#{i'd rather leave them in but they are... very triggering to some people}

[soaringwide]

PAC: How to overcome your fears regarding relationships?

Hey :p

Here is a new love pick a card about a topic I've personally been struggling with recently, so I really wanted to dive into it.

The goal of today's reading is to look at what fears you're dealing with in matters of relationships; fears that might manifest as blockages or obstacles in your love life; and how to overcome them.

As always, this reading is meant for multiple people and there are only three piles, so take what resonates and leave out the rest. It can help focusing on your issue or a specific relationship while selecting the pile.

I offer paid readings as well, don't hesitate to reach out to me in DMs.

Ko-fi ★ book a reading ★ pinned post ★ instagram

PILE 1

Cards: 3 of Swords, 9 of Pentacles, King of Wands, Queen of Wands, Slow Down, King of Pentacles, Manic, Queen of Swords, King of Cups, Queen of Cups, 2 of Pentacles, 5 of Pentacles, the World, 7 of Wands, the Magician, the Emperor

Your fears surrounding relationship have to do with heartbreak and loss. It seems you've had your heart wounded deeply in the past. The pain was intense and it took you so long to sooth it, and you had to use all your resources to revive yourself from this state. You had to learn to be independent and flourish for your own sake, to tend to your own inner garden and make a life beautiful and enjoyable for yourself. So you not only are scared to get your heart broken again, but also to lose your individuality and the peace you built for yourself. I think you are attracted to people like you, strong individuals with ambition and passion, but you're scared it's going to get in the way of your own path and vision and lead you apart, breaking your heart once more. I believe you overthink quite a lot and expect things to go wrong before they even do.

These fears are rooted in your relentless mind, forever going full speed from one extreme to the other, in a frenetic quest for meaning and movement. It seems you have trouble feeling satisfied by anything for long because you're always looking at the next adventure, the next prize, the next achievement. It's not that you're ungrateful or anything, but rather, that you are scared you're going to be left with nothing if you stop trying to fix what's wrong in your life. You keep looking for problem to solve, perhaps due to your triggered survival instinct, and it's hard for you to stop and appreciate what you have. So the root of your fears is in your own mind, in the pathways you built years after years and that you solidified. It seems you have a hard time finding your balance, go with the flow and stay in the appreciation of the present.

These fears manifest in relationships by a hard grip on your feelings by your mind. See, your feelings are strong and run deep, and they can get overwhelming very easily. As a result, you react by dissecting them like some freaky science experiment and try to break everything down to understand them, but also to keep them under the control of your logic. It's kind of a toxic pattern, an abusive move from yourself towards yourself. Your words can be harsh and hot tempered because you feel hurt easily and can blow things out of proportions fast. You're so scared of losing your agency and getting hurt that it makes you hyper aware of every little blow at your heart and you go to war a bit too easily. I'd also say that paradoxically, you have a hard time being honest about your feelings and communicating them in a gentle and open way. You may even wait till things become unbearably painful before saying anything, instead of acting earlier when the need arose the first time. You struggle with the idea of vulnerability a lot and perhaps your way around that is to wait till it feels like it's the other person's fault for hurting you instead of your own inability to express yourself authentically.

For what external influences play a part here, I'd say first that you have a strong personal sense of what you need from life and relationships, but that you doubt yourself a lot. You keep comparing yourself to what others have, or what society expects and this is making you feel depleted and resource-less. It's like, people say one thing, and you know it's wrong, but for some reason you keep entertaining the idea even though you know it's rotten and useless for you. In addition, you also feel pressed by time, as if you felt you were following some type of transcending schedule you had to abide by, and if you are late or out of sync, then that means you are failing and it's causing your fears to intensify. This is making your fears worse because these expectations weight on your mind and make you feel broken and worsen you destructive patterns.

For how to overcome your fears, your first need to let go of the struggle mindset. No, life is not out there to get you and you aren't going to lose everything if you dare opening up to love. You are too defensive of your heart and too combative in your approach. You need to replace that mindset by bringing all elements of yourself in harmony. Your mind shouldn't fight your emotions, your passion shouldn't clash with the respect of your boundaries. What I'm trying to say is to take a look at what you're over-doing and what you're neglecting, and bring some balance within yourself. You must also bring clarity in your mind about what it is you want and hold the vision, knowing that you will find what you need when the right opportunity arises. Also, don't hesitate to advocate your your needs and wants. Not like a tyrant, but like someone who knows themselves and know what's best for them, and go after whom they desire without fear. Yes, the battles of the heart are scary and it can be hard to go for what you want due to the fear of loss and pain, but you need to make a conscious decision to not only open up, but also let the other person know where you stand. Trust in your magic, your skills and power, you have everything that you need to succeed.

PILE 2

Cards: 4 of Swords, the Magician, the Star, Inner Awareness, Let Go rx, Queen of Pentacles, the Fool, 5 of Swords, 10 of Cups, Jealousy rx, Optimism, Queen of Cups, Page of Wands, 3 of Pentacles, Death

Your fears regarding relationship come up as fearing your hopes and dreams won't manifest. You are a romantic, a dreamer who has a beautiful and idealistic idea of what love can and should be, but you're struggling to find it. You may currently be in a state of isolation and afraid of it will never end, and that you'll be missing out on the joys of love. You are highly in tune with your higher desires, have a strong faith in the vision you have for the relationship you dream of, however, you're also highly scared that this will not become a reality, because you worry you do not have what it takes to reach your dream. I'd also say you're painfully aware of you own flaws and issues, and you worry you won't be accepted as you are.

The root cause of these fears shows up as a struggle to let go of your need to control and predict when the situation would require to simply take a step forward and embark on an adventure without worrying about the future. You may have been neglecting your love life for a while before this moment, not leaving enough space for relationships to bloom, because you perceived it as a treat for your well being at the time, which might simply mean that you hadn't met the right person or at the right time, and I think it shows up here because these disappointments made you very wary and careful about love and it's holding you back presently.

These fears manifest in your relationships by placing too high of an expectation from the get go on them. This gap between reality and dream is putting pressure on the relationship and on yourself. You may see the relationship as failing and struggling to communicate because you feel so vindicated. You might know that your approach is not working, but failing to understand why, and thinking things were not meant to be as a result, circling back on this idea of fated and perfect love. You may also compare the relationship to the ideal in your mind excessively, which is creating even more tension, anger and frustration, because it doesn't match your ideal.

For the external influences, it seems your current mindset was shaped by an environment that didn't encourage honest and authentic communication of your emotions, needs and desires. Paradoxically, you were told to always remain optimistic and hopeful, that things would always work out without effort, but without giving you the keys to how to work towards that in reality. It's as if it fed into your dreamy nature without allowing you to understand how to build the bridge between dream and reality. You didn't learn the power of your actions and how to take accountability for them, which is again feeding this imbalance between your inner world and the reality of a lived relationship. Also, circling back on the fear of not being accepted I highlighted in the first paragraph, this is also linked to your lack of skills in communication, because you expect people to understand you without having to express yourself, which is unfair to them.

For how to overcome these fears, the cards point at a few things. First, we're being led back to this idea of embarking on an adventure, with passion and confidence, and stepping out of your comfort zone. You must learn that the way you are approaching things is not working and need a deep transformation. You must learn from the mistakes of your past and start anew. Look at the future with hope but take actions toward what you desire. Also, keep in mind this idea that building a relationship requires team work and constant effort, and that things will not always be perfect and dreamy. Some days will be hard, but it doesn't mean they will never be sweet. Be open minded and enthusiastic and learn not to draw hasty conclusions on the relationship or on your person.

PILE 3

Cards: 3 of Pentacles, Page of Pentacles, 10 of Wands, Joy rx, 10 of Pentacles, 10 of Swords, 7 of Pentacles, King of Wands rx, King of Pentacles, Ace of Pentacles, 2 of Cups, 8 of Wands, Forgive rx, Intuition rx, 4 of Pentacles, the Hermit, Knight of Cups

Okay so heads up, this file feels a bit like the results of your own doing.

Your fears regarding relationships have to do with the idea of being burdened with responsibilities and losing access to the usual ways you find joy in life. I'm getting strong fear of commitment. That a committed relationship could get in the way of your present social life, friends and party habits. I see you quite mesmerized by what looks like glitter, as in, what seems attractive and exciting in the moment, which makes you ignore everything else that is around it because you're so fixated on what's in front of you. Basically, it seems like a lot of work and sacrifices for a reward that seems unsure and unsatisfying, and you fear that.

This is all rooted in what seems to be a fear of endings, as in, you fear closing a chapter of your life, both because of the pain of closing such chapter will cause (grief for a time of your life that is gone), as well as for the loss of the pleasures that come with it. You also fear things slowing down and being out of your hands, that your happiness won't depend from your own will only anymore and that you would have to work for it with someone. However, you of course don't see that behind every ending is a new beginning, and that things might not be as clear cut and as desperate and you imagine them to be. It's a bit over dramatic I feel.

This manifest in relationship by a bit of a toxicity if I'm completely honest. The cards point at rigidity and stubbornness as well as pent up anger and passive aggressiveness towards your partner. You might get fed up of them easily, because you feel restricted in your freedom. There is an inability to look past your own trauma and you're pushing its patterns onto your partner instead of addressing them directly. You end up hurting the both of you on the process.

For the external influences, I feel like there may be a connection that is triggering all these wounds for you here. Perhaps someone you were not expecting, someone who wish to come into union with you, to communicate freely and to make you a solid romantic offer. You sense that and it's making you spiral. This connection is putting pressure on you by asking you to make amends with the way you act and to own up to your bullshit (sorry). It may also trigger your intuition that is trying to tell you something, which you are refusing to listen to.

How to overcome these challenges then? The cards point at a need for a deep, thoughtful introspective journey, which will lead you to let go of your resistance to change. You're currently holding everything in, and I'm getting the image of a dam that is about to break down, little cracks growing and growing, and you're trying to cover them with your hands, but it's a losing battle. You need to learn to come forward, be vulnerable and authentic with your feelings and move towards what calls your heart without negating your deeper feelings and intuition. Make amends to you heart and pay attention to its whispers.

[nitewrighter]

Hi, I’m studying to get my associates in library tech with the goal of becoming a children’s librarian. Is there anything that you wish you knew before becoming a librarian?

Well it's tough to say for sure because I had been working as a library assistant for a long time before I got my master's, so I actually did have a lot of 'on the ground' experience in libraries, albeit in a very immediate, lower-skilled customer service sense.

I would say, on a "librarian as a whole" level, try to get as much hands-on experience in programming development and assisting with programming as you can--a major part of advancing your career as a librarian (at least as a public librarian) is being able to plan and implement programming, and also evaluate the success of that programming, and while I got a lot of experience with that in theory in Library school, it wasn't something I really bothered with as a library assistant because I felt too intimidated by it and I felt it "wasn't my place"--even though it's absolutely something I'd have to do as a librarian. And it's something they ask you about at EVERY interview for Librarian positions! If I could go back in time, I'd go back to 2018 and thwack myself with a newspaper to tell me to elbow my way into more programming development--because there ARE openings for it! Libraries ARE always looking for fresh ideas for programming, and one day, I WILL get my Makerspace Cosplay Workshop For Teens idea launched, goddammit!!

On a more "Children's Librarian Specific" level, I realize I talk a lot on this blog about like... the basic thesis that Children Are Indeed People. And I realize in that last ask I got that I was complaining a lot about parents basically using library space as a space to shut down and recover--often at the expense of the space, or sometimes even at the risk of their children. But I do think in terms of like... practicality, respect, and humility, that you as a librarian have to acknowledge that these parents are caring for their kids 24/7 and a lot of the time, for all your dreams of "Youth Liberation!!!" they will, generally, know their kids' triggers and patterns of behavior better than you, Cool Youth Liberator Librarian, ever will. I'm gonna use an example I call the "Give a Mouse a Cookie" story:

So we have coloring sheets and crayons at our children's desk, right? And this little girl comes up to the desk asking for a coloring sheet and I'm like, "oh, okay, we have a puppy coloring sheet?" and she's like, "No, I want the kitty." And her parents are going, "Sweetie, just get the puppy, we need to leave," and I'm like, "Oh, I can just print out some kitty coloring sheets. It's not a big deal. It looks like we're running low anyways." So I print out a bunch of kitty coloring sheets, hand her the first warm-out-of-the-printer kitty, and she starts melting down, because it wasn't just a kitty coloring sheet she wanted, it was a Unicorn Kitty Coloring sheet (except she's like 4 or 5 so it's not really fair to act like she could articulate that), and this is where the story gets stupid, because I'm like, "Oh. Here." and I draw a unicorn horn on the kitty--and like, I need you to understand that this is me going off of babysitting experience where I'm used to little kids being psyched at me drawing something especially for them. And this would provide an immediate 15 second solution rather than however long it would take me to track down the unicorn kitty coloring sheet she wanted through our coloring sheet database and then send that to the printer. And like, I know how to draw a horn so that it meshes decently enough with the coloring sheet's art style. LIKE IT MESHED WITH THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CAT'S HEAD. But still, the meltdown intensifies because that's not the unicorn cat that other kids were coloring. How dare I slap a horn on this regular-ass cat and try to tell her it's a unicorn cat?!?!? So finally her parents just go, "She needs a nap" and drag her off. I told this story to my brother and he went, "Oh yeah. You gave a mouse a cookie."

Like, yeah, there is something very rewarding in validating a kid's desires and meeting their needs just like you would any adult patron. I love that little flare of 'Yes! I did the thing! I asked the lady where the InvestiGators books were, and she showed me!" I love seeing kids light up when you take them to the nonfiction section they ask for and then you help them leaf through it for the right book for their desired content and reading level, but also... sometimes it's not about the unicorn kitty, and you have to be able to trust when the parents are picking up on that and be able to put up a united front. It's kind of like when you start getting caught up in your own anger, and you have to ask yourself, "Am I letting this burn out, or am I adding oxygen to the fire?" There is so much going on under the hood with kids! So much is happening! Developing brains and very little experience are a helluva drug! You do want to fight for and encourage the kid's agency and value when you can, but also they're part of a family! And families have their own unique dynamics and needs! Growing up and having to negotiate your wants and needs with everyone around you is a trauma in and of itself!

[givrally]

You can't say "Everything humans make is art" right after a whole tirade about how AI isn't art.

Hi op here

I CAN actually.

The machine made to make "AI" is art. Its engineering+programming. Which are crafts and a highly difficult ones.

What that machine makes however is NOT art. Its not even true artificial intelligence. Its just a bunch of stolen work cut up and pieced back together using complicated programming. What is produced is not art. What made it however is. Its a feat of accomplishment that we can get a machine to do that kind of stuff

But what it makes is not art.

Feel like @snitchanon would have a field day with all this.

So Photoshop itself is art, but works done in photoshop aren't art ? It's engineering and programming, but what it makes is not art. It's just clicking buttons and dragging the mouse until you get what you want.

As for true AI, yeah, I actually agree with you in no small part. What we call "AI" right now is nowhere close to having any kind of intelligence, we're basically making a very complicated math function with many parameters and tweaking it until it spits out the right output. There's very little explainability (it's a black box for the most part, we don't know what goes on inside or why this particular input), and every year there's a paper titled something like "We Fucked Up : How we evaluate [field of deep learning] is flawed and gives the illusion of progress".

As for the ethical issues with using stolen works, yeah, I'm completely with you, that's a dealbreaker for me, and unlearning (=getting from a model trained on a dataset to a model trained on a dataset w/o some data, without having to retrain everything, but being 100% sure the excluded data doesn't leave a single trace) is too new as a subject of research to even be usable for the next few years, so for me, AI Art generators are a big no-no.

(Also, the online ones take as much of your personal data as they can, so I'd avoid those like the plague)

HOWEVER, what "AI" image generation does isn't to cut up stolen work and put it back together, that's a myth. I don't know how this started but I've heard that said like three or four times already, it's way too specific a definition to have evolved independently so there must be a Youtuber out there to blame.

It's like saying Photoshop just takes pixels from stolen works and weaves them in the right order to make a new image. That's technically true, but it's a stupid definition that gives Photoshop way more credit than it's due. Likewise, AI image generators don't look through a database to find the right image, cut out the part they like, and add it to their final product. Otherwise, why do you think AI art would have all those problems with hands, buildings, etc... ? There can't be that many people out there drawing weird 7 fingered hands, I know some people have trouble drawing hands but not to that extent.

What they do instead (or rather what they did, because I don't know enough about the newest diffusion models to explain them in an intuitive way), is deconvolutions, basically "reversing" the operation (convolutions) that takes in a grid of numbers (image) and reduces it to a small list of numbers. With deconvolutions, you give it a small list of numbers, at random, and it slowly unravels that into an image. Without tweaking the thousands or millions of parameters, you're gonna end up with random noise as an image.

To "train" those, what you do is you pair it with another "AI", called a discriminator, that will do convolutions instead to try and guess whether the image is real or made by the generator. The generator will learn to fool the discriminator and the discriminator will try to find the flaws in the generator.

Think Youtube vs AdBlock. Adblockers are the discriminator and Youtube is the generator. Youtube puts out new ads and pop-ups that don't trigger ad blockers, and ad blockers in return fix those flaws and block the ads. After a month of fighting, it turns out ad blockers have become so good that other websites have a lot of trouble getting ads past them. You've "trained" ad blockers.

The most important thing to note is that the training data isn't kept in storage by the models, both in the adblock example and in AI image generators. It doesn't pick and choose parts to use, it's just that the millions of tiny parameters were modified thanks to the training data. You can sometimes see parts of the training data shine through, though. That's called overfitting, and it's very bad !

In the middle, the model won't remember every O and X out there. It drew a curve that roughly separates the two, and depending on where a new point falls compared to that curve, it can guess if it's an O or an X without having access to the original data. However, in the example on the right, even if you remove all the O and X marks, you can still make out the individual points and guess that those holes mean an X was in there. The model cannot generalize past what it's seen, and if there's ten thousand variables instead of just two, that means you could change a single one slightly and get nonsense results. The model simply hasn't learned correctly. For image generation, that means parts of the training data can sometimes shine through, which is probably how the "cut up and piece back stolen images" myth came to be.

The reason I don't like to use AI image generators is twofold : 1. Right now, all the models out there have or are likely to have seen stolen data in their training dataset. In the state of AI right now, I really don't believe any model out there is free of overfitting, so parts of that will shine through. 2. Even if there's no overfitting, I don't think it's very ethical at all. (And 3. the quality just isn't there and I'd rather commission an artist)

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean I agree with you guys' new luddite movement. "Everything humans make is art except when they use AI" is not a good argument, just like "It's not art because you didn't move the pixels yourself" or "AI cuts up and pieces back stolen images". The first two give "I piss in Duchamp's fountain uncritically" vibes, and the last one gives "Don Quixote fighting windmills" vibes.

[daydream-cement]

Hiii! I know you’re not taking requests right now so this is for whenever you have the time ! (Or even if you want to:) ) but I absolutely loved the Weems x student reader platonic fluff so much! Would you consider writing one surrounding a student who came out to their parents during parent weekend, it didn’t go well and their parents caused a scene? And then just some protective/mama bear Larissa would be so cute ! Have a great day/night!

Momma Bear

Characters: Larissa Weems x student!reader

Authors Note: This fic may be triggering for LGBTQ readers. I wanted to filter out some of the more painful elements, so everyone feels safe reading.

Your parents voices rung around in your head as you stared at the floor. You mother specifically had begun yelling, causing the whole quad to go quiet, listening in on her harsh words. Parent's Weekend had been going so well, you thought it would have been the perfect time to come out to them. Your time at Nevermore had brought you so many new supportive friendships that you felt like you could finally be yourself.

Your parents has caused you so much embarrassment in that moment with their behavior, but you were astonished when Principal Weems stepped in. Literally, she stepped between you and your parents, shielding you with her tall form.

"Mr. and Mrs. L/n, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Principal Weems offered a diplomatic smile, but like with most people, your parents found it hard to argue with her, "I prefer not to have people making a scene in my courtyard. Your child has been a wonderful student here and I'd rather not have their progress backtracked due to your unscrupulousness."

Your mothers mouth gaped and your fathers look soured. They were absolutely furious that your Principal was speaking to them like this with such a bright smile on her face.

"Once again, I believe your Parent's Weekend is over. I'm sure Coach Vlad can see you out." Larissa held up a hand, inviting Coach Vlad to come stand next to her. His serious demeanor the exact opposite of Larissa.

Principal Weems turned around to face you, her smile was softer when she looked down at you, "Let's go for a walk, y/n."

You nod, eyes staring down at Weems' high heels.

-----

Principal Weems and you sat side by side in the gardens on a bench. You carefully glanced up at your principal, she was looking around the gardens, allowing a silence to grow between the two of you. Probably waiting for you to talk to her first.

"I tried coming out to them." You explain the reason for your parents yelling, "They... They didn't take it well."

"Mhmm..."

Your principal wasn't all that comforting you thought to yourself. Principal Weems seems nice enough, but she always seemed so serious.

"You know... My mother wasn't too happy when I came out to her either..." Principal Weems drew your attention in, making you feel better knowing she had experienced something similar, "I ended up finding a different 'mom' of sorts..."

Principal Weems looked down at you, her head tilted, "Sometimes the people we are born to aren't our real family. Nevermore... This is my family. You are apart of our Nevermore family too."

You felt tears began to pool in your eyes, but you really didn't want to cry in front of Principal Weems. Gently you lean your head into her arm, hiding your face in her sleeve.

Principal Weems pulled you into a hug. Your head rested against her shoulder and Weems' arms hugged you tight. She continued to speak to you, "As your mom, I'm telling you that I'm so very proud of you for sharing all of yourself with us. You are so incredible. You have come so far since coming to Nevermore."

She placed her hands on your shoulders, drawing you away so she could look into your eyes, "Now I want you to go back to the festivities. I've been told they will be serving dessert soon and I don't want you to miss that."

With that final statement, you went back in for another hug, squeezing Principal Weems a little tighter this time. You even felt Principal Weems press a kiss to your temple.

"Thank you, Principal Weems..." You murmur against her jacket.

"Anything for one of my babies..."

[indelicateink]

Please cheer on these in-progress claimed prompts on the IWTV anonymous kink meme!

anonymous authors out there, you have our attention.

there's no way to notify claimants that we're cheering them on, but: if any of the rest of us want to give a shout out to a prompt you're anxious to see, you're welcome to comment on this post or reblog with a comment; maybe it'll be seen.

thank you to @vampire-dove for maintaining our kink meme.

(If you fall in love, note that prompts can be claimed more than once!) some prompts are truncated here for space, but click here to read more

There's so much love out there I had to split this into two posts. Post 1/2 of prompts that have a pending claim:

Nicolas de Lenfent/Lestat de Lioncourt "I would love to see a first time between Nicki and Lestat. Maybe it's their time in general or the first time after Nicki is turned. (Maybe even some canon divergent reunion sex?) I'd just like it to be very fluffy, those men deserve to be in love. (Bonus points for laughing/giggling/joking around during)"

--

Daniel Molloy/Louis de Pointe du Lac "What if Daniel took Louis up on his offer while Armand was out to lunch? "Armand comes back to find the two of them either fucking or having just done so. Jealous!Armand so very welcome and perhaps he wants to join in or hear about the encounter in detail? Author’s choice!"

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac "Lestat cajoles Louis into hooking up at the Azalea, and Louis gets hot and bothered imagining Lestat as one of his sex workers. "This can just be something Louis thinks about privately while he fucks Lestat or it can be a full on roleplay Lestat ropes him into. Either way Louis is embarrassingly and shamefully turned on by it, and if Lestat is aware then he obviously is too."

--

"Daniel meets Claudia in the present day and is caught between being starstruck and horrified. (An AU where Claudia is a ghost that only certain people can see.)"

--

Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac "Something triggers a flashback during a particularly rough BDSM session, and Armand's mind regresses back to when he was in the brothel. He is confused but too scared to say anything to stop the scene, and Louis realizes this much too late. He attempts aftercare, but Armand/Arun is too scared of him for it to be helpful." […]

--

Armand/Lestat de Lioncourt "Lestat hears through the grapevine (Louis? Daniel? The internet or someone else entirely?) that Armand is getting over/moving past his love for Lestat. Lestat refuses to accept this, and decides his solution is to give Armand what he’s always wanted, and show him why exactly, Lestat is his type, through and through." […]

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac "Louis is firm: he doesn't want to get back together with Lestat. Not in this century, at least. "Doesn't mean the sex isn't great. "Four times Louis dropped in on Lestat's tour to hit it and quit it. "Four managers who got fired for pointing out Lestat's mood swings post-visit were going to ruin the tour."

--

Armand/Daniel Molloy "Daniel's on an important phone call and Armand decides that instead of leaving his boy be, he goes up behind Daniel and starts trying to distract/fluster him by nibbling on Daniel's neck, unbuttoning Daniel's shirt, slowly sliding his hands over Daniel's body, with this going on and on until Daniel finally snaps, hangs the phone up on whoever he's talking to and wild vampire sex ensues."

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac "He's full of contempt for the process, but Lestat doesn't hold back on telling his story. To Louis's annoyance, Daniel sends him uncut parts of the more incendiary interview sessions as the weeks go by. "Four times Louis almost picked up the phone, and one time he did call Lestat."

--

Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac "Dubai Era, Pre-/Intra-Interview: It’s been a bad night. So now, ankles deep in his rock garden, Louis watches as Armand cuts his own switch from their magnolia tree. They both would rather burn the tower to the ground, with themselves and Rashid in it, than let their husband get in the last word." […]

--

Claudia/Madeleine "Modern-day mafia assassin AU. "Claudia averts her eyes from the rising sun as she tosses her gun into the river. She's decided. This was the last one. She's getting out of the life. She's going to run--travel--starting with some small, bright Caribbean island for a few weeks. "She doesn't have any ties to hold her back: if her dads haven't been able to get their shit together for 30 years, it's clear she isn't going to make a difference. "But first: the dry cleaners opens in an hour. After three years of increasing sexual tension and expertly removed damning bloodstains, she's finally going to shoot her shot with Madeleine Eparvier."

--

Armand/Daniel Molloy/Louis de Pointe du Lac "They're adapting Interview With the Vampire for film, and Daniel is producing it. He wants to bring Armand and Louis on as consultants, since they have firsthand experience of the story. Armand and Louis interact with Daniel, as well as each other, and their interactions bring up some feelings from the past, as well as some that are new."

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac "Louis and Lestat tentatively re-establish a connection with each other over Facetime while Lestat's on tour. "Louis is used to seeing Lestat in early 20th century clothing. He can admit to himself he likes Lestat's new slutty rockstar look. "Lestat can tell. And the clothing budget is starting to get out of hand."

--

Armand/Daniel Molloy "You know how best friends don’t have any boundaries? Well, Louis and Daniel are chatting shit, which leads to talking about their sex lives, which leads to Louis offering tips on how to deal with Armand, which leads to Daniel revealing that out of the two of them, Armand very much likes to take charge in the bedroom. None of that Maitre shit with them"

--

Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac Corporal Punishment, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Accidental Voyeurism […] "Claudia is absolutely mortified to return home and overhear her father scolding and spanking her beloved coven master. Worse still is the fact she has to come in afterwards and pretend she hasn't heard a single thing, and isn't suspicious of any of the possible impromptu implements left out."

--

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Internalized Homophobia, Blindfolds, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Getting Together "AU of pilot episode: through the course of courting period Louis' shame grows along his feelings for Lestat. The more he wants him, the guiltier he feels. But, no matter what he does, his desires won't go away, so he stuck in permanent state of horny frustration, which starts to show outwardly: his mind wanders during his conversations with Lestat, daydreaming about his hands and mouth." […]

--

Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac "I think it’s time someone fucked Armand against the Marius painting until he comes all over it"

--

Armand/Daniel Molloy "Armand absolutely does not covet a copy of Lestat's numbered special limited edition double album--gatefold with the silver foil alternate cover and colored vinyl. And he doesn't wish he had one of the exclusive Indianapolis concert tees with the set list printed on the back in glow-in-the-dark ink. Why would he want an actual Vampire Lestat guitar pick. Who cares about the already-out-of-print Long Face Japan cassette single. A signed copy of the Vampire Lestat tour concert program book would be intellectually interesting, but it's not like Armand actually wants such a thing--that would be silly. "Interviewing your situationship's obsession on tour has its perks. "A courtship in five merch items."

--

Armand/Lestat de Lioncourt "after talking armand into attending a function at the theatre of vampires, lestat insists on dressing armand in some of his nice clothes for the occasion, but a bath must come first. they've shared blood but this is the first time they have sex."

[notoneopinion]

10 Ways I Soothe Anxiety

Hello. I have anxiety.

I have anxiety, but I have also managed to somehow keep a pretty good life for myself through it all. Getting out of bed when you have a paralysing fear of the world is not an easy task, but there are a few things I have found that make it that little bit easier, life that little bit smoother. And because we certainly don't gatekeep here, I thought I'd share the ten main ways I soothe anxiety. Basically, ten things I do to switch off and remove myself from my brain.

1. Turn your phone off.

An obvious one, but probably one of the most important. It's insane how clogged a person's brain will get when they spend their day glued to a phone screen. For me, it's not even just social media that sets me off, though that is a massive trigger for me and many other people; it's the phone in general. I could be playing Angry Birds for twenty-four hours and still finish the day feeling gross and anxious and guilty. The screen itself just makes me feel groggy, which in turn leaves me feeling anxious by the time I'm getting into bed that night. There are some days I will wake up, and just turn my phone off completely - usually days when I know I'm going to be at home all day, but still. That extended break from screen time is a life saver.

2. Fidget toys.

Okay, so I may also have autism.

But!!!! Fidget toys are miracle workers for all kinds of mental illnesses and uncomfortable feelings, so don't think you can't invest in some just because you're not on the spectrum. Fidget toys are literally made to soothe anxiety, so get yourself some!! I have one called a Tangle that I keep on me at all times, and I just mess with it in my pocket when I'm in a social situation and I don't know what to do with my hands, or I start feeling a little overwhelmed. It brings my fight or flight right down. I don't know the science behind it, but I honestly don't even care. Give me fidget toys, or give me death.

3. Model making, eg Legos, 3D puzzles.

Legos and 3D puzzles are another thing that has changed the game for me when it comes to anxiety. Like fidget toys, they are the perfect way to keep your hands busy, but they have the added bonus of keeping your mind busy, too. These are, of course, more of a relaxation technique, something you come home to after a stressful day rather than something to eliminate anxiety on the spot, but we'll take what we can get. These also keep you relaxed and distracted for hours, because there is hours worth of work to be put into them. Plus, they're very addictive - once you start on a Lego set, or a puzzle, you don't want to stop until it's finished. I've sat for eleven hours straight doing a Lego set just because I wanted to see the finished product as soon as possible, and during those eleven hours, my anxiety was non-existent. I was just enjoying myself the entire time.

4. Have a nap.

Very self explanatory, and yet controversial???

But genuinely, just go to sleep??? If you're having a gruesome day, and your mind is bullying you, and you're exhausted, just lay down and go to sleep. Fuck what other people say. There is nothing wrong with clocking out from the horrors of the real world for a few hours. As long as you get back up, all refreshed and ready to tackle another day, who cares??

5. Talk to a loved one.

I am very blessed that I can put this on the list. I know this can be a very difficult coping mechanism for a lot of people - trust me, I know. Growing up, my anxiety was my own, and not once did it ever occur to me to share that problem with anyone else. However, after meeting the right people, and understanding that nobody is going to be annoyed about hearing my problems, talking to people became one of the best and most useful coping mechanisms I've got. It can be as simple as sending your best friend a text telling them how you're feeling, or you can go all out and sit your Mum down with a cup of tea and bawl your eyes out. Getting those feelings out will give you a physical relief as well as a mental relief; the weight you've been carrying, a weight you probably don't even notice any more, will be gone in a matter of minutes. I promise you.

6. Exercise.

I know. I was shocked too. All those scientists that told us exercise and moving your body is good for your mental health were right. Bastards.

Just go on a walk. That's what I mean when I say 'exercise.' If you want to go to the gym and lift weights, or run a marathon, you go right ahead. More power to you. But by 'exercise' I just mean. . . move your body. Take the dog on a walk! Walk to the shop instead of driving! Get a bike! The tiniest bit of movement in a day can do wonders, whether we want to admit it or not.

7. Blast happy, sing-in-the-car music.

There's a playlist of Spotify that I highly recommend when it comes to wanting to escape reality and just have a good time. It's literally called Songs to Sing in the Car, and it's one of those playlists Spotify make themselves, just full of songs that you can sing at the top of your lungs, or blast through your headphones, and just have a real good time for a little while. I know it's easy sometimes to just go straight to that playlist full of sad songs that you can relate to in that moment, but try and go for a different approach - go find old bangers that you used to jump around to as a kid. It's a breath of fresh air.

8. Do chores.

Two in one baby!

A good chunk of the time, our anxiety is stemming from our to-do list, even if we're not thinking about it. All around us is evidence of all the unfinished tasks we've got to do, and that can really stress you out. Personally, whenever I'm anxious, I become almost camotose; I will just sit on the sofa and stare at the wall, feeling everything all at once. However, I've found that using this time to do little tasks around the house actually makes me feel better. I'm not saying I go and do a full massive clean; I might push myself just a bit to wash one or two dishes, or the whole sink if I can manage it. I'll hoover the living room floor. I'll go upstairs and put my clothes away. Just tiny jobs, only as much as I can push myself to do. A lot of the time, one job turns into two, and then two turns to three, and soon my house is spotless, and you know what they say - clean space, clear mind!

9. Take up knitting/ crocheting.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I only discovered this as a coping mechanism when I was suffering from really bad insomnia and I couldn't sleep; I somehow found myself watching YouTube tutorials on knitting, and I was overcome with this intense urge to learn. It was literally one in the morning, and I drove to my Mum's house (dragged my fiance out of bed to come with me, too, sorry babe <3) and grabbed knitting needles and some yarn. I was up knitting for about an hour, and I felt so relaxed that I actually managed to go to sleep! For the first time in days! So not only can you make really cute clothes and nick-nacks and learn a new skill, you're also relaxing that anxious brain of yours for a little bit.

10. Have a good cry.

Yeah. Just this.

[heyidkyay]

Havin' to be human |

As it's October and Halloween is by far one of my favourite holidays, I thought I'd write something a little different than usual! This is another Matty fic, not sure how long it'll be but if it's well liked I'll post a second part? Happy October, hope you enjoy it:)

Summary: There's a fine line between the living and the dead. I realised that at a very young age and still have yet to escape it- even after forcing myself to move miles away from home. It seems that you can't escape much though in Wilmslow either, not the dead, not overly-involved flatmates, and certainly not the curly haired lad that stands hanging about in cafe's. But when have things ever been easy for me?

“Would you like another biscuit, deary?”

I glance up from my slight daze and draw my eyes away from the staircase sat just outside the living room door to meet the older woman’s weary smile. I’m fine with the six she’s already handed me but I can’t find it in myself to deny her, so I just nod minutely and give her another quiet thank you.

“Sorry about all this, I’m sure he’ll be in any second now.” The woman, Mrs O’Donald, tells me, still fiddling with the biscuit tin. It's one of those metal ones you usually find in old people’s houses, full to the brim with either shortbread or sewing needles. Always one or the other.

“It’s no worry. I don’t mind waiting, I’ve nowhere else to be.” I assure her but she just nods quickly and then starts rearranging the table for the seventh time. I leave her to it, knowing it must bring her some sense of comfort. She seems the type, the many figurines littering the shelves are all in perfect position and the cushions on the sofa look practically untouched.

But while she does that, my gaze ultimately drags its way back over to the doorway, to the bottom step of the staircase where I can still see a tiny hand gripping the banister bar, the rest of the body hidden behind the living room door’s wooden frame. It's eery but I can't keep myself from looking.

I cough lightly after a moment and rest my teacup back on the coffee table, making sure to use one of the many coasters offered, “If you don’t mind me asking, Mrs O’Donald-”

“Rosie, please.” 

With a polite smile, I nod. “Rosie.” I correct myself and don’t pay attention to the light tremors in her right hand as she refills my cup once more, I say nothing about it. “I was just going to ask if you had any more children, other than Andrew, of course.”

I’m a little startled then by the way her entire demeanour seems to shift then, as though my question has triggered something deep within her. Gone are the faint tremors and stuttering pleasantries, she’s now sat deathly still, the fidgeting and the strained smile she’s worn since the moment I’d arrived have vanished.

“Just one other.” Mrs O’Donald, or rather Rosie, answers me, her eyes caught on the fireplace mantle now, where a plethora of neatly arranged photo frames crowd together, all of them silver and very detailed. 

“Oh,” I reply quietly in return, deciding now to tread with a little caution after having witnessed her previous response, “Are there many years between them?”

The older woman seems to swallow then, her throat bobs and her thin lips tighten, before her eyes dart back to me. I try not to outwardly react, not to still under their sudden scrutiny, their coldness.

“Why? Who told you to ask that?” She immediately quizzes me, hunching further in her armchair now that it takes a great strength in me to keep from cowering back in my own.

“No one.” I hurry to reassure her, and I can hear the tight pitch of my voice, how bewildered I sound. “No one, Mrs O’Donald. I just, I just wanted to know a little more about Andrew. That's all.”

Mrs O’Donald nods then at my lie, but my assurance seems to ebb her sudden worries, which gifts me no reprieve. At all. I’ve often gotten myself into some odd situations, some even more strange than this, but the woman’s reaction to such a simple question is so peculiar that it instantly sets me on edge, not to mention that the little hand on the staircase has vanished now.

Fucking Frankie and all her meddling, I could wring her neck right about now! I think to myself helplessly. 

Frankie’s my roommate, you see, we’ve been friends since I’d first moved to town, since I’d left London and got on the first train that had been leaving the platform. I’d seen her ad in the newsagents outside the local train station, all bejewelled and with this ditzy font, and had headed into a nearby cafe to give her a call. She’d been two months behind on rent and had been desperate enough to tack up her spare room on the bulletin board there for a couple hundred quid a month. Then along came me and well, I’d had nowhere else to go. 

We’ve been as thick as thieves from the get go though, she’d actually been one to arrange this rather impromptu excursion, having set me up with a lad she knew from secondary that was apparently ‘my exact type’. Not that she really knew what that was, in truth, Frankie knew nothing of actual importance about me, even though we were dead close. She had no idea why I’d even left home, or why I’d come to Wilmslow of all places, and had never once bothered me about it. 

My sex life, on the other hand, was something she loved to bug me about to no apparent end. Enough that I’d finally relented and agreed for her to set me up with this mate of hers after having seen a picture of him on Facebook, if only for the reason she’d let this whole thing go. I was perfectly content being on my own, preferred it actually, even when it sometimes grew harder having to keep everything to myself all the time, scared to let people near. But that was just life, wasn’t it, and life was so much easier when everyone around me was none the wiser to my… situation.

Mrs O’Donald appears to have softened a bit now and I try to return the gesture when she gives me a shaky smile. “Sorry, it’s just. It’s hard, even now, to talk about, you know.”

Fuck. I struggle to keep my smile.

“I didn’t mean to pry.” I’m quick to tell her, my chest tightening as I draw in another slow breath. I can see that the small hand is back now, there, just out of the corner of my eye. “We can pretend that I didn’t even ask, hey?”

The woman just shakes her head at me though and for the millionth time today I wish I’d never stepped foot through that fucking door.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” Mrs O’Donald says, although I’m pretty sure she’s only doing it to reassure herself. “It was a long, long time ago. Gary says it does me no good to linger on the memory. And our Andrew’s the same.”

I have zero fucking idea as to who Gary could possibly be, her husband maybe? But I don’t even ask, just willing myself to pop out of existence then and there. Or for her pink puffy chaise longue to eat me whole. 

“Right.” Is all I can bring myself to say, and it’s then that my mind finally relents in its stubbornness and allows my eyes to wander back over towards the staircase again, only I’m not fully prepared for what I see. The hand is still there, only now it’s joined by another, the pair of them bracketing a wan head with unrelenting eyes.

I jump on instinct at the image and send the teacup I’d taken to cradling again soaring through the air. Mrs O’Donald jumps too, though her reaction is solely down to me, and I find myself so surprised that all I can really do is ramble, “I am so sorry. Honestly, I don’t know what came over me. I’m so, so sorry, Mrs O’Donald. Here let me-”

The woman, who appears to be in better shape now that she has something to occupy herself with, is waving my apologies away freely, a tea towel already in hand as she pivots around to wipe up the spilled tea. “Not to worry, dear. I’m the same somedays, just one of those things, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” I breathe out, though my stare is still stuck on the staircase and the tiny little boy staring back at me through its wooden railings. “Just one of those things.” I murmur.

To say I made a clean break for it after that, would’ve been an absolute lie, seeing as how the second I tried to say my goodbyes to Mrs O’Donald, claiming that I suddenly felt a bit under the weather and apologising once again for the spillage, did Andrew walk through the front door.

“Oh Andrew! You’re just in time.” Mrs O’Donald all but beams, a total contrast to the woman who’s been serving me tea and biscuits in her living room for the past twenty minutes. She hurries over to the front door to properly welcome him in whilst I linger in the hallway, only a foot away from the bottom of the staircase, trying incredibly hard not to concentrate on the soundless feet kicking at the skirting-board. 

So before Andrew could even utter a word to me, or simply breathe in my direction, I was slipping between the pair of them and out the front door before you could say ‘goodbye’. I practically legged it down their street, even as Andrew called out after me in obvious confusion, and didn’t stop running until I was far too winded and amongst the noise of the high-street in town.

I wasn’t always like this. I swear.

It had started out with whispers, mostly soft and indistinct, but occasionally a single voice would stand out amongst the others. I’d be on the motorway in mum’s car and suddenly hear ‘Look out, oh God, look out!’ in a frenzied voice that would quickly cut off, or ‘Such a fucking slag, knew she’d move right on-’ on the walk home from school, and even ‘Are you sure I locked the front door before we left?’ whenever I bypassed the house at the end of this one street.

They’d drift in and out of oscillation like a poorly tuned radio. Sometimes the voices are fuzzy, almost silent and barely there, whilst other times they can be so real and immediate that they have me spinning around in a circle trying to work out who’s talking.

It quickly grew from there though, the voices went from being carried on a nonexistent wave to falling from faintly drawn lips caught in a blur of movement. I’d see them just out of the corner of my eye, whenever I’d turn a bend or glance over my shoulder. The visions also made me pause abruptly, stop to catch the breath that had left me, they were like trails of smoke caught on the wind, like wisps from a candle freshly blown out. But even after that, with the seeing and the hearing, things still changed. The blurry images adapted, became more evident, more vivid. They went from hazy chance glances to people crowding busy intersections or sitting by a bridge. Had little girls with snapped necks living in my childhood bedroom and the neighbours lost dog sniffing around my ankles.

Even then though they tended to loop, to say the same things, and follow the same path. The little girl back home would often climb the stairs at night and I’d hear her footfalls, never a step mistook, always the same pattern, the same beat. Always repeating, apologising, crying. Enough that it started to drain me, enough so that I could no longer sleep in that house at night. Enough to force me out and away. 

Only recently have they started to interact more, see that I truly am there, that I can see them as much as they can see me. They don’t appear to forget as much either. Don’t repeat like they did for so many of the years before. When I ask them questions, they can choose to answer, they differentiate from their previous paths, follow me about with a questioning gaze instead of continuing the same cycle. 

That little boy back at the O’Donald’s house, he was one of them. He knew I’d seen him too. From the second I’d sat down. But he’d been reluctant to come any closer than the staircase, why I don’t know, but I chose not to dwell too long on it.

I finally breathe a sigh of relief when I see the front door to our flat, all pretty with the wreath Frankie had adorned it with, not to mention the brightly coloured paint that set it vastly apart from the rest of the street’s. I don’t think I’d ever been more thankful to see it, in fact, not even after that first time when Frankie had invited me inside and let me call it home. 

“Oi, and there you are! Honestly, what do you think you’re playing at? I’ve just had Andrew on the phone, ranting away! Said he just got in through the door when you all but bolted your way out of the house to run like a mad man on a mission down the street! I mean, what on Earth were you-” I’ve just slipped into the warmth of our little two bed and Frankie pauses the second she rounds the corner to the hallway, catching the gaunt face I’m sporting. “Oh, shit. You alright?”

I can only chuckle as I struggle to remove the coat I’d thrown on earlier. “Oh me? I’m fine!” I huff sarcastically, all but chucking the leather jacket up onto one of the hangers we have in the hall, “Fucking brill, me!" I add, but I’m still fighting for breath as I slump against the wall slightly to cast her a narrow-eyed glance, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me Andrew had a dead little brother?”

“He what?” Frankie shoots straight back, eyes as wide as bowling balls and bleached eyebrows practically hitting her hairline.

“Andrew. Dead brother.” I repeat, forcing myself back onto steady feet so that I can slip past her and head into the kitchen, “What is there not to get about that?”

“No I definitely got it, just… processing?” She replies in that familiar twang of hers, voice carrying its way through the flat. 

“How could you not think to tell me, of all people, that tiny little detail?” I complain in a whiney groan as I set to sticking the kettle on, I'm still struggling to wrap my head around the whole ordeal and sitting honestly feels like the worst thing I could possibly do.

I hear her footfalls follow shortly behind me and when they stop I glance up to find her stood in the doorway, eyes still wide as ever.

“I didn’t know.” Is what Frankie settles on, her arms hanging limply by her sides, “I didn’t know.”

I pause immediately. Her words well and truly hitting me like a truck. 

“Oh, oh shit, Fran. God, I’m so sorry.” I hurry to apologise, a hand covering my mouth as she slowly makes her way across the kitchen tiles. “I didn’t even think. I had no idea. Fuck."

A startled laugh escapes her at that, but I know there’s no real humour in it. “Yeah, me either.”

We just stand there staring at each other for a long while, both in obvious shock. Me trying to get over the experience, her coming to terms with the newfound information I'd all but thrown in her face.

It’s the kettle whistling that sets the two of us back into motion. I look over to it and then back at her, we both seem to just move on instinct then, her heading to the fridge for the milk, semi-skimmed for her, almond for me, and I grab two mugs to fill with the usual brand of tea.

A quiet settles after that, until we’re both curled up on the sofa at least, tele on low and a brew in hand. Fran’s taken to sprawling herself across her end whilst I crowd myself up against the sofa’s back, knees touching my chest.

“So, dead little brother?”

I hum lowly at the cut in the silence, watching Fran's expression from over the rim of my cup, steam hazing the view.

“How dead we talking here?”

I roll my eyes but can’t help the breathy laugh that escapes me as I grip my mug a little tighter, mainly just wanting the warmth. There always came an unrelenting cold whenever dealing with the dead, and I was almost always cold these days.

“Pretty dead.” I tell her, pursing my lips when the image of his little face comes to the forefront of my mind, “He had these dark circles around his eyes, big and blue. He looked so,” I draw in a breath, “I don’t know, he just looked so small and bony. Wasting almost.”

“Cheers.” I snap myself out of it and look back over when I hear Frankie’s voice, I wince at the expression she now wears, all pale and pensive, though trying her best to cover it up. 

“Sorry.” I mumble, but she merely waves me off, shaking herself out of it before she takes a sip of her milky brew.

“Don’t matter, just, can’t believe I never knew of it.” She exhales heavily, “He was young though, yeah? So like maybe he died back when Andy were a kid or summat.” 

My eyes narrow in thought, “I don’t reckon so, when I asked whether she had any other children Mrs O’Donald got all weird about it, she just changed all of a sudden, and then when I wondered the same thing you just did, I questioned how many years were between them- the boys, I mean. She switched up, Fran. Like, gone was the wobbly old woman and there was this massive fuckin’ viper ready to strike me down.”

“Weird.” Frankie comments and she pulls the face she makes whenever something doesn't sit right with her. “Never seen her act like that, was always so skittish whenever we saw her out. Her husband never let her leave the house much though, my mum reckoned they had a bit of a domestic going on.”

I find myself glancing out the living room window, mulling her words over as well as the entire situation. “Maybe. The kid seemed withdrawn too, didn’t move from off the staircase the whole time I was there.”

“They usually move about then?” I hear Fran ask me and I hum as I blink, “These ghosts of yours...”

A small smile graces my lips and I roll my eyes once more before turning back to her, “They’re not my ghosts. And yeah, typically. Sometimes they’re stuck in a loop-”

“What, like reliving their death?” She grimaces at the very notion.

“Yeah,” I admit a little reluctantly, because it always seems to make me feel uneasy whenever I linger too long on it. “But then they sort of become more animate once they know I can see them too.”

“Oh, so you’re sort of like a battery then?”

“Pardon?” I snort, unable to help myself.

“A battery!” Frankie parrots a little livelier this time, smiling over at me as she pushes herself to sit up properly. “You like power them and crap, give them the energy to step off the path, you know?”

I wrinkle my nose, “Never thought of it like that.”

“‘Course not! But that’s why you have me, in’t it?” Fran snipes back, settling her tea down on the coffee table to give me her full focus. “Tell me more about Andrew’s brother then, did he say anything, do anything?”

I sigh whilst shaking my head, saddened by the fact that I now feel as though I have to set my cup down too. Frankie seems to get like this sometimes, where she gets overly excited by the things that intrigue her. When I’d first mentioned all this seeing spirits thing to her- it was only after I’d taken a trip with her to her nan’s house and seen her grandad mowing the grass- I’d still been getting used to the whole change in sight thing and had waved to the old man in the garden as we’d walked by, only realising just after that Frankie's grandad had been dead almost ten years. Fran had been eager to learn more once she’d pestered me enough into coming clean about the whole thing. Not once has she made me regret telling her though.

“He didn’t say anything, just kept looking. Watching.” I tell her truthfully, thinking back to the boy's empty eyes.

“Creepy.”

I chuck a cushion at her for that, which she only narrowly avoids by ducking, it skids across the living room floor and bumps against the tall cabinet we brought home a few weeks ago. “Not creepy, just, he’s dead, Fran. It’s all, well, it's all a little bit creepy but they're still people.”

She just shrugs and gestures for me to continue.

I sigh, “He wouldn’t leave the staircase, even when Andrew came home. Most times ghosts will just carry out their tasks, but sometimes when loved ones are near they’ll deviate and track them instead. This kid just sat there though, watching his mum and brother as he kicked his feet off the skirting-board at the bottom of the stairs."

Frankie hums as she listens, but then pipes up with “Did he die there then, on the staircase maybe?” when I’ve finished and it breaks me from my own train of thought. 

“‘Spose so, bit grim to think about though. Could’ve just tripped and fell, hit his head, died instantly.” I reply, chewing on my bottom lip as I fight not to think of any other scenario that could’ve occurred. Fran, on the other hand, is not like that though- meaning, I wouldn’t be surprised if she came home one day and told me she was going to become Wilmslow’s next big detective.

“Could’ve been pushed too, by the dad maybe? He wasn’t much of man, bit too short, too hefty, and had the ugliest mug you'd ever seen- me and mum always wondered how he’d managed to score a pretty thing like Mrs O’Donald.”

I purse my lips and inhale, “Could’ve been any of them if we’re going down that route.”

I feel more than see Frankie still then. “What, you reckon Mrs O’Donald could have done it?”

“Maybe,” I shrug a single shoulder, picking up my mug again. “I mean, she changed so quickly when I was there and I’d only been with her twenty minutes. Never know what could’ve happened behind closed doors.”

“Shit.” Fran murmurs and I almost feel bad when I add, “Could’ve just as easily been Andrew too.” Because her head snaps up so quickly she actually winces.

“What? No. Not Andrew, he’s far too lovely! Even in school he was well liked, everyone wanted to be his mate.” Frankie argues, adamant as she shakes her head. “There’s no way.”

“Okay, didn’t mean to upset you, babe, but I was only mentioning it. Everyone has a story, Fran, have things that they hide, that they don’t want other people to see.”

Frankie shakes her head and releases a heavy breath, sat cross-legged now, “No, I’m not upset. Well I am, but only ‘cause I set you up with him- and what does that say about me if he’s a killer!”

I pause entirely at that, before I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up out of my throat, throwing another cushion that does actually hit her this time. “You’re such a fucking self-obsessed twat.”

“Oi!” She immediately retorts, chucking the pillow straight back at me. “I’m not, but just- could you imagine? I’d have to rethink my entire life!”

I roll my eyes, “You’re such a drama queen.”

“And you, my dear, are in dire need of a good shag. So I apologise that I’m the only one here with their head screwed on straight.” She stretches over the settee to grab at her cup, wrinkling her nose when she finds it to now be cold, though she still drinks it. “But at least we can rule Andy out now, even if he didn’t push his brother down the stairs I don’t think he’ll be wanting to see you again.”

“Oh ta, Fran. I’m a catch, thank you very much.” I snark, all bark and no bite. “But yeah, glad we can put all this shit behind us now.”

“Um, no. That is not what I said. Now it just means that we can move onto the next guy on the list!”

“List?!” I squawk indignantly, Frankie just grins all shark like.

“Huh, I figured you would have worked that out by now. You’ve been here seven months, babe, so that means I’ve had thirty something weeks to work out a catalogue of people who might have yet to catch your eye.”

“Frankie.” I warn. 

But she just keeps on grinning, the cow. “You can thank me for it later.”

And she leaves it at that, pushing up off the sofa to stand and make her way back into the kitchen, “Fancy another?” She asks me with her raised mug in hand. I huff but ultimately nod, not looking forward to this charade she’s been apparently been planning in her head for months now. 

It’s a couple days later and the dust has barely settled when Fran asks me to meet up with her in this local coffee shop just off the main street in town. It’s her absolute favourite, she used to frequent it all the time up until her ex from college got a job there, but according to the rumour mill he apparently just got the sack after having been caught selling on the side- “coffee and a baggie, please and thanks.” Anyway, Frankie had been over the moon to hear about it and had popped in first chance she got, came home grinning that same afternoon with a latte in hand and a lemon loaf to share in the other. 

The loaf was to die for though, so I couldn’t blame her for the ruthlessness and understood why she was so keen to meet up there. I only wished she’d given me a bit more notice, I’d been halfway through researching a little more into the O’Donalds- because I could never seem to let anything go- that I’d barely even had the chance to run a brush through my hair. Still, I managed to make it in time and found myself smiling as I pushed through the door to the shop, a warmth wafting over me.

My eyes scan the crowd first, it’s not busy, only a handful of people litter the open space, but the cafe’s really welcoming, makes it feel like a place you can come to hideaway, what with all the dim lighting and wood furnishing. I step in further but can’t seem to catch sight of Fran just yet, so I pull out my phone to shoot her a text, figuring I can just order while I wait. Only, she’s apparently already beat me to it, texted I mean, telling me that she won’t be able to make it, that something came up, and then practically demanding me to stay and try the place out.

It’s a heavy sigh that I let go of as I send her off a quick reply and tuck my phone back into my pocket, feeling a little miffed about the fact that she’d forced me out of the flat only to bail at the very last second.

“You alright?”

I blink at the sudden voice and instinctively glance up to find its owner, a curly haired male leaning against the shop’s counter looks me over with the beginnings of a smile. 

My brows shoot up on their own accord and I glance over my shoulder to make sure that he’s actually talking to me, which seemingly makes him laugh.

“Yeah, I meant you there, Dottie.” He says and when I look back over he’s sporting a proper grin.

I frown at the gifted name and tilt my head down in confusion to peer at the outfit I’d chosen, “What?”

“Your scarf.” He tells me with a jerk of his chin, gesturing towards the silk square I’d used to tie my hair back only half an hour earlier. Instantly I reach up to touch it whilst he merely smirks, sharp eyes still trained on me.

“Oh, um. Yeah I’m alright, why?”

He simply shrugs and it’s with that gesture that I catch sight of the guitar case behind him, it’s a similar colour to that of his eyes but covered in an array of stickers and pins. “Look like you’ve been stood up or something, face is all... sad.” 

I can’t help the airy chuckle that escapes me, he’s hit the nail on the head there. “Not sad, more like pissed off.” I shoot back and step closer to the counter to get a better look at what they’ve got to offer. I’m already here, so who would it hurt if I grabbed myself a treat? 

“Ah, so you were stood up then!”

I turn my head towards him now that we’re standing more in line with one another, his hip resting against the display case, me facing the chalked boards. “Could say that. Was meant to be meeting my flatmate here, but turns out she couldn’t make it.”

He hums, pursing his lips a tad as he watches me and I just let him, looking back up towards the menu- only, it’d be much easier to see if I was wearing my glasses. Hated the things though, made me look all square, like my head was too big for my shoulders or something. Stupid, I know. But I suppose I was just that vain.

Frankie would laugh about it if she were actually here, I think, already knowing about the blur I’d been met with. 

“You work here then?” I quiz the guy, figuring I could either just get a simple breakfast tea or… “Know what’s best to get?”

At my question, he seems to shift so that he’s truly facing me and I note the wooden stirrer he’s holding between his teeth, as well as the way his eyes flitter across my face. “Don’t work here, no. Just waiting for my mate to finish up with his shift, though I am in here enough to know that the honey bee cortado is an actual, honest to God, blessing.”

“That so?”

That smile of his widens, his stare relentless even as a tall, curly haired boy clad in a green apron wanders in from the back.

“G, make this girl one of your specials, will you?” He says to the barista, or ‘G’ rather, who doesn’t even bat an eye at the ask, so I’m guessing that this is a usual thing. “That’s George, by the way,” The stranger beside me states, “And I’m Matty.” Weirdly he extends a hand out to me with that and I feel mostly amused as I reach out to take it, shaking his with a smile that can’t be helped.

“Y/n.” I return. 

Matty hisses between clenched teeth, looking as though my name has actually injured him somehow, my hand still cradled in his. “Nah, sorry, can’t get behind that. Don’t suit you.” He flashes a quick glance over his shoulder at the barista or well, said mate George, “Doesn’t suit her does it, G?”

“Don’t suit her.” George answers with a minute shake of his head, fiddling away with the coffee machine. His tone’s gruff, matches his stoney exterior a bit, but I can see the small curve of his mouth as he flicks a lever. 

“See?” Matty practically beams, extending the hand not holding mine outwards to further exaggerate his point. “Dottie though, I like that.”

“Makes me sound like an old woman.” I huff, wrinkling my nose enough that my brows crowd towards one another. 

“And still, you set my heart racing, darling.” He swoons theatrically and I can’t not roll my eyes at him before glancing downwards once more.

“You gonna gimme my hand back anytime soon, or?” I ask and Matty seems to realise then that he’s still in fact got my hand held in his, but that revelation only has him grinning harder and he moves to swing the joint pair between us both. He’s far too sure of himself, I deem.

“Nah, been chilly all morning, ain’t it? So I reckon I’m doing you a favour by warming you up.”

I raise a single brow- yup, what a cocky little shit. “Could always order yourself a brew if you’re cold.”

He pulls a face at my suggestion, “Wouldn’t feel the same though, would it?”

“Well, it looks as though you’re times up anyway, seems George here has just finished with my drink.” I reply, smiling as I move to step away, but Matty holds strong, leaving his guitar case to lean against the counter alone while he follows after me. I chuckle, shaking my head at him, “You always this needy?”

Matty hums but he’s nothing if not persistent, “Might be. Why, would that put you off?”

I narrow my eyes at him but turn to grab at the mug George has pushed onto the counter. “Might do.” I say, unable to help myself, “But sweaty palms do, and I also need my hand free to pay for this.”

Matty’s chocolate coloured eyes drop down to my mug and then back up to George, who’s stood waiting patiently by the till. “I’ll get it.” He suddenly tells me and then immediately starts riffling through his coat pocket. I blink, look between both him and George, who still appears as though this is nothing to be surprised about, and it’s only when Matty withdraws a crumpled fiver from his back pocket do I find my voice.

“You’re fine! It’s alright, I can get it, honest. But thanks.”

Matty waves me off, awkwardly what with him still holding both my hand and the newly acclaimed five pound note, then rolls his eyes at my rambling, “Nah honestly, I’ve got it. Least I can do for forcing you to put up with G’s crappy coffee.”

George just snorts, snatching the fiver from his mate’s hand, while I purse my lips slightly, “I thought you claimed it to be an honest to a God blessing? If this is shit, I’m holding you accountable.”

“Ignore him, it’s instinctual for him to be a twat.” George sighs as he closes up the till, Matty’s brow furrows.

“Oi firstly, you’re the twat. And secondly, where’s my change?”

“In my tip jar.” George is quick to retort, forcing a pleased grin for his friend before he’s walking his way back through the door he came from, “I’ll be two minutes, yeah? And you’d better be ready to leave ‘cause I’m not dealing with Adam’s bitching again.”

Matty just tuts and I realise that now it’s just him and I in a shop full of people who’ve been watching this entire exchange. “Ignore him,” He tells me, “Well, don’t. Adam will definitely be pissed if we’re late, but a couple minutes for you won’t hurt anybody.”

I just shake my head, hoping to hide my smile as I pick up the recently brewed coffee to take a sip. It turns out that as well as being an arrogant prat, Matty is also a liar, because the drink is heaven sent and I prove it with the soft sigh that falls from my lips. “Fuck, that’s really good.”

When I glance back up I’m only a tad embarrassed by my reaction when I see Matty’s cheeky smirk, even more so when he wets his bottom lip and I have to force myself to look away.

“G’s known for his coffee around here, should see the Yelp reviews from the yummy mummy’s that stop in after dropping their kids off at playgroup- we actually spent an entire night reading through them once, taking shots every time G cringed.” Matty reveals with a conspiratorial grin and he seems to delight in hearing me laugh. 

“I can almost imagine it.”

He hums, this low thing that resonates from deep within, “Should join us one time.”

“Us?”

When Matty nods his whole body moves with it, as though the rest of him disdains the thought of being left idle, the thought makes me smile. “Yeah, got this band. Four of us, me and a few mates. Should come see us rehearse, if you’re up for it.”

I squint back at him, not refusing the offer but wondering over it. “We’ve only just met, what if this is all a plan to lure me into your music obsessed cult?”

“Well, if it’s a cult, it’s a fucking small one. But I don’t think we’ll be Britain’s next Manson family so I reckon you’ll be alright.” Matty quips back and I just nod, taking another sip to hide my growing grin.

“You do this a lot, don’t you?” I can’t help but say, and at the tilt of Matty’s questioning head I carry on, “Flirt and hope you can rope some poor girl into bed by saying you’re in a band. Play ‘em a few chords and flash that smile, not that I’d blame them.”

Matty appears to take it in stride though and doesn’t even comment on the assumption, “And why wouldn’t you blame them? Is it the charming smile, or am I just that fit?”

I snort, then cover my mouth to keep myself from spitting out the sip I’d taken, only a little ashamed by the noise I’d just made. “No, think it’s more down to the fact that you’ve still to let go of my hand. Reckon even if I say no, you’ll still find a way to drag me along with you.”

“Ah, how you wound me, darling!” And our connected palms start swaying again, I realise in the next moment, after having looked down, that Matty’s closed the distance between us even further. I startle only slightly when my eyes lock right onto his. “So, how about it then? You coming or staying?”

And just as I’m about to reply, biting back the smile that wants to overwhelm my face, do I see him again. Just out of the corner of my eye. The flicker of a face pressed up against the shop’s window. I still instantly and the cup slips from my hand.

The boy, it’s the O’Donald boy and he's staring right back at me. 

[noahsresources]

INCORRECT QUOTES PROMPTS ( 2/? )

taken from this generator & this generator! triggering themes & nsfw topics may be present!

❝ schrödinger's cat is overrated. if you wanna see something that's both dead and alive you can talk to me any time of the day. ❞ ❝ if the thought of something makes any of you giggle for longer than 15 seconds, you are to assume you're not allowed to do it. ❞ ❝ dracula had it right. sleep all day, live alone in a castle, and explode into bats to get out of all social situations. ❞ ❝ i'm a multitasker: i can disappoint fifteen people at once. ❞ ❝ i'd make fun of your height but there isn't enough to make fun of. ❞ ❝ as someone who has a long history of not understanding anything, i feel confident in my ability to continue not knowing what is going on. ❞ ❝ does anyone know how to relax? asking for a friend. ❞ ❝ if looking good was a crime, you'd be a law abiding citizen. ❞ ❝ the next time i open up to someone, it'll be my autopsy. ❞ ❝ well, well, well ... if it isn't my old friend: the dawning realization that i fucked up bad. ❞ ❝ do you ever think? because i do not. ❞ ❝ i dunno if i'm ready to process the ramifications of this bullshit. ❞ ❝ my expectations were low but holy fuck. ❞ ❝ why do i always try to tell people we're cool? we are so very uncool. ❞ ❝ the last time i went to an urgent care clinic, i checked off 'excessive crying' on the symptom list, and then the nurse got really confused and said that was meant for babies. ❞ ❝ i was born for politics. i have great hair and i love lying. ❞ ❝ i am so horny and angry all the time. ❞ ❝ i have been tricked, i have been backstabbed, and i have quite possibly been bamboozled. ❞ ❝ if you see me talking to myself, go away! i'm self-employed and we're having a staff meeting! ❞ ❝ i've never encountered a problem that can't be solved by a spontaneous musical number. ❞ ❝ god has let me live another day and i'm going to make it everyone's problem. ❞ ❝ i just realized that every person is living a life as vivid and complex as my own. i feel so bad for them. ❞ ❝ quitting! it's like trying, but easier. ❞ ❝ with great power comes great need to take a nap. wake me up later. ❞ ❝ i came into this earth screaming and covered in someone else's blood and i'm not afraid to leave the same way. ❞ ❝ we always used to do the wordle rather than take notes in class, and to stop us the teacher would always threaten to tell us the answer if we didn't pay attention. ❞ ❝ the only thing keeping me from running away and hiding from society for the rest of my life is spite. i could disappear forever, but there are some bitches whose downfalls i have yet to witness, and i wanna be around when that happens. ❞

[sweetmage]

I was talking to my friend about DAI's treatment of Anders the other day and how it drives me INSANE. This game is SO cruel and uncharitable to him! Firstly, the only time we EVER see his manifesto in canon (as far as I know) is in the house of a crazed murderer with a pile of bodies in his basement. Every single mention is placing the blame firmly on his shoulders. I know some people subscribe to the "Varric is distancing himself from their actions for his/their safety" which I subscribe to as well simply for my own sanity, but it does sometimes become hard to swallow when it's been revealed that (assuming you romanced him) he knew where Hawke and Anders were the entire time yet he continues to let others trash Anders while he chimes, etc. And I DO understand and sympathize with Varric in a way, Kirkwall was his home and when the war broke out there was mass death and destruction and he had to leave. Anders did play a role in that, but he only sped up the process, he was not the root cause and they were heading that direction anyway. Also, he saw Meritdith's red lyrium nonsense firsthand, he saw the cruelty that preceded it, and everything she did aligned with what Anders was so concerned about. The Thedas-wide fighting is not "blondie's mess". I originally had my imported Hawke set to "supported Anders" but I had to change it to "didn't support Anders" in my next playthrough because the supportive Hawke straight up calls him a "monster" so I found the alternative to somehow be the lesser of two evils. In the end, I guess that's more accurate to my Hawke anyway because he was upset that Anders went behind his back and didn't tell him first, he would have liked the time to prepare for the aftermath and all that. But yeah, the "I don't know if there ever was an Anders" from a conflicted but still loyal Hawke is easier for me to roll my eyes and ignore than "he wasn't a hero or a monster, maybe he was both" from a supportive Hawke. But ugh, I digress... As for the other main characters, I do understand that none of them knew Anders personally, they only know him from the big action he took with the chantry and nothing more. So I think it makes sense that they don't necessarily have a favorable view of him, some of them seem rather confused if anything. Not to mention a lot of them did not personally endure the circumstances that led Anders to do what he did. But I really would have loved for there to be more NPCs that supported him, especially when DA2 introduced "The Resolutionists" who seem to align pretty damn well with Anders.

And we got a character that supported Loghain which is a 10+ year old topic but not a single one that supported Anders who seems to be a hot-button issue atm? At the very least, I wish there were at least some people that questioned the whole "Anders did this, this is all his fault" narrative (especially once DAI itself revealed that the war did not, in fact, start because of Anders) or at least SOME differing opinions on him?? As far as I can tell, the only person who has been remotely charitable to him is Solas in this conversation (the thing my friend sent me that got me talking about it):

And the only other mention I could find of people that may have supported him is in the Annexing Kirkwall wartable mission where Sebastian mentions "Anders's associates" who he believes might know where he is. But then again, this is coming from the man who wants to march on a city of innocents for to find a man who probably isn't even there so should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

FWIW I now play with the mod that makes Aiding Kirkwall trigger every time because it better aligns with my HCs for Seb and I will never in my life kill Anders so... I actually like Sebastian even though I don't agree with him most of the time. I get his immediate hurt and betrayal at the end of DA2 because he effectively lost his family again, but I'd like to after 3 whole years of being prince he'd have cooled down enough to uhhh... not march on a bunch of innocents??? Which seems very antithetical to his character and development in DA2?? Annexing Kirkwall is silly, so I do not see it. But I digress, this is an Anders post!!

Anyway, I know I am not saying anything that hasn't been said to death by this point. I love each and every DA companion in their own way, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. But I feel like this is less an issue with them and more an issue with how the writers chose to frame the narrative. I do have to wonder if the fact that so many people hated and were averse to Anders made them think that this is what the people wanted. I have quite a few issues with Anders's writing and handling in DA2 as well, don't get me wrong, but at the very least I enjoyed the ability to support him all the way through.

[darklovecat]

My Pouty Sans-Juvederm Routine

I am fond of pouty lips and I personally prefer mine to be juicy, lips are a symbol of femininity and beauty and allure, and I love nothing more than covering my lips in heavy coats of plumping lip gloss before stepping out and there's no way I could leave the house without applying a very light layer of of capsaicin ointment (common vasodilator used in lip plumpers) or my trusted and all-time favorite Lip Plumper.

I have created a routine for myself to for enhancing the shape and color of my lips and I use this routine pre-makeup or on its own for an extra boost of volume while maintaining a natural and subtle look. The results are natural and I'd recommend them for obvious short term and subtle long term results, I use this routine weekly and it works for me.

As always, this is what worked for me and it's what I do, I would recommend you do your own research and make sure you know what you are doing and it's appropriate for your individual needs before following these steps, it's one of my ways for when I need to enhance my lips and accentuate their shape and color.

I prep my lips with a focus on hydration.

For starters, you need a very smooth and moisturized surface, this won't work with chapped or dry lips. You want to prevent any damage, the skin of our lips are very delicate and the thinnest part of our bodies so make sure your lips are properly hydrated. To physically exfoliate your lips, you can easily make your own peeling at home with honey and sugar to slough off all of the dead skin, and I also use a toothbrush to gently remove dead skin cells. My lips are always soft because I have incorporated more hydrating products into my daily regimen and before I go to bed I make sure that my lips are properly moisturized for an extra boost of hydration and improved texture so that I can wake up in the morning and do my makeup on smooth canvas. I always keep a spray bottle with water handy and use it before I apply any hydrating products on my skin or lips, it has worked wonders for me as I feel it activates and helps my lips better absorb the products and pull the moisture from the water. I spritz my lips with water and hydrate them by applying a very generous amount of hyaluronic acid and/or glycerin serum and really massaging them all over my lips to provide deep hydration.

I dermaroll my lips.

I have been using dermarollers for several years now for various purposes, and I have noticed excellent results. I know that dermarollers have sparked some controversy and people have raised concerns about their safety, fretting about how they could cause infections or permanent damage to the skin. I would never use one on my facial skin and would strongly advise leaving that to a professional, but I particularly enjoy using them on my lips and or for doing my microneedling treatments. Prior to use, I ensure that my dermaroller is free of bacteria by disinfecting it. Never skip this step as you want to keep it free from germs so sterilize before each use to prevent infections. I always use the smallest needle size possible, which in this case is 0.25, and I think it is way more gentle on the lips and less irritating compared to bigger sizes. The principle behind dermarolling your lips is that micro-tears are created on the lips or skin during the process, which triggers the body's natural healing response and produces more collagen. I roll my dermaroller over my lips both horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. My lips are not that sensitive to the dermaroller since the needles are tiny and I try to be as gentle as I can.

I slather some more hydrating serums and lock it all in.

My lips become slightly red after I am done with the dermarolling, I'm used to this whole process and the needle size is rather small so my lips aren't that sensitive anymore. I want to encourage and speed up the growth and healing response, the post-care routine is equally important as the actual steps so in order to promote faster healing and encourage growth, I generously apply hyaluronic acid serum once again. Then, I use an occlusive like La Neige Lip Sleeping Mask or good old Vaseline to seal in the serum in order to speed up and facilitate the healing response.

I Follow My Lip Care Regimen.

Dermarolling my lips has worked wonders in making my lips appear fuller and I increase blood flow to my lips with my lipcare regimen that consists of regular massages, exercises, special ointments, physical exfoliation, SPF lip balms, diluted essential oils and icing just to increase circulation, stimulate the blood flow to my lips and protect them from environmental factors. This routine in combination with a separate lip makeup routine makes my lips get that red plump bee stung look that I so love.

Cat.

[v3nusxsky]

Hey love, I hope your well. Can I maybe ask for a hurt/ comfort larissa × reader fic? I was thinking maybe reader could have BPD/bipolar disorder and when, Larissa is in her office for extended periods of time she sometimes gets insecure and thinks Larissa is purposefully ignoring her and feels on the verge of splitting and pushing Larissa away, but she's been working on it and so one afternoon when she feels like sending a maybe not-so-nice message to larissa because she's a little hurt, instead she goes to Larissa and breaks down in tears and asks for a hug? And maybe larissa sort of knows what's going on and just embraces R tightly and reassures her it's simply work, and she'd much rather be spending time with her girlfriend than on a laptop all day, and maybe is just very mommy and calls R a good bunny for coming to her???

Split incoming| h&c

*Authors note~ as someone who has bpd and splits I feel these are important to write for and I hope some one out there finds this comforting or informative. This is largely based on myself and quite indulgent, wrote in a split so I can't say it's my best*

Trigger warnings~ mommy Ris bunny r (non sexual dom/sub dynamic (24/7 kink?) bpd r splitting

Prompt~ see ask^^^^

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

You love your girlfriend, truly you do more than anything else in the world, so why would you feel this way? Your own brain confused you most days so how could you expect someone else to understand. Your borderline personality disorder has been something you've struggled with for years, people had came and gone in your life because of it. Because you become too much, a problem. You gotten use to that same pattern and routines, convinced yourself that you were simply unworthy of love. It's the only thing that made sense, how could all those people be wrong?

Until you met Larissa. You'd split on her many times yet she still stayed. You couldn't do anything or say anything that would make her leave you. But that didn't mean it was okay. You hated who you became in those moments, you never really remember them clearly but you knew you had said and done some terrible things. Living with the regret of hurting your favourite person because they don't seem to match the pedestal you put them on. It wasn't on them. You knew you needed to work on responding better. It was hard but you needed it.

Larissa is safe, you knew that. So after a few splits, you both sat down and made lists of triggers and things you could do or she could do to help you in these moments. She knew splits were an inevitable part of your relationship together. However, Larissa wanted to be there to support, love and help you anyway she possibly could. No matter what you need, Larissa will always do her best to provide it.

A big trigger for you is when Larissa ends up in her office for hours on end. It made your irrational brain convince you she was ignoring you, cheating, or worse, leaving you completely. You could feel a split coming on, the rational sides of your brain leaving as you felt clouded with all these confusing thoughts and conflicting emotions. You typed up a message, the rage overwhelming you as you informed her if she was going to leave then hurry up because you I'm fact did not need her. She was just like everyone else who came and left.

Before hitting send you remembered your promise to the blonde, so you threw your phone else where as if it burned you and hurried to her office. You didn't bother with knocking but as soon as you laid eyes on her you couldn't help but burst into tears which caught her attention. "Mommy, hug" you'd sobbed. Without questioning it Larissa came to gather you in her arms, putting her laptop away, you had her soul attention. She knew what this was, you'd came to her and used your signal, she couldn't be more proud of you. "It's okay bunny. You're so good darling. Thank you for coming here love. I'd much rather be all snuggled up with my cuddly bunny than doing boring work" she murmured to you showering your wet cheeks with sweet kisses. "I'm so proud of you bunny for finding mommy. You split didn't you?" Causing you to nod in response. "Okay bunny good job shall we go lay down? Cuddle and maybe nap love does that sound good?" Truly there was no one as perfect as Larissa Weems, she seemed to always know what to do even if she felt like a failure she'd always help bc she was her.

Word count~ 807

[adventures-on-foster-island]

Service and Suport Pokémon

The class takes place in a plush room within the main building, full of bean bag chairs and large cushions for sitting. Ellisa stands at the front of the room with an Umbreon on one side of her and an Espeon on the other.

"Hello students! I'd like you all to meet two Pokémon who are very special to me; Pan the Espeon and Nyx the Umbreon. They joined me over ten years ago, when I was 16 and moving away from home to attend school. Up until then, I had a close support network and attended online classes. When I moved all the way to Kanto, my anxiety and ADHD came to light in a way they never had before. I struggled to make it to classes, turn in school work, and even leave the dorm at all for a while. Eventually, my counselor suggested that I look into getting support Pokémon, and they changed my life.

You see, most people only think of service Pokémon as mobility aids, seeing eyes, and those that can detect things like allergies, blood sugar, blood pressure, and seizures. On the contrary, there are near endless possibilities of ways support Pokémon can help their trainers. Take the move Helping Hand for example; in battle it is used to increase attack power, but outside of battle it can do so much more. Nyx uses it on me to regulate my focus, or more-so my executive function, while Pan uses it to lower my heart rate when I'm on the verge of a panic attack. I've heard of people with chronic pain and fatigue using the move to manage their symptoms as well. Most moves have uses outside of battle, and if trained correctly, can help with some kind of condition. Folks with insomnia or other sleep disorders may benefit from moves such as yawn, hypnosis, and sleep powder, in addition to dream eater for nightmares. People who suffer from chronic pain have a wide variety of options, from poison type moves that dull nerves to fighting and psychic type moves that can trigger pressure points. Future sight is a popular move for those with OCD and anxiety, and Pokémon with the ability telepathy are great for the deaf, hard of hearing, and those who are nonverbal or have times when they go nonverbal."

Ellisa hands out a few items to be passed around; wristbands, harnesses, vests, and lanyards in various colors, all reading 'SERVICE POKÉMON' and/or 'WORKING, DO NOT PET'

"Service and support Pokémon are trained to perform specific tasks to help their trainer. They are working, and should not be interrupted or distracted from their job. Most will have some kind of vest or other accessory to alert others that they are working. These Pokémon are not battle trained, and just because someone has a Pokémon on them does not mean that they are a trainer who is prepared to battle. Service Pokémon must be registered through the PokéCenter system, and business are legally required to allow them inside. There are only two questions the trainer must answer if asked by staff; 'Is this Pokémon required because of disability?' and 'what work or task has the Pokémon been trained to perform?'. It is illegal to ask the trainer about their disability, require any special documentation, or ask for the Pokémon to demonstrate their task.

If you think a service or support Pokémon could help you live life to its fullest, reach out to your doctor. There is a process for finding the right Pokémon for your specific needs that can take up to a year to finalize. It is important to get your service Pokémon from a reputable breeder with a history of successfully trained adoptions rather than catching one wild."

[ambyandony]

whats Angurio’s lore?

OHKAY WOOO!!! BUCKLE UP!!!! I'm half going off the cuff and half just documenting previously decided info.

i think ive got everything in here.

I'd say Angurio has one of the... stranger concepts of my OCs. Unlike Tirami, he is very interesting! (I am bullying my own OC)

JJBA OC: Angurio Profile(tte)

Angurio (from 'anguria' meaning watermelon), full name presumably Angurio Romano Zatta (he's not Roman, so I don't know why his middle name would be Romano, and it's hard to say if this is his actual name, but...) and also nicknamed Ang and Angie by his sisters. He is a friendly guy! He's Italian-born, probably somewhere in his 20s and a bit younger than Melonia. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about him concretely, necessarily. But I can tell you he's a Stand User, and his locale is technically Vento Aureo. Similarly to Tiramisu, this technicality is because Naples/Italy is his origin and where his family are, so he has ties to the Part 5 locale and a reason to be in the area.

He's also a bit of a viator; a fly-by-nighter (metaphorically)—a common trait in the family—but for him, it's not exactly by choice. Moving out of Naples originally was planned; Angurio never liked the hustle and bustle of big cities and wanted to live in a nice little town instead. And he intended to stay in that little town.

Unfortunately, that didn't pan out.

Of course. who would have fucking guessed.

「High By The Beach」

(design not official but i tried to pull something together. I draw the damn thing a little differently every time I draw it, by which I mean I have drawn it 3 times, and in not a single one of them has it been consistent. i tried to follow my Related Stand Resemblance Procedure here. a good alternate name if i were to rename it would be Blasphemous Rumours)

「High By The Beach」 is essentially built entirely around 'vengeance'.

The Stand targets victimisation or trauma, to put it one way; it picks up on the mental state of an individual who was significantly "wronged" by someone, and if the User—Angurio, that is—feels a strong enough conviction against an act of injustice that the Stand detects, then 「High By The Beach」 can take the "wrong" from the victim's mind, and use it to fuel itself. It then seeks, with Angurio, to 'avenge' the victim in some way ("peace through vengeance"). The taken 'wrongs' are manifested as bags the Stand carries. It becomes stronger through vengeful thoughts, leaving suffering as the wake of good intentions (road to Hell and all that).

Angurio knows that his Stand can remove the 'wrong' from a victim's mind, and he thinks it's a good thing, and that he's just helping them out by doing that. Removing memory and the presence of trauma can surely bring a sense of calm, a sense of safety, but it's all a potent occurrence of repression, and the potential good is temporary. It also leaves the victim dazed, lethargic, or otherwise prone to dissociation.

If the victim was particularly traumatised by the injustice that was taken, then the removal can actually do a fair bit of harm. If a traumatic 'wrong' is removed, it doesn't remove trauma; it removes the memory. If something happens that would trigger the memory—like seeing or hearing something, anything like that—then whatever trauma response the victim usually would experience—a sense of panic or whatever else it may be—they will still experience, the only difference is that they won't know why. Rather, that is, they lose readily available access to the memory of the trauma that would let them comprehend what's going on (at least to some extent).

What Angurio doesn't know—at least not actively, consciously—is that 1. there are these very negative side effects to what he believes are a good act, and that 2. 「High By The Beach」 also gets stronger from these side effects (which he, as stated, doesn't know about).

See, Angurio's very sweet. He tries to be gentle and helpful to the people around him, though he's a bit scatterbrained at times. He also carries around a supply of emergency items (think rescue inhalers, EpiPens, etc), which I cannot verify the legal obtention of; but he keeps them on him in case anyone around him ends up needing them. He's an incredibly empathetic person, which is why he uses his Stand how he does in the first place. He hates to see people—children, especially—suffer, particularly at the hands of someone else. He just wants people to feel safe. You'd be forgiven for thinking he's perhaps a bit of an antihero.

I would thusly have to call him a bit of a... face-heel turn, on a sort of acute scale. Perhaps an anti-villain.

While 「High By The Beach」 does get stronger mostly through feelings of vengeance, what isn't inherently obvious at surface level is that it also severely increases Angurio's mental strain and propensity for needless violence.

Which, um... uh oh!

Because of this, when his Stand's ability is active, and/or has something it's carrying, and especially if he's in the middle of hunting down a 'wrongdoer', he has a tendency to become brutal, cruel, vicious, to the point where he seemingly simply doesn't even know or experience his own rage most of the time and develops lapses of memory when he brings injury to people. And these factors are the main reason why he couldn't just stay in that nice little town like he wanted. Or several of the other nice little towns he's moved to.

As time draws on and he uses his Stand more and more, it seems that he begins to more easily vacillate between the two sides of his essence (nice dichotomy idiot) at disproportionate provocation (or seemingly complete lack thereof); and as a result, now has an odd dualistic personality (what the fuck is wrong with pink-haired Italian men). It doesn't seem to be a Dissociative Identity situation, though—both seem to be Angurio.

He can be a bit hard to read sometimes, though arguably not often. It can be hard to tell if he's Normal or in Crazy Murder Mode at a given moment, but there are usually tells (hair being down is usually an indicator of being in crazy murder mode. sometimes its also just an indicator of he just woke up and hasnt had time to braid it yet). The change is actually so drastic that some people, even after seeing it and seeing the personality swing with their own eyes, have trouble believing that both sides of Angurio apply to the same person.

His relationship with the communities he lives in can vary slightly depending on how others react to his actions and personality swings. But ultimately, he almost always ends up chased out—either "directly" (closest you can get to torches and pitchforks in the 80s/90s) or because the cops are poking around.

Unintentionally he probably actually does more wrong to people in pursuit of justice than what he's trying to avenge.

Even if he didn't, he's quite clearly lost perspective.

He's convinced himself that everything he's done is justified and noble (—whoever it was he just killed; Hell, he probably doesn't even know who it was—but it doesn't matter anyway, so who cares). Ends to a means.

His sense of right is heavily skewed.

Now, while things "making the Stand stronger" is meant in a physical power sense, having the bag(s) of 'wrongs' also gives the Stand everything it needs to help Angurio track down and get to the person they're taking vengeance against. When the bags are opened, the Stand releases a mist that facilitates a very strange, loose form of fast travel that puts them within "proximal distance" of the person they're after. Basically, they disappear into the fog and then emerge from the fog elsewhere, though it generally can only go so far on its own. It also can't go through the walls of buildings unless a door or window is open, since the mist can't really flow through solid matter.

(this picture is not canon. obviously)

Like his sisters, he was born with Stand potential, but not with a Stand. And like (at least) one of the other two, he can be assumed to have developed his Stand upon contact with a Stand arrow, though I couldn't tell you where or when that happened—either after his middle sister left for uni, or after he left Naples. I think things would have gone a lot differently for her if he'd developed 「High By The Beach」 while she was still around him before the whole Passione situation... I'm not gonna get into all that, though. That's Ilta's business. Ask her after she posts the new OC profile update if you're still curious.

Anyway, wherever he got his Stand, it didn't impact anything until after he'd successfully moved to a smaller, much less urban (less noisy and touristy) town. The kind of place where you can actually get acquainted with the other people around you, since there aren't as many.

And things were just lovely at first. Why wouldn't they be? He's an agreeable guy and quite unconfrontational—his older sisters' sibling rivalry seemed reserved for each other, so he never got much of that Big Sibling Bullying toughness that he probably would've otherwise. He was friendly enough to fit right in, even as a bit of an outsider! Made a few friends, or at least friendly acquaintances... even friendly people can have some trouble with actually making friends. Became a minor facet of the community, and his Stand didn't really have any impact on his life. You know, until it did.

Angurio always found himself to be pretty good with kids; kids seem to think he's tons of fun, and he likes to indulge childish imagination and help them learn when he has the opportunity. Whether he had any occupation in childcare is up for debate, but since he eventually became fairly well-known in the community, kids would talk with him plenty either way. And from this came the first time his Stand activated and all the disaster that resulted from it. Unclear if he even remembers what the kid said about their dad, but does it matter?

The man's dead now.

Wasn't really what Angurio meant to do; though, did he actually know what he meant to do to begin with? Hard to say, but either way...

someone saw.

The kid, in fact. Sure, Angurio meant well, but you know what they say about the road to hell—and abusive or not, if you see someone in your house at night murdering your father, I'm sure we can all see how that would not make things too much better overall. The situation didn't really catch up to him fully when he tried to calm the kid down. And when he did come to grips with the situation, he realised that this was going to be... a bit of a problem. And there was only one way to get away with a crime with a witness, right? Still, he kind of has to wonder why his first thought was just to take the knife he was holding and make sure the news didn't make it out of the house.

Well, he did what he had to do; that's what he told himself when he hurried home and started cleaning himself up. So what next? Well, all he could think to do was to start packing up. He didn't leave, not right away. But he packed. He was absolutely unproblematic; nobody would've suspected he could do something like that. Angurio was a bit squeamish, too, so the turnout was certainly quite a surprise and kept suspicions off him for a bit longer.

But when accusations did turn to him, even just once, even just an accusation that wasn't taken seriously, he didn't wait; everything he couldn't transport in two suitcases and a shoulder bag was left at his home, and he vanished without much of a trace. Some people worried he'd gone missing, or that they had some kind of serial killer in their midst, but there were plenty of people who said they saw him leave the day he... well, left.

The whole situation became something of a myth, and even for years after he'd left, his name was passed around in whispers. Some people believed he did it, some people didn't. But he wasn't forgotten. And though everyone in that town knew it, he'd never become important enough for his name to be spread much further.

He tried again and again to settle somewhere but never seemed able to help himself from trying to take matters into his own hands. He wouldn't always take it to the extreme (often, when the wrongdoer wasn't an immediate threat to the victim, they would be alive when Angurio left). But the violence was bad enough to get people after him—police or civilians—and he found himself locally infamous in a few places—but still never important enough to reach beyond local scopes when it came to dissemination of rumours.

They don't always remember him, now that he doesn't seem to stay as long or socially embed himself as much. Some forget his name, or probably wouldn't recognise him right away if he came back. There tends to be at least one person, though, in every town he's lived in, who will never forget about him completely.

He knows that he's talked about, and often negatively or fearfully. With his name passed about in so many places, even though it stayed almost entirely within those local scopes, it was bound to breach containment at least once; when he first started moving, he mostly lived in towns that were at least somewhat proximal to his birthplace, so even in Naples, occasional rumours about him are spread, probably because it's where he's from; but the rumours are much less well-known in the city than in the towns.

He continues to try to live a sociable lifestyle... and also still violently pursues 'wrongdoers' when he detects a particularly angering 'wrong', hoping that at least some good comes from his efforts.

And he continues to try to justify it to himself when he finds that an innocent person got hurt in the process. For the greater good, right?

At least once, he pinpointed himself as the wrongdoer.

And, well...

For the sake of vengeance, what must be done must be done, right?

As long as I survive, a part of him thinks. Another part wonders: is that really fair?

Sometimes he wishes he knew where he got that scar under his eye.

[mad-hunts]

so, i'm gonna give y'all a warning for this post immediately because i have yet to talk about this on here besides with one or two people, and the last thing i want to do is make anyone uncomfortable... but if you believe that cannibalism is a trigger for you then please do not continue beyond this point. for those of you who are okay with it, though, let me start by saying this:

barton does engage in cannibalistic acts sometimes, and this is actually one of the few, if not the only sources of shame that he feels in response to the heinous acts that he commits pretty much on the daily. and this is because he believes himself that it is disgusting and not something to be proud of; so, in a way, it does kind of demonstrate that he has some humanity left in him albeit in a very unsavory way and that's mainly why i wanted to bring it up. because his relationship with this part of him... well, it really isn't good, for lack of better words. which is understandable considering cannibalism is a rather big taboo in society, but it has become somewhat of a compulsion for him. not to excuse it in ANY capacity, of course. that is honestly just the best word i could use to describe it as i've done some research about it and, like other serial killers, barton is SO perpetually lonely that by consuming his victims -- it makes him feel like he is no longer so alone anymore as he will always be able to 'carry' a part of them with him that way, so-to-speak, and they'll never be able to leave him.

now this is obviously not the way to go about dealing with his loneliness at all, as it is extremely messed up both morally and honestly, just wrong as a human being to do. but i also believe that there are other factors at work regarding his tendency to sometimes cannibalize his victims, and that is that because of the trauma he endured at the hands of his biological father (wesley mathis) whom forced him to eat people with him. it could sort of function as a very unhealthy coping mechanism for him to navigate that complex trauma; and this is because it may serve as an attempt for him to restore a sense of control over himself that he felt was stolen from him as a child, since he had no choice but to engage in it. plus, interestingly enough, antisocial personality traits are often an underlying element in those who divulge in cannibalistic acts. and cannibals in one study have been found to have more cases of abuse / have more family members who are criminals, so this could also be indicative that his environmental upbringing very well could have a hand in his subsequent (occasional) cannibalism after he commits his killings.

i also thought i would mention that, despite his apparent depravity, barton has taken extra care not to expose his own children to the same trauma that he had to suffer from as a result of wesley (what with the 'hunting trips' that they went on) and he would NEVER want his kids to see him eating people. so, although it still is unquestionably wrong for him to be cannibalizing people, things are a little complicated in that regard. while i'm talking about it, for my closing thought, i'd like to say that the police does highly suspect that the dollmaker is a cannibal but they haven't been able to confirm it as of yet. though i'd imagine that most of the underground knows that he cannibalizes people because rumors can be spread quite quickly, and i can totally imagine the way in which people found out being that they were unfortunate enough to have to stumble upon barton just... eating someone. and a lot more casually than one should probably be about it, because half of the time, he doesn't even remember that he's done it afterward because his mind literally just blocks it out. but that's something i shall expand on more later

[anukkuna]

Vincent's Ring

Alright people... I got headcanons on Vincent's ring but most of them are a bit tragic! My mushy brain can't decide what it likes best... and I'd love to hear if any of you got similar ones?

(trigger warning: mentions of mental health and family issues & suicide as well as a spoiler warning for the latest episodes)

1. It's a wedding ring, but V's spouse passed away

Meaning: Vincent is a widower. In my hc V was married (maybe legally, maybe not; it might just have been an informal ceremony, doesn't matter) to another queer/enby/trans person but their spouse died. I felt like V was quite affected by Dirk's choice to jump at the End of "Abrgund"... maybe because their spouse took their own life (which can be quite hard on the one who feels left behind). They might feel guilty, like they didn't watch out for their spouse enough or like they weren't good enough. That might have been part of the trauma Vincent had to work through. (Might also explain why V was so angry with the manipulative culprit in "Gott des Bankrotts" for how the guy pressured all these people to take their lives). Anyway V loved their partner and always wanted to keep them close to heart.

Part of that hc for me is that Vincent's spouse's biological family wasn't supportive of them at all... neither as a person nor of their relationship with Vincent (like: very queerphobic and maybe religious parents) and Vincent tried to be their rock but ultimately their spouse decided to leave this world anyway.

Because Vincent had to deal with someone leaving and feeling so bad about it once before... well, Adam leaving just hit the same spot. On the one hand V's is like 'oh fuck, not this again, why me, why can't I be enough, why didn't I see the signs, why didn't I help him more' - on the other hand they're like 'I know, if someone really wants to leave there simply is no way to stop them and I have to respect their choice'... so Vincent already has some tools to deal with the feeling.

2. It's a (dead) family member's ring

I actually like this hc better than the first one because it's a little less dark, but since Vincent kissed the ring in "Abgrund" I'm not so sure... anyway: here the ring would belong to a family member like a parent or a grandparent.

Maybe, Vincent had a grandpa or grandma who loved them dearly and was always supportive of them, even though they were by far no ordinary or gender-conforming kid. The respective spouse (so, depending on what you choose the matching grandma / grandpa) was grandpa's one true love. Grandpa is very romantic and was maybe the odd one out himself as a kid... but he encourages Vincent to always be himself. Grandma was his one true love and when Grandpa dies, Vincent keeps this ring to remember him and how he believed in him - and in true love.

Another version of this hc is that the ring belonged to a parent gone missing or passed away. More likely V's mother... and when their dad remarried, Vincent asked for the ring to keep her memory.

3. The self-love head canon

A bit strange, maybe, but the most positive one. Here, Vincent's family was quite religious and V was supposed to marry rather young (maybe someone was picked from the religious community, maybe there was not specific partner picked at the time, dunno). However, V realized that they couldn't live this life any longer and they ran away from home and only took the few belongings they had with them. They ended up in Berlin, maybe graduaded there, studied psychology but later decided to become a cop to stand up for those in need (and ofc at some point in Berlin Vincent met Adam Schürk).

Now, why would Vincent wear the ring around their neck and even kiss it? After all, it was supposed to be a wedding ring for a forced marriage. Well, V keeps it as a reminder to always love yourself, to listen to what your heart tells you and to free yourself if needed.

4. Vincent is actually a Hobbit and on the road to Mordor

Selfexplanatory... and V certainly has the hair for it. (And have you seen the Gollum rendition... Queen, I cannot...)

Sooooo... what did I miss? Which headcanons are already out there??

(Gerne auch auf Deutsch und ich kann's auch auf Dt. nochmal erläutern, falls Bedarf ist.)

[yallemagne]

This year, I'm not doing Dr*cula D*ily

Or any other substack but DD is the biggest. I have numerous reasons for this decision that none of y'all are gonna particularly care for, but ya know, just so we got our expectations in order: I'm not gonna participate in DD this year (maybe never again), I'm probably not gonna reblog many posts related to it (doing so would be counterintuitive), but I am holding myself to finishing Orice (at LEAST the base fic).

Now, why?

TL;DR: Mental health crisis brought on by internet harassment and overprioritizing social media. It's not fun anymore, folks.

DD just... it completely ruined the novel for me.

It was a nice phenomenon, but it took a wrecking ball to my mental health and self-worth. Now, I'm not saying DD's creator personally did something to spite me (or maybe I am, he knows what he did /j), but this whole thing? It wasn't good for me. It was never good. It was sometimes fun, but most of the time it made me want to end it because of thumblr notes.

That's fucking stupid. My life is not worth internet validation. My art is not worthless just because my numbers are not as big as the biggest big shots in the fandom. I'm not a horrible person when other people handle personal disagreements regarding headcanon with defaming rumours and impersonation. But hell! My view of reality was horribly skewed.

A while back, I unfollowed all the gothlit tags I previously followed because 1) Some people (active and popular members of the fandom, mind you, not bots or trolls) were posting honest-to-god name-dropping harassment in the tag because "it's a popular tag so more people will see my callout post" and 2) I reached a point where seeing anything related to the novel on my dash just set me off. It didn't even need to be drama-related anymore. Mentions of the characters, mentions of popular AUs, just the very content of this book became triggering to me, and I really didn't miss the content when it was gone, as sad as that is.

And the kicker? I've come to realize that I probably dislike more things about the novel than I actually like about it. Not only is it tied to some of my darkest moments in recent memory, but it's also just... a book with many flaws that I could go on and on and on about. Sometimes, it straight-up made me furious, like seething mad, and I think I'd rather just be happy. But even when I would try to channel that energy into being happy, I always felt I had to over-clarify or else I’d get bombarded with anonymous messages. If you’ve seen any of my posts from during that time… chances are there is a passive aggressive “btw people can have opposing opinions from you about an old book and it doesn’t give you leave to stone them” or several tags of “#this is a joke #a jooooooke #for the love of god #if y’all don’t stop”. I bet it was as annoying for y’all as it was for me.

P.S. Mutuals/friends, do not worry. Y'all keep doing y'all. I can and will block tags if seeing your posts triggers me. So, I suppose my only request is to properly tag, but I've been saying that from the very start.

I just want to move on to other things.

I took a break for Lent. I needed it terribly. And... not gonna lie? I almost didn't want to return. I never got an itching to just log on and "check in". I very successfully avoided tumb altogether. I came back because "I gotta come back eventually" and also like, this is my main hub where I update when I've written a fic, and ya know... I'm not gonna let toxic fandom bs rule my shit.

During my break, I got back into gaming. More specifically, I started playing Hades again. And listening to Epic the Musical. Aaaand boyyy did that bring me back to my Greek mythology phase. I have a Greek mythos/Hades sideblog btw: @areopagusimp. It's cringe, if you can't tell by the blog name.

Back when I was into Hades game and general Greek mythos, my expectations were so much smaller, but yet, my goals and will to create seemed so much bigger. I made art that no one gave a single solitary shit about (except for my friend), but I was happy. Maybe I'm wearing rose-tinted glasses, but... even if I wasn't as happy then as I remember being... haha at least I wasn't receiving threats and insults in my inbox back then :))). That was the most fun thing about the gothlit fandom. I hope every single chickenhearted angry anon is proud of their behaviour.

But yeah, whatever I end up doing, I’m striving to not let it run me into the ground.

But... What do I do now?

I have so many WIPs (art and writing) for the novel, and it's very disappointing that I didn't get to finish them before it all turned sour. Hopefully, I can still finish them, it just won't be with the same distress I worked with before. Hopefully, I can post that stuff and fully manage my expectations, not crash and burn when only a few people like it. Because hell! A few people liking my stuff? That's amazing, really. I shouldn't take that for granted. At the same time, I'm setting a boundary for myself. Placing my self-worth into the hands of people who I don't know, who don't know me, and who aren't even paying for the art? I need to stop that. Who the hell is that gonna serve? Absolutely no one.

My number one goal is to finish Orice. It is somehow untouched by my aversion to the novel; it is my safe space. I want to honour it and honour the longtime readers who have stuck with me. It's gonna be hard, but it's gonna be worth it for me.

This feels attention-seeking, and it kinda is. I'm not tagging the main subject and I'm not allowing reblogs because I want this to stay isolated (and hopefully prevent backlash/misunderstandings), but ya know, no matter how much I try to keep this small, I'm still posting it online. But I just feel like I needed to get this off my chest. I don't really owe everyone an explanation, but I want there to be one for my own sake... also it's much easier to generalize and make a post than contact each of my friends/mutuals on here and unload stuff onto them that I'm not sure is too personal or not.

For those of you who are reading: I love y'all. I love the good people I've met through all this mess. I want to keep the good apples, not throw out the whole harvest, alright? Dunno how much you'll care for my art when the subject is different, but... eh. If y'all are willing to try?