,” Isagi called out your name, breaking your trance, wearing a description of ‘feeling bad’ on the scrunch of his face, “I’m sorry but that friend of mine…uh, he kinda turns back with his girlfriend and needs me, so…”

“Take it easy, it’s okay,” you hummed in understanding. Isagi wore an obvious guilt on his face still, however, so you added, “Really. While I do pity that I won’t get an explanation from Master Ace Striker himself, I was grateful for our chat. Thank you for humoring me.”

He chuckled at that, “Come on, no need to be that formal. I enjoyed it all too–oh. Wait.”

As Isagi cut himself short, quickly clicking through his phone, you let him be for a moment. You took the chance to put your sketchbook in your bag and scanned over the table for any of your belongings left. From the corner of your eye, you saw a quirk placing itself on Isagi’s lips.

“But, since we already looked each other up,” relaxed and friendly he offered his phone to you, unlocked and displaying the contact screen, Isagi did what you felt like you should do in your stead. “Mind exchanging our number so I can explain about ‘offsides’ and other rules to you through text?”

You were very glad your head had cooled down, or it would be terrible. Is Isagi the friendly oblivious type who doesn’t realize this sort of thing could be translated as flirting? Or it is? Or perhaps, you were simply getting too many things over your head after a few praises.

“Sure, I was about to ask you for the same thing,” you took his offer gladly, admitting your prior intent easily. Accepting his phone, you punched your number in and quickly returned it. “I will look forward to that offside explanation and the other kinds of stuff too.”

“Yeah, yeah. Explain some art stuff to me too later, ‘kay?”

“Oh. An exchange of information? How transactional.”

“I don’t mean it like that! But… yeah?”

The two of you emitted a simultaneous small laugh, for some reason. Quieting the tickle in your mouth, you shook your head, “I’m joking. I will look forward to another talk with you. It was insightful.”

Isagi’s lips turned into a shape that spelled out amusement in its equal crooked and wry curve. However, just right before he was about to open his mouth, his smile slipped along with the resounding vibration from the device in his hand. Isagi let his mouth hang open for a moment, before finally grimacing, “...well, I should go.”

Never taking your eyes off him as Isagi stepped off his stool, you nodded. “You should. I will be off soon too. Be careful and good evening, Isagi.”

“Then… good evening to you too,” Isagi said as he took backward steps towards the exit, confident and controlled enough as if he could see what was behind him clearly, “I’ll see you around.”

You raised a little wave that was more of a jest than anything, bidding him a farewell, “See you.”

And with that, Isagi turned around swiftly, a slight bounce pushing his first step forward as he went for the door. You were about to take your eyes off him right as he stopped in his rush all of a sudden, turning towards you once again.

“Oh, also–” Isagi said, a bit louder and ignorant to a few glances thrown his way, “–good luck with the idea hunting. Don’t push yourself too hard, ‘kay?”

prev. ; series masterlist. ; next

a.n.: and the second chapter is done!!! it definitely took longer than i thought, haha. maybe i should publish the outtakes for giggles hoho;;; but things are finally moving and looking up. and as a disclaimer, i want to remind you that everyone's burnout is different & this fic will never be the perfect portrayal of those experiences. but, if you are in a slump or a burnout, i wish you a good time soon :3 thank you for @doobea for beta reading this too ;;; this thing wouldn't end up being as coherent as it is without u ily;;;; all in all, i hope you enjoyed this chapter :> please do look forward to the next one, i will look forward to any kinds of feedback & thoughts u may have hehe <3 once again, thank you for reading!

taglist: @doobea @mariyumemi @intheewrld @lazysublimeengineer @coquettemaiden @kreishin @yoisami @takotakigum @themigrainegirll **bolded and italicized means i cannot tag you. please do contact me in case you want to be added or taken out of the taglist :>

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twstfournights · 4 months

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We're stopping development

First I'd like to apologize for the silence. I suffered another heart attack shortly after arriving home, which left me in critical condition. After that I truly tried my hardest to recover, but I simply cannot get myself into a remotely functional working state. Development had slowed down considerably since two of my team had almost entirely disappeared, and the holidays took up everyone else's time. Leaving me to try and charge ahead blindly.

I loved this project dearly, it was a wonderful beacon in the dark when I was in a terrible situation, and I loved crafting its story and putting my twists on the characters, excited to give back something to the TWST community. But sometimes, life just doesn't work out. And after a long long battle with my first heart attack, then getting diagnosed with a chronic illness from it, it just continued to get worse and worse.

I don't want to give up entirely on Four Nights, but I do not have the strength to be the lead developer. With this in mind, I'll be releasing the entire design doc with all of our planned routes and story beats for everyone to read. We never did finalize everything, but my belief is if anyone likes what we were trying to do, and wants to take it and use it. They should be free to. I don't want the hundreds of hours I spent writing and putting work into this to be wasted. That would be disrespectful to everyone who had worked or supported this project.

The patreon has been left up with all of its public posts and previews. I will post any remaining content on there and tumblr. The Ko-fi has also been deleted, and after this post goes live, I will start compiling all of our notes and documents into one post that should be coming in the next few days. I'm still severely ill, so it may take a little while. I'm sorry about this.

I'm mostly sorry to all of you, who waited an entire year for a demo I couldn't deliver. What build we have will be made public, and even include the unfinished sprites. I'll also be releasing the entire script, including what didn't get to be released into the build. All side works I created will also be released.

I once again apologize. I know I can't control my health, but my brain has always nagged me that there should of been more I could of done. Especially when I was so confident I could do this. I wanted to do better for all of you. I'm sorry.

Thank you for following development after all of this time, and I hope to see you around somewhere.

#twstfournights #twst fangame

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thelioncourts · 2 months

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I've been real absent online the last couple of months, but I can't miss out on @iwtvfanevents 'a meal to remember' because we are so incredibly blessed with beautifully creative and talented people in this fandom who constantly inspire and allow me to forever-wander in the world of Louis de Pointe du Lac, my most darling and favorite character ❤️ this won't be nearly as organized as I'd like it to be, won't say all I want to say, and I will inevitably miss somebody and/or some fic, but just know that there is so much wonderful content out there, especially by so many of the people on this list that anyone can check out at any point:

twelve days/nine months by @devotiondroid & @weather-mood daniel/louis/armand modern human au quite literally the fic that saved the holiday season for me. when new chapters of 'twelve days' would post, I would drop everything to go read it and would count down the days until the next update was set to happen. 'nine months' is a wip in the same verse and just as stunning. it's no surprise it's amazing; it's toni and it's bri, two people shining with so much talent it's blinding. and their powers combined?? oh my god. (there's also a one-shot in this verse called 'saint valentine' and my brain broke reading it, idk) now, just a list of @devotiondroid fics that changed me as a person: daniel/louis (and a little louis/armand as of now) human au quicksilver/mercury a danlou noir au that I reread a couple of weeks ago just to feel something again and then toni up and posted its prequel 'mercury' and I simply couldn't cope. the noir vibes paired with the gorgeously yearning story is just !!! everything.

daniel/louis modern human au

baby, I'm your man

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WOULD READ 1000000k of this world. the idea of it, the complete ache of this story, has stuck with me, buried somewhere between my ribs, and I'll forget about it for a second then remember and it'll hit me like truck how wonderful it is. toni................m o r e lestat/louis human au my neck, her rope solar plexus hit of a fic. oh, oh the loustat dynamics....it's gorgeous and the concept is !!!!!!!!!! everything to me and now, my list of @weather-mood fics that, when posted, I quite literally become/became a dragon needing to hoard the newfound treasure immediately: armand/louis (armand/louis/REAL RASHID) canon-verse instruction real rashid, my beloved ;;;; no but, honestly, bri has made real rashid so important to me and to loumand, she's why he exists in my first (unfinished) loumand fic 'facio ut facias' because he's just that important. but bri also just always puts into her fics the gorgeous way that loumand are so perfect together, the way they are consumed with one another's existence. armand/louis canon-verse-esque rumpelstiltskin

FAIRY TALE AU. bri is also the inspiration behind my unposted and ongoing fairy tale au because no one does it like her and this one is......oh god, the way armand is the only character that could have ever been in this, the way he fits into louis' life to be this exact character.......don't talk to me lestat/louis; armand/louis; armand/louis/daniel siren au THE ENTIRE PART OF YOUR WORLD (ONCE UPON A WINE DARK SEA) VERSE y'all don't need me to tell you how perfect it all is. I think about it constantly, I've told real life friends about it, it's everything, every single fic of it is everything. lily/lestat pirouette by @weather-mood and @nlbv/@ouizaya

it's so interesting thinking about lestat in those weeks and months of hunting louis, of how he found out things about him from others, how he got lily so involved, how she died because of it all, and the way bri and zaya took all of that and then showed the mental state of lily throughout it all, how much lestat's vampiric control ruined her....................amazing. it's everything.

lestat/louis canon-verse tides by @nlbv/@ouizaya

zaya, my love, she takes some of the sexiest loustat scenes and makes them even sexier before gut-punching you with something insane and devastating and it reminds me so much of the show's writing, the way you'll be like 'look at my family <3' and then suddenly their conversation has gotten dark, the room looks cold, and you wonder how they'll ever truly come back from it......... god shallows by @nlbv/@ouizaya

REPEAT ALL THAT I SAID ABOVE AND THEN SOME. like???? the episode 6 elaboration???????????? oh my god. it's real. it's what happened. we all know it.

roadkill by @nlbv/@ouizaya and baberainbow I think about this fic so often. the car wreck, lestat and claudia being so in-tune with one another hunting because they're the same, the way they're both aware of louis, the way the family works and fits in, the gore and beauty of it. obsessed. TIME TO TALK ABOUT BABE. lestat/louis canon-verse glass the capturing of louis during those earliest vampiric days, paired with lestat's doting as he tried to solidify his wooing, and then just -- everything else, it's all so good.

disruptions that scene in ep 7 where the entire family teams up on that poor man at their door is crazy and this fic takes that concept and just runs with it in the best way

lestat/louis non-traditional a/b/o verse lioness listen.............i'm such a sucker for a good a/b/o fic and we have a severe lack of them in iwtv, thank you, babe, for writing a beautiful one armand/louis canon-verse luna the way that loumand have been together through some of the most insane historical events will haunt me and also I'm in love with the idea of it, thank you, babe, I want every single year and something they experienced together

armand/louis; lestat/louis; louis/others canon-verse catacomb a required read leading into season 2. that's all you need to know.

armand/louis/lestat cannibalistic modern au cleave/tie by @kittyldpdl

a couple of years ago, I went through this obsessive body horror phase where all I watched and read was something that had some kind of body horror and it would make me nauseous but also I was so intrigued, so fascinated, I couldn't stop. this is that. oh my god.

armand/louis; lestat/louis modern au capillary by @kittyldpdl and @salmoncakepls

WIP. I think about it once a week. falling in love with louis while dressing him??????????? oh my god, the concept, the idea, I want to drown in it armand/louis; lestat/louis robot&android au design; intricate by @salmoncakepls

every time I see concepts for this fic my brain short circuits and every time I read it I just !!!!!!!!!!!!! the brain behind this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the most brilliant

goat goat goat time <3 <3 <3 armand/louis prey drive by @iwtvdramacd18

HI I THINK ABOUT PREY DRIVE EVERY TWO DAYS AND FEEL FAINT. like idk what else to say, it just sticks with you and you're like 'wow they're just like that and it's insane and beautiful and raw' and goat just writes it perfectly, always lestat/louis exposure by @iwtvdramacd18

I've never actually heard of this fic, but if I had, I would assume it was the most batshit crazy thing I'd ever read......full compliments lestat/louis WIP lunacy by @iwtvdramacd18

I seriously always admire people who can write the 'monster' so well. I struggle so much with actual horror/monsters/suspense and so to read it so well done always makes me a little crazy armand/louis/daniel canon-verse after s1 gathering dust by @knifeeater

non-linear narrative !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

armand/louis canon-verse esque alluvium by @knifeeater

I see the tag service dom armand and my brain blacks out, comes back, and is forever changed. that's all. armand/louis/lestat perpetuum mobile by @knifeeater

sometimes you read a fic and the opening is the most insane thing you've ever read that you're like 'how can they keep this up?' and then they do and you're like 'oh so you're that kind of talented....okay' that's this fic.

armand/louis canon-verse

dirges by @dictee

'He had told Louis once, a lifetime ago, as a kind of bedtime story, about his work with cadavers in the nineteenth century, in the catacombs under the Parisian graveyards. Louis, half asleep, made some comment about Mary Shelley, but in his mind it was his skin under Armand’s scalpel, as loving a part of Armand as any. Shuddering and offering up the red jewels of his insides. ' please read it. oh my god.

MORE DANLOU NOIR THAT IS JUST i'll let you win by @diasdelfuego

danlou prophet. daniel just being so overcome by louis...........daniel just being so enraptured, so in love. the noIR. ily. need to reread asap actually oh my god.

daniel/louis post s1 nothing left to give you now by @diasdelfuego

'When he turns back around, Louis is still facing away from him, eyeing the coffee table as he shrugs off his coat. It slides gracefully off Louis' elegant frame to reveal a deep burgundy button-down underneath. In Daniel's mind, he thinks as he takes in the sight, Louis is always wearing black —mourning black, the writer in his brain supplies. Daniel takes stock of him while Louis stands at the edge of the carpet and looks over Daniel's apartment. The vampire is just as preternaturally young as he was half a century ago, just as beautiful, looking entirely out of place in Daniel's mundane, chaotic environment.' like imagine the whole fic being this beautifully written................................w h a t

lestat/louis; armand/louis murdery mystery au WIP overlords by @diasdelfuego and @shewhomustbecalledking I'm behind on this (work is the worst, let's all quit our jobs) but what I've read is just !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO INSANE. cannot wait to catch up, I have spring break in three weeks and honestly just want to read the entire time, catching up on this and drowning in its beauty

lestat/louis a/b/o verse WIP house of gold by @shewhomustbecalledking I think this was the first a/b/o fic I read for this fandom and it's the blueprint, it's the reason, it's everything. the way lestat is so perfectly lestat in this is everything to me. I love an in-character lestat so much.

armand/louis; lestat/louis AU gothic horror WIP rhodedendron by @blueiight

'Let the Devil tempt me not, Louis thought, as he crawled to the mirror. Hollowed out eyes stared back at him, light-brown mawkish physique barely visible, swallowed up by loose pajamas, twists slightly askew but still meticulously sectioned off.

You look a fucking mess, bruh. Hardly fit to carry on the Du Lac name, what lady would want troubles such as yours? His Mother’s voice blended in with his own. But alas he could not be, could not sit in his sorrow and forever laud the man he was not.' true southern gothic horror. the last two chapters changed everything for me.

lestat/louis modern human au dreaming put to shame by @downstairsbar

I read this every single weekend. the beginning??? louis classing lestat?????????????? louis knowing lestat's eyes are on him but not understanding it???????????? the way I'd give anything for a million more words about how they got to the last part, about what all follows.

lestat/louis canon-verse modern era WIP

murmur by proval the way these are still our louis and our lestat, reunited after everything, still so the same, still so not..............this author seems to have such a good hold of these characters, I can't wait to see where this fic goes

armand/louis; lestat/antoinette; lestat/louis modern succession inspired au WIP dirty, sexy money by thevintage I've never seen succession but I love a business au and these first three chapters are so good. lestat and louis are divorced, they have claudia to tie them together, lestat is marrying his mistress, and louis has just met armand who is business rival of lestat's and the sparks are already flying and ohmygodohmygodohmygod

#fic rec #fic recs #iwtvfanevents #a meal to remember #this took so long and it's not even well done oh my god

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an00dleb00 · 1 month

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In Defense of Magnificus

A very very long rant by me. Originally from a rant I posted in a discord server in 2022, modified to be a little more concise. I have to apologize if some of this stuff is incredibly outdated, I haven't really bothered to catch up with newer stuff about the game outside of the game itself yknow... Like twitch streams from the dev and such.

I saw a theory that Magnificus was originally intended to be the villain of the original, in lore Inscryption, but through the rush of making the game as a coverup and developers like Kaycee not making much progress on the development because of said rush, he didn't get finished. And I think if you really analyze his character, everything about him FEELS unfinished.

His character design is super simple compared to the other scrybes. His deck is weak; there are not a lot of hard hitting cards aside from the Stim Mage, and the Magiks system itself feels wonky, as if they didn't have enough time to balance it out. His tower feels empty (Specially that damned bathroom. It haunts me.) His letter stops before its completed, he suddenly disappears mid-sentence... He's the only scrybe to not get a proper 3D version, as the game was mostly deleted by the time we got to him in Act 4, and he might've been the only scrybe that never became hegemon. We don't get to finish his battle, and he doesn't even get a handshake.

And going back to originally being a villain? Maybe that's why he was made to be so cruel to his pupils. P03 is also mean to his subordinates, but they're robots, they're not mean to gain as much sympathy from the player. Meanwhile, Magnificus is established to be mean and perhaps downright evil by the dialogue we get through Act 2. Rebecha speaks about him by saying he's mysterious, stating "Some say he wants... No, it's too terrible to say." But we never know what that refers to, and if it's coded dialogue or her own speech.

Outside of the CODED IN lore behind his pupils suffering, we don't see him being evil AT ALL. In Act 1 he is practically our savior; his throughout preparing was able to get us the film roll, and if we take too long he sends the player VISIONS to guide us in the right way. In Act 2 he attempts to warn the player about P03, his paint leads around to secrets to clue in about the OLD_DATA as well as perhaps serving as warnings for it. At the end of the game he is the only one who is distraught about everything being deleted; Grimora and Leshy accept their deaths, but Magnificus REFUSES to.

But wouldn't a villain rejoice about people dying? About, in his own words, an entire world being destroyed? It's like the original plan for his villainy was there, but he doesn't WANT to be one.

Now as to why he seems to continue to treat his pupils badly. I think it's just.. guilt. I believe he didn't have a choice in making them suffer, they were all just coded into what we know of Act 2. They were all created with the pupils being in torturous states and the game code telling them "It's Magnificus' fault". I think he himself believes this. I believe he could have tried to fix it before. But the thing is that, even if he ever did fix it, if he stopped their pain, it would all be for nothing... because the game resets. The only times it doesn't do this is when a scrybe takes over, which is something he has supposedly never been able to do. And if he were to help them outside of being hegemon they'd just go back to their original state once the new game card was used. I think he simply gave up upon realizing this and instead chose to bury his own grief that comes from it by playing into the character he was originally meant to be; the villain. That, and I think he just doesn't want to look at them... It hurts him to. I believe this is why he painted bleach over Goobert's painting.

I think him being originally an unfinished villain plays into him always being prepared. As I stated before, people often forget how helpful he is- it's due to his preparations that we are able to leave Act 1, he warns about The Great Transcendence in Act 2, warns Luke about the OLD_DATA, and warns him about the fate he'd encounter if he looked upon it. I think Magnificus wants to make up for his "villainy" by being the one the other scrybes and npcs can rely on in a time of need, so he spends every hour of everyday getting ready for the worst, and foreseeing what is gonna happen next.

Thing is that, he never stops anything from happening. He prepares a way out of Leshy's hegemony, but he can't stop it from happening in the first place. It's very probable that he was the one that planned how to stop P03 in Act 3, as we see he has been preparing since at least Act 2. But not only does the P03 hegemony happen, but he is ultimately unable to stop the Great Transcendence once it is in progress. Same thing for the game's deletion, which I believe it is at that point he truly panicked, because he couldn't foresee it or plan for it beforehand. It all feels like... An unfinished character arc. He never got to do anything he wanted.

I think he feels powerless.

Magnificus is often regarded as the worst scrybe. But in a sense, there's no real reason why that should be the case, at least not compared to the others. Like... Leshy took over the game and put the other scrybes into cards. He had good intentions, sure, but that doesn't mean his actions were good. Magnificus lost his eye, Grimora lost her memory, P03.... Was having a bad time...

Hell, the reason people hate Magnificus so much so often is because of the treatment of his pupils... But Leshy isn't all innocent there either. He puts Goobert in a bottle (At least, maybe he does. It's not clear whether it was him or Mags), which we know Goobert REALLY doesn't like, and he also put Goobert's description in the rulebook as "Failure". He also threw the bottle into the river as stated by himself in Kaycee's Mod.

P03... I don't gotta explain this one we know it is an asshole.

...And Grimora deleted the game, which basically killed everyone in it. While she had good intentions, it really only led to the discovery of the OLD_DATA and the subsequent assassination of Luke.

Now, what did Magnificus do? Nothing. Like... Really. He didn't GET to do anything. People dislike him because of his treatment of his pupils, but as I talked about before, I really don't think he can do anything about that, even if he wanted to.

So why do people so easily hate him? Circles back to the theory: Because he's unfinished. Everything about him is unfinished. The other scrybes are loved because we got to finish their arcs... We get to know why they each do what they did.

P03 not so much, but... P03 is a villain of sorts, people like villains and don't need them to be "good" to like them, which I agree with cuz villains are fun! P03 does have some sympathy points somewhere, though, which I'm not gonna go into here.

I'm gonna focus on Grimora and Leshy instead. Their farewells were perfect closure:

Grimora spoke about why she chose to delete the game, and we as the player come to understand her. It was right after her doing it in the first place, so we didn't even get to really build anger towards her. She talks about it being a necessary action- perhaps something we can agree with after knowing everything about the OLD_DATA. She laments not being able to play more with us, but she accepts her death and says goodbye.

Leshy talks about just.. wanting to play. That's all he wants, he just wanted to give us a good story. The original Inscryption is rushed and weird- Act 1, his hegemony, was his attempt to make it better and enjoyable (Which, considering it is the Act people love most, he succeeded.)

The player probably misses him by this point- playing cards with him feels somber, sad, and nostalgic. At this point we consider him a friend. And then he gets deleted after complementing our past deck, speaking about how much he enjoyed his time with us, and saying farewell. It's not something that leaves us with any possible anger towards him.

Magnificus though... He doesn't get that. We never get to talk to him properly, he never speaks about how he feels or why he does things. In Act 1 he spends most of the time in the clock, in Act 2 he gets cut off when trying to speak to us, Act 3 he only speaks a few sentences, and in Act 4..

His farewell is different than the other two. Leshy and Grimora accept their deaths... Magnificus doesn't. He doesn't talk about his feelings or justify his actions, because if you have been holding in your feelings, that is something you do when you can no longer do so. You let them go when you know you're going to die soon.

But he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to die, he can't accept it.

The game he played with us wasn't complete- the scales were gone, so we weren't even supposed to play against him. It was his opportunity to just say what he needed to say before he was gone, but he refused to accept his upcoming death. So instead he tried prolonging the process by using unrealistically high numbers instead of scales (The bigger the number, the longer the game will take, right..?). Even as he felt himself getting deleted he refused to end the game, or even talk to the player properly. For once, he couldn't prepare for the worst, and he was in denial- he was completely powerless and he didn't want to accept it. Instead, he speaks to us about the game deleting. He blames the player for it. He tries to guilt us; "You even allowed my goo mage to get deleted... I thought you two were becoming friends!"

And he doesn't get a handshake. He tried to push his deletion away for so long that he ended up not even being able to finish the match or get the same, proper farewell that Grimora and Leshy got.

I think by now I've said what I needed to say, but I wanna add that... Yeah, I think he's one of the most tragic characters in the game. I think he spends a lot of time being anxious- we don't get a clear answer on if he can see the future or if he is just able to predict it, but either way he lives with a lot of anxiety because of it.

I think the worst part is the deletion of the game and his farewell. He isn't able to let go because he's scared to, and because he has spent his whole life trying to prevent bad things from happening; trying to help his friends to get out of bad situations they caused themselves. But this time he's not able to, he can't do ANYTHING about it, and he's terrified because that means his whole existence and work is just... Gone. He spent all his days preparing for the worst scenarios, only for it all to be thrown away. He WASTED his life for nothing. And it hurts me that the fandom never saw that.

Or maybe I'm overthinking all of it. Maybe this has all already been directly disproven. But I still wanted to share this.

#inscryption #magnificus #ah... this took so long to rewrite and revise and agh!#i just... have a lot of thoughts about him #a lot of strong thoughts #it genuinely hurts me when people hate him #call me a snowflake or whatever I really don't care #hes a character very dear to me #i hope this might make someone like him a little more #or at least consider it #hm

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kithj · 5 months

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tired of the obsession with "ethical" vampires and also "good" vampires who don't eat.

i think there's a lot to be said about fatphobia and the glamorization of EDs in vampire media, particularly in more modern depictions... i don't want to place the blame solely on twilight because this was happening way before the 2000s but i do think that had a huge impact with meyer's weird obsession and unwillingness to depict the vampires as anything other than thin and pale (and her singular fat aka tall and curvy vampire is described as "intensely feminine" and we don't have time to unpack all of that in this post)

saying that vampire venom "melts the fat" off of people, or that the vampire venom turns a person into their "ideal self" - who is the one saying my ideal self would be skinny? why is that the ideal at all?

i also just find it soooo fucking boring to neuter your vampires in this way. the whole point is to explore these deep desires and impulses and especially in romance these power imbalances that come from human/vampire relationships. i find the "good" vampire to be such a cop out. why even make them a vampire. twc vampires are just glorified super soldiers that work for the government. twilight vampires are just a bunch of mormon models. there's no real substance to them. even if you wanted to make an argument about edward, it falls flat because stephanie meyer doesn't write him intentionally, she genuinely thinks this shit is romantic & isn't ever really interested in exploring their age gap or edward's hunger.

i think interview with the vampire (the show) approaches the "good" vampire in an interesting way with louis. the decision to make him a gay black man adds so much to his desire to be "good" (accepted) and there's more to it than just him not wanting to eat humans; he's worried about the way the world will perceive him. and he still has so much love for claudia despite how different they are and the things she's done (but ultimately he still chooses lestat over her!!!) and he tries to influence daniel's perception of her, too. i also like that they still actually show him eating, versus the cullens, who i don't ever recall being shown on screen (or in the book) eating anything.

when i write about the hunger in blood choke, i worried about how people would react to the hunting scenes in ch2. overall, way more positively than i expected. there's a lot more i want to expand on especially in the next chapter, and i worry about how it may look right now in the game's unfinished state. i don't want the hunger to be something bad, at least not at its core. everyone is hungry. everyone eats. and i wanted to make it so the vampires in my world could not just opt out of it. they can't eat animals, they can't sustain on blood alone, they have to eat.

when it comes to the mc, they struggle with the hunger, but it's more than that. like with louis, it's the combination of that visceral hunger but also being gay and gender nonconforming, someone who has always been an outcast in society struggling to find their way back in after having their memories and sense of self completely wiped clean. their hunger is a manifestation of this idea they have of their past self - the potential for them to become the next Standard - and their physical/sexual desire that they repressed for so long now untethered due to their lack of memories as well as waking up in a more accepting world.

i think this is a much more interesting way to approach the hunger as opposed to painting the actual act of eating as inherently evil. in twilight, all the good vampires don't eat, even when bella is a human she doesn't eat. in dracula, lucy is only ever good when she doesn't eat. and when she does eat, she becomes an evil, indulgent sexual demon that is a threat to all men and she has to be destroyed.

female vampires always get the worst of it; they are sexual deviants, they want to kill all men, they asked for it, they're disgusting and vile for desiring anything from food to sex to independence. this of course goes way back; again, look at lucy. even in more "progressive" vampire media like bit, the lesbian vampire is evil, hates all men, and is tricking and seducing her female companions into it.

it's interesting to see how far back these trends go. dracula and carmilla all the way up to the modern depictions today. the "good" vampire narrative almost never works; i think because the idea of what is "good" is always going to be influenced by the person creating it. edward is not a "good" vampire. he is a 108 year old man who preys on a teenage girl; this should have been far more important to his character than whether or not he, as a vampire, drinks human blood. but instead he's considered good because he only eats deer and he's skinny and white and looks like a model, and because stephanie meyer says he is.

i don't write all this to say that these topics can't be explored (twilight is terrible for many other reasons, and i think iwtv does do it well) but just to point out why, in my opinion, the "good" vampire is usually such a weak narrative. who decides what is good? and there are other ways to explore the themes of desire and humanity than just restricting their diet... just because your vampire doesn't eat humans does not make them automatically good. and to be frank no vampire will ever be ethical!!! that's the point!!!!

#hello. can anyone hear me #this is just a steam of consciousness rant. i dont know #also i still have like 2 or 3 episodes of iwtv left so 🙉#this was inspired by a video i watched on youtube the other day and also people complaining abt twc on the reddit again #and that post going around about how its probably way worse to steal blood from a blood bank than to just drink it from someone LOL #where people then recommend increasingly unethical ways for them to be ethical #like feeding on prisoners (jfc) or tricking people in a spa #even the hotel in blood choke is unethical. i wrote it that way. i purposefully made it so the woman changed her mind #but the mc nor hana care #anyways. sorry im watching a lot of vampire stuff lately lmfao #and im still disappointed by bit i will never get over it #ed tw

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cactusringed · 10 days

Text

Etho and Bdubs' meeting | Political Intrigue AU

Putting it in a tumblr post because idk if I can commit to a full fic that'll be posted on ao3 yet so I'll share this way

Word Count: 3,715

Content Warnings: Depictions of a staged suicide

The blood moon illuminates the night sky, painting the surrounding clouds crimson. Looking up through the glass roof of the observatory tower, Bdubs knows that today is to be the day he dies.

Even before his vision, he’d known, somehow, that the blood moon would signify his end. He was always attracted to it like a moth to a flame. Except moths aren’t aware — Bdubs doesn’t think — of the fate awaiting them once their delicate wings brush against the harbinger destined to extinguish their life. Bdubs is. He is, he believes, the most painfully aware one could be about their demise. The blood moon calls to him the way a jailer would a prisoner on death row, marching him through that last corridor towards his end.

“No, wait, I think a siren would be a more accurate metaphor,” Bdubs muses out loud, rubbing at his scruffy stubble. He should’ve shaved. Perhaps he still can. No. He’s meant to look this way, he knows. Images of his destiny flash in his mind and Bdubs screws his eyes shut in hopes to chase them away.

It doesn’t work. He takes one shaky breath, then another. His lungs ache. When he opens his eyes again, his vision blurs with tears that he quickly blinks away.

After spending over a year aware of the grisly details of his own death, one would expect Bdubs to have come to peace with it. He certainly thought he did. Yet here he is, staring up at the moonlit sky for what he knows is the very last time. Fighting back not only tears but primal fear that screams at him to rattle the bars of the cage fate has sealed him in. His heart gallops in his chest with such force he swears he feels its echoes against his ribcage, all the way up to his throat. His Adam's apple bobs as he forces his gaze downwards, to the workshop he’s built in the main observatory room. To his very last painting:

A landscape - that of the country of Oblivion. He’d hoped to finish it before his death, but he supposes the least he can do is bring it to an acceptable state. He wonders how much his work will sell for. He wonders if he can ask his murderer to burn it all before they leave.

Bdubs picks up his brushes and palette, the oil paints still wet from his last session, and works at the landscape. He paints a tree — thin, spindly, and grey — only to cover it almost immediately. He refines the cliff-face, as he’s done dozens of times, overworking the surface into a mush of dull colors and clashing textures before he throws his equipment to the ground in frustration.

His mind’s eye always had trouble focusing on the picture he wanted to bring to life, the shapes blurring together even after spending hours studying references of Obliviate scenery — but now, with the promise of death hanging over his head, he finds it downright impossible to not only focus but also keep his every muscle from shaking. Come on, he wants to tell himself, it’s not like you’re going up on stage to give a speech. It’s just the day of your own murder. Relax.

Bdubs worries he might puke. Or cry. That would be worse.

Another couple of breaths in and out. Shakier than before. He’s restless, to the point he knows he won’t be able to sleep no matter how late it gets, but also won’t be able to get anything useful done. What is there to do that would be useful mere hours, or potentially minutes, before his death? He could draft a will. He doesn’t know how to write one. Maybe he should’ve learned before he had to go and die, but to be entirely fair to him… no, he did know it was going to happen tonight for some time now. Ever since he knew of the blood moon. It just didn’t feel real enough to warrant any preparation, somehow.

Bdubs looks at the unfinished landscape. The sculk that snakes through every crack of the cliff-face. It’s too flat, despite how hard he’s worked at it. It resembles the sketches and croquis he’s studied in tomes, but not the feeling they elicit in him. That infinite darkness that threatens to suck him in. He reaches for his paints, but pauses. Gazes up, instead. Up and around himself, searching for that blackness, for that feeling.

It must be here. They must be here. Whoever Oblivion sent to end him. Bdubs isn’t stupid — he knows they’ve been following him for a while. Studying his every move, habits, his entourage. Yet he’s never been able to feel the weight of their presence. Not a shadow has ever been out of place. No matter how hard Bdubs has looked, how much he tossed his room upside down. How much he’s raised his voice.

But he’s got to keep trying.

“Assassin,” Bdubs speaks in the Obliviate tongue, struggling with the soft and flat tones it forces upon him. “Show yourself. I know you’re here. You have to be. You’re here to kill me, are you not? So, show yourself. Let me see my own murderer before I die.”

Bdubs waits. He waits for what feels like a full minute, only to be met with complete, suffocating silence. His lip twitches downwards, but he keeps his chin high, and continues to speak in a register he knows to be far more proper than he prefers to speak in his native Celesti tongue. He should’ve worked harder on his lessons.

“I’m unarmed. I don’t deal in violence. I just… wish to see your face. Then you can kill me,” Bdubs walks slowly, carefully, to the oak desk covered in loose paper and canvas pressed against one of the walls. His fingers trace over his sketchbook. He lets out a soft laugh, peering back up at the ceiling, looking out for any movement overhead. “I bet it’s not often you get to speak with your victim. I can offer you some critique. Because I have to say, the method you have planned for me… Well, it’s a bit too quiet. It’s like….” he frowns, unable to think of the right Obliviate word. “It’s boring,” he settles on the Celesti equivalent, before he switches back to the assassin’s tongue. “It will make my retainers suspect foul.”

Still nothing but silence, no matter how long Bdubs waits. A long sigh, as he lets go of held breath. He takes his sketchbook, worn at the spine, and holds it to his chest. He turns, raises a foot, intends to take a step — only to let out a roar of terror as he’s suddenly faced with a tall figure come out of nowhere.

Bdubs stumbles back, and as quickly as he began screaming he slaps both hands over his mouth to silence himself, letting the sketchbook fall open by his feet. His back hits the edge of his desk, and he waits as the figure stands still as a statue. One, two — his eyes dart to the door, listening for guards, servants, anyone who might have heard the commotion. Only when he’s certain no one intends to ruin his moment does he drop his hands down, letting out a high pitched giggle.

“You scared the life outta me!” he exclaims in Celesti. “I mean,” he corrects himself in quiet Obliviate: “You sca—”

The figure holds up a hand, and Bdubs stills, before letting out another, softer chuckle.

“Right. You understand Celesti. There’s no need to translate,” He insists on continuing in Obliviate, but it does save him some time.

Another stretch of silence. The figure lets their hand drop. They remain still, and though it fills the air with an awkwardness that would normally make Bdubs want to keep yapping — he instead finds himself transfixed by their presence.

Slowly, as to ensure they don’t take it as an offensive move, Bdubs leans down to pick up his sketchbook. He opens it towards the end, and meets with a sketch of himself laid in bed, arms stretched out at his sides, small rivulets of blood dripping down. The blood moon shining in the window. He’s transfixed by it for just a moment, his throat closing up.

He flips the page. More angles of his dead body. A few sketches of gloved hands taking hold of his wrist. The fingers are slender, long — one might call them delicate, even as they hold a blade to Bdubs’ wrist.

A study of how the blood flows. It pearls at the edge of the cut at first. There’s a few attempts at getting it quite right. The amount of blood that begins to trickle, then pour out. The way it soaks Bdubs’ sheets.

Then, finally, the main object of interest: The assassin. His sketches become more abundant, but less clear, as he focuses on them. Looking up at the figure standing in front of him, then down at his sketches, he’s happy to note he got their build right: Tall, slender, but not too much. Loose clothes that likely hide solid muscles. That’s another thing he realises he portrayed perfectly: Their outfit. The long, dark cloak hiding the near entirety of their figure. The large hood obscuring their head alongside a scarf wrapped around the bottom half of their face. The only part that remains uncovered is their eyes and a few strands of silver hair — easy enough to remember and portray, one would think. Yet it always remained blank both in Bdubs’ memory and sketches.

The surface of some of the pages have been rubbed raw from his eraser. Some have frustrated scribbles all over the assassin’s face. Others have just been left blank. It’s endlessly frustrating, and if he doesn’t get to do anything else before he dies, he hopes to at least fix this.

“Can I…?” Bdubs reaches for the assassin’s scarf — only for them to suddenly jerk back before his fingers can even brush against the fabric.

It’s the first movement he’s seen from them, a proof they’re not just a hallucination. It makes him jump, and he tenses in expectation of a blow that never comes. The assassin just adjusts their scarf securely on their face before peering down at Bdubs’ sketchbook. They point. A silent question hangs in the air.

Bdubs frowns. “Can you use your words?”

“No.”

Their voice is deep, surprisingly so. It’s also rough around the edges — the way one’s voice sounds after waking up in the morning. And a bit muffled by the scarf.

“Very clever,” Bdubs grins, reaching to shove playfully at the assassin. They move away. “It does mean you can speak though, so— Oh, how do you say in Obliviate… you know, like… gotcha? Do you guys have a word for gotcha?”

Bdubs swears he hears a quiet, near inaudible snicker from the other.

“You can switch to Celesti. I’d rather you did, actually,” they say in perfect Celesti. Not a trace of an accent. Not even an intonation amiss, despite how much more melodic Celesti is compared to the flatness of Obliviate. Bdubs could mistake him for a native if he didn’t know better, and if it wasn’t for the paleness of his face.

“Right, yeah, I was tryna impress you, but turns out I’m real rusty. But hey, I was doing well enough, yeah? Since you came down from your little hidey hole?”

Silence. They’re still pointing.

“...So, uh, what’d you want my sketchbook for?”

The silence stretches, until the assassin seemingly remembers it’s their turn to speak. “I want to see.”

Bdubs raises a brow. “Not the most eloquent sort, are ya?”

They blink.

“Just gimme a second, okay?”

Bdubs reaches for one of his charcoal pencils, and holds the book open against his chest. He peeks up at the assassin, then down at the page, lightly finishing up one of his attempts at a portrait. He sticks out his tongue as he adds the outline of lips he can barely see through the scarf, refines the shape of their face, and draws the long, white eyelashes caressing scarred skin. The hint of sculk Bdubs can barely see, pulsing like veins burrowing deep within the assassin’s skin. He goes at it for a moment, before he finally gives up with a dissatisfied huff.

“It’s not as pretty as you are in real life,” he holds the sketchbook out to the assassin. “But have a looksie, if you want. It’s kind of… Ah, well, you can keep it as a souvenir after you’ve killed me! I’m sure in a few decades you’ll be able to resell it for some pretty money. I mean, can you imagine?” Bdubs gestures when the assassin takes hold of the book. “‘The prophet prince’s last drawings.’ People will fight for it!”

The assassin doesn’t seem to find it quite as funny as Bdubs does. They stare at him blankly, jaw slack, before seemingly remembering to look down at the pages, ignoring Bdubs’ grin as they do. He doesn’t let it get him down. Instead he watches their piercing grey eyes dance across the pages. He doesn’t think he did them justice. He wishes he had more time. They genuinely are beautiful.

Their fingers run over the sketches. As they study the depictions of themselves knocking Bdubs unconscious and slitting his wrist, Bdubs can’t help but hyperfocus on their hands. They’re like a pianist’s. He wonders if they play instruments. Are Obliviate assassins allowed to partake in hobbies? Arts?

“I wasn’t sent by anyone,” their voice force Bdubs out of his imaginings. They stop on a page depicting them hopping out of Bdubs’ bedroom through the window and disappearing into the darkness of the night. It was a bit of a challenging pose to figure out. Bdubs is proud of that sketch. He doesn’t think it’s what they’re admiring. “My actions were planned by myself, in opposition to my orders. You are dangerous, but no one seems to see that.”

Bdubs swallows heavily. A strange calm had settled over him, ever since the assassin revealed themselves — but their saying that turns his blood to ice. He’s suddenly aware of every inch of his body, and the way they scream at him to run, or hide, or fight — something. Instead, he stays frozen as the assassin circles him, takes in the room as if they hadn’t been spying on him for stars know how long.

“You showing me this,” they tap their fingers on the pages. “It made me realise something I hadn’t considered before.”

Bdubs opens his mouth to speak, but the assassin continues before he gets even a sound out:

“If I choose not to kill you tonight. What happens with your vision?”

“I…” Bdubs looks down at his dead body laid on the pages. It’s hard to speak. He should stop staring. He can’t. “I don’t… know. Every single thing I’ve predicted has come true, no matter how hard I’ve worked to stop them. I don’t know what happens if… if they don’t. I think it would just push away the inevitable. If you don’t kill me today, then you’ll do it on the next blood moon. Or the one after. It’s not the first blood moon I’ve seen since the vision, after all. I could just be wrong on the exact date. Both of us could be.”

The assassin shakes their head. “Even if the date isn’t right, I won’t do it like this,” they gesture at the book. “So it still wouldn’t be true. Besides, you knew this blood moon was to be the one. I’ve been watching you for a long time. You’ve never called out to me the way you have tonight. You knew it was today.”

“I just… felt it, somehow. I tend to, with my visions. Even if nothing indicates a specific date within the vision itself, I just… feel it, when it’s about to happen,” he shrugs. “With normal prophecies — you know, the one they do all those fancy rituals for? With those, it’s kind of a fifty-fifty as to whether they’ll actually happen. But mine have always, always come true, no matter what. I’m just too good at this divination thing!” He laughs. It comes out wrong. Stilted. Tearful.

The assassin watches Bdubs pace.

Bdubs’ eyes find the image of the assassin’s bloodied blade, placed in his limp hand.

“...I don’t wanna die,” he finally admits, quietly. A few tears roll their ways down his cheeks. “I just know — well, I don’t know… what’s meant to, to happen. If you stop it, I mean. I don’t know what happens if you don’t kill me. If I— If I wake up, tomorrow. I don’t know what… what would happen. I’m not meant to. It— It won’t. It won’t happen. You know?” he looks up, his lips trembling uncontrollably.

He feels like a damn child.

The assassin is obviously uncomfortable. Their previously relaxed posture grows suddenly tense. Their shoulders are almost all the way to where Bdubs assumes their ears would be. They reach into their coat and Bdubs gasps, sharply. His eyes squeeze shut. He expects the stab of a knife. For all of it to have been a ruse. A way to finally end their conversation and get to the very reason they came here.

But nothing comes.

Bdubs takes one, two — up to three shaky, hiccuping breaths, before he opens his eyes again and looks up. What he sees is not a knife, but instead a handkerchief. It’s held in front of him awkwardly, the assassin staring at him unblinking. Bdubs hesitates, before he takes it and wipes the tears off his face. Except the very act of compassion coming from what should be his assassin makes his tears double, and Bdubs sobs embarrassingly against the cloth.

“We’ll find out what happens when a vision of yours does not come to fruition, then. Because I won’t kill you. You won’t die by my hand, prince Bdubs.”

Their voice is so gentle, now. Bdubs nearly chokes on air as he tries to calm himself. As he tries to listen. Take it in.

“I was only sent here because we found out about your vision. Before you worry — none within your court knows. We’ve only inferred it through our surveillance. I will report back, explain what happened. They’ll send another spy to continue monitoring your safety. Oblivion never wanted you dead, so you won’t have to be afraid of them. And it means… you’ll know: There’s a way to stop your visions.”

Before Bdubs can say anything, before he can thank them, they turn away. They take a step to leave. Bdubs’ tears stop in an instant, and he reaches for them. For their cloak. He pulls them back towards him, and wraps his arms around them in a tight embrace, feels the air escape from their lungs as he squeezes.

“Thank you,” he says, voice only shaking a little as he clings to the assassin’s clothes. “I don’t know how I could ever repay you. I don’t even know your name, I—”

“My— My name’s not important.” The assassin’s voice is strained, as if in pain. They pat Bdubs’ hand in what he assumes is a gentle attempt to pry him off. He doesn’t let go quite yet. “We won’t meet again. Just… try to find a way to stop your visions. If anything, for your own sake.”

Bdubs shakes his head. “I won’t let you leave,” he declares. “Not after you saved my life. Not after you did… did this. You were sent to protect me, right? So you must be pretty good! Then, I want you to stay. I can write to Oblivion, get them to keep you here. Then you can help me stop the visions from coming true again. Yeah?”

He finally pulls away so he can walk around the assassin and face them, sniffing as he watches them shake their head.

“I’m not a protector. I’m an assassin. The only reason I was sent here was to neutralise your murderer. Since I technically have, there’s no reason for me to stay. Especially now that I’ve revealed myself to you. It… goes against almost every tenets of the code,” they sigh, reaching to pinch the bridge of their nose. “It just can’t happen. I’m sorry.”

“... Will they hurt you? For… you know,” Bdubs gestures. Could the price of his life be his would-be assassin’s death? Does he want to know? “...If not your full name, can you give me… I dunno, a nickname, the first letter — anything? I don’t wanna forget the person who broke my curse. Please? Then I’ll let you leave. And I’ll promise not to speak a word of this. To anyone.”

The other furrows their brow, and studies Bdubs’ face. They shake their head again, and brush Bdubs’ hands off themselves. “Slab,” they finally offer. Bdubs recognises it: A clan name. A… very prominent one. “And what happens to me isn’t something for you to worry about. I’m… uh… Sorry. For causing you stress.”

There’s an awkward pause, then, before they take a step back. Bdubs lets them. He watches them as they climb back up to the rafters, open a window, and leave without a trace.

“...Slab…” Bdubs looks down at his sketchbook, hugs it to his chest. Clouds creep closer to the blood moon, obscuring its glow. The observatory is plunged in darkness, illuminated only by the flickering candles on Bdubs’ desk.

He’s alive. His vision has come and gone.

He sits at his desk. Opens his sketchbook, picks up a pen, and begins sketching.

He draws until the sun rises. A feverish attempt to burn the Slab assassin’s image in his head. Draws until one of his retainers knocks on the door and scolds him for not showing up at breakfast. Until they drag him out of the observatory, force him to breathe the fresh air outside.

He’s free of the burn in his lungs as he’s smothered into unconsciousness, of the blade splitting his arms open.

He’s alive.

#pltclau #writings

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tleeaves · 5 months

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Wasting Beats In This Heart Of Mine - how it would have ended

Hello, folks! As some of you already know or have heard me mention previously, my TLH fanfic WBITHOM is coming to an end. I am no longer comfortable with it being in the public eye since it involves a lot of personal stuff for me, and so I have decided to delete the fic entirely on every platform it's been published on (that's Quotev, AO3, and Wattpad) rather than rewrite the entire thing. This will also finally give me the chance to focus on other written works. Maybe I'll return to fandom with a rewrite one day for anyone interested, but for now, the future is dedicated to other things. The fic will be deleted in 48 hours, so readers on Quotev and AO3 have a chance to download the unfinished fic if they so desire before then or just have one last read. I ask that no one rewrites or adds an ending to my fic and publishes it anywhere without my knowledge and permission. Never put an author's work through AI either. I still have several copies of my fanfic and its outline, so I will always have evidence of where the story comes from.

WBITHOM is a monster, with the master document coming to well over 150,000 words and the fic so far being ~146,000 words (the entire outline and all my notes makes up over 4,000 words, yes). I predict that, had I finished the fic, it would come close to 188,000 words (so, there was a decent ways to go still). It's the biggest thing I've attempted, but because of that, it is also the most time-consuming (it's been almost a year and a half of writing, and each chapter either takes two full days to write or weeks) and it takes up the most space in my head, not really leaving room for the other ideas I want to explore.

So, as someone suggested, I thought I'd give readers who were hoping to see the fic to its proper end some closure. That's what this post is for: how it would have ended. Along the way, I'll explain some things too about recurring themes and motifs and all manner of behind the scenes and thoughts behind my ideas.

Character Arc Summaries

As readers know, this story follows the characters of Lila Raftis, James Herondale, Cordelia Carstairs, and Matthew Fairchild. They're all the most significant figures, though we do see other perspectives and side characters too. Essentially, Lila Raftis struggles with loneliness due to a myriad of other issues she has to work through, and James Herondale's arc starts with his depression and turns into a journey to authenticity where he feels like his own person and not just what he has been written or expected to be. Cordelia Carstairs' physical state of being lost extends to how lost she is within, and she ends realising that she has been continuously defining herself through other people. I see her as leaving London and the love triangle with James and (unconfessed) Matthew (and Lila) to deconstruct a lot of the ideals she was trying to live up to and why. As for Matthew Fairchild, I made the deliberate decision for him to turn into a werewolf and have that separation from Shadowhunter society so that he could pursue the arts and build a better life that he would find more satisfaction with, also eventually becoming sober. I took inspiration from his time at the academy, particularly when he turns to Lila in one of the earlier acts and asks if it's so bad to not be a Shadowhunter. At first, he regrets turning, but I planned for him to wind up relieved.

Honestly, while this work is very self-insert (and that's not a bad thing generally, but I've been finding it uncomfortable as time goes on, so that's why I prefer to take it down and keep it to myself), it was also my way of going How It Should Have Ended for the TLH series as a whole. I started it before ChoT, yes, but that book only led to minor changes and alternate paths taken -- I was already using ChoI as a base to steer these characters in the directions I thought they should go.

The Rest Of Act Three

The rest of Act Three of the fanfic is summarised below (...at length. It's a lengthy summary).

We ended the fanfic on the chapter where James and Lila returned to London, 1903 of his dimension. He was gravely wounded in his left arm, which ends up being amputated despite the efforts of Lila and Lucie (and Gus' help too). This is, of course, a reference to the recent fan art of James where a headcanon went around that the reason we couldn't see his other arm was because it just didn't exist. I took it and ran, which was not planned. I knew I wanted James injured so that Lila could return the care he once had shown her when she was wounded badly, but it wasn't going to be as severe as it ended up being. This is how we ended up at the Institute instead of 48 Curzon Street as I had previously planned for the chapter. James was going to be fine, but Cordelia had decided to confront Lila about several things, and they'd end the night having kissed -- which in turn leads Lila to going for a walk to clear her head and her subsequently getting kidnapped by Jonathan Bell (the Other James from another dimension). Anyway, the change did make some of these plot points awkward (😭) hence why I spent ages editing the make out between Lila and Cordelia because I could not decide how it should start and end. It was a nightmare. As Silver pointed out, it didn't make a whole lot of sense in the order of events (Cordelia should have gone to see James first), but I was in a mad rush to finally release the update since I knew people were waiting. The kidnapping also was not quite as dramatic as I envisioned it, but oh well. I'm actually quite happy with the rest of the chapter though.

From there comes the rest of the fic that readers probably will not get to experience, so that's why I'm writing this out, so you at least know the mysteries that I won't get to reveal and how we get to the end.

Jonathan Bell kidnaps Lila and, through the use of shadow, they end up in Paris, France. This is where Matthew also fled after his mother released him from the Silent City cells after he persuaded her into it. Lila ending up there and being away from both James and Cordelia, and spending more one-on-one time with our antagonist and Matthew since the earlier parts of the book was always intended.

Jonathan is revealed to have possession of another silver pen, which is a reference to a previous fanfic I wrote (also deleted) called Chain of Lies, where the pen could literally rewrite reality if you used your own blood for ink. In Jonathan's dimension, Lila ended up staying in his world and marrying him, but she also dies of a mysterious sickness during their honeymoon, so he uses the pen to go back in time and cancel their honeymoon, under the impression she would not get sick. Instead, she was hit by a car several days earlier, and died in the accident. Jonathan goes back again to stop that from happening, but Lila ends up dying again anyway, over and over again in different ways, every time Jonathan reverses time to prevent each event from occurring. Eventually, he goes so far back in their timeline together that he's reliving the December when they met, and that's how he knows how to divert the accidents in WBITHOM that threaten harm to this other dimension's Lila (are you still with me?). But before that, he created a time loop in that December of his dimension just trying to keep Lila alive for two years of his life whereas everyone else remained the same, but stuck in time. It's supposed to be very angsty and tragic, and it's a demonstration of one of James Herondale's core traits eventually twisting horribly wrong: how he would do anything for those he loves, whether that be family, friends, or lovers.

This character flaw/strength is something I reference lightly a few times throughout the fanfic, mostly in the ways he is concerned about the safety of his family and friends which he tries to find out from Lila, who has read Chain of Iron and knows what the future is supposed to be, and then how he reflects on how he does not know what he would do when someone he loves dies. Honestly, the issue is that he cares too much about people, which is both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on how far it goes. Jonathan is the literal embodiment of what would happen if James' care went too far, if it bordered on obsession, if he wanted to keep someone from dying so bad that he would sacrifice everything else, even the universe.

So, Jonathan finally confesses to the time-loop and explains that as a drastic measure, he tried finding Lila in another dimension to see if he could save her there, but this tearing of the time-loop to escape it worsened a tear that Cordelia had already created in her fight with Belial and the Mandikhor to such a point that it started growing and expanding and destroying the fabric of time and space between dimensions and the universe as a whole. You know, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff (Doctor Who reference for those who get it). The thing he did not realise though is that in this timeline, Lila is not meant to die, so long as she goes back home instead of staying in 1903 (he still doesn't know this, it's just a fact I would have explained to the readers when we meet Circe, the employer of Poppy Morad (P.M.) and Saint Nicholas). This is supposed to leave Lila conflicted, because as much as she wants to hate his guts for being the reason for her family disappearing and the worlds ending, even this Other James is a reflection of her own nature, which is another thing that's been lingering beneath the surface for the duration as the fic: while James has a doppelganger that demonstrates who he might become if he cannot accept loss, he and Lila have similarities boiling beneath the surface that go unnoticed until an outburst we saw Lila have where she basically accuses James of being just like her (not complimentary at the time).

Lila as a character is someone who cares deeply, but is willing to sacrifice herself and others to protect what or who she cares deeply about (yet we also see her choose self-preservation over self-sacrifice a few times before she truly starts acting in service of others). Her circle of people she cares about is more limited than James', but the shared sentiments still stand. Plus, the way Jonathan has acted this entire time has always bordered on unnerving or odd -- I did that on purpose. He's been driven to obsession, where he's basically an extreme of what James and Lila believe in. And he is both James and not James in this way, if that makes sense. We see in one of Lila's nightmares earlier in the book Jonathan saying it does not matter which version of him he is or which version of her she is -- they belong together. Fully delusional at this point, but it's meant to be scary. I'm kind of obsessed that Jonathan is also a mirror for Lila to see how she might look to her James: someone who knows you way too well, but you've also never met nor know much about at all (she might know James but she does not know this one), who's inexplicably fixated on you (granted, James did not even begin to guess Lila's feelings, and hers were rather superficial in a way until they spent more time together).

Anyway, basically, the start of this rewrite of Chain of Lies pretty much began with these dynamics between the two Jameses and Lila. It was a whole thing with diagrams and late night ranting to my poor sister and everything.

So, of course, Lila is conflicted and she also does not know how she's supposed to get Jonathan to reverse the problem he has created -- whether he's also supposed to go back to his dimension and whether that will be enough to repair the tear. Most of this happens in the Notre Dame cathedral because I said so (I like cathedrals as settings, sue me if you dare).

Meanwhile, Matthew has been in Paris and totally avoiding Charles, so he also hears nothing of Will and Tessa being notified about James' injury in London and leaving by portal. But he does hear some French Shadowhunter gossip about the Consul's werewolf son's disappearance when he discovers Lila being taken to the cathedral by a masked man. Then ensues a solo rescue operation. Honestly, I always have a lot of fun writing Matthew, it's hard not to include him more. Anyway, the rescue is successful, and he takes Lila back to his hotel room to lay low for the night before he gets her back to London with the others (since he recognises that they must have no idea where she is, what happened, and she's an integral part of solving this whole mess, as people are still disappearing in this world).

I had a really nice scene planned that I'd been waiting the entire book to write, but basically Lila and Matthew spend a sober night together (as opposed to their time in the Silent City together) where they talk about all their woes, including their love lives, and eventually they get on to the topic of how they could have smoothed over both their dilemmas if they just had each other as lovers, if only their similarities were not such that would probably be self-destructive at this point in their lives. Because we've seen often in the book other characters compare these two, but it's these two themselves who recognise that, yes, they are alike in some ways, but not the ways it counts in order to have a healthy romantic relationship. They settle on being good friends. Matthew also takes her measurements so they can pick up some quick changes of clothes since Lila's still wearing her grimy outfit she wore during the explosion. And she also brings up that she knows he's an artist, but asks that she have the chance to sketch him, and he offers to do so in return, so they spend the rest of the night drawing, which I just find so sweet. There's not much significance in that at face value, it's just cute, but I also see Matthew embracing an old hobby as one of the first steps he takes in moving on from all his pain and finding better outlets for it.

Also, the platonic nature between Lila and Matthew, the complicated romance with James and Cordelia, and then all the familial themes and side-plots going on are all part of an idea I had going into this that I wanted to demonstrate many facets of love and the importance of each in their individual right. If anything, given the extreme slowburn I've come at James/Lila/Cordelia with particularly, I want to end this book purposefully with none of them winding up together because so many other things mattered more than their romance, and even the kind of loves they have for each other are a reason they don't end up staying because they would all rather see each other safe and not see each other at all than know they might cause other problems by being in the wrong dimensions.

Anyway, because I do multiple perspectives for everything, while Matthew and Lila and Jonathan have their bit going on in Paris, back in London we see James coming to terms with his disability and in all his rumination over what's happened and Lila being missing but him being unable to go out and find her, James finally (FINALLY!) realises his romantic feelings for Lila. This also leads to a scene between him and Cordelia where they both discuss Lila and their feelings for her. Cordelia also confesses how she has felt for James for a long time, but she also explains that she wants nothing to come of it anymore because she does not see herself settling down with him like she previously thought. James is a bit stung by this (I mean, my guy had no idea about Cordelia's true feelings until now and then she also springs a rejection on him at the same time when he's just begun to realise some of his own feelings around her) but is ultimately relieved since he feels he needs more time to figure out who he is and the life he wants without the bracelet numbing him.

We also would have seen Poppy Morad and Saint Nicholas again and their increasing distress and alarm with how difficult Jonathan Bell has been to track and control since he's hared of to Paris with Lila.

When Jonathan finds out Lila's gone, he feels betrayed and frustrated by his failure. Because while he feels he has saved her, she's refusing to be his as she once was in his dimension (also why he was confused and then against her leaving and going home earlier in the story). The world is breaking down around him (we start to see parts of Paris going up in flames, not unlike London 2021 of Lila's dimension) and he's about to go track Lila down again (but now he's going a bit more heavily into Villain Mode).

We also see Poppy Morad closing in on Jonathan as he returns to London when she's defecting orders from Circe, her higher up, to take him down instead of corralling Lila's effects on the timeline.

Lila and Matthew return to London on Christmas Eve just hours before the end of the world properly starts in 1903. This is also when she and James interact for the first time since he passed out on the bridge several days ago. I was a bit undecided on how I wanted this scene to look, other than I needed them to finally confess their feelings for each other in the rain like a cliche after they have an argument where Lila says that James has everything she wants (and this is where we realise the root of her problem in this whole book is not simply loneliness, but a dissatisfaction with herself and her life, which has lent itself to the more superficial issues she's been having) but that ultimately she also just wanted him though she knows she cannot be with him without risking everything. So, when James confesses his side, they decide to spend what little time they have left with each other as best as they can. (And this where I as an author push them together like Barbie dolls and go "now kiss").

Have I mentioned this story has too many layers and plot points and it's been driving me mad this entire time I've been writing it? Anyway.

They quickly determine with The Gang™️ that "Belial" and "Lilith" are not who they seem to be anymore, because while Alastair just got arrested for the murder of Lilian Highsmith (oh yeah, that happens while Lila and Matthew are in Paris, because I wanted a reversal where it's Thomas who stands up for Alastair when he's accused of murder, just for funsies) everything else that has happened seems to be related to whoever this P.M. (remember when Cordelia was also accused of murder because Filomena thought she saw Cordelia when she was attacked?) and Matthew body double is (spoiler: Poppy Morad and Saint Nicholas are codenames for other versions of Cordelia Carstairs and Matthew Fairchild in another timeline, I'll explain more about this later, but what you can probably surmise already is that this alternate Cordelia has taken the place of Belial within this dimension and is the one murdering all the victims (including her father. That was a difficult point, because we see in a PM and Saint Nick scene that he's concerned about whether she can go through with it) and Matthew has taken Lilith's place in some minor ways (like hiding and then handing back Cortana at the right moments)).

Anyway, because Lila's kind of behind on some events, she goes to confess to Cordelia (but explain how she also feels about James), when Cordelia says there's a lot more she wants out of life before she pursues romance again. That she's been so consumed by it, by finding love, by getting married, she's lost who she is beneath it all. (Have you noticed the theme for every character in this fic is basically authenticity and finding oneself despite whatever circumstances they find themselves in?)

Then, we also would have seen Lila dedicate herself to taking down Jonathan herself since he's the main problem that's tearing things apart and perhaps if he's killed then he can no longer influence time and reality.

Vaguely, I had planned that James and Lila would have what my outline says is "an emotional night together" because it could mean literally anything and I wasn't totally sure where I wanted it to go. So. Interpret that one how you will with whatever you prefer, honestly. Anyway, while that's happening, we see Matthew go home to his mother who is, understandably, worried sick and mad because he never wrote to her like he was supposed to and Charles return without him. We see Matthew collapse into her arms and just sob. That was the plan. It's important to me that he's actually vulnerable with her for once and that he, a young man too big to be in his mother's arms, lets himself be held anyway. There was also supposed to be a wholesome Thomastair moment that I hadn't really planned, though I knew Alastair would go home with Cordelia afterwards and she would start her journey to forgiving him. We also would have seen her kneel in front of Sona to confess A Whole Lot Of Things about what's been happening in her life, from as early as the marriage blanc and the Blackthorn Manor incident. Basically, everything is supposed to be hopeful even if it hurts just a bit and feels a little bittersweet. Because then in the chapter this all would have taken place in, we'd end with Saint Nicholas and Poppy Morad collecting the pithos from Christopher who picked it up in the background of everything (basically, all the Belial storyline has still been operating as it should, except it's being orchestrated by PM instead of Belial), when Jonathan sneaks up on them and fatally wounds (he had the intent to kill) Saint Nicholas, who he is shocked to find out in that moment is an alternate Matthew.

AND THEN, next chapter we would have had at the tolling of midnight, signaling Christmas day, PM the alternate Cordelia (whose character is the way it is because she's been hardened by some long and traumatic years -- she and alternate Matthew have a tragic backstory that I've been keeping in my back pocket that wasn't really necessary to be explained in the story, but if you want to know more, just ask) drags a dying alternate Matthew back to their tent where Circe, their mysterious employer, is torn away from her work elsewhere to start enacting emergency world-fixing in this timeline. This is also when we find out Circe's identity: she is Cassandra Clare, once again (if you read Chain of Lies) who's codename was derived from the common shortened CC she's referred to in fandom, who has universal powers and basically controls (to an extent) a good portion of the universe. Like a god. But also not. It's a whole mysterious thing that I never intended to explain because I think some things are better unexplained.

THEN, Jonathan shows up to 48 Curzon Street, covered in blood and calling for Lila. A fight between him and James (and sort of Lila who's attacking Jonathan though he refuses to attack her) ensues before he ends it all by taking out a silver pen (The Silver Pen) where we see 'Nikoletta' engraved on it, and writes a time-loop which snaps the final threads keeping all the timelines and dimensions in order.

Act Four Explained Slightly More Briefly

This is the final act of the book and also the shortest. It was planned to only be about six chapters long. Now, I was most excited about this part of the book because I had ✨visions✨. No, literally, the entire inspiration of this entire fanfic came from a dream I had about James Herondale as Spider-Man, me impersonating Cordelia Carstairs and not knowing how to do Shadowhunter things, Santa Claus as Father Time, and the end of the universe, and this is where we would have finally get to see it all come together.

We kick it off with an entire chapter dedicated to a lot of scenes similar to what I've written earlier in the book with Lila and James' nightmares, where nothing makes complete sense and yet the reader is meant to feel on the cusp of understanding something alongside the characters before the dreams usually end. Only they don't here. The dreams are reality, but reality is broken, and there is no waking up because there is also no sleeping and there is no normal but faint memories of what came before. So not only is the environment ever-shifting (think of it almost like a kaleidoscope and you have maybe a quarter of my vision here), but the people also keep "glitching" between different versions of themselves at different points in time and in different realities even (sometimes the doubles join and then they split apart, it's a weird nightmareish sort of thing in my mind), and so they also have different memories and levels of knowledge about things that have happened and what's going on. We see it mostly through Lila and James' perspectives. There's supposed to be a lot of angst and a feel like everything is a fever dream.

In the next chapter, things only start to get slightly ordered when Jonathan Bell finds Lila and says he'll rewrite the universe she wants so that it's perfect for her, and can have it be anything she wants, so long as they are together (major creep vibes though, honestly, as sweet as this might sound to some). This is also me addressing a problem from my original fanfic before this one, Chain of Lies, where I basically gave that silver pen waaay too much power, and now I'm demonstrating what it can do and so, like the one ring to rule them all, it must be destroyed (once Lila or someone else gets a hold of it to rewrite and fix the fabric of everything). Alastair saves Lila from Jonathan this time (he's still a bit prickly, but we see he still cares about Lila anyway), and demands she go find Cordelia to end Jonathan (Cordelia has Cortana which can cut through anything, which is important). Then we also would have seen that James is stranded somewhere with a fluctuating Matthew (the vision is that he keeps changing states from a werewolf to a living corpse to himself at various ages) and they are attempting to find PM, the alternate Cordelia, who knows Circe who should be able to fix everything as PM explains (she got separated from Circe and Saint Nicholas when the world went crazy). She leads them partway before she's taken by the collapsing world (she disappears basically, because that can still happen to people). When Lila finds her Cordelia, she's in the Paladin state (imagine glowing eyes and a vague aura of scariness with a glowing sword and you've got it) and it takes a bit to get through to her so they can make a plan to take down Jonathan.

Chapter after that, we have Cordelia distracting Jonathan so Lila can steal the pen, but she realises she does not know how to write an ending that does not kill all the Jameses since, as Jonathan once put it in her nightmares, "it does not matter which version of him I am... we are the same". This hesitance gets Cordelia fatally wounded, though she's not quite dead yet, but it's the final push Lila needs to kill Jonathan with Cortana (as also seen in a dream she had ages ago without realising it), and Circe finally manages to pull enough worldly strings in this chaos to pause time long enough for James and Lila to reunite to do the re-writing with her.

From there, we have two alternate paths. I called these basically "the happy ending that could have been" and "the bittersweet ending that was", which I was inspired to write by The Umbrella Academy (if you know, you know, I won't spoil it for anyone else who doesn't).

In the happy ending that could have been, we see the characters a couple years down the line. We also find out that Lila would not have died like she did in the other universe. She and James are together and they end up planning to propose to each other on the same day, which is the day after Lila successfully ascends. Then we see Cordelia and Matthew travelling together across the world as friends. After that, we would have seen Thomas and Alastair having dinner at the Lightwoods'. Finally, the Raftis family believe Lila is missing, presumed dead, but after a couple years they are finally moving on.

The bittersweet ending that was though is where Lila goes home. The friends she's made in London 1903 see her off before James takes her back to her dimension where they'd have one final goodbye on Blackfriars Bridge. That night, Cordelia gets on a train to set off and travel on her own. We also see Matthew, who has already picked up Oscar a couple days earlier, going to Gus' flat to complain that Oscar misses Gus and would not stop whining until they came by. We see Matthew finally tentatively suggest a first date, and Gus would accept. We close this part of the ending much like we started the book, with James walking alone in the night, just as he was when he left the Devil Tavern and his story took a different direction to canon when he found himself outside Cornwall Gardens where he met with Alastair. This time, James is alone, and he's feeling a little hopeful about the future ahead.

We get one final chapter before the epilogue where it's mostly Lila's perspective as she finally gets to experience Christmas with her family in 2021 and I planned for the beginning of some family healing and bonding to occur. Then we would have seen future James once more, who it turns out is now tasked by Circe (CC) with maintaining the space between dimensions, but this means he can't be in any one for very long since it's a lot of work that takes up time.

And now we get to the epilogue. Every time I imagine this, I get a little emotional. The epilogue would have began several years in the future with Lila dropping a bi-annual letter into the Thames, which I liken to the River Styx, in that it's where all lost things end up. We see, rather comedically, that she has moved out with the money she gained from some things she "stole" from Curzon Street, as well as her mysterious finding of the adamas, which scientists in her world are still amazed by. We are surprised to see though that when she goes home, she's living with the version of Matthew who nearly died in his previous role as Saint Nicholas, because CC gave him a chance to live out a new life elsewhere, in a dimension where there was not another version of himself. He and Lila seem to be doing well.

We cut to James of around December 1905 who has gone to visit his family at the Institute, where Lucie and Jesse are pouring over Cordelia's latest letter from abroad. James says he was just at Matthew's flat, and Gus was telling him about theories of time travel that the mundanes at the university Gus attends were discussing. We also find out that James himself has written a book, a science fiction piece with a ridiculously long title, about different worlds and the doubles of people that exist. After the dinner, he goes to Blackfriars Bridge and produces several of Lila's letters out of a pocket before stowing them away and shadow travelling to her dimension to leave a letter for her.

The fanfic would have ended on James' letter, which mentions briefly that he is having nightmares again of Belial's return since they have heard nothing have what happened with CC. Aside from that, the letter is rather sweet. But we see that Lila never gets a chance to read it, because CC collects it first and burns it with a lighter while humming "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas".

Concluding Words

And that, ladies, gents, and fair folk, was how Wasting Beats In This Heart Of Mine would have ended. It has potential for a sequel. One I never want to write except in my head because, man, I am so exhausted by this fanfic alone after I already did it as a rewrite of Chain of Lies. If anything, this is the sequel to Chain of Lies and the next potential story would be the third book. It's been a long few years, I'll tell you that.

Some final things:

If you're wondering about that green coat I was always mentioning: it was supposed to be my tell, along with the gold-ringed eyes, for Saint Nicholas being an alternate Matthew, who is also the leader of the SoHo wolf pack in his origin universe. For Poppy Morad as the alternate Cordelia, who worked as Matthew's partner in time shenanigans, it was the fact that people forgot her face once they saw it because of a facial rune she applies (one that does not exist but she has courtesy of working for The CC). That's why people often knew they saw Cordelia, but could not remember the details of that meeting, if they managed to remember her at all.

The reason Lila has essentially what I call "a death aura" is because of her alternate selves, many of whom die, and it's something that leaks between worlds as the walls steadily break down.

At some point in Le Grand Reveal Of The Time-loop, Lila realises that the detailing on Jonathan's mask matches the floral detail on the back of The Joker card she's been carrying around with her sister's initials this whole time, which hints at just how significant some of the objects in this story are and the meanings they can give (The Fool and The Master being other common names for the card, related to its unpredictability and capability of being anything).

Jonathan wears, obviously, his crimson cape, but his clothes are a deep navy blue and this is part of my reference to Spider-Man and the original dream that inspired all of this.

Future James does indeed have diamond stud earrings. I said so.

At the end of the book, CC would have reinstated Lilith and Belial (whom she removed for previously causing problems in other dimensions where they became too aware of alternate timelines) with altered memories, so the stories can generally continue where they left off (some a couple years later, which has some interesting effects if I wrote the next book, in theory).

And I think that's all I have. But if anyone has any questions at all, feel free to reply to the post to ask, message me, or put it straight into the ask box, I'm more than happy to answer since I'm already depriving you of a properly written-out neat ending to everything. Reminder that I am deleting the fanfic WBITHOM in roughly 48 hours from the time of this post, so after that it will not be available on any public platforms for reading. I am not taking down any of my other fanfics (except for the few that I already have some weeks ago).

Thank you to the readers who have supported me on this longass journey. You were often the reason I kept going when I wanted to give up on writing fanfic, especially writing this one, which has been a very trying process (I mean, it took me half a day just to explain the last approximate third of the damn book, for crying out loud). I appreciate the kudos, the comments, and all the enthusiasm. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Take care now, and I'll see you in the updates of other works in the future.

-- streettealee

P.S. special thank you to @thevagabondexpress who endured many hours of me blabbering way too much about this fic and these characters, who I pestered to give me feedback as I fretted over whether I was doing everything right (spoiler: there's no right way, just better ways), and who cared about this when I struggled to. You suggested I might find a way to give readers some closure. And so I also give thanks to @faithfromanewperspective, who went nuts for an Australian OC (understandably, as I would too) and blazed through my entire fic and encouraged me inadvertently to start updating again after a long dry spell. You still absolutely get to see my drafts and outline next time we catch up in person, but I hope for now that this is a good description of the rest of what the book would have been and it gives you some closure, as well as for the other readers. Thank you also to @quantummeep for reading and commenting! I can never get out of my head how even early on in your reading you recognised all the plot threads that I had been weaving together, and it meant so much to me that you appreciated the level of detail I tried to work with.

Thank you all and to the other readers who also supported me 💛

#wasting beats in this heart of mine #wbithom #the last hours fanfic #tlh fanfic

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noturvlentine · 11 months

Text

im sorry about my frail state of mind

matty healy x reader based on this request

sorry for the inactivity but yes, i am alive and posting, i thought I’d just put this one out because it been sitting there unfinished and I apologise for the wait!!! I also didnt proof read this so there might be some errors. i know i normally write in second person but i thought i might switch it up :)

Do not copy my stuff elsewhere but reblogs are appreciated 🖤

Summary- after being stuck in a relationship, a certain friend of Matty’s finally snaps after surrendering to the exhaustion of touring with the band and Matty is there to comfort her.

alcohol? reader is a she and lots of angst. Implied unhealthy relationship. the girl mentioned is a part of the band :)

1.9k words

༺ ♰ ༻

As soon as the set came to a close, she’d followed the rest of the band backstage as Matty and the boys were still taking their final moments, tossing picks and thanking the fans for being there. She’d left her guitar to be dealt with by the stage crew and the moment her body hit the darkness backstage, she felt the piercing sting of exhaustion hit her.

How the fuck does matty do this obnoxious act for weeks on end?

In truth, he doesn’t. The band knows full well that Matty isn’t at his best on tour but that’s just the reality, one he can’t run from because he wouldn’t be able to live with his own mind in retirement. She passed all their equipment stands which were already being packed into cases, and made her way into the corridor of the green rooms. The girl’s mind wandered, never fully settling on something before being annoyed by her own thoughts and purely just pissed off because of her growing exhaustion. She’d haphazardly passed the cases in the hallway, and made her way to their green room lounge. They’d been touring non stop for two months now, after recovering from their last leg of the tour. She wasn’t exhausted and annoyed because of the tiring after hours and fraudulent sleep schedules, she wasn’t tired because they had to play shows almost every night, nor was it because she was sick of anyone on tour- Well that wasn’t entirely true. After running around for a year and thinking she’d fallen head over heels for the glow of blue eyes and smirk of teeth, she never quite got the memo that her boyfriend was their new stage manager- stage manager assistant, to be exact. It was probably because they’d met through the actual stage manager, and she’d toured with The 1975 since god knows when, and having known Matty since he was fired from Cafe Nero, she really didn’t want to be anywhere else. Her presence was made known in the green room as she fell limp onto one of the couches, and after a brief moment of stillness, she rolled herself far enough to grab a beer from the coffee table.

“That lighting hit you too hard?” A voice from the other corner of the room taunted her exhaustion. Probably Jaime, or John even, she couldn’t tell anyone’s voices apart when all that’s ringing in her ears were the swirling hazes of intolerance. No response. The figure then laughs and plops down the the couch opposite her resting place. A moment of brief silence leads her to drag herself upright, sitting on the couch with her head draping on its back and beer bottle in hand dangling between her legs. John looks up from his phone (though she hasn’t yet noticed it was John in the room), and huffs in pity. Being in a band was never easy, thought being in a band with your best mates made it both harder and easier, it wasn’t something all too glamorous. And before the girl could properly rest her eyes for than a minute, George’s squawking laughter comes echoing down the corridor. She’d argue that he loved the sound of his clowning giggle, but her head was too deep and in need for whatever suppressing pill she could get.

She could hear what was clearly Matty’s footsteps stop at the door, as the rest of the boys stumbled in and helplessly made their way over to the couches. Through the faint ringing and dilation in her ears, she hears him light a cigarette, before making his way to the couch opposite her.

“You ‘right?” His voice was dry and soft, which made her roll herself out of that semi-sober drunk state. She looks at him with half an eye open and like before, no answer. Matty simply takes that as a sign he shouldn’t push anything on to her, she knows that he cares and he doesn’t want to find himself in the line of her potential bullets. The gun was cocked but there hadn’t been anyone pretentious enough to put their finger on the trigger-

That’s until some unknowing stage manager’s assistant takes his stride into the room. Matty could see him behind the couch she was sitting on, he walked passed the mirror and set his clipboard down onto the naked vanity. What the boy does next doesn’t surprise Matty, though he doesn’t feel the need to walk over and disarm the weapon. Matty never liked her boyfriend, he didn’t hate him no, nor did he had any strong biased towards the annoying witty blond they’d been stuck with. Matty watches as he comes around the back of her couch, stopping behind where she sat as to not find himself tangled up in George’s smoke. He leans over the back of the couch to look at his girlfriend- Matty’s friend, she doesn’t hold his gaze but instead lifts the bottle up to her lips but is quickly stopped. He slips it out of her hand, and at that moment Matty knew that he’d probably- most likely, fucked up. She doesn’t snap like Matty expected, but instead the boy puts the bottle down on the floor and then rests his elbows on the back of the couch. He brings a hand to the far side of her face and brings it to look at him. She flinches, both pissed and unwilling to even make eye contact with him. That boy really set himself up to burial and when he doesn’t get the memo that his girlfriend wants nothing to do with him, he tries again.

“Fuck off.” She says, stern and tired, unwilling to put up any defence. He looks- offended almost, but definitely not confused.

“What?” He accuses, as if he hasn’t already figured it out. And when she doesn’t answer him, her name slips out of his mouth in full demand and wanting to talk. To Matty’s surprise, he watches as she pulls herself to stand up, walking around the couch to grab the bottle from the floor and storms (in a silent, undetected manner) past the arrogant twat. If Matty weren’t so worried with his friends well-being, and everyone’s safety, he’d be laughing right now, but no one else seemed to have really noticed or thought anything of her departure, that was until the blond spun around and followed after her. George looked up from his phone and furrowed his brows to the empty space beside him, then turned his gaze over to Matty, who was now sitting next to a confused Ross and John. Adam, who was crouched on a stool beside the vanity, felt the concern silence radiating from the lounge as he too turned to the boys. They proceeded to hear what sounded like a ‘fuck you’ followed by an incoherent male voice stumbling after her. That was enough to have Matty off the couch and over to the door as everyone’s eyes trailed him. Matty poked his head out the door quietly, assessing the state of their mess.

“You’ve been coming into the hotel room every night like your fucking job here is finished, expecting me to fuck you when the only thing you fucking respect is how good your job looks.” She was yelling at him. Matty had never heard her yell, in the same fury driven, resigning matter- in fact, Matty had barely heard her yell in anger at all in the two decades they’d known each other.

They were at the end of the hallway, two doors down from the exit, the buzz of the overhead lights meant that they were in no position to hide from his view.

“And when have I done that to you?” He snarks.

“You’ve been doing it for the past- fucking six months! We have breaks for a reason and I’m not about to give you a shag whenever you want!”

It was blatantly obvious to anyone who could read basic human emotion, that her voice was on the verge of cracking as a lump in Matty’s throat began to grow- not a very good sign to anyone with half a brain.

“You’re unbelievable-“ he sighs in annoyance, turning his head in directions to look at anything but her. She was defeated from the beginning, now running her hand down her face and back up to rub her eyes. It probably took too long for Matty to make his way down the hall, George had also twitched to this action, seeing as his best mate no longer had his foot in the room as he himself contemplated getting up to help with the situation but instead received a stern look from Ross across to him. He shook his head at George as to not follow Matty into the fire, not because Ross didn’t care, but it’s unspoken that you don’t go running into another bloke’s fire unless the situation were to escalate any further.

By the time Matty reached them in the hallway, he was sure the blond was ready to open his mouth and tell Matty to ‘get her to shut the fuck up’, but he only pushed passed him and stormed off somewhere unseen. He also prepared himself to get a bottle thrown in his direction- not that she was drunk, but probably because it was logical for a pissed and tired person to lash out at anyone in rage. That and or- start crying. He’d never seen her condone that type of violence- with the exception of some dickhead at a bar back in 2012 trying to get on Matty’s nerves (who ended up with her fist in his face and a knee to the crotch, followed by her robbing him of his drink for the hell of it) and the occasional threats if she was ever gaming in the studio.

Matty hadn’t said anything as she managed to slip out a defeated laugh, before turning the back of her hand to rub her eyes.

“What a dick-“ she said, almost mockingly but with the same type of sorrow as before, leaning her head back to the wall and avoiding Matty’s eyes. One look at him and she could probably start sobbing uncontrollably, but this wasn’t the space and he knew she had no right to make a bigger deal out of her exhaustion in front of the performer himself. Matty stepped in front of her and took his hand to the bottle she was holding, squeezing her hand a little so that she’d let go of it. He put it on the floor beside him and looked up to the sight of her sore and glassy eyes.

“Yeah, what a sleaze bag he is hey?” He gently smiled (yet still internally bothered by it, though avoiding any opportunities to display it on his face as to not worry his already defeated friend) and opened his arms for her as she surrendered to his embrace, her arms slung lazily around his waist as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. Matty stood there with her in his arms, rocking on the sides of his feet as she shifted her head to the side, producing an audible sniff as the tears started down her tinted cheeks. Matty shifted his fingers to the ends of her hair, offering some sort of comforting motion when he twirled a strand around his index finger.

“Hey, we can talk ‘bout it, if you want.” He was met with a long pause and a weak hum.

“You’re welcome to stay in my room tonight.” He offered, almost like a whisper. She nodded and lifted her gaze to look at him, her eyes red and her lashes bound together in tick points from the tears.

“We should go-“ she whispered, her voice like cracked glass and quiet. Matty could only return a look of delicate smile and assurance.

AN: SORRY, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW I WAS MEANT TO END THAT. I know the request was more of a ‘hang out’ type thing, but I was tired, and I’m back- so why not make it a little angsty

#matty healy x reader #the 1975 fic #matty healy x y/n #matty healy #george daniel #matty healy fic #george daniel x reader #adam hann #ross macdonald #the 1975 fanfic #the 1975 x reader #request

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