this is my favorite tape!

The Constant Gardeners - Sophie Charalambous , 2025.

British-Cypriot , b. 1973 -

long distance selfies

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

happy 10 years to the first chapter post date of and, action!.

i understand there are only a small handful of people who were with me through the posting/writing of this fic who are still with me now. and that more recent followers do not know me for this at all. therefore, making this post feels a little strange but still something i've been looking forward to documenting.

10 years ago, i fell headfirst into vld. i genuinely loved it and klance (still have a soft spot for the og red/blue). it was the first big obsession to grace my blog (back when i was known as @ bluethisisforyou). i started my real foray into writing fic by taking fic prompt asks. and from those smaller pieces, i built up to thinking:

what if i wrote something longer?

and using an idea from a post on tumblr (i don't have it on me right now/remember the nature of the post) as inspiration, i opened a google doc. typed four thousand some words. then i posted the first chapter. that was really supposed to be how much i would write. but that would quickly bloom into was my first experience watching something spin wildly out of my control in the best way possible.

it would become an experiment in having fun. it would teach me a lot (saving that for for my secondary anniversary post for the day the last chapter was posted (12/31)). it would become a spurt of creativity so potent it would lead to me create a 100k+ fic. so, for now, i am just taking a moment today on the dash to write:

happy 10 years to the seed.

“it’s sixteen miles to the promised land, and i promise you, i’m doing the best i can.”