#plus mitigation and shit

[avaritia-ffxiv]

I've legit lost all ability to play DPS tho, somehow. Tank I can sorta play, healers I can definitely play, but DPS? I'm a laughing stock nowadays.

Which isn't the greatest feeling when you're completely sweaty about your own performance, but when you can only make it to the freaking middle of the pack as a Viper, yeah I'm about ready to crawl under a rock and die of shame.

[themathomhouse]

I don't know if I like taking ADHD medication. apparently it doesn't magically make me into a more organised person who doesn't procrastinate, which would imply that those things were partly within my power to control before now as well!! and that just can't be right. I'm supposed to be able to hide behind my diagnosis and never work on myself this is bullshit

[afrenomes]

This is the post that i was referencing in the tags of the previous post. I’m sorry but this is an incredibly dangerous take to have. The core principle of our democracy is the peaceful transition of power, and attempting to stop that even for someone who’s going to do as much harm as Trump is, would have UNPRECEDENTED consequences reciprocated back on us. Like, I can’t even begin to explain how horrific it would be for everyone, much worse than it is now, if this type of belief wins on the political left.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

yeah so i think i was right about all the cyclical depressionses ganging up on me

[keferon]

Ooo Prowl deciding to snoop or bug the mecha scientists about how various ones work so that he can better figure out how to keep pilots from getting killed in the field, and Tarantulas being one of the only to actually show him the work plus talk possibilities once the mad scientist realizes that Prowl’s actually listening and genuinely paying attention.

Cue an increasing back and forth of Prowl coming by with new ideas for ways mecha abilities could be advanced for safety or protection, with Tarantulas consistently being the only one to figure out how to do the impossible work needed with their Earth materials (and scavenged Quintesson materials?).

Which then gets pushed even farther as Prowl gets more and more desperate with every death and puts himself front and center for Tarantulas to use as a test subject for their new ideas. Tarantulas’ questionable morals not seeing any problems with potentially dangerous or unstable upgrades bc the science is simply fascinating + Prowl really wants to do this clearly so who is he to refuse. Like Tarantulas is gonna make sure Prowl doesn’t die from such things, he likes having him around too much, but if the side effects are within a certain (dubiously safe) threshold then he’s not gonna exactly mitigate them all that much. (Upgrades for other mecha & pilots might be. A bit less safe comparatively. Tarantulas has a soft spot for Prowl and Prowl alone of course)

Eventually Tarantulas is bringing even more wild and dangerous ideas to the table, and bc of years of results and… companionship, one could say, between the two, Prowl is almost completely trusting with whatever Tarantulas brings to the table after only a quick (and maybe not entirely honest sometimes) rundown.

Which obviously has lead to an increasingly questionable state of Prowl’s general health. Not that Prowl would care as long as he’s able to pilot his mecha and do his job.

As well as increased isolation from many others somewhat encouraged by Tarantulas as Prowl focuses only on his pilot work and being around Tarantulas for brainstorming sessions or upgrades. Withdrawing from many around the base as a defensive measure so he doesn’t get overwhelmed if something goes horribly wrong out in the field- grief could get in the way of directing or helping others to safer situations after all. And this being the way things are for a long while.

Until a certain visored bot crashes into the tactician’s life.

OH MAN IMAGINE

Jazz doesn't want everyone to know that he is secretly tiny because he is shady and sneaky like that. But also his armor is too big to fit in corridors so he can't really follow Prowl everywhere. Including the labs~

So one day he decides that "fuck it I wanna know more" and hacks into security system to look though cameras footages right. And he finds the ones that placed in the labs and discovers the fucking HORROR that regularly happens there.

Bonus points if he doesn't realize that the reason Prowl does all this is kind of. him. Jazz.

He looks at Tarantulas and thinks there must be some kind of shady scheme involved. He thinks that Tarantulas is somehow forcing Prowl to go through this shit.

While the real reason is just. Prowl lost his previous partners. He doesn't want to lose the new one. He is afraid he wouldn't be good enough to keep Jazz alive and Tarantulas is very conveniently here reaching his hand and promising that "You can be better at protecting him and keeping him alive. Sure thing you can save him you just need to let me do a couple of tweaks and upgrades~"

[alchemistc]

visions are seldom all they seem

an: warning for a hint of dubcon hidden in amongst tommy's memories

They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.

That's a fucking fairytale if he's ever heard one. Tommy's had enough friends brought back from the brink, enough experiences of his own, to know that it's a crock.

When you die, you...die. You're there, and then you're not.

Tommy's legs are pinned, and there's smoke filling the cabin, and the last thing he'd said to Evan before he walked out the door was "Tell your father thank you, but I'm happily involved with a younger man."

There's something poetic about all of this, Tommy thinks, as he watches Garrett stumble to his feet, just beyond the door he'd managed to break loose to Tommy's left. Tommy hates poetry. Not necessarily as a general rule, but there's a lot of pretentious shit out there, and this feels pretentious. Maybe that's just the smoke inhalation.

"Kinard!"

Garrett's coming around the other side, lopsided and limping, but still pushing.

Thank fuck they hadn't been carrying passengers. He's pretty sure one of the blades had sliced clean through the hull behind him. He can't really look - there's something caught in his belt, pinning his back to the seat, and he's got one arm too fucked to reach for the blade strapped to his hip, and another that wouldn't reach if he tried. He's losing blood, he's losing time. He's done the math.

"Kinard!" Garrett's not having much luck with Tommy's door, which makes sense. The landing skid had done good work with the whole right side of the bird. Tommy's pretty sure the aftermath of that piece of work is the reason he can't move his fucking legs.

There are tools, somewhere nearby, that might have been useful, if Tommy hadn't used Garrett's clear concussion against him in an effort to get Garrett the fuck out.

It's funny, though. Funny that this is the way he goes. Not in the initial crash, which they'd somehow both survived. Not even from the blood loss, though Tommy guesses the coroner will have something to say about that being a mitigating factor. Probably won't even be the fire, which Garrett seems to have banked, a bit, with the extinguisher he'd scrounged from - somewhere. No. Four tours and a dozen plus years as a firefighter and it's the smoke that's gonna get him.

The windscreen is cracked. If Tommy wasn't in the midst of dying, he'd probably be thinking up the most professional way to tell his superiors that his windscreen isn't supposed to fucking spiderweb out like that, but -

Garrett's got the extinguisher in hand again, which is a nice thought, except he'd watched him drain it earlier. But he's not -

Tommy flinches when the canister makes contact with the windscreen and it cracks a little more.

He wishes he'd texted something better to Evan than a thumbs up emoji in response to his "Be safe" text. Gonna look real fucking ironic in a few minutes, here.

The glass webs out further when the canister makes contact again, and over the crackle as the flames kick back up, Tommy realizes that Garrett's yelling at him. Has been, for a while now, most likely. He can't really hear it, or contextualize it, but he's definitely yelling.

Something cracks. A few shards of glass sprinkle on down towards his knees. Garrett's voice gets louder. "--uckley's gonna kill me if I fuck up your pretty blue eyes, fuckhead, so close them right fucking now, Kinard!"

It's not like he has anything better to do than take orders. He follows his instructions.

The windscreen doesn't shatter - it's built not to - but a second later Garrett's got something wedged into the seal, tearing at it now that the things mangled enough not to be airtight, and Tommy isn't sure where he'd gotten a crowbar, or how the fuck he'd climbed the nose with a bum leg, but he's a little glad he'll be too dead to get the lecture from Garrett's wife on making sure his copilot doesn't do dumb shit.

"-kill you to - little leverage wouldn't - 'mon Kinard - 'mme something to work -"

Tommy's flagging. He can't really breathe, anymore. There's chance the impact shattered a rib or two.

The windscreen actually folds, under the leverage from outside, but Garrett still doesn't know Tommy's pinned. He'd have had a better chance if Garrett had just worked the fire, but Tommy doesn't plan to tell him that. As it is, he sucks in smoke and blinks through the haze as Garrett folds the windscreen farther back. "Hold on, Kinard!"

Tommy laughs. "Not going anywhere," he says, which aren't the last words he'd have chosen for himself, an hour ago, but - seems fitting, anyway. He gets a feeble cough out, and then things go blurry.

"Fuck you, Tommy," isn't the last thing he ever expected to hear, either, but - well. Today's been FUBAR since he took the chopper up, so.

Fuck you, Tommy it is.

---

The field behind his grandparents house is loud, in the soggy twilight - frogs and crickets and cicadas, a cacophony of noise.

Oh, Tommy's absolutely gonna be pissed if all his friends just didn't get far enough into dying for the flashbacks. It's not like he could have asked any of the ones who'd actually kicked the can, of course, and Tommy'd never been actually all the way dead before. Just - on the brink.

This isn't anything like Evan had described.

Tommy turns. And there's nonna, in her sapphire blue muumuu, flicked with gold trim, grey hair permed within an inch of its life. He can smell the romas she must have brought in from the sun at dusk, and the espresso poured into her fancy china next to her porch chairs - a rocking chair he'd never had a chance to fix up for her before she'd been gone, the Adirondack he'd stopped fitting into when he sprouted six inches the summer between sophomore and junior year.

Nonna grins.

Tommy watches a firebug flit by him.

He blinks, and Nonna raises an eyebrow at him - the same way she'd done the first time he tried to lie about where he'd gotten the bruise on his chin, or why his knuckles were scabbed over, or what he thought of the model on her favorite set of dog eared bodice rippers.

Tommy isn't sure what he could possibly be lying about right now, but he doesn't get a chance to ask. Between one blink and the next the night, the frogs, and Nonna's back porch are gone.

---

Tommy fucking hates Dorian Gray. The reasons had changed, over the years, but even more than being wedged into this fucking deathtrap of a desk, with it's lose nuts and bolts and the arm on the wrong side of his fucking body (because Tammy Pritchard always got the lefty desk in every fucking class and not a single one of his teachers had ever thought to wonder why his handwriting on his homework had better penmanship and an incredibly unsubtle smear of ink when compared to his in-class assignments): even more than the scent of Heather Chester's perfume and the reek of weed and Cheetos coming off of Barry Trott, in the seat in front of him; even more than the squeak of chalk against the blackboard as Mrs. Henderson posits the question of the day (What is so horrifying about the painting?); Tommy hates this fucking book.

He sort of wishes this memory had taken him back to freshman year instead - at least he could articulate why Holden Caulfield had been a whiny little bitch.

It's not like he could say -

Well.

Actually.

This is Tommy's death rattle. So.

"It's a mirror," Tommy says, like he hadn't all those years ago. No one notices that Tommy's a few decades too old and more than a few inches too wide to fit in his desk. "It's an indictment on everyone who ever had a hand in creating such a beautiful monster."

Mrs. Henderson doesn't look up. Tommy doesn't know why he expected she would.

She'd never listened to him before, either.

---

He'd been expecting his dad, next, which is his own damn fault.

Captain Turner's zipping his pants back up.

Tommy rises from his knees.

The paperwork is there on his desk. A glowing recommendation for the flight training he's been denied twice already. Tommy's throat feels gummy. He can't remember when Turner stopped using condoms.

This isn't how it happened.

"Open your eyes, Kinard."

Tommy's eyes are already open.

---

"I'm proud of you, son," Gerrard says, and Tommy would very much prefer it if he was just dead, already.

The thing is - the thing is Gerrard looks genuinely pleased to see him - a rare enough thing in general, rarer still because this is the older Gerrard, the one he'd shut the fuck down in front of the very first chance he'd been given to tell him exactly how rank Tommy really thought he was.

"You know when to give up," Gerrard continues. And.

Oh.

Well.

Did he have a choice?

"Of course there's a choice. Make the right one. Keep on making it, Kinard."

---

Pain.

Christ. Tommy's had shrapnel under his skin for decades, now - he's been blown up, and shot, stabbed once, although that was a grazing blow, really.

This is so much worse. He feels like he's hemorrhaging, like his lungs are constricting, like -

"You're no son of mine."

Yeah. That'd been worse than the IED by far.

"Dad," he says, but the damage is done. His room is in shambles, which Tommy thinks is overkill - his dad'd probably found the Blueboy Tommy had tucked under the mattress a long while before he had swept all his football trophies off the shelf and emptied what looked like the entire contents of his wardrobe onto the floor.

On the plus side, it looks like he'd actually ripped his annotated copy of Picture of Dorian Gray in half, too, so small favors.

Only.

This hadn't happened. This was his nightmare scenario, the horrific dream he'd had every day for six years until he got out of basic and the nightmare scenarios turned physically violent, instead. If his dad had ever known an inkling of Tommy's inclinations he'd ignored it until the day Tommy made him stop ignoring it.

He'd never found his dirty magazine - just the one, because he'd been too fucking terrified of having a second one lying around somewhere.

Those words he'd reserved for something else entirely.

His dad had thrown a bitch fit when Tommy'd enlisted in the Army instead of the Marines, but those words - those were the words he'd gotten when the father he hadn't spoken to in three years learned that Tommy'd gone for turnouts instead of a gun and badge.

How do you emulate your father and rebel at the same time?

"Love you too, pops," Tommy says, and waits for the blink.

---

"Oh," Tommy says, and blinks open his eyes. Keith smiles back. It's a charming little grin, the first thing that had caught Tommy's eye across the bar three months before this night. And it's not - the room is all wrong, and it'd been midday, not evening, six hours between shifts and the first time their schedules lined up in weeks. Keith is all lithe muscle and smeared makeup, barely an hour out from his latest shoot.

"Don't say it," Keith says, and shifts his weight against sheets that aren't even the right color.

Tommy had wanted to say it, though. Thirty-odd years and he'd never had the courage to say it to anyone who might say it back in a meaningful way, but Keith -

They'd been all wrong for each other. Conflicting schedules, conflicting lifestyles, conflicting expectations. Keith would spend the next six months flying back for hookups, jet setting around the world on a campaign for Dolce & Gabanna, and then text Tommy to let him know he should get tested and never reach out again. Tommy would fly his chopper over the aftermath of a tsunami and wonder how it felt to drown.

The hands on his skin are wrong - rough with calluses, working hands. Tommy slides his thumb across the palm of one and thinks it feels like home.

"Don't go back to sleep," Keith says. There's something playing on Tommy's TV, which had never been in his room when he was with Keith.

That had been a recent development, actually, and technically it wasn't even his TV, but when Evan's lease had been up it had just made sense to the both of them to -

"Monster truck rallies, really?" Keith says, but the volume on the TV is too loud to make out what he says next. His mouth moves, and the words don't make it to Tommy's ears, and when he blinks again he thinks he can hear sirens.

---

The chicken barely moves as Bobby passes it off to Officer Grant, and there's some sort of significance to this moment, Tommy knows, but Sal is too busy making smooching faces at Tommy, his laugh deep and bracing, for Tommy to figure out what that significance is.

Eddie is staring at him from the passenger seat when he swings up into the rig.

"You need to come back," Eddie says, and that stupid fucking mustache twitches. "You stupid bastard, you have to come back."

---

"Just like that?" Tommy asks, staring at the transfer papers, and Nash looks at him like he knows too much.

"Have you changed your mind?"

Tommy's uses his middle and ring finger to pull the transfer papers closer to himself. Bobby hums, satisfied. "Good. I've got my eye on one of the new kids in training - hate to pass up on him."

Tommy shakes his head. "You still haven't replaced Sal. Who's even gonna train this new guy?"

Bobby's in his civvies. He's holding his rosary beads. Did he start out like that, or is this death knell just fucking with him now? "Not your time, yet," Bobby tells him, and Tommy doesn't -

---

"Just a little something I learned at the 118," Donato says with a grin, while Jerry eyes the blown up photo of Tommy and Evan kissing in the hospital lobby that's been hung up on the announcement board right next to Jill's kids butterbraid order sheet. One of the nurses must have taken it. Donato must have bribed one of the nurses to take it on the ride to the hospital. "We're, like, a base and a half away from wiener cousins, you know," she sing-songs, and Tommy tilts a raised brow her way.

He's still staring at the picture. When had Evan's hand made it that far into his turnout?

"I'm just saying, having been on the your end of those lips - congrats."

"Does it smell like smoke in here to you?" Jerry asks, and Tommy tries to swallow, tries to respond, but there's something stopping him from -

---

"Hey," Evan says. He's on nonna's rocking chair. The cicadas and the frogs are loud, against a backdrop of misty fields. It still smells like sundried tomatoes, but there's an antiseptic scent underneath it. There's a firebug perched on Evan's birthmark. "I'd, uh, really hate it if the last conversation we ever had was about my dad's weird obsession with you."

Tommy would also hate that. He goes to say so and can't speak. His chest is on fire, and his leg feels like it might give out if he takes a step forward. Evan's too far away, but he can still feel the calluses on Evan's fingers on his wrist, steady against his pulse.

"So, if you could just. If you could just open your eyes. Twitch your fingers. Um. I have a ring, and a speech, but I'd settle for like, you waking up to tell me you're leaving me for Andrew Garfield."

He's thinking of Andrew Lincoln, but Tommy can't get his throat to work to tell him so, or to remind him that Tommy actually hates that plot in Love Actually. Now Colin Firth...

The fingers slide from his pulse point to his ring finger. His leg screams. The cicadas drown out whatever Evan says next.

---

The lights in this room are too fucking bright. It smells of sterile metal and the cedarwood soap Evan uses. His hand is stuck to the bed.

"Tommy."

Tommy's pretty sure he's imagining the firefly perched on Buck's brow as he slides into his sight line, but the rest of him is real, and solid - his ridiculous fade and the curls askew atop his head and the slow blooming smile across his face, the hand sliding up his arm and the suddenly wet corners of his eyes.

"ey," he says, or tries to say - it comes out as croaky as the frogs that'd guided him through whatever strange dream he'd been having. He's losing the edges of it already, trying to grasp details even as they slip way. Evan's going to be so fucking disappointed they can't trade coma dream stories.

Evan hovers while a nurse looks him over, demanding ice chips from someone out in the hallway, and Tommy can't stop looking at him. He'd been dead. He'd been sure this was it, this time.

Tommy gets three ice chips down before he's allowed to speak.

"Why's the chicken important?" Which is - great. They've got him hooked up to good drugs. He'd meant to start off with the basics - I love you, and don't propose to me in a hospital room I know it's a Buckley special but I'd like to limit our significant moments here until they actually dedicate a wing in your honor. "Did Eddie shave the mustache while I was out?"

Jesus Christ.

Evan's laugh is wet, and his hand is wrapped around the cup of ice chips, instead of around Tommy's, which seem unnecessarily cruel.

"I love you," Evan says.

They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Evan informs him, eventually, that he'd crashed twice on the med-evac and been gone for a total of one minute eighteen seconds ("There's no significance to that. A coincidence," Tommy tells him. Evan doesn't fight him on it. Not then, anyway.) The flashing thing is still a crock of shit. Tommy's lost most of it before Evan gets around to 'you'.

Tommy finally gets Evan close enough to grasp his hand - slide his finger over the rough pad of his thumb, dig a nail into the forking lifeline in his palm. "Hey," he says, when Evan's grip goes tight, and tears well up in his eyes again. "Were you watching monster trucks while I was out?"

[grimalkinmessor]

The parallels between Tsubomi and Reigen drive me so fucking insane you have no idea like—that shit had to be at least SOMEWHAT intentional even if not in a specifically romantic way.

For one, Tsubomi and Reigen are two of the only few people that call Shigeo "Mob" consistently. (Yes Tome also calls him Mob eventually but she starts out calling him Kageyama-kun and likely picks up "Mob-kun" from Inukawa or Reigen later on). We don't know how Reigen started calling Shigeo "Mob", though we can assume that Tsubomi was likely part of the group of kids that originally misread Shigeo's name as Mobbu to begin with so she's less of a mystery on that front. Maybe Reigen saw it written on his backpack or his shirt tag and started calling him that too, or maybe Mob even just told him that that's what everyone else called him and was what he prefered to be called at the time. Either way, it's a little odd that Reigen's one of the only people who use that nickname when we don't really get a reason why beyond "it can also be read like this", especially since Reigen is a grown man with (presumably) full literacy of kanji and would know how to read it.

Then there's the other obvious parallel that's made in the show; how Tsubomi and Reigen treat Mob. How they see his powers. They're not special, they're just a part of him. Nothing to be scared of—even though they kind of,,,,are lmao. The fact that Tsubomi continues to sit in the park even though a literal hurricane is approaching because she thought Mob sounded upset on the phone happens at the same time Reigen goes sprinting full-tilt into said hurricane because Mob is in trouble always stands out to me. It's less obvious than Mob's own words: "She never treated me any differently because of my powers" "Master never treated me any differently..."—but it's still a pretty blatant parallel to me.

Not to mention that both Reigen and Tsubomi's personalities are actually very similar as well! They're both described as people that hide behind a mask, a facade, while still being brutally stubborn. If Tsubomi doesn't want to do something, she's not gonna do it. While Reigen is more laid back because he's used to getting his hands dirty for work (money), he's still very stubborn himself when he doesn't wanna do something. He'll find a way to wriggle out of it and talk circles around you if you let him. Dimple even says that Tsubomi is the type of person who can't be swayed by words or peer pressure. She and Reigen were actually, again, two of the only people brainwashed through airborne Vibes™ instead of through food like everyone else. The biggest difference between them on this is that while Reigen lies fairly blatantly, Tsubomi seems to only lie through omission. Tsubomi is more of an introvert too, compared to Reigen's extrovert (though you could argue that both of them are good with people, with the only difference being that Reigen enjoys being the center of attention while Tsubomi presumably does not).

Plus they're both pretty goofy too once you think about it lmao. They're both prideful and hate to be humiliated, but they also care a lot about their public image and how people perceive them. Every time the scene with Tsubomi and her friends outside cleaning up leaves comes up, her expressions and panic always remind me of Reigen. And then there's Mob, calm and unjudgemental, willing to help her with no questions asked. Mitigating her humiliation, just like he does for Reigen :)

Another thing that always strikes me is how Mezato says, "If you can accept her for who she really is..." followed by Reigen's echo during his confession: "This is who I really am". Mezato essentially tells Mob that Tsubomi isn't who she seems on the outside and that if he wants to be accepted by her, he needs to also be ready to accept her as well. Which, we don't get to see much of Tsubomi's life outside of Mob—wow just like Reigen—so we don't ever really know who she is beyond that outer mask, but we see her slowly opening up to Mob later, as a friend. But the fact that Reigen's own confession mirrors Mezato's words to Mob about him accepting Tsubomi always makes me vibrate in place a little like,,,Confession Arc my beloved 🙏

I don't know man, there's just so much there, it makes my head spin. I could go on and on about it but I better cut myself off because if I don't I'll start crawling on the walls going feral about it because what, what was the point of this if not to make it clear that the relationship between Mob and Reigen is supposed to parallel his relationship with Tsubomi like what do you MEAN—

[nothorses]

I hope this is okay to ask but I’m pretty desperate and googling stuff has failed me, so do you or one of your followers have recommendations on how to deal with the BO that comes with taking testosterone? I never had BO that couldn’t just be managed by showering enough and putting on just any deodorant but now that I’m taking T I sweat a lot and I smell bad and I nothing I do seems to fix it. My boss has politely mentioned it several times now despite all my effort and it’s so mortifying and embarrassing.

Things I’ve tried and am currently doing include so many different deodorants which I bring to work and reapply, putting baking powder in my shoes, on top of general basic hygiene. But none of it seems to make a dent and it doesn’t help that I can’t really change clothes or shoes throughout the day. I have to wear closed toed shoes and a lab coat and my job is pretty active, plus it’s 10 minutes walk from the parking lot and it’s over 100F or 40 C right now so when I arrive at work I’m already pouring sweat. I also have a large chest so it all gets under my bra and soaks into it and by the end of the day the bottom part of my bra reeks.

I know some ocasional BO on a busy day can’t be helped but none of the other people at work including other male coworkers seem to have the same issue at all, so there’s got to be a solution but I haven’t found it. Im thinking of trying antiperspirants but I also know I need to sweat and I would rather not put my health at risk. So if anyone has something that works for them please let me know bc im really desperate here.

First I want to say: you're not doing anything wrong. You probably just sweat more than some other folks, and that's not your fault, and you shouldn't feel bad about it. I'm gonna give you some ideas to try if you haven't yet, but I don't know how much you've already tried, and it sounds like you've been through a lot already.

I also have always had terrible BO, and the only thing that helped at all pre-T was "prescription strength" deodorant. I honestly have had less of an issue since starting T, weirdly enough, but part of that is also that I physically cannot stand to shower any less frequently than every single morning (not necessarily a good thing lol), and I also started using antibacterial products on my armpits when I shower.

Currently I use benzoyl peroxide body wash on my armpits, which can be drying, but it hasn't caused me issues so far (just look for Panoxyl, other brands have caused irritation for me and my partner both). I used Betadine surgical scrub before that for a bit (you collect weird shit when you work with horses 🤷‍♂️) and that worked well, too- plus it's less likely to irritate skin.

I also find that certain shirts cause me to sweat there more, and those also tend to be the more form-fitting shirts that get up into my armpits. That skin def needs to breathe.

My partner has had trouble with feet/shoes in the past, and he's used cedar shoeforms to mitigate that (cedar is also antibacterial!). He also makes sure any shoes he gets are breathable (not leather), and if they are leather, he gives them at least a day or two between wears. Probably good practice if you notice any kind of smell on any of your shoes.

You mention baking powder, and I'm not sure if you meant baking soda and just mixed them up (which I do all the time lmao) but just in case: if you are using baking powder, the one you want is baking soda.

I don't have much advice for chest sweat, except that you may want to consider bringing an extra bra (and maybe an extra pair of socks if you're noticing it before the end of the day) to change into midway through the day. You can also look for more breathable fabrics in general, especially athletic-wear, which is already designed to help wick sweat and mitigate those issues.

Lastly, I want to stress again that you're not doing anything wrong. Some people have more trouble with this than others, and if you're really struggling in a way nobody around you is, it may be that you've got something going on in your body that they don't have to deal with. This could be a medical thing as well (like acne!!), and there's no shame in seeking medical solutions for it. Talk to your doctor if you can; it sounds like it's causing you distress, and you deserve to be comfortable.

[porcupine-girl]

Dear Principled Third-Party or Non-Voter,

This is one last-ditch effort to reach out to you. I understand that you want the Democrats to move left, and you think that voting third party will do that. I fully understand this because I felt the same way in 2000!

I voted for Ralph Nader because even though Al Gore did a whole documentary about climate change, I thought the Democrats overall didn’t care about the environment enough. Plus he wanted exoneration for drug-related non-violent crimes and all sorts of other things that I thought the Democrats should be pushing for. I didn���t really think Nader could win, and didn’t even particularly think he should win-I wanted to send a message. To tell the Democrats “hey, I may only be 21, but I’m onto you and I think your platform should be more like this guy’s.”

So. What happened? Bush got elected. And here’s the real point:

Did losing due to people voting for Nader push the Democrats left?

Well, if it had, you’d probably be planning to vote for them this year.

Now, maybe, maybe there was a chance that it could have done that. But then 9/11 happened less than a year into Bush’s term, and suddenly they’re dealing with terrorists and war, and an American public that veered to the right* - they did not have the time, energy, or resources to think about the far left, plus it was no longer advantageous in an election.

“But that was 9/11!” you cry. “That was a major historical event that hasn’t been repeated! We won’t have another 9/11!”

Well, maybe not (and the pandemic, while a major historical event, had entirely different effects). But the thing is, if Trump wins, it’s basically 24/7 9/11 mode for the next four years.

Do you actually remember the Trump years?

Democrats were NOT busy moving left. No, they were busy constantly scrambling to mitigate the worst of him.

Talking John McCain (who, remember, IS DEAD NOW and cannot repeat this act) into voting with them so the ACA didn’t get repealed. Trying to get the impeachment for intimidating and blackmailing our ally to stick. Filibustering (unsuccessfully) the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, to try and prevent him from doing all the shit he did.

THAT is what you will get if Trump wins, only with event more crazy MAGA sycophants in Congress than last time. Democrats won’t be going “oh gosh, we could’ve picked up 1% of 18-35-year-olds if we’d taken a stand on Palestine,” they’ll be too busy going OH FUCK HOW DO WE KEEP TRUMP FROM TALKING NETANYAHU INTO LITERALLY NUKING GAZA????

So please please please, on behalf of all the Nader voters whose third-party votes did absolutely fuck-all to move a party that was trying to deal with Bush, don’t repeat our mistake.

If for no other reason than the fact that if Trump does win, there is absolutely no way you will get what you want. While if Harris wins, it will be much easier to push the Dems left - Biden has been pushed left on several issues!

* Fun fact from a psychology professor [me]: When people are scared they tend to agree with more conservative points of view than when they’re not scared! This is one reason things like terrorist attacks and wars tend to gain votes for conservatives.

[twopoppies]

hi Gina,

I'm already sick of myself typing this but I just read some of your anons from earlier and started thinking about holivia/full stop/jeff & harry/stunt or no stunt for HS4. Because holivia was never a stunt for Harry's benefit, was it? I keep thinking of it as badly executed PR for Harry but was it simply mediocre promo for DWD? It wouldn't surprise me if all of it came from a PR team that couldn't care less about Harry's image, fully focused on promoting the movie. And considering the ties between DWD and the Azoffs, if we assume Jeff got him that role and approved the marketing strategy? One that made Harry look terrible and lasted for that long? I would assume he felt used and lost a lot of trust. It just seems much more like full on movie marketing than any kind of personal PR. And if Harry was brought into it unknowing, that's a huge betrayal. I'm sure that's how things work most of the time and signed artists are probably treated more like assets, but everyone has a limit.

Or, the person who worked really hard to not obsess over what people think about him was fine with his reputation being thrown under the bus for one mediocre movie. Because it makes no sense to me that this was Harry's stunt in any way. Maybe he thought that's what it took to start his acting career? Maybe his team did? Maybe it is?

Or it was purely for DWD/Olivia's benefit.

I think we’re all guessing when it comes to this stuff because it’s probably very layered and complex.

I don’t know if you were here before it started, but most of the fandom was really excited for him to take that role. She was coming off directing Booksmart which was very well-received. She’d gotten the rights to a highly sought-after screenplay that seemed very timely. He would be working with a female director who seemed to be on the right side of a lot of political issues. And the rest of the cast were exciting names.

So, on paper, it looked great. It’s no wonder we missed all the signs.

In retrospect, it seems that Olivia was either in over her head or didn’t give a shit (or both) because no one seemed happy on that set and the film was huge fucking disaster. Additionally, she seemed to care more about her own personal promo (adding herself into the film, taking scenes from other characters to give them to herself, making her PR relationship the primary focus of every day, etc.) and in the end, the movie and the actors and crew suffered because of it.

Beyond this, the Azoffs seemed to have their fingers in every part of this pie. They have connections to the movie studio, the original authors of the script, the lead actor, and seemingly, Olivia herself. They used Harry and his fandom as a major selling point (offering chances to win tour tickets for buying movie tickets, Harry’s entire team/friends/family plus other FullStop artists—Lizzo—to promote the film, etc.), but at the same time, ignored how all of this was negatively affecting Harry’s image and career.

Obviously, Harry signed on to the film and PR relationship. And it’s possible it was an exchange for being allowed to make My Policeman. I’m not saying he had no responsibility in this mess. But if whoever was in charge of it was in Harry’s corner, Olivia’s behavior would have been nipped in the bud. Or at least the negative effects it was having on Harry would have been mitigated in some way.

So it very much felt like the primary concern of Harry’s team was the film/Warner Bros’ investment, Olivia, and the Azoff’s own financial or personal investments.

I don’t know if they thought Harry wouldn’t notice or that he was so well-liked that none of it would matter. But I have a hard time believing Jeff/Irving had the wool pulled over their eyes by Olivia and her team and there was nothing they could do to get H out of the situation he was in.

And given the seeming shift in energy between H and Jeff toward the end of that debacle, I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me think Harry was happy with the situation.

[apocalypse-shuffle]

THE VEES | VELVETTE, VALENTINO, & VOX (Hazbin Hotel)

—

Imagine a minor AI demon gaining the ire and (reluctant) infatuation of the Vees.

Headcanons

CHARACTERS: VELVETTE, VALENTINO, & VOX

Fem!OC

SFW, 16+, non-romantic, non-sexual, sex industry mentions tho (TW: Valentino, but no seriously the Vees kind of are their own trigger warning in this fandom)

Pic source: Hazbin Hotel Ep8 “The Show Must Go On”

the short oneshot is 1k+ words

⚠︎ I DO NOT ENDORSE VIVZIEPOP (& associated parties) but I did watch the show and wanted to write for it, so idk ⚠︎

THE VEES

Some sinner has been stealing their gains from right under their noses (because she’s been impersonating each of the three).

Supplies and new prototypes keep getting snatched until one day Velvette sees that (without her input) one of the electronics that Vox had been trying to get off the ground before it’d been stolen has gone viral.

Before then Velvette had been far more entertained by the AI Demon than anything else — only working to stop them at all because Vox told her to — but after stealing what was supposed to be Velvette’s spotlight when she unveiled the new in demand device, and going viral more often than Vel, the Overlord is beside herself with rage and jealousy.

Velvette’s typically put together appearance cracks and the string of fits she has rival some of Valentino’s own; she’s so over the top and out for blood at being made less relevant it’s crazy.

The internet drama that sprouts around both sinners' public feud has Hell in a chokehold for weeks.

At first Valentino would be endlessly entertained by the AI Demon driving Vox up the wall, he’d even give Vox grief over how long taking her down was taking just to fuck with his partner himself.

Problem is the AI Demon eventually also starts imploding his own business and then Val is out for blood and making it everyone’s problem.

He’s so caught up on mitigating the damage the lower level sinner is doing, and on his own work, that Angel Dust barely sees him or is summoned to work at all.

The AI Demon drives Vox crazy at the same time that she reinvigorates him. Vox is the type who likes to be on top, he likes to coast, but coasting comes with a price. Namely that everything gets far too routine and boring.

So when the AI Demon starts to make poorly made but just good enough knockoffs of the shows on his streaming service(s) and of his technology he finds immense joy in hunting her down and tearing apart every site the other sinner creates to host her plagiarism.

Plus, unlike with Alastor, this is a challenge that he can take on without worrying about having to deal with any emotional damage too so he goes all in.

❤︎

“Why the hell should I care that someone��s ripping off Voxflix? Just drop some malware on the site and get outta my face, I have shit to do.”

Vox doesn’t move from where he’s standing as she turns her back to leave, but he does nearly roll his eyes.

“Velvette,” he snaps lowly.

At his tone Velvette stops dead, shorter form stiffening. Vox waits her out.

It takes a silent slew of seconds before she shakes it off and then - finally - turns back to him. Slowly. Her head goes first, he’s sure just so that he can get a good look at the irritated scowl she’s taken on, before she lets the rest of her body follow.

Only once she’s staring at him again - eyes narrowed, arms crossed, and hip cocked - does Vox start back up.

There’s about a million things being transmitted to him at any given moment, but he takes care to narrow his active focus down to only the necessary few to give Velvette his due attention.

“Finished?”

“Fine.” She bristles then noticeably forces her tone to something trying to be more acquiescent, “What can I do for you Vox?”

The corners of his screen fizzle, but he came to her before he set off Valentino with the news of their newest dilemma for a reason, more than anyone else’s he needs those sharp eyes of hers looking out for whoever this trifling little ant is.

So he starts playing a peppy little jingle through the speakers of his primary build like he would in front of a crowd.

“This just in!” Vox exclaims, mostly mockingly. The smile on his screen widens as he thrusts his hands to the sides, wiggling his fingers, and kicks his foot out to balance his leg on that heel. “For the low low price of your own non-obligatory free time—!”

“Oh, shut it,” Velvette growls, flicking her taloned fingers at him to emphasize her point, “I’m not a client or Val, don’t pull that poppyshow crap with me.”

He sighs, rising back into his default power stance and smoothing his lapels, “Live a little, why don’t you?”

Gesturing towards the pocket he knows she slipped her phone into Velvette raises a brow at him in challenge. “That’s rich coming from you.” She huffs, “Now get on with it, you’re boring me.”

This time around he opts to let some of his residual irritation color his words as he breaks the issue down to her in a more approved manner. Although he’s also not not smiling any longer despite his more subdued tone.

“Velvette. Dear,” he adds, because he knows it softens her up, and low and behold her scowl eases the moment the endearment leaves his speakers, “if this new…sinner is mimicking my shows and my people what’s to stop them from coming for your models next? Every new show they copy is already starting to trend after they drop before I catch them. The masses are teeming for lesser inexpensive ripoffs of our stuff so I need you to take this seriously.”

The woman goes silent for a moment, lips pursed in what Vox knows is her actually evaluating what he said earlier. Then the scowl’s back, but one of her arms comes up so she can tap her thumb to her lips, and her hip realigns.

Somehow the lipstick doesn’t smudge as she does so. Even when she sucks her teeth, lips briefly pursing against her painted nails, the glossy black doesn’t dare transfer.

“Okay,” she mutters softly before cutting her eyes at him. “Don’t throw my name around like that again though.”

A shock of static flows through him as he narrows his eyes at her.

“Be more amenable next time.”

They stare at one another for a few more moments - Vox locking his screen on his unimpressed expression while he waits her out for a second time - before Velvette scoffs.

“Ugh, whatever,” she flips her long coil-filled hair over her shoulder, “just tell me what you need me to do.”

His processors ping with irritation at her wording, but he unlocks his screen nonetheless.

“I don’t know…just,” he waves his hands in her general direction, “make the insistent pest tacky, or whatever. Find a way to make this ‘AI Demon’ completely irrelevant. You can manage that much, can't you?”

Velvette’s eyes roll so hard that for a good few seconds all Vox can see are their reds.

“Your lack of faith would be insulting.” Velvette waits, almost explicitly, for him to begin reacting to her words before continuing. “If I cared more about your opinion, that is,” she cuts him off.

She smiles when his screen glitches slightly and his brows furrow.

“Funny,” he deadpans.

Nearly unnaturally bright fangs flash up at him as she giggles, throwing him a wink.

“I know I am.” In the next breath her phone materializes in her hand. Already tapping away rapidly at it she glances up at him with no small amount of slyness. “No need to sing my praises too much though, I’m already doing what you asked. That Hack’ll be yesterday's news before the dinner rush.”

Vox values self preservation above most things so he doesn’t question her claim. Not that he’d even be able to considering the surge of ruckus that comes from a few halls over in that very moment.

“They impersonated who?!”

Valentino’s high booming voice firmly marks the end of their conversation and - Vox visibly deflates - the destruction of his plan to carefully broach the issue with the other Overlord.

“Oh dammit to Hell,” he grumbles, straightening up and brushing off his suit before marching off to go douse whatever fire whichever one of Valentino’s assistants just lit under the moth demon’s ass.

Behind him Velvette still finds it in her to laugh. A rich giddy thing that has no right sounding so mocking.

He’s a class act though so Vox very pointedly doesn’t flip her off, only glaring as he banks the corner.

She just laughs harder, kicking one leg back and rising on the toes of her other to give him a jaunty little wave.

“Cheers, Darling!”

❤︎

The AI Demon is able to take their shit and profit off of it for months before The Vees figure out where the demon’s usual selling posts are and track the other sinner down with extreme prejudice.

No one in Hell is allowed to have more social influence than Velvette, the AI miscreant is costing Vox millions, and she’s been damaging Val’s reputation with his usual buyers since she can create scenes with all his usual stars but sell them for a cheaper price and add in personalized scenes of whatever the buyer wants to watch.

Despite this they’re all still…impressed.

Once the Vees find the AI Demon they’re so sure that they’re going to rip her limb from limb for fucking with their business….until they start theorizing about all the things that the demon could do for them instead of against them.

They end up keeping the AI Demon alive only because she’s useful. She’s not elevated to Overlord status but the AI Demon is made a high priority “enforcer” for the Vees, which is significant.

Vox also 110% makes her sit in on certain business meetings and acquisitions that end with him killing some manipulated sinner(s) in a bid to intimidate her into staying in line.

She’s unphased until Vox orders her to oversee a feeding and she’s gifted to the sight of his electric sharks eating one of his employees whole and ripping them to shreds while the sinner thrashes wide-eyed in the tank. How fast blood spread throughout the water had stunned her into silence until the whole ordeal was done and Valentino had come slinking around to taunt and tease her over her clear horror at what she’d just witnessed.

Vox gets what he wants though: her culled, and though she still won’t completely cower from the Vees, she certainly learns to stay wary.

(the oneshot of this scenario is posted here)

THE AI DEMON

She’s a know-it-all; frequently corrects people’s grammar mid-sentence and glitches at the sight of spelling errors no matter how intentional they are.

Velvette makes misspelling even more words the thing to do on purpose just to piss the AI Demon off. It annoys Vel too though so she doesn’t keep it up for very long before disavowing the whole trend as boring and try-hard.

Has shapeshifting and vocal mimicry abilities but tends to give herself away with her face copy being too perfect or adding extra features like seven fingers instead of five or having too clean vocals and hilariously mispronouncing words.

Likes to steal (like, nothing is off limits). She’s a full on kleptomaniac.

Velvette’s good curl enhancer? Snatched. Extra clothing pieces from Velvette’s collections that the AI Demon makes go missing all the time once she becomes a permanent fixture in their operation too.

Vox’s power cords are being sold on Hell’s black market as we speak.

Valentino’s shit outta luck to find his contract papers. And really, she’s doing a public service with this one.

She’s selling his scripts and bootlegs of his pornos too.

Is malicious compliance incarnate, and while they could kill her she’s far too useful for them to want to (and unfortunately for them she knows it).

I’ll be honest as much as I think making an AI Demon look more reminiscent of the types of people who frequently do “AI stealing” the most (white male CEOs to be the most exact to just one line of thinking I have) would be interesting, I don’t want to do that for my OC. So my AI Demon’s black (bcs that’s what I do here) and female and began stealing mostly because she was getting stolen from and then got fed up with that. She becomes inexplicably petty and greedy in the process though and goes to Hell after having been one extremely profitable professional scammer.

Is tasked with doing work for Vox and VoxTech visual mediums the most, but gets along with Velvette best, and does nothing but bitch back and forth with Valentino about his ridiculous attempts to have her understudy for some of his actors or him whenever he has to attend meetings he’d rather not.

Would slip them all cyanide if she could get away with it— and if their resulting deaths (not as a result of angelic means) would actually stick.

Still though, she doesn’t want to be redeemed and thoroughly enjoys scamming people and grifting savings or souls from other more gullible sinners so she will stay on her villain grind. At least the Vees provide her with protection now while she’s at it.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while so I figured I’d just put it out even though I can’t say I’m expecting to gain much from it.

And, yes, I made Velvette more obviously black since her black-coding was so piss poor in the show that it’s still embarrassing.

btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!

[coffeekenzie]

I interviewed for my dream job at the USDA a few months ago. I was second choice. I held out hope for months. Finally found out the other guy accepted. Fine. It’s research I really believe in even if I don’t get to be the one to do it. The research proposal I put together for the application excited me. I hope they take some of my ideas into consideration, I’m not precious about them. I want science to thrive.

Now as far as I can tell on the research unit site there are no active employees. And even though I didn’t get the job it still makes me so mad. I guess it’s slightly better than getting the job and relocating and then getting laid off 3 months in but still the fact that myself and my unnamed competitor went through a really rigorous application process to run a research lab only for it to be for fucking nothing makes me so mad. I don’t know if they actually laid off all employees but they definitely laid off probationary employees (>3 years) and all the effort that goes into those probationary years, the funding secured to build a lab and a research project and hire post docs to get fucking nothing from it is such a goddamn waste. One of the probationary researchers I know was laid off was an analytical chemist and do you KNOW how expensive a GC-MS is??? The analytical chemist I worked with at UC Davis liked to say his lab was the equivalent value of a cul-de-sac of homes in Davis.

Plus agricultural research is by nature of agriculture SLOW. Shit takes time to grow. So much fucking WASTE by shuttering USDA-ARS sites. I know it wasn’t just Davis. I have a USDA-ARS job search alert that has gone dark.

When I interviewed and asked about the election they said they had some concerns about Trump but agriculture was so bi partisan that it was very unlikely that the election would have a major impact on the department.

Fuck Elon Musk, fuck DOGE, fuck Trump. I’ve been dealing with this shitty ass job market for over a year trying to leave my terrible startup and the potential for government work felt like a miracle. The people who achieved that should not go through being put out like that. Plus you know fast paced industry jobs won’t want employees used to the pace of government bureaucracy.

I just I know there’s so much bad going on but this one hits close to home.

Also the research project was mitigating the effect of wildfire smoke exposure on grapes and other west coast agricultural products so enjoy further enshittification of your west coast fruits and veggies because it’s certainly gonna not stop being on fire there.

Man I went on my yearly vacation to Washington wine country right after the interview over the summer and the small wineries I visited were so excited about the research the USDA was doing.

It’s so fucking stupid

[ranidspace]

learn to pirate. im sick of like 50k+ notes posts to some zip file hosted on a google drive or on some file sharing platform thqt gets taken down or has malware in it. a good vpn (proton, ivpn, mullvad) costs so much less than a single streaming service let alone 3 or more, plus adobe products plus whatever textbooks you're buying plus music services and whatever.

Torrent sites cannot be taken down because they host .torrent files, and they doesnt contain any pirated content, it just tells a program where to find it. Since the site doesnt host pirated content you're free to talk about it without any risk of shutting it down.

Be careful tho cuz by talking about you can increase the chances of companies finding out their stuff is on theae websites, and they can send cease and desists to the IPs that are downloading/seeding it. This issue is mitigated with a Private Tracker which only allows people who specifically have been invited by other users to download the .torrent files.

Also: Torrents are peer to peer. if someone hosting a torrent's house gets raided and gets taken down (very extreme example, AT MOST they will send a warning or a C&D to ur ISP) anyone else who downloaded the torrent is still also hosting it. as long as theres one person left on the planet that has it, you can still download it (oversimplified)

Also a note about C&Ds and ISP letters. Me and my family have been pirating content for definitely over a decade at LEAST. We mostly use invite only private trackers (google it, lots of info on reddit specifically) WITHOUT a VPN and also live in canada. All of that combined, we recieved a warning from our ISP once in 15 years(i was seeding cyberpunk 2077)

tldr go download qbittorrent and go to reddit and find private trackers for you to torrent shit from, or public trackers if you have a VPN that supports p2p

[here2bbtstrash]

Miss you❤️

i miss you all so much, my goodness 🥹 shall we do a small life update?

partner moved in! my place was small to begin with so it's definitely a little cramped in here now 🥴 but we have our eyes on getting a bigger place when the lease is up. i'm super happy to have him around all the time, just sleeping in the same bed every night and sharing our meals together brings me so much comfort. it's been really wonderful!!

i turned thirty 😳 and honestly it... hasn't been a big deal at all lmao. i feel so excited to be entering this decade. i think i care a lot less about things that ultimately don't matter than i did in my twenties, and i feel a lot more sure about myself and what's important to me! plus i had a super-fun karaoke party with some of my favorite humans 🥰

i've seen so much kpop this summer, and it's not even over yet!!!! txt, itzy, ive, stray kids, ateez, and we have (g)i-dle, kard, and seventeen still to come before the year is through!! the shows have all been AMAZING, and ofc the best part is having friends come into town and getting to experience it together!! (and yes we did see lolla felix in person and no i have not recovered 😵‍💫)

and for the least-fun update..... health news 😔 after a whole bunch of concerning symptoms that were continuing to worsen over the last year, i sought out a specialist and got some tests run and have been diagnosed with ✨endometriosis✨ - and friends, this shit blows. i am on some new meds that we are hoping will help mitigate symptoms so that i don't have to have surgery (for now!), but the adjustment period has not been even a little bit fun, nor have the swirling unknowns about things like fertility or long-term quality of life. it's something i'm trying to give myself space to process and get adjusted to, bc even as someone with long-term mental health issues and adhd, adjusting to a chronic physical illness is a whole nother fucking ballpark. but i'm hopeful for an improvement with these new meds, and very lucky to have the best support system i could ever ask for - y'all know who you are 🫶

unfortunately, because of all these bullet points but particularly the last one, writing has continued to be at a full standstill. i am really hopeful that the inspiration will come back for me when it's ready, but for now i'm allowing myself to be in a different season of life and feel okay with that! i am still counting down the days til our boys come home (i quite literally am on the verge of tears every time i think about how SOON we will have hobi back MY LOOOOOOVE 😭😭😭) and i cannot wait to see what this next chapter brings, for them and for us!!

i hope you're all doing well, would love to hear your own life updates if you feel like sharing!! MWAH 🤍

[supa-kuwameshi-bros]

Im glad you guys started strong with a Keiko appreciation post and I have a few thoughts on that. There is a lot of clear stuff indicating that Yuske and Keiko are soulmates and its very down-to-earth and oddly mature (aside from the occasional ass poking, but ya'know), so it pains me to say that they're tragically incompatible, on like every level. Values, goals, personality, lifestyle (sort of mitigated in the end of the manga), long term it would be a real struggle. Like, I just dont see it ending well between the two of them, even if Yusuke didn't get his demonic immortality.

BUT I can see Kuwabara as the potential grease in the gears of this relationship if they ever became a throuple. Kuwabara's oddly in both their worlds and really understands each of them. And he's way better at expressing his feelings than either Yusuke or Keiko lol. I need this fic, it would be hella cute.

AYYYYYYYYYY fellow keiko appreciator i see!! ^^ rest assured that there’s nothing but love for keiko on this here blog, at least as far as the folks running this joint go. she goes through SO much, she rlly deserves the world.

hard agree that she and yusuke are extremely incompatible in a romantic sense, as well. their friendship means the world to me but as romantic partners, there’s a severe lack of communication + conflicting interests which would make a romantic relationship crash and burn in the long run i think— a majority of the issues being yusuke’s fault, in my own opinion. bro needed to LOCK IN and yet he just continued to fuck around while keiko put her whole life on hold for him. with all the love in my heart, i am beating him with hammers. BUT I DIGRESS!!

your take about kuwabara being the much needed grease for that relationship’s rusting gears is something i myself have considered on multiple occasions, largely prompted by many many yap sessions with blue anon (who truly would be better suited to reply to your lovely ask, all things considered (^-^;) at least in terms of how well versed we are in this particular topic)

i feel like a large part of yusuke and keiko’s separation stems from their individual relationships with makai, and the spirit detective shenanigans which divided them— and the lovely thing about kuwabara is that he bridges that gap!! as you said, kuwabara is an emotional center that makes up for yusuke and keiko’s individual stubbornness, cuz lord knows keiko’s got a temper of her own. plus ofc that greater understanding that he has inherently, both as an outsider, but ironically, an insider? if that makes sense lol? he understands where yusuke’s coming from seeing as he was IN the dark tournament he was THERE in the weeds with yusuke while all the spirit detective shit was going down, but he also feels keiko’s own pain in many ways. being pushed aside in yusuke’s own fucked up idea of “protecting them.” idk if any of this made sense but know i think you’re very based and im kissing your brain folds as a peasant would his squire’s hand.

SHOULD NOTE ON THE FIC THING: there’s actually a fic being updated rn that i believe has the exact premise you’re looking for!! it’s not finished yet, but it’s showing a LOT of promise and i think you’d rlly get a kick out of it ^^ honestly you may have already read it but HEY spreading the gospel yk? anyway tysm for the ask my brain is expanding you are so based AAA

[celebrityhero]

yeah adhd is cringe now because it's kind of becoming 'overdone' and people on social media talking about it turned it into the disorder that causes every single problem on the planet thus making life basically unlivable. annoying extremely long post under the cut you know how it is

but I feel it is two-pronged as a repetition online because i do think it has effected more parts of my life than i ever realized and being diagnosed with it plus autism did make me feel like i had to come to terms with a lot of things about my life and my behavior that i assumed were not only normal and i was being dramatic about but also so normal and typical that everyone did them and i just had to learn how to stop having problems with it. the second prong is that i think people are kind of using it to wash away possibly all personal responsibility. i hates ta says it but i do think the notion that people with adhd benefit from more discipline is most definitely true. i can do things at my own pace and it is probably better for me to not inflame my pots every fucking day (and pots will improve with exercise & honestly i am eating like shit lately but pots hasn't been too bad bc of it though i imagine it will worsen if i don't improve it soon) but 'my own pace' involves a lot of simple mistakes that i really do just miss and have to let go and forgive myself for that an average person would not have to do.

THAT ALL BEING SAID... i can only remember so many things from my childhood that lead me to believe my adhd diagnosis is 'legit' in the sense that i was just reading an article that illustrated that internet usage is actively depleting our attention spans, giving us 'checking' behaviors, giving us mutlimedia split focus (can't remember if that's the term in the article I wanted to link it after I was done reading it if it held up), like this stuff is a no-brainer it's stuff i noticed happening to myself as a little computer addict eight year old && i was just blogging on allykatzz and playing webkinz but i still felt like something was happening to me mentally and changing how i was thinking and behaving. this is stuff we all have noticed over time too, so i guess my inquiry for the uprising of adhd diagnosed individuals is if your internet usage is plentiful and if reducing it has ever made you less distractable? I Have Found that reduction of usage does not make me less distractable and i seem to be able to entertain myself without a personal entertainment machine. but i also have never reduced internet usage for longer than a week if that. but i do remember things about being a kid that lead me to believe i really do have adhd, how it persisted into teenagerdom is hard to say because as a 'digital native' (another term from the article) i only lived so many years of my life without using a computer a lot lol. i would like to mitigate that too though.

and i think i have gotten better at choosing what i want to do online and also trying to fight the online checking behaviors or even ones like 'omg i can't post xyz online because it's CRINGE!!!!' but i like to type a lot sorry screw me kill me behead me run me over with with your gay little bike i really don't care if it's cringe. i yam what i yam. and i think choosing what i do online is a step towards reducing my contact with online world which is a step towards better discipline that hopefully reduces my adhd symptoms.

because even the age old adhd diagnosis checker of do adhd meds work for you? then yea you probably have it, doesn't really feel Real to me because if the internet is changing our cognition, even able to reduce the gray matter in our brains and things, then who's to say that it isn't also making adhd medication work for people who otherwise did not naturally otherwise qualify for adhd? like to be honest even when i qualified for adhd diagnosis from a therapist & a psychiatrist, i wasn't given extensive testing. they didn't go over my childhood. they didn't bring in my mom to ask about how i was doing or what i was like. it's not standard to inquire about someone's internet usage. i truly think we are getting to a point where we might need to start changing someone's internet habits before we consider evaluating them for anything, but i am not a psychologist nor am i deeply studied in these things, nor do i even have a precursory survey of psychology or anthropology or whatever else one would need to study to Really Understand these things. i just am making observations and i do talk to people irl, i think my internet presence gives the impression i do not do that. but i do! and among my peers and my age group i do think it's a cause for concern that we are addled with distractible qualities. i think getting distracted is normal and i've talked to my mom about our shared webbing thought patterns and i guess i call into question how natural that is for me. would i have ever developed that if i didn't go online?

and for as much as im leaning into confirmation bias for my own self i do remember as a kid being very sure i didn't have adhd, because i knew some kids who did have it and they read to me as stupid--keep in mind i had already developed a maladaptive narcissistic coping mechanism to protect myself, so i tend to chalk that up to that rather than to me finding my peers beneath me in a genuine way. though maybe i did genuienly find those people stupid in a shameful way. i viewed adhd purely thru a lens of ability, and that is real that the things that matter about adhd is how it affects one's abilities, and as a kid i didn't like to think of myself as unable to do things. it was true that i would get bored of reading books even if i liked them, and i would need to jump into some other activity, but a) i was a kid! and b) i liked drawing and writing my own stories way more than i liked engaging with something someone else made (and i was always very sure that i could do what other people did but better, i guess i can't decide if this is a child ego thing or maladaptive narcissism because i have only recently recognized and tried to grow out of this). i liked reading because i liked visualizing, but i would often become distracted and skip ahead, or distracted and begin daydreaming--these are things my mom also said she did. i rarely got in trouble but when i did it was because i was being disruptive because of my quirks like clicking pens or shaking my legs, and there's also the angle of inattentive adhd or adhd in girls being a little more tempered and not as noticable or diagnosable. but while all of those things are true how are we supposed to feel absolute certainty that i definitely have adhd and have had it since i was a kid? how do we know if that wasn't all byproduct of internet addiction or otherwise internet mental erosion?

and i propose the same question to everyone who uses their adhd as this life-changing, shocking, mind-bending deliverance of the good psych world that has persisted, hidden from their self-perception for years of their lives. yes, it can be true, but with how it's utilized in the common consciousness i just call it into question. there are those tweets about how people with adhd can't do anything, annoyance at its permeation throughout the digitalscape verbalized through little posts poking fun at the phrasing of those adhd information posts, which i also think are funny. and i DO concur that a lot of this stuff is cringe and frankly yeah overdone. i do question how is it possible that we all have it? how is it possible we all have a developmental disability? how is it possible that every single person who has this diagnosis, myself included, can not stop bringing it up whenever they make a mistake or lose focus for 5 seconds? it wasn't paramount for a good chunk of our lives so did it really reframe our self-perception that severely? as a kid i thought people with adhd were morons! even if i didn't mean it and i was just being ignorant or narcissistic, i could have never imagined myself as being just like them. they were loud, obnoxious, had no control over their actions it seemed like--and we can kindly ignore that i had similar experiences that i was not self aware about for a long while, just for the sake of argument. as much as i think that it makes sense why this surge happens and why the annoying 'omg sorry i have adhd' 'btw i have adhd' 'as someone who struggles with adhd...' seems to be the case for every single diagnosed person for not no reason, i do agree with the general perception that it all seems a touch overblown. oh, i don't know, it's just a little too convenient that every single thing is just too difficult for those with adhd. the poor dears.