#oh hey didn’t rb to this blog yet

[appalamutte]

I posted 1,406 times in 2022

That's 1,396 more posts than 2021!

165 posts created (12%)

1,241 posts reblogged (88%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@a-very-gay-disaster

@tiredsemanticist

@skeletonzimms

@weneedtotalkaboutfic

@dexsbruins

I tagged 1,333 of my posts in 2022

Only 5% of my posts had no tags

#omgcp - 520 posts

#hockey - 320 posts

#other rb - 241 posts

#zimbits - 185 posts

#check please - 130 posts

#sidney crosby - 129 posts

#evgeni malkin - 92 posts

#jack zimmermann - 79 posts

#hockey chatter - 75 posts

#sky says - 71 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#they’re up 4-2 but eric knows not to get cocky just yet‚ and he knows nelly knows that too‚ how he evens his gaze and takes a deep breath.

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

A bag is dropped in the chair across from Eric, and when he looks up from his phone and half-cold bowl of pasta, he finds Camilla Collins standing before him.

“Oh,” he says through a mouthful of penne, struggling to swallow it as quick as possible. It hurts a bit when he finally gets it down. “Hi, there!”

Camilla goes to sit down beside her bag and smiles sweetly over at him. “Hey. Eric, right?”

“Yup, though everyone really just calls me Bitty -- because of my last name, not my size.” Eric screams internally. “Anyway, you didn’t need to know that, sorry.”

Camilla just chuckles and props her elbows onto the table, resting her head on her fist. She’s staring at him like she knows something, but her gaze still looks a bit inquisitive. It’s disconcerting, really. Eric knows she’s Jack’s ex, or ex-hook up, or whatever. Holster and Ransom always mention her at Haus parties when Jack’s clockwork absence is noticed, drunkenly cheering about finally getting her back in bed, and Shitty has vaguely confirmed they were involved with each other on more than one occasion. But no one has ever given Eric a straight answer on Jack’s and Camilla’s history.

It’s not like he’s been able to ask about it much, though, either. Eric’s pretty sure Shitty’s starting to pick up on his hopeless schoolground crush with all the questions, and he can’t even look Lardo in the eye when Camilla’s name is brought up anymore. He can only say a silent prayer of relief that Holster and Ransom are too preoccupied with personal endeavors to notice anything, because he’s certain he’d never hear the end of it from them if they knew.

And no matter what, having said crush’s ex-something sitting before him makes the pasta Eric just swallowed sit uneasily in his stomach.

“Bitty, that’s cute,” Camilla says, and it’s not condescending in any way. “You’re on the hockey team, right? With Jack?”

Eric tries to give a humored smile. “What, do I not look the part?”

“Not at all,” Camilla easily smiles with him, “but I like that. There’s too many meatheads on that team. We’ve been needing someone like you for a long time.”

“Hah, yeah,” Eric says, absentmindedly twisting his fork in the pasta, “good thing I’m here then. Those boys finally have actual dinners rather than microwaved bagel bites. And that kitchen when I moved in? An absolute biohazard, lemme tell you. I think I spent a week scrubbing everything, and another full day just cleaning the inside of the fridge. There was also a cabinet solely for sriracha, and, like, really? I think they had at least thirty bottles of it.”

Eric knows he’s babbling on now, but Camilla has this sparkle in her eye and she’s listening so intently that Eric has to catch himself from letting more unnecessary words tumble out. “And now I’m just rambling,” he finishes with an awkward laugh, “sorry about that.”

“You don’t have to apologize so much,” Camilla tells him, “it’s cute. You’re cute.”

Eric blinks and, with the way she’s looking at him, blurts: “Are you hitting on me?”

“What?” Camilla sits back suddenly. They just stare at each other, both wide-eyed, before they both laugh loud enough for the tables around them to turn their heads. Eric laughs, and laughs, and he thinks at some point Camilla is still laughing just because he’s still laughing. He can’t stop, though. Her laugh is light and airy, a melodic sound that matches everything else about her. It’s nearly perfect. And Eric’s own sounds too shrill and uncontrolled, so he just laughs harder because his heart is plummeting and when he stops it’ll be all too real that he’ll never stand a chance with Jack -- especially if he really was with Camilla at some point.

Which is pathetic because Jack is straight. His ex sitting before Eric with blinding beauty is only adding insult to that injury.

Finally, after too long, Eric wipes at the tears in his eyes and takes a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to ask that,” he says when they’ve calmed down enough. “I don’t know why I even did.”

“I was coming on pretty strong, wasn’t I?” Camilla runs a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face in the process. They have the same hair color. “I’m sorry for that.”

“No -- don’t apologize!”

She waves a hand dismissively, and Eric watches it, unable to stop from comparing his calloused ones to her soft-looking ones. “Anyway, I just wanted to come by and meet you for myself. Jack told me you’d be here.”

Eric nods and desperately tries not to blush. His cheeks heat up anyway. “Yeah, cold pasta always helps after bio lecture.”

“I bet,” Camilla says, and there’s that glint in her eyes again when she continues: “I’ve heard a lot about you, Bitty.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. He’d be stupid not to go for you.” At first, Eric thinks he wasn’t supposed to hear that with how quiet her voice fell. But then her gaze quickly drops down to his body, then to his hair, before meeting his eyes again, and he’s definitely meant to hear: “He really does have a type, too.”

Eric blinks, opens his mouth but finds he can’t say anything, and Camilla bids him farewell with a promise that he come by and watch a tennis match sometime. Maybe he waves, though he isn’t sure. He just watches her leave, winding through the tables until she’s out the door and there’s nothing but his rapidly beating heart and bright red cheeks left in her wake.

He has a type? 

Then, twisting up the cold pasta in his stomach one more time:

Who’s he?

267 notes - Posted June 23, 2022

#4

How many passive aggressive emails did the Falconers’ nutritionists send Bitty

363 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

#3

Bittle's head lolls to the side as the bus climbs the on-ramp to the freeway, thudding softly against Jack's shoulder. He shifts, too, readjusting his hips, turning toward Jack's body the slightest bit. His hand finding a place on Jack's forearm. His shoulder prodding into Jack's bicep. He doesn't wake, though, and Jack finds he doesn't want to wake Bittle up either.

Using his thumb to bookmark the page in the book he's reading, Jack drops it to his lap and looks over at Bittle. There's nothing but the passing city lights that illunimate all his soft features, features which never seem to callous over: the jut of his jawline, the bow of his lips, the point of his nose. Hair just long enough to fall across the tip of his forehead. Eyelashes so pale Jack can barely make out their curl.

Jack can't explain it. Can't explain the inexplicable comfort that settles deep in his chest, the warmth that blossoms across his cheeks. He drops his gaze further to the stretch of cotton that sculpts Bittle's thighs, the faint hairs on his arms that come and go, glistening under the fading lights.

Slowly, subtly, Jack shifts his body, drops his shoulder to allow Bittle a more comfortable position. His hand on the armrest between them comes alive with nerves, feels everything, and his pinky twitches. Reaches out. Nears Bittle's own.

Bittle shifts again, then, suddenly enough that Jack jerks his hand back and face up to look straight ahead. His heart's pounding. His breath is caught in his throat. He hears Bittle hum, feels Bittle bury his face further into his arm, tightening his shoulders. The grip on Jack's forearm grows stronger for the longest of moments and afterward, Bittle mumbles: "Light. Turn...turn it off."

Reaching up, Jack breathes out a quiet euh and turns the reading light strapped around his forehead off. Another moment lingers, strewn together with held breath and wide eyes, before Bittle relaxes against Jack again and evens his breathing back out.

It's not until they're halfway back to Samwell, somewhere deep in the suburban woodlands of Massachusetts, that Jack allows his eyes to finally close. He didn't feel exhausted before, not even when they all climbed back onto the bus after the game; yet, sleep comes gently, quick, pulls him down with the weight of Bittle againt his side.

Jack hasn't found sleep that easily in a long time.

395 notes - Posted May 7, 2022

#2

See the full post

556 notes - Posted June 2, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

realizing versus recognizing the difference between bitty’s and jack’s oh moments

See the full post

767 notes - Posted July 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #long post #like really long i couldn’t figure out how to shorten the posts lol #i’m sorry

[kanmom51]

Hi! Love, love your blog! I am a new Army and only recently dove into BTS. I have never shipped before but one funny jikook compilation video and I was done. Then I saw rosebowl and here I am a supporter. I wanted to ask what were the reactions of people when that happened? KMers and non-shippers in particular( not the people who are in denial). I can maybe accept difference of opinion on other jikook moments but not this. I am curious how the fandom viewed it. Thank you for taking this up :)

Hey there anon.

Being pretty much a baby army myself, I wasn't around in the fandom when RB happened, so I can't tell you what was going on right after it happened.

What I can tell you is what I saw, from fan clips on the day, and what I have read (fans talking about the reactions, asks and comments about what happened).

So, if you search on YT, you can find many fan clips from the day. Look for original clips, not the edited clips with the moment. You will be able to hear the reaction of the crowd when it happened, the surprise/shock, the screams, the Oh my god's. So, I think, as a whole, the crowds at the concert loved it. What was read into it came later, when the clips surfaced.

Then, when it came out, the talk started and the clips surfaced, the shock waves hit, and with it the denial.

So, the reactions were those that screamed Jikook with joy and happiness (the word was that this can't be explained away as anything else than them being together. There was nothing brotherly about it and it couldn't be explained away by skinship either), but on the other side of the spectrum there was outright denial - it didn't happen, he didn't kiss his ear, he was only whispering something in his ear, his chin touched JM's ear, that's it etc. etc., all kind of ridiculous stories, as long as it wasn't JK actually sucked on JM's ear. Then there was those that realised, well, it happened, so we have to explain it off somehow, and from them we got: it was fanservice or it's only regular skinship between brothers or friends, or JK was doing acupuncture on JM to calm him down like you do to a baby.

Whatever it was though, for good or for bad, everyone was talking about it. That is also the reason, in my opinion, that BH inserted the moment into the 2019 memories. It was already out there, everywhere. Putting it into the memories, in a way, would be saying "look, this isn't a big deal, nothing really going on here, nothing to hide." It was playing both teams, in a way. The JKK's screaming it's real and BH are not hiding it, while the deniers screaming that BH wouldn't have put this in if JKK were really involved because that would be outing them. Yet again JKK hiding in plain sight.

#ask #anon

[chrisevansszn]

THE GAMES WE PLAY PT 4‼‼‼‼

FINAL CHAPTER ‼

1.6 Word Count

*quick recap*

 

The ride was nice, and you guys held hands the whole way home. When you got back home yall decided on order Door Dash. You both were taking off your shoes and such when the doorbell rings.

 

“That’s odd”, Chris says. You both was still standing in the hallway, and Chris walks up to the door and opens it. Standing there is his ex, Lily James with a bottle of wine.

 

“Hi there”, she says.

 

Chris stops and stare for a second, and then finally says “Lily. What a pleasant surprise.” “I just thought a nice pop up would be ok since you just finished the premiere maybe we can celebrate”. Lily holds up the bottle of wine.

 

She still hasn’t noticed you standing in the hallway. Her eyes are directly on Chris.

 

“Well,”, Chris says, “I do have a friend here.” He moves to side and opens the door a little wider revealing you. “Oh, goodness”. Lilly blurts out. “I had no idea”.

 

You smile respectfully and walk up to the door to shake her hand. “Y/N, nice to meet you”. Lily shakes your hand back but not in a super friendly way.  “Lily”. It takes you back. “Chris, please let Lily join us for a drink to celebrate our premiere”, you say. You turn around to walk towards the kitchen.

 

Chris and Lily follow behind. Lily hands Chris the wine to open and you both sit at this kitchen bar. Chris begins looking for the wine opener and remembers he left at his wine bar next to the living room. He walks out.

 

Lily looks at you. “Are you and Chris dating?” Your faced grimaced. You couldn’t believe that she had the audacity to ask you that. “I don’t think that is any of your business”, you reply. “Well, you know Chris is a lady’s man…if you are thinking about taking things to the next level, I wouldn’t recommend it…from personal experience”. Lily gives you a fake smile.

 

“Well, what the fuck are you doing here then?” You don’t have time for the games.

 

Chris walks back in. “Ok, ladies I finally found it”. He popped the bottle open and grabbed some glasses. He notices that something is afoot. “Is everything ok?” He’s asking both of you.

 

You waste no time. “Lily asked if we were dating. I told her it was none of her business”. He stopped pouring. “She also said that if I was considering taking things to the next level with you that I shouldn’t, because you are a lady’s man.” Chris set down the glass and the champagne.

 

“Lily, stand up. Get your shit and go”, she says without hesitation. “Chris, I didn’t-…” “NOW, Lily. You came here to start some shit and I won’t allow it.” He pulls her chair back for her. She gets up and he follows her down the hallway. You can hear him say “I don’t want to hear that bullshit” and closes the door.

 

Maybe you shouldn’t have said that! BUT she was being a bitch for no reason. Chris walks back in. “I am so sorry. I had no clue she was going to show up.”

 

“It’s ok. Damn ol girl got put out before she could have a sip of her wine”. Chris throws her wine in the trash. “Her fault”.

 

You and Chris continue the night drinking and playing card games. You just love how simple this man is. Then you get a message through Instagram. You click “unread messages”, but don’t actually click the message just yet.

 

Sender: Lily James

 

You pre-read the message.

 

“I just wanted to let you know Chris invited me to visit last week. I don’t know what you guys have going on, but I wouldn’t just show up like a creeper. Here are the screenshots to prove it”.

 

You hesitate. Chris is looking at his phone not really paying attention. You both are fucking wasted. If you click this message Lily will know that you read it. You think…and think…and think.

 

Chris is not your man. These messages have nothing to do you with you.

 

You click it.

 

It’s Chris professing his love for Lily and how much he missed her. That he only has eyes for her. That he wants to try it again, and to come down for the premiere so they can spend some time together.

 

Why would he invite you after her? You keep reading….she declined his offer. You were the back up option. You are completely intoxicated, and your emotions are beginning to get the best of you.

 

“Chris”. He looks up. “Yes”. “Lily is messaging me on IG and sent me screen shots of you asking for a second chance and to come to LA for the premiere. She declined…was I just a backup?” He froze. You can tell he was processing everything. “She sent you screenshots of mine and her text messages to you?”

 

“Correct.”

 

He ran his hand over his beard. “I….wanted to see if there was anything left between Lily and I.”  “So I was a backup bitch??”

“Y/N, no!” “Yes, I am Christopher”. You stand up.

 

Its literally 2AM and your flight leaves out in 6 hours.

 

“Y/N please sit so we can discuss this.” “There is nothing to discuss Chris. You are not my man and I am not your woman”. His eyes grow big. “I do not have times for these games with you, Chris. If you just wanted to fuck I would have been fine with that. Don’t cuddle with me, hold me, and whisper a whole bunch of nothing to me”. “Y/N I never said I wanted to be in a relationship with you. Why would you even assume that?”  Chris finally stands up.

 

You are taken back by what he just said.

 

“You know what Chris; you are fucking right. Why would I? You’re damn near 40, still no wife, still no kids, all alone, and maybe that’s the life you so deserve.” That hit a soft spot.

 

“FUCK YOU Y/N! You don’t know shit. I’ve been working my ass off in my 30’s and neglected the one thing that I’ve always wanted the most in my entire life. A fucking family!”  You both are standing face to face.

 

You’ve never seen Chris so upset. You’ve never heard him raise his voice, but all that ended today.

 

“I am going to pack my shit and leave”. “Where are you going to go Y/N, it 2 o clock in the fucking morning!” He screams at you. You begin to walk off, and Chris grabs your arm. “You are not leaving, that’s ridiculous.” You yank your arm back. “Don’t touch me”.

 

You begin down the hallway, and he follows you. You enter the guest room and throw your suitcase on the floor and start placing your items in there. Chris is standing in the doorway watching. You are on your knees googling hotels so you can leave. Chris closes the door and locks it. You and him are in the room. He comes and snatches your phone out of your hand.

 

“Are you out of your mind?”, you yell and stands up to try to get your phone back. He holds it up high over his head. “Chris, give me my phone now!”

 

“Listen to me….listen to me NOW! Please don’t leave. I will leave you alone, but you must promise me you will not leave in the middle of the night.”

 

You stop. You both are looking each other in the eyes.

 

“I will take you to the airport in the morning like I had planned.” He gives you your phone back.

 

“I am going to bed.” You can hear his footsteps going down the hall. You are so emotional and drained. You look at your phone 3:05AM. You change clothes and  peep down the hall and you can see a light coming from Chris’ room. He normally sleeps with his door closed. He’s making sure you don’t leave.

 

You finish packing quickly and lay in your bed. Sleep really isn’t finding you right now. Then you hear footsteps headed your way. Your bedroom door is open. Chris knocks respectfully.

 

“Hey”, you say. “Hey”, he replies. Chris walks over and sits on the bed. “I just want to apologize for everything. I never wanted you to feel second. You are so special to me; you have no idea.  I did reach out to Lily and I am happy she declined. My intentions were to never hurt you. Do you forgive me?”

 

Well...how can you stay mad at him?? Those blue damn eyes! “I forgive you Chris”.

He leans over and hugs you.

 

“Can I sleep with you tonight?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

Chris crawls into bed with you and holds you close. You both fall asleep. Your alarm goes off at 6:30AM. You both are dreading getting out of the bed. You throw on some joggers, hoodie, and some Nikes. Chris makes you a fresh cup of coffee, while you give all the goodbye kisses to Dodger.

 

The drive to the airport was quiet. You were holding Chris’ hand. You arrive to the airport, and he helps you with your luggage. “Thank you again for everything Chris.” “You are absolutely welcome”. You give him a kiss on the cheek, paparazzi are starting to swarm.

 

“I’ll text you when I land back in Texas.” “Sure thing”

 

“Bye Chris”. “Bye Y/N”.

 

You enter the airport… and never look back. Maybe it’s best for you to keep Chris just as a friend. 

I hope each and everyone one of you enjoyed this one! 💜💜💜

@thatoneperson5000

@stylesann

@melannie77

@jst-sayhell-no

@kcath-rb

@hopefulbonkvoidland

@thummbelina

@lovinevans

@mrspeacem1nusone

@thesecretlifeofdaydreams-bl-blog

#chris evans x reader #chris evans fanfiction #chris jamal evans #chris evans #cevans #fanfiction #captain america #marvel #andy barber #defending jacob

[missskzbiased]

What r ur favorite blogs here on tumblr (and maybe also why if that's not too much trouble ofc 👀)

Hey! Sorry for the delay, I wanted to finish my studies before answering you~

Well, since it’s favorite blogs I’ll start with 2 unusual things lol

@writing-prompt-s : I like their prompts suhauhsahusahusahusa That’s pretty much the reason LOL. Some of them I just think that is funny or interesting and there are some that I’d like to try out.

P.S: If anyone wants to suggest prompts blog, sfw or nsfw, I’d find it endearing!

@justcatposts : I love cats and seeing them in my dash makes me happy SUHAHSAHUSAUHSHUA

Now, I’m assuming you actually meant like mutual blogs or something? So to not disappoint you SUHAUHSAUHSUHAHUSA

@hhjs : I like their posts and their points to some stuff. She also writes fanfics and I didn’t have the time/will to read all of them yet (I’ve been too tired to actually read fanfics. The ones I’ve been reading pop up in my feed and I’m like, oh ok, let’s read) but the ones I read, I liked a lot.

@rebelspy / @stay-tinystars I like her SUHAUHSAUHSAUHUHSA That’s my reasoning. She’s fun to talk to (though we don’t talk a lot, when we do I really enjoy it) and I enjoyed the piece I read from her (She made my son a lovely baker husband that deserves my love <3)

@nightshade-minho She has not been around lately but when she was, I just loved to see her on my feed. I don’t have an explanation lol. She has great pieces that made me want to punch the boys way more than once. She’s a lovely bean, what can I say?

@soulssung / @virgothicc My daughter. Although she’s in debt with me (I’m waiting for the greens, baby, where is my money?) I love when she drops by to talk to me about random stuff. I’m pretty sure I read her fics as well but tbh, I don’t really check the URL before I read the fics LOL So I remember reading at least one piece that I liked SUHAHUSAHUSAUHUSHA Others may have been lost in my brain without a proper author stuck on it.

@aliceu She’s my nomnom <3 Have you seen her layout? I’m in love with it. She uses such pretty words as well! She’s a cute and lovely foodie that I can talk to about tons of random things~~ Would totally recommend interacting with her! SHUAUHSAUHSAUH She’s a talented sweetheart that deserves my munching on her face

@jl-micasea I haven’t interacted with her for AGES but I find her quite sober and cool (I think those are strange words to define someone? But whatever) and really enjoyed keeping up with her posts. Time has been a bitch, tho. I really like her writing, and although this is not a “fave writers” list, I must say that she’s one of my favorite authors here.

@runalongwith-skz Tan is a cute and desperate human being lol. I think whining about college and life kinda got us together UHSAUHSAUHSAUHSA and I don’t know, I feel like an older sister (more like a grandmother) when I talk to her. Timezone is quite a bitch here but when we get to talk, it’s nice. I read her new years’ fic a while ago and I thought it was quite comforting, which I appreciate SUHAUHSAUHSAHUSA (I’m weird, I like people for weird reasons, sue me)

[I like raw feelings, I guess]

Anyway! I think that’s a lot SUHAUHSAUHSAHUSA

Things I feel compelled to say:

1) This is a list of blogs that I like/interact/interacted a lot with, so I feel comfortable listing people randomly as I feel SUHAHUSAUSAUHSU

2) They’re mostly writing blogs because I follow mostly writing blogs, since I want to stumble over content LOL

3) I’m saying this because I suck 100% to do things like “fanfic” or “author” recs and “mutual as”. I just can’t take it UHSAUHSAUHASUH I feel extremely anxious to the thought that I could forget something or someone. So, this is kinda a note to say that I was comfortable with this but I’m not comfortable with “rec” and “as” lists if anyone sees this. 

P.S.: I do have a hashtag “author” (or authors [?] I can’t remember) and a “rec” where I rb rec lists or fanfics that I’ve read; so in case someone is wondering, you can check those! <3

4) I know there was a 4th thing to say but I forgot it LOL

#ask #annonie #I hope those made sense #I talk a lot #I'm sorry for this lol #Also #in case it wasn't clear enough #I'm totally fine with this USHAHUSAUHSAUHSUHAS #And I liked to do it #Also thank you for sending in an ask! #I don't get this many sauhsauhuhsahuashsauhsa #And I think that was the first time someone asked me something like this? #So it felt cool #sauhsauuhsahusauhahuas

[racingtoaredlight]

RTARL’s 2020 NFL Season Week 17 Extravapalooza

Well, here we are at the end of the most unique NFL season in memory. Was it the smartest idea in the world to stage an entire professional football season in the midst of a rampaging viral pandemic? No, it really wasn’t. But, somehow, the NFL managed to make it through the year without any outright disasters (sorry Broncos, having to start a practice squad WR at QB doesn’t really count), and they did it through the tried and true combination of blind luck and pure willful ignorance. Yay, I guess? I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t appreciate having games to watch, but the whole enterprise was downright impressive in its blatant disregard for common sense and social responsibility. That’s why it’s America’s game!

There’s still a fair amount of playoff-positioning to hash out this week, which always lends a nice bit of urgency to some of the proceedings. I’m far too lazy to go into those particular weeds myself, so I’ll just link you to someone else’s work if you want to study up on the various scenarios in play.

My picks are in BOLD, and the lines come to us courtesy of our friends at Vegas Insider. I use the “VI Consensus” line, which is the line that occurs most frequently across Vegas Insider’s list of sportsbooks. Your sportsbook of choice may offer a different number, and if you’d like my opinion on said number A) you are insane, and B) leave a comment below and I’ll try to answer at some point before things kickoff today.

EARLY GAMES

Baltimore Ravens (-14) at Cincinnati Bengals

If the Ravens win, they’re in the playoffs. The Bengals don’t have the horses to offer much resistance against a supremely motivated Ravens team. I will say that the most entertaining turn of events for someone with no dog in the fight would be for Baltimore to somehow lose this game, for the Browns to win, and for Ravens fans to have to sweat the result of the Colts/Jags game to see if they make the playoffs. Friend of the blog Fryan Turd would likely suffer a half-dozen heart attacks in this scenario.

Miami Dolphins at Buffalo Bills (-2)

I have no idea how important clinching the #2 seed in the AFC is to Buffalo, and if it’s not a big deal to them they may rest some guys for all or some of this game. The Dolphins will remain feisty to the very end, of that I’m certain.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Cleveland Browns (-9)

The Steelers are sitting a whole bunch of guys and the Browns are in the playoffs with a win. I will say that losing this game to Mason Rudolph and subsequently missing the postseason would be an incredibly Brownsy thing to do. 

Minnesota Vikings (-4) at Detroit Lions

Despite having nothing to play for and no reason to risk further punishment, Matthew Stafford is suiting up for this one. Dare I say that Stafford is...A GAMER? I do dare say it. I hope he whips ass and the Lions win in what could be his last home game in Detroit. I would sacrifice one of my siblings to get Stafford onto the Patriots this offseason, and also to get a larger share of my family estate.

New York Jets at New England Patriots (-3)

Oh man, this is not going to be a fun game to watch AT ALL. Sullen Bill Belichick, Broken Down Cam Newton, Traumatized Sam Darnold, Dead Man Walking Adam Gase--this game has way too many depressing ingredients, to say nothing of the very-likely-to-be atrocious quality of play. Let’s just move on.

Dallas Cowboys (-1.5) at New York Giants

This is essentially a playoff game, as each of these teams needs to win (and for Washington to lose) in order to clinch the shittiest division of all time. I’m taking Dallas here because they’ve been rolling in recent weeks and Daniel Jones isn’t close to 100% healthy, but what I want most is for the Giants to win, the Football Team to lose, and for us to get the hilarious spectacle of a 6-10 playoff team.

Atlanta Falcons at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-7)

I’ve ridden with the Falcons all season, why stop now? 

[looks at season record] 

Okay, that might be a good reason to stop. BUT I AIN’T GONNA!

Hey, do you think Matt Ryan could end up on New England? He went to Boston College, right? What have I become, coveting other teams’ used goods? This is no way to live.

LATE GAMES

Green Bay Packers (-4) at Chicago Bears

I’m greatly enjoying the Trubiskaissance. The Bears making the playoffs would make for some tremendous restlessness and conflicting emotions among Bears fans, as a strong showing would likely mean that Mitchell and Matt Nagy will run it back next season. This would entertain me as a man who isn’t a Bears fan. 

Las Vegas Raiders (-2.5) at Denver Broncos

I truly have no opinions or thoughts on this particular contest. Oh wait, here’s one: fuck the Raiders for ruining so many of my picks. Here’s another: Do you think New England could trade for Derek Carr? HELP.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Indianapolis Colts (-14)

The Jags are quite possibly the most ready-to-start-their-vacation team in the league, and the Colts need to win this game to make the postseason. I’m bummed about how things turned out for my man Gardner Minshew this season in Jacksonville. I hope he’s able to continue his career with a franchise who appreciates his comedic potential more fully. You know who would love him? Famous mirth-merchant William Belichick.

Los Angeles Chargers (-4.5) at Kansas City Chiefs

Tremendous opportunity for Justin Herbert to pad his already fantastic rookie-year numbers against the K.C. JV team. The thing that makes me the most nervous about this pick is the possibility that Chargers Head Coach Anthony Lynn knows that this is his last game, and as a result will make sure to unveil his most breathtaking piece of clock-mismanagement performance art yet.

Arizona Cardinals (-3) at Los Angeles Rams

I can’t in good conscience get behind a team that intends to start John Wolford at QB, no matter how awesome their defense is. Then again, maybe if Sean McVay basically controls his movements Ratatouille-style the way he does with Jared Goff, he’ll be okay. If Arizona loses and misses the playoffs, Coach Handsome might experience the quickest progression of “This Guy Has No Idea What He’s Doing” to “This Guy Is A Genius Who Is Changing the Way Football Is Played” and back to “This Guy Is a Dipshit” of any coach I can remember.

Seattle Seahawks (-6.5) at San Francisco 49ers

The Seahawks continued there whole “now the defense is good, but the offense is kind of blah” thing last week in a 20-9 win over the Rams, and I see no reason to think things will change. The Niners finally got All-Pro TE George Kittle back from injury, but then immediately lost studly rookie WR Brandon Aiyuk. The injury gods have really had it in for them this season. Despite the brutal injury luck, San Fran has remained competitive all season, and I say they keep this one within a TD.

New Orleans Saints (-6) at Carolina Panthers

The Saints won’t have RBs Alvin Kamara, Latavius Murray, Dwayne Washington, or their fullback Michael Burton. They’ll also be without WR Michael Thomas once again. If I were Saints Head Coach Sean Payton, I’d start Taysom Hill at QB for this game so that he can use his legs to augment the severely diminished run-game, and also to give Drew Brees’ ribs more time to heal. I’d also be an insufferable dickhead. Well, more of one. Okay, I’d be the same, I’d just be addicted to pain pills. More addicted, I mean. I’m Sean Payton.

Tennessee Titans (-7) at Houston Texans

DeShaun Watson has been absurdly good this season, despite the total shitshow around him. He leads the league in Yards Per Attempt while also being third in the league in Completion Percentage at 70.1%. He’s not dinking and dunking his way to his eye-popping numbers. You’d think having a franchise QB in place would make this a primo job opening for potential head coaching candidates, but between the lack of high-end future draft picks and general ownership/executive ineptitude, it’s gotta give a desirable candidate pause. Yikes. Clearly, Houston should trade DeShaun Watson to New England. 

SNF: Washington Football Team (-3.5) at Philadelphia Eagles

The Eagles have nothing to play for and a bunch of key players are skipping tonight’s game. Among them are TE Dallas Goedert and RB Miles Sanders, which is going to make things extra tough for QB Jalen Hurts against Washington’s exceptionally nasty defense. The Football Team also has major injury questions, as QB Alex Smith, RB Antonio Gibson, and WR Terry McLaurin are all listed as Questionable. As of this writing, it looks like all three of them are going to play, but I have no clue how effective they’ll be. All of this uncertainty does not make for confident betting, imo.

Last Week’s Record: 4-7-1

Season Record: 99-112-8

#Sports! #Football #NFL #Gambling

[marypsue]

@blogg-saron Just remember: you asked for it.

Reincarnation Blues (95,096 words, published April 2, 2015, completed September 26, 2015)

This fic was the product of an idea that absolutely would not leave me alone. I’ve mentioned before that originally Rosa was the centre of the piece, with Ian as a supporting player and partner in crime in her bid to take over the world by being adorable and popular. Rosa Darling, Taylor Swift’s Evil Twin, crawled fully-formed out of the first time I heard Delta Rae’s ‘I Will Never Die’, at least two months before I ever wrote a word of Reincarnation Blues. 

Ian didn’t actually have a name until I decided to write a short fic based on these characters who just wouldn’t get out of my head; he was a generic, grinning-evil Devil Went Down To Georgia reference with a fiddle but no name playing backup in Rosa’s band and lending her supernatural firepower when necessary. As originally conceived, he knew exactly who he’d been and used it to his full advantage. I decided on 'Ian’ after considering ‘Liam’ as a name that referenced ‘William’, but not as obviously as a ‘Bill’ or ‘Will’, and then deciding that would give the game away too soon. I also just plain didn’t like the name ‘Liam’ as much. It was only later that I found out that the man responsible for the absolutely stunning art direction on Gravity Falls is named Ian. And I just found out now, looking up Delta Rae to see when ‘I Will Never Die’ was released, that one of the band members is named Ian. This is...typical of the experience of writing this fic.

Mira came into the picture after I gave up on finishing the fic I was working on at the time before giving the RB characters free rein on my imagination, and decided to write just a short one-shot, just to introduce them. (Hah.) I’m not sure, exactly, when or why I ended up deciding that Ian shouldn’t have any knowledge of his previous incarnation (I think it was somewhere between Brown Bird’s ‘Blood of Angels’ and the short burst of Alex!Bill popularity), but it ended up being a good decision. It would’ve been around that time that I decided I needed to put him into Alcor’s path in order for his previous incarnation to come out, and that the best way to do that was to put him into the orbit of a Mizar. Deciding to have them date was purely a ‘hey, wouldn’t it be funny if...’, with an added touch of ‘oh man, Dipper would hate that’. Mira basically started out as an amalgamation of Mabel traits and fashion that I like, and a lot of her arguments with Dipper came out of my trying to figure out just what the heck was going on in her head. (Also, her social media presence is a little bit based on Manzi, who Alex was dating at the time, because I followed her on here for a short while before realising we had practically no interests in common and she posted a LOT of stuff that wasn’t cosplay. )

And now that the stage is set:

Chapter One

This began life as a one-shot that was meant to exorcise these characters from my head. Ninety-six thousand words later, we can all see how that turned out.

I wrote a good chunk of this chapter from Mira’s perspective, but it just wasn’t working, and I realised around the point where Dipper flips out that if I wanted to keep it as a short, I needed the readers to know whether Ian was really evil and scheming like Dipper suspected, or if he was just as clueless as Mira was. Now, I think I might have stuck with my original plan and left that ambiguous, because that would be a nice, tight little horror story. On the other hand, ninety-six thousand words later...

Given the opportunity to do a complete rewrite, though, I would adjust Mira and Ian’s introduction as a couple. Their first interactions seem really, really stilted and forced to me now. 

Chapter Two

I actually wrote a short fic for the TAU blog based on a prompt about Ian and Dipper learning to tolerate each other and Ian pitching a show based on Dipper and Mabel’s experiences in Gravity Falls before I decided I was going to expand the, at the time, one-shot into a full multichapter fanfiction novel. It actually was part of what convinced me that I still had a lot of stories to tell about these characters, and that it should be expanded. That short fic also introduced Ian’s prosthetic eye, which he didn’t, at that point in Reincarnation Blues, have. I got to answer a couple of asks with axolotl gifs and feel like a real creative mastermind.

There were a couple times while I was writing the climax that I actually considered killing Ian off, because it seemed more likely with the state of each of the characters and also just so that the Toby plot could still work, but because I had made this short fic of events taking place after the events of RB and Ian was still alive in it, I decided that meant I’d made a tacit promise that he’d survive. I didn’t really want to kill him off anyway, so it made a good excuse when I was weighing my narrative options and they all seemed to be sliding towards Death.

A lot of this chapter was influenced by the surge of human!Bills in the fandom at the time, and especially of human!Bills (and human-shaped!Bills) who had flashy, obvious, fire-based powersets. I felt like Bill Cipher’s real power lay in misdirection - the flash and the fire, in canon, always only distracted the main characters from Bill’s real objectives, and, arguably, what he was really getting out of their interactions. To my way of thinking, it was far more likely that a human Bill Cipher would have some kind of mentally-based powerset, if they had a ‘powerset’ at all, and weren’t merely very quick cogitators who could think big and put themselves one step ahead of everyone around them. At the time, there were precious few authors and illustrators who seemed to have come to the same conclusion - none that I ran across, anyway. (There still aren’t, but the flood of billdip-based Cool Human Bills With Fire Powers seems to have slowed to a trickle.)

It also came in response to Toby, who was invented by the Transcendence AU’s very own Mod Z and exploded in popularity almost instantly. He was a sweetheart, a genuinely good, kind, little kid, who was facing enormous cosmic retribution for a millennia-long previous lifetime as a liar, monster, and snappy dresser. Toby is great, his creator manages to milk all the hilarious irony out of the situation, and there are some authors who’ve done really good and clever things with him. I’ve just never been all that interested in purely Good characters who just keep getting kicked in the teeth by a cruel world, and it struck me that Toby was the perfect setup for Bill to sneak in close to Dipper and do...something vicious. (I don’t think, at this point, that I knew exactly what Bill was planning to use Ian for, but I definitely knew that Bill was planning something, and it was going to blow up spectacularly in everyone’s faces.)

With those things in mind, I tried to imagine some realistic flaws or weaknesses that a near-omniscient, immortal demon forcibly bound to a decaying, imperceptive meatsack might potentially develop. Ian’s anxiety and nihilism(-lite?) and self-destructive tendencies all come from there. I settled on the feelings of insignificance and impermanence as the two major issues Ian had to face mostly because those were two things that Bill had never had to consider, would never have had to consider if he hadn’t ended up human himself, and would never have been able to satisfactorily reconcile with his own omniscience and indelible influence on human history/trail of destruction across several dimensions. It was not long after I settled on this and really committed to it (I believe it was a few chapters later than this, though) that Alex did a twitter Q&A where he talked to a fan with anxiety and...basically laid out that he suffered from very similar fears, and had developed very similar coping mechanisms to the ones I’d decided to give Ian. I initially only made Ian look like Alex for the sake of the joke, but as the fic progressed it became more and more clear to me that, by writing a version of a character who Alex Hirsch had once gotten in a ‘which character are you’ online personality quiz, I had inadvertently tapped a vein of similarity that was only gonna get wider. 

If you’re reading this, Mr. Hirsch: I am so sorry, and I swear that I did not and do not stalk you. I know my icon of cartoon Dana Terrace kinda makes this harder to believe, but still.

Chapter Three

The first Mira-POV scene! Also the first appearance of Rosa!

I think this was the chapter that really cemented for me that I was doing this, that this 'short one-shot' was now a fully-fledged multichaptered fic and I was in it for the long haul. This is the first chapter that starts to set the plot in motion, and the first chapter where I really knew that there WAS an overarching plot thread and where, in a more specific sense, it was going. I believe this is also the chapter where the fic got its title (the previous two oneshots had been posted without titles). 

...her punk-bluegrass act, the Savage Peace...

Oh yeah! I never mentioned these guys again. This was the duo that Ian and Rosa played together in, before Ian left to go into animation and Rosa went solo. The name is a riff on the Civil Wars, another excellent bluegrass duo who split up due to differences of opinion on their future direction. I love the Civil Wars.

I searched last.fm for 'punk bluegrass' after this chapter, because I had a very specific idea about what Rosa's music sounded like (like Delta Rae but with more electric guitar and bass, pretty much) and I wanted to see if anyone else had made it a reality. I did not find what I was looking for, but I did find Wood Spider, a band that plays bluegrass music with screamo vocals. I recommend 'Is It Strange?' because it is a very, very Ian song.

In case you hadn't noticed yet, a lot of the making of this fic was heavily influenced by music. I really need to make another playlist for it at some point.

Also, there's been some confusion amongst TAU peeps regarding Rosa's hair. I intended it to look like P!nk's blonde fauxhawk. Word Of God has spoken.

"He knows what I like and don't like, what matters to me, even things I don't tell him. He pays attention to what I say and do, and he remembers. He just does nice things for me sometimes when I'm least expecting it, and it's always exactly what I didn't even know I wanted."

This line was meant to show how Bill's 'ALWAYS WATCHING!' shtick might, under a very different set of circumstances and put to a different use, actually be a good thing. Post-Escape From Reality and Mabeland, it also takes on a vicious irony which I really appreciate. Successfully predicting what'll be ironic in the most painfully angsty way before canon even gets there: The Mary P. Sue Advantage!

I think this scene is where Mira actually coalesces into her own character for me, rather than 'a Mizar who is dating an r!Bill'. This is where she gets to show some of her own strengths and values, and to oppose and conflict with Dipper on her own terms, rather than because of Ian. I made a conscious effort to make sure this fic passed the Bechdel test, but I feel like even though this was a conversation with a dude, it was equally important in giving Mira a voice and an interior life separate from the men (well, okay, man and demon) in it. It also shows off the two sides of her - she's picked up a lot from Dipper, as evidenced by her nonchalance about cult-busting, but she's also still empathetic and compassionate, as shown by how she handles the kids. She's stuck between Dipper and humanity, and this is the first place where that's really shown, rather than talked about. It's one of my favourite scenes in the fic for exactly those reasons.

The last scene in this chapter is also where Mira and Ian start really feeling real to me as a couple, too. I really think this is just the chapter where I found my stride and all the pieces started to come together.

Chapter Four

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this chapter. It mostly exists to set the scene for what comes later, to get the reader more familiar with the characters, to set the cogs in motion. I am very pleased with Ian and Rosa’s friendship in the first couple scenes, though - I think it’s pretty natural.

Rosa looked up at him, her expression completely neutral. “Beale, I am goin’ to steal your girl.”

At the time I was writing this, there had been - I remember it as several, but it really must’ve been like, three - Gideon reincarnations (and preincarnations) in TAU who had gotten weirdly possessive about Mizars and had caused All Of The Plot in their respective fics by trying to make her their own. We’d also - if I recall correctly - received an ask basically proposing that Gideon’s soul would always do that, any time it came into contact with a Mizar’s, no matter what else might be going on. I...wasn’t a fan of that idea. I believe I’ve mentioned in a previous thing-where-I-talked-too-much-about-RB that Reincarnation Blues’ major theme is determinism versus individual identity. That was why I felt like this was the perfect place to kind of deconstruct that idea that there could be no r!Gideon who wasn’t an epic jerk. Right from the beginning, I intended for Rosa to get fixated on Mira, to set events in motion by doing a bunch of stuff that was beyond the pale to try to ‘steal’ her from Ian, and then to have to face the consequences of her actions. The goal was to see if she could grab a clue, if knowing what was going on and what she had done would give her a chance to look at her life, look at her choices, and make better ones the next time.

That’s right. I was redeeming Gideon before it was canon cool.

(There’s a whole lot I could get into about what I’m meaning when I say ‘redemption’ versus ‘apologism’, but...I won’t, here. Suffice it to say that I wouldn’t have wanted any kind of redemption plot for Gideon - or, indeed, any character, anywhere - that didn’t acknowledge that they started out in the wrong, and, though I usually disagree, I completely understand people not wanting to see certain villainous characters get a second chance.)

“... So - noose joke. Think that can ride, or are the censors gonna flip?"

I made a Mistake here. I was referencing the cut storyboards from Scary-oke where Dipper finds Ford’s ‘Zombie Survival Kit’ and all that’s in it is a noose. It was a suicide joke. (Well, I mean, suicide wasn’t the joke, but - well, whatever.) I should have referred to it as a suicide joke, or chosen a different deadly weapon. Instead, I referred to it as a ‘noose joke’ and it became a meme on the TAU blog, that Ian would be hiding nooses in the backgrounds of scenes all the time.

It was only, like, a month into this that I realised what the noose has historically, in the States, been a symbol for, and that without the context of a cut storyboard presented at a con (which might not necessarily be widely known) and then taken out of the context of a scene where the character is making storyboards (thereby removing the storyboard reference link)...yeah. I have to apologise for this one. Nobody has said anything to me about it, but in hindsight and with some consideration, I would word this differently if I were to rewrite the fic today.

I had a loooot of fun writing sleep-deprived Bill-like Ian here, and I hope to do more of it at some point.

Chapter Five

The introduction of Sun-mi! Sun-mi was a last-minute addition because I realised Mira had no female friends and panicked, and also because NWHS came out and I fell even harder in love with the character of the Author, and figured that tossing an r!Author (we didn’t at the time know that he was named Ford) into the mix with an r!Bill would be fun. This...is why Sun-mi’s role is small (though, I think, still important enough to justify her inclusion) - it was added to the plot post-outlining.

While I was writing Sun-mi, I was thinking of her with a voice much like April on Parks & Rec. This is not particularly relevant information to anything, I just see her as being very deadpan in that same way.

“So, not that one. How about Tam Lin?”

The mention of Tam Lin - one of the Child Ballads, in which a girl rescues her fairy lover on the night his soul is to be sent to hell as a tithe, and restores him to humanity, by holding him fast, and fearing him not - was a blatant nod to how the fic was going to end, and nobody picked up on it. It is also just a great, classic fiddle tune, though, and apparently it's not widely known that it's in the same time and key as St. Anne's Reel and so the two can be played together?

(I also answered a question about what each of the characters would have on their iPods, and said that Mira would have the Kerli song ‘Chemical’ on hers. If anyone had looked it up, they would have found out that it’s got a refrain that goes ‘This love is more than chemical’, which also directly references how the fic ends. I took every opportunity to hide spoilers for this fic in plain sight. It was so much fun.)

Stamped into the starry void around them like an artificial horizon was a massive ring, parallel lines glowing red like gashes cut into the dream to reveal an inferno on the other side. And between those lines, all around the horizon, burned familiar symbols.

Most of Ian’s nightmare is based on what I thought Bill’s experience of the Mystery Shack, from the mindscape, must have been like. This bit, though, is based entirely on a nightmare I had which involved Bill Cipher. I was practically contractually obligated to include it here.

Chapter Six

I have to preface any comments I make about this chapter with a disclaimer. Normally, I loathe miscommunication plots, especially ones where characters who ostensibly love and trust each other just flat-out refuse to listen to the other's explanation of a situation that looks bad. However, that's...exactly what I've written here.

I feel like the saving grace of this first scene is that, one, it doesn't constitute the entire plot, and two, it's more of a symptom of larger, deeper problems that they're having, rather than manufactured drama so that there can be some conflict and a tearful reunion in the third act. Sure, things end up hinging on Mira and Dipper trusting one another, but things are already strained between them, and this one miscommunication isn't the only problem they face, it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. Clearing up this one particular misunderstanding also doesn't magically solve all of their problems. I could, of course, be totally wrong and this miscommunication plot could be exactly as painful as every one I've ever seen on a made-for-TV romcom.

Had this whole thing been a colossal waste of time?

And here we see the product of Rosa's machinations! My thinking behind her slightly-absurd recruiting of Sun-mi to investigate Ian's past lives in an earlier chapter was that she thought that, any negative information Sun-mi turned up, she would share with Mira, and it wouldn't look like Rosa herself had deliberately sabotaged Ian and Mira's relationship, so she'd still have a shot with Mira. Devious.

(It occurs to me that both of the two characters who were the initial inspiration for RB started out as evil masterminds in concept, but ended up being sympathetic characters who got redemption arcs in the actual fic. There's some kind of irony about this.)

Trying to work out how the historical record might represent the Shack so far in the future was also a lot of fun. I know that the worldbuilding on this fic isn't sufficient for something that's meant to take place a full thousand years in the future, that the rate of change is so rapid that the society - and even the landscape - of the world Ian and Mira live in ought to be near-completely unrecognisable. On the other hand, I just wanted to write a fun story about character interactions, and I couldn't really set it any earlier or I'd risk 1) Dipper still having a clear thread of niblings around to anchor him, 2) things not having progressed far enough to actually have something like preincarnation testing, and 3) it being too early for Bill to have recovered from his 'defeat'.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that this, here, is the first use of the word 'preincarnation' in the TAU.)

He was still himself, more or less, he wasn't like Bill - !

Dipper is a little (or a lot) less human in this fic than in some of my others, but the thing is, he isn't really aware of that. This is the scene where it gets hammered home. It was a lot of fun constructing the scene where he eats Ian's nightmare so that it could be deconstructed here, to put all of the pieces of his real motivation and plans on display and show just how much like Bill's his modus operandi has become. (It also explains how he's able to get into Ian's head to offer the deal he does right at the end of the fic.)

Chapter Seven

aka "Shit, Meet Fan".

If you asked Dipper what seeing the future was like, he'd probably say it was like a beach.

I lifted this metaphor from Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People, a book which I strongly suggest for anyone who is interested in high fantasy, slightly deconstructed, and set among a race of teeny-tiny people living in the hairs of a carpet. He wrote it at seventeen and then came back and edited it as an adult. The result is...not quite A Terry Pratchett Book, but also not your average Extruded Fantasy Product Tolkien knockoff. He deploys the metaphor a little differently, and I can't remember how exactly he phrased things, but the concept of seeing possible futures as grains of sand on a beach came from him initially.

"I'm Alcor and I was wrong

I'm singing the Alcor Wrong Song..."

Dipper's apology is, of course, based on the Stan Wrong Song, which I thought was a nice touch to show that he was still thinking of Mira in terms of his life with Mabel in Gravity Falls. You gotta give the boy credit, though, he's trying.

I also think that Dipper will never be over his fear of puppets, partly because of Sock Opera, but also partly because we never got the Labyrinth episode. Until Dipper and Mabel have a siblinghood-affirming adventure in a giant, glittery maze with a mess of Muppets and a David Bowie guy, Dipper Pines will forever fear all puppetry.

"Well, we're all going to die."

Ian is really, really, profoundly bad at being comforting. (Unless you're worried about having embarrassed yourself or messed up your future, in which case, your ultimate insignificance in an eternal and uncaring universe and the inevitable certainty of your eventual complete eradication can sometimes be comforting.)

Ian hummed along as he turned on the faucet. "Dream a little dream of me..."

Annnnd here we go.

I decided that Ian would like folk and bluegrass music, partly because of the initial character concept and the Rosa connection, partly because I thought it was a genre that would remain resistant to introducing synthesised music even in the hypothetical future, partly because then I could make 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' jokes. I decided he should also be into jazz music mostly because of the incredible His Name Was Billy Mischief, which is probably one of my favourite GF fics of all time and also highly recommended for anybody who liked RB. The author's inclusion of 'Someone To Watch Over Me' was both inspired and led to me looking up more jazz music, which led to finding a surprising number of songs that could be easily read as referring to Bill. It's not jazz, but Alex's inclusion of 'We'll Meet Again' in the finale still made me kick my feet in vindicated glee.

This scene was in the works from chapter 2 onwards, and it's another of my favourites - I think with good reason. I've had a lot of feedback from people that this was the most viscerally effective scene in the whole fic, and somebody drew me fanart for it! It was a little challenging to get into initially, because I was so excited to write it and I had to restrain myself somewhat to keep it taut and tense and simmering, instead of just explosive from word one. I think - I hope - that it succeeded.

Chapter Eight

“I’ll be looking at the moon,

but I’ll be seeing...you!”

I found Billie Holiday's version of 'I'll Be Seeing You' somewhere around chapter three or four and I instantly knew I had to write this scene and use it as a backdrop. I'd love to see this on film; Mira looking through the empty apartment, the slight and subtle wrongnesses adding up as a sinister bass note slowly builds from under the song to nearly drown it out, only to vanish on the final line as the camera overlooks the sink abandoned in the middle of a task and the phone left docked on the wall, letting Billie's voice echo, alone, over the unnatural stillness, before the song ends and all is left in perfect, fragile, ominous silence -

Anyway. Sometimes my mind is unnecessarily cinematic, and sometimes I profoundly regret not being able to score and soundtrack my fics.

“Do y’all mind?” Rosa asked, holding her phone away from her head. “Can’t hear a word my friend’s sayin’.”

This scene was originally even longer and more obnoxious. I really wanted to give people a reason to like and root for Rosa. Okay, so I also thought it would be badass. Thankfully, I have long trained myself to sacrifice cool awesome character stuff when it needs to be sacrificed for the sake of the story.

Are you done laughing yet? No? Okay, I’ll give you a couple more minutes.

Please ignore literally everything I had to say about the wards, because it is all bullshit. I think I said that anything less than an SS-class demon would be bounced back from Mira's wards, and that Ian, once 'active', shattered one of them completely on his way out, but that Dipper could go past them without having any effect on them at all? Which would require him to, like, probably use his powers to recreate them after he passed through...? I don't know how any of that was supposed to work.

I am, however, very, very pleased about opening a scene with Dipper missing Mabel's absolute faith in him, and immediately taking it into Mira accusing Dipper of murdering her boyfriend because Dipper's just such a demon. Juxtaposition!

The 'highlight reel' is equally if not more bullshit than the wards. I think this chapter is where I just gave up on trying to give Dipper a balanced powerset and decided to just go with whatever best served the emotional, character-arc thread. Sometimes you just have to play to your strengths.

Dipper didn't like other people knowing things he didn't. ... If he wasn't that guy, then - well, what was he?

A good brother! A real scrapper with a heart of gold and a will of adamantium! A sarcastic little shit! Dipper's focus on being The Smart Guy getting deconstructed and his realising that that isn't the be-all end-all of who he is was a wonderful good awesome character arc, even if it ended up being kind of understated in comparison with some of the more in-your-face character development that, say, the Stans got. TAU kind of does a similar thing with Dipper's arc, giving him All The Knowledge but making it come at the price of his family, which makes him reconsider its value...but it doesn't address that particular thing in the same way as canon, so I can see Dipper still getting hung up on this even thousands of years later. (Also, there are a lot of interpretations that indicate he may be kind of mentally frozen at the age he 'died', which I kind of love and subscribe to.) Hence, this line!

(I bet Dipper haaaaaaates when, like, The Slang and memes change. He has all kinds of arcane knowledge, but just what exactly the kids are talking about when they say something that looks like a random combination of syllables is beyond even his eldritch comprehension, and he can't figure out the nuances of how the new words are used, and - argh.)

"I tried to set things up so you'd find out something awful about Ian and break up with him so I could date you instead!"

There was a beat.

"That's it?" Mira asked, carefully.

One, I personally still think this is hilarious. 

Two, this is the thing about Gideon - in a world of supernatural, outsized threats, he's really quite mundane! His whole shtick is something that can and does happen in real life! And he's the second-worst antagonist in the whole show! I front-loaded the redemption arc in this fic and gave Rosa a little more self-awareness and a quicker leap to recognising that what she was doing was shitty, so how funny the mundanity of 'I want you to be my girlfriend and I don't care what you think' as compared to 'a literal demon is going to try to blow up the whole of reality' is can really shine, but, like...it's still terrible, and giving it outsized supernatural consequences doesn't make it worse or better than it is when it happens in reality. Do any of these words make sense? Who knows.

My one explicitly lesbian character in this fic being manipulative and predatory in her affections? Mmmmmmaybe not a choice I'd make again. But I do like how this storyline played out.

Chapter Nine

I'm still not entirely sure who knows what about Bill and why. That was another thing that I'd change, given a chance to do a rewrite - I'd solidly establish Bill's position in history, myth, and public consciousness in this particular future right up front. That way, it might actually make a lick of sense when the characters react to hearing his name when there's not...like...any evidence that they have any idea who the fuck he even is.

Don't set your stories in a future where magic has been real for a thousand years if you don't have a lot of experience or interest in worldbuilding, guys.

This is the chapter where Mira is just completely fucking done with absolutely everyone's shit, and I love it.

"...They used to have to take my pulse manually every time. ..."

I decided that Ian wreaks havoc with medical technology because his Ooo Weird Demon Soul Energy is, like, an actual electromagnetic weirdness that hangs around him. This is also why the viewscreen for the peephole goes all fuzzy on him in chapter seven and why, in some extracanonical material, he can't get his storyboard files from his tablet to talk to literally any other piece of technology. It's also why Rosa can tell his energy's 'weird' and why Mira's mom thinks his aura's like a hole.

"... Remember Paloma Heart?"

... "I don't."

I should have mentioned Paloma earlier. That's all.

Brown really did think that he had Ian figured out, that he knew Ian back to front, just because he knew Bill Cipher. ... He wasn't expecting Ian Thomas Beale.

Ian, here, is thinking he's making Brown nervous, making Brown think that he's up against some semi-omniscient, potentially-omnipotent extradimensional being who knows more than he does and can do more than he can, in hopes that Brown will get scared and angry and slip up, give away information that Ian doesn't actually have yet (like how Bill sent Ford that nightmare in the beginning of TLM that really had no purpose except to send Ford running scared for his defenses against Bill, and which also led to the brainwave-encryption machine being destroyed and Ford taking Dipper into his confidences and growing closer to him and ultimately seeding the rift between Dipper and Mabel that ends with Bill getting the rift...). Just how in control is Ian of his own actions here? Debatable, since what he ends up actually doing is getting Brown scared and angry enough and believing enough in Ian's 'powers' to, eventually, let Bill out. Oh, the irony.

Area 51! For someone who's never been big into aliens, I sure have put this dang place into a lot of fics.

(I also wanted to give Mira a chance to one-up Dipper in the Smart Guy department. And do something nice for Dipper. He deserves a bone thrown his way.)

Chapter Ten

Mira is one of the only people - if not THE only person - in this entire fic who has exactly zero ulterior motives. She does exactly what she means to, goes for exactly what she wants to, directly and without hesitation. I kind of love that about her, it's a breath of fresh air.

Here, however, it does probably make her immediate job a little harder.

"It just kills you, doesn't it?" he said ... "Not knowing?"

#getrektIan

I am unreasonably proud of the jet-skate Ladies of English Lit roller derby team as a method of mass destruction.

This scene originally had Dipper taunting Mira about killing mooks lead into the 'mooks' turning out to be magically mind-controlled people, which Mira found out very graphically and horribly when she wrenched the helmet off the guy who tried to choke her out to jam her fingers in his eyes and saw the sigil on his forehead - but that dragged me down a rabbit hole of Is Mira Actually A Good Person etc, and it was both too late to introduce this thread and would have muddled the plot. I might revisit the idea sometime, but then again, I might not.

Chapter Eleven

Janice!!! Janice is one of my favourite backgrounders and I almost wish I hadn't killed her off so quickly. Almost.

I have a boatload of headcanons about how the Society of the Blind Eye worked, how it was originally a secret society designed to stop Bill but Bill used Fiddleford to co-opt and disable it and then used Dipper to destroy it, most of which ended up finding a home in Raising Stakes. This is one of them. There's just no way, in-universe, that the Blind Eye is so deliberately similar to Bill's in design just by chance. (Out of universe, of course, it makes perfect sense for the gravi-team to maintain a consistent aesthetic, but still. My convoluted headcanons can still be supported by textual evidence!)

There was a circle in the middle of the room.

Goodbye, Ian. It was nice knowing you.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and his outstretched wings flickered with stars, surveillance footage, images of the fight that had just happened, an apple tree in a forest of pines, a blueprint, a wide-eyed alien-looking creature...

Dipper's wings flickering is meant to parallel Bill's face flickering in Dreamscaperers, and, like Bill's face flickering in Dreamscaperers, it contains spoilers! The surveillance footage refers to how he and Mira eventually find Ian (through the central control room, on a security tape), the apple tree in a forest of pines is a reference to Henry's antlers and his tree over his grave in Gravity Falls and also a metaphor for him being part of the Pines family, the blueprints refer to the wards on the structural components of the facility, and the alien's just a reference to the fact that it's Area Fifty-freakin'-one.

"For the love of - are you actually twelve?"

Nyahahaha.

I love the bounce castle. I love Mira and Dipper's dialogue immediately post-bounce-castle. I think I have Dipper rip the doors to the soul tree room off their hinges and then later have Mira say she should've closed them, whoops.

I have nothing particular to say about the last scene except that I'm very proud of how it turned out.

Chapter Twelve

The summer Ian had turned fourteen, one of the artists his mother represented had gone triple platinum, a record-breaking heatwave had hit the West Coast, and Ian had tried to kill himself.

I like this scene too. I like montages, bullshit experimental purpley prose, and expressing emotion through place. I also like that this nods to what they're trying to do to Ian - they can't bring Bill back proper, but they can dredge up all his memories, theoretically creating a powerless, more controllable human with all of Bill's borderline-infinite knowledge and no requirement of making a deal or dealing with demonic senses of humour to get at it. All of Ian's own memories bubbling to the surface is part flashback, part the spell dragging up something old and dead and long-buried and dislodging Ian's memories as it rises.

I also should've established Ian's father's death earlier, I think, though now that I'm staring it in the face again I don't dislike it as much as I did just considering it as a concept. I could've mentioned it more concretely earlier on, but bringing its full impact on Ian out here, where everything he's tried to forget is being dragged out of him and everything he is is being stripped bare, is not the worst narrative decision I've ever made.

The soul tree (or ‘tree of knowledge’, as Janice calls it, because haha, it bears apples and it’s a research project) is a product of me looking at what they’re doing to Ian and trying to work backwards, to see what kind of other things they might be doing to research souls, if this is how they decide to deal with Ian. It was also a nice opportunity for a great big hunk of angst, and a good excuse to give Dipper the powerup necessary for all the heavy magical lifting he’s going to have to do. Three for the price of one cool-looking plot device!

“We’re not going anywhere,” Brown said, taking his hand away from his earpiece. “We’ve still got -”

Janice gave him a pitying look. “It’s Alcor,” she said.

Janice is...probably a little bit of an Alcor fangirl. (Not the Twin Souls kind. The watches-doumentaries-about-serial-killers-on-her-days-off kind.) She is perfectly aware of, and starstruck by, the fact that he can kill her with barely a thought. She would just love to get him under a scalpel or energy blade of some description, but she’s also not a complete idiot. No one who’s ever tried to summon Alcor for anything like the kind of research she does has ever lived to tell the tale. She probably just has a wall of newspaper clippings all about Cool Shit Alcor Has Done.

“Wanna know what your future has in it?” ...  He blinked, once, slowly, deliberately, and said, “Exactly three minutes!”

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also probably wouldn’t have worked if Ian hadn’t already played at being Bill for Brown earlier. BAM. PLOT. 

Ian glanced over at the timer as Brown brandished the tablet. The last few seconds drained away just as Brown pressed a finger down on the screen.

The house from Ian’s nightmares crashed down around him.

This is another one that I can see as a scene, animated or filmed; the room beyond, the ‘real world’ with the circle and the magitech and the terrified people suddenly vanishing from Ian’s viewpoint when a wall drops in front of it, no, slams down in front of it, shaking snowglobes and pine-tree trucker hats off the shelves and putting huge cracks between the boards, settling slowly into place like it was just dropped by a tornado even as blue light starts to spill up through the floorboards and the cracks start to widen as gravity fights for every board and nail...

Man, I wish I could make the moving pictures. (Though I guess if I’d put my time and energy into learning to make the moving pictures, maybe I would know less about making the words go. And, like, I’ve managed to just blither some seven thousand words about Making The Words Go. So I might actually have some modicum of skill at that by now.)

Chapter Thirteen

Mira hadn’t said anything since they’d left the room where Henry’s soul had been imprisoned, and Dipper was starting to worry.

TAU’s creator and Mod Z mentioned to me after this chapter was posted that I could’ve held off naming Henry as the owner of the soul until Dipper is forced to admit it, out loud, to Mira, and I’m still kicking myself that I didn’t think of that before posting the chapter because it’s a great suggestion and would have been very effective.

“See, at least we just kill people.”

Yeah, I’m glad I didn’t get into the ‘moral dilemma of Mizar’ aspect in this one any more than I did.

“You’re my best friend, you know? And I don’t want to lose that.” She glanced down the hall, back the way they’d come. “But if this is going to work, then sooner or later, you’re going to have to trust me.”

WHOOOOA THESIS STATEMENT

Everything from Mira and Dipper breaking into the control room straight through to Mira landing in the hospital was pretty much written in one straight shot, without stopping. This was the part I'd been itching to write since, like, chapter two, and it was GREAT to finally have it all fall together. The reactions I got to Bill's appearance - even though I think everybody was kind of expecting it by the time we got to this part - were all awesome and priceless.

I do want to make sure it's clear - the whole Bit in Area 51 was set up to approximate the circumstances under which Dipper became demonized. We had 1) an enormous, elaborate spell being worked, 2) ancient spells in the foundation of the building which had been in place for more than a thousand years, 3) all of which were destroyed, releasing all that pent-up power while 4) demonic energy and knowledge was being forced through and into a fragile puny human with an intrinsic tie to the physical plane.

It seemed like it made sense at the time, okay.

"AND PUBERTY! REMIND ME TO GIVE THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS THAT DREAMED THAT ONE UP A SWIFT KICK IN THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST!"

I love writing dialogue for Bill. That is all. Most of my favourite lines did actually make their way into the fic, but I still ended up having to scrap some that I really liked, just because I couldn't make the dialogue work with the plot and the other characters. A shame.

I honestly don't think I could be happier with how the scene with Bill in the centre of the circles with Mira turned out. Choreographing it was a bitch, though.

"Give Ian back, you son of a -"

"AH AH AH, LANGUAGE!" Bill interrupted, with a wink. "TRYING TO PRESERVE THAT Y-7 RATING HERE!"

this is my favourite fucking joke in the entire fic

can you imagine how much funnier it would've been if I actually had kept the entire fic Y-7 rated

"Why does everyone keep forgetting I'm Mizar?"

#getrektbill

Chapter Fourteen

I really don't have anything more to say about the rest of the scene in Area 51. I think the writing actually says exactly what I want it to say, how I want to say it. It all flowed easily and beautifully, and I barely had to edit it at all. I was and still am pleased as punch about how it came out.

Everything was floating.

This fucking scene, on the other hand.

I rewrote this entire scene from scratch no less than three times (and it was probably actually four). This scene was a righteous pain in my ass. I had one goal with it - I had to get Dipper to offer Ian the deal that would remove all outsiders' memories of Ian being an r!Bill, in exchange for eating all of the Bill-memories left in Ian's head. Usually, that's a good thing. Usually, knowing the purpose of a scene makes it pretty easy and straightforward to write. 

This motherfucker, though. This scene was like pulling teeth. I'd get about halfway through Dipper explaining the deal to Ian and why it was important, and then I would just stop. I couldn't go any farther. It was like I was on the end of an imaginary rubber band of Actual Ability To Make The Words Go that I could stretch only so far, but no farther, and only with a great amount of struggle, before I'd be snapped back to the beginning and have to try to start again from there in a direction where maybe I could make it to the next scene before I ran to the end of my rubber band again. I tried over and over and over with no luck, no success, and no small amount of frustration.

I don't know what tipped me off to the fact that, one, I had to actually deal with the demons I'd pulled out of Ian's head, and two, there was so much more I could do with the mindscape than the literary equivalent of talking head panels, but once it clicked into place, it was like that imaginary rubber band just vanished and I wrote the whole thing all the way through in forty-five minutes without stopping. It also required minimal editing, and it is now one of my favourite scenes in the entire fic.

A little while after I finished this chapter, I saw a quote (from Clickhole, so obviously fake, but) attributed to Haruki Murakami, which basically said, "If you can set a scene in the basket of a hot-air balloon, do." It was a joke, of course, but I also, since writing this, think it's genuinely excellent advice.

Also, I managed to sneak in references to used-car-salesman!human!Bill, stylised-skinny-smirky-pretty-boy!human!Bill and how I felt he was kind of a caricature and a lot of versions of him that looked like that also flattened out the depth of the character, and to the apocalypse tapestry, which I actually don't think I've seen mentioned anywhere in the fandom since Escape From Reality aired! Huh. Too bad, it was cool.

Chapter Fifteen

...and the forest outside with all of its eyes is burning, burning - 

I just really like this line, I don't know.

The news story about the Nordwext group that's playing when Ian wakes up for the first time is, one, yes, a reference to the Northwest family, and two, a callback to the girls in the factory who Dipper hadn't been able to help back in chapter five. This is him trying to do something that will actually help them and make a difference in their lives, instead of just lighting people on fire from inside out and getting them in trouble for summoning demons.

"... another such facility located under the former Ellens Air Force Base in Idaho."

Ellens Air Force Base is entirely fictional. It was invented for an episode of the X-Files, Deep Throat, where Mulder actually sees a UFO up close and personal (before having it wiped from his mind by the government). I couldn't resist.

I actually researched eye removal for this chapter. It took a lot of psyching up and then realising I could probably start with Wikipedia and click though to their sources without ever having to brave the minefield of Google Suggested Images.

He'd never seen this ring of trees (aspen? Birch?) in his life...

When I wrote this, I had the clearing where Gideon first summons Bill in mind. I also deliberately used descriptors, when Ian looks over and sees he's holding hands with himself, that could apply to either Ian or Bill.

"Oh, demons ... We can deal with demons."

I love Mira's parents.

Guess whooo put in a Twin Peaks reference without knowing basically anything about Twin Peaks!...okay, I could not pass up the opportunity. Besides, you know Ian watched Twin Pines at a formative age, and nearly flipped when he found out they were resurrecting it as Twin Pines: The Returnening.

He’s also a big fan (and friend) of Lauren Mephistopheles, but there is absolutely nothing that will make him actually watch more than ten minutes of Friendship is Prestidigitation. Sorry, Lauren. Some things are too terrifying even for an ex-demon in human skin.

And here we have the culmination of the Rosa Darling Redemption Arc! Ian telling her that Bill played all of them is, as she correctly deduces, a test - if she took the out as offered, played off her own responsibility, he’d know that he really couldn’t trust her to recognise what she’d done wrong and try to fix it. At that point, he probably would’ve had to ask Dipper to remove her memories, too. It’s a lucky thing for both of them that she got a clue!

“State-of-the-art prosthetic.” Rosa clasped her hands behind her back. “This model’s so new it’s not even on the market yet. Which, uh, would mean that technically you’d be part of a clinical trial -”

“A guinea pig,” Ian said, softly.

Just like Bill made Dipper into! I’m a genius.

“You’re not my father,” Ian says at last.

Ian’s father shrugs. “Does it matter, if I’m right?” He puts his glasses back on, light hitting the lenses just so that Ian can’t see his eyes. “Does any of this matter?”

Ian thinks.

“Yes,” he says.

Hi, my name is Mary, and I love Terry Pratchett’s writing.

“You know what,” Ian said, still looking up at the ceiling, at the hoist that dangled over the bed and the dark bulb in the reading lamp, “it’s been - three days? Four days? A couple days since we narrowly escaped death and you haven’t kissed me even once.”

“You haven’t kissed me either,” Mira said, with an affronted look, but there was a hint of laughter in her voice.

Remember how I said they started out forced and stilted? Yeah. I think that was just inexperience and a lack of familiarity with the characters. Let this be a lesson unto me: write the whole damn thing, then go back and rewrite the first, like, until it starts sounding natural again.

“Mira, don’t call me nerdface,” Alcor grumbled, coalescing out of the dark and fussing with his cufflinks.

“Okay, dorkbreath,” Mira agreed, just to hear Alcor’s long-suffering sigh.

Case in point.

Epilogue

Toby!

Everybody loves Toby. I guess I’m no exception. I am a sucker. Also I really wanted to show how the whole Ian thing affected Dipper’s relationship with Toby, while not actually causing it to deviate at all from what had already been established as TAU canon.

“Fragile neurological attachment, huh?” Dipper said, under his breath, and then, loud enough to hear, “Well, now you’ve got me.”

That’s all, folks!

Some more RB-related song recs, before I go: 

- The Garden, by July Talk (This ain’t Johnny Carson/I got thoughts that ain’t my own/I’m talkin’ black souls dressed in red and things that I shoulda never known)

- I Run Roulette, by Boots (I’ve been tricked into a thousand different ways/to slide myself away right down the drain)

- Better Not Wake The Baby, by the Decemberists (make your moan of your lot in life, split your mind half-crazy/gouge your eyes with a butter knife)

- Tic Toc, by Mother Mother (the Sandman told me, there’s no use in listening)

and because shush, it’s a great song and I had it on repeat for writing a decent chunk of the middle bits

- Out Of The Woods, by Taylor Swift (but the monsters turned out to be just trees/when the sun came up you were lookin’ at me)

#chatter #reincarnation blues #holy hell why am I so long-winded and opinionated #blogg-saron