#But when my scatterbrain made this connection

[hylianassassin]

Zelda's golden horse, totally not a take on the Akhal-Teke.

[everywishway]

Khaenri'an Blood Purity Through Eye Color?

This has spoilers for the 3.5 Archon Quest Cavibert. You've been warned!

Alright. I’m scatterbrained so I figured I’d talk about this. My main theory is that pureblooded Khaenri’an’s can be identified by teal eyes with Primogems.

We know all people with Khaenrian blood have primoshaped pupils but Kaeya specifically noticed that Dainsleif is stated to be “pure blood Khaenri’an”. The main difference between the two when it comes to eyes, the main thing connecting Khaenri’ans is their eye color (Kaeya having purplish eyes while Dain having teal)

Dainsleif and Chlothar are both stated to be “pure-blooded Khaenrian” and they both have the same bright teal eyes with primogem shaped pupils. This is also something Halfdan has from the Chasm quest so he might be a full blooded Khaenri’an too.

Kaeya on the other hand has a purplish blue eye. We know he has khaenri’an blood because he’s related to Chlothar and it’s stated in game through his voice lines and backstory. Plus, his primogem pupils are smaller and not as defined. It’s highly likely Kaeya is only part Khaenri’an, not full blooded. This has even been a theory for a while.

Finally, the last playable character who has a backstory related to Khaenri’ah who also has teal eyes, Albedo. While Albedo does not have the Primo-shaped eyes, his eyes match the Alchemy Crafting Table so that might be a side effect from his creation. Rhinedottir purposely made Albedo look as close to perfect originally with Subject Two/Susbedo but he was tossed. This might’ve been another symbol for “perfect” in Khaenri’ah, the teal eyes.

To add to this is the history behind blue eyes in the real world. Blue eyes are a genetic mutation from a single common ancestor and was bred throughout the years despite being a recessive gene. I think this might be something similar because Chlothar says during the quest he was a Khaenri’an noble and Khaenriah already is split between people who are “pure-blooded” vs people who aren’t (whose parents aren’t both from Khaenri’ah, like Caribert’s mother was from Mondstadt). The people who kept their bodies vs the people who turned into Hilichruls.

Khaenri’ah is shown in this quest, through Chlothar, that they had some elitism to other nations due to not worshiping the gods. The color of someone’s eyes might indicate to people how pure blooded the person is, if they are caring both the dominant trait (the primogem-shaped pupil) and the recessive trait (the teal eyes).

This might be why Kaeya was able to notice Dain was “pure-blood” so easily and why Rhinedottir gave Albedo teal eyes almost the same color as the purebloods. Just something to chew on :)

[midnightfox450]

Ayda: I have notes from three previous lifetimes. ...They go back about 150 years and the very earliest note starts with an apology, because me, or she, destroyed all of my previous notes. ...She said she wanted to start over, be someone new, and then decades later she regretted it and started keeping notes again. [wipes tears] I hate her so much.

Do you ever think about how the first words Ayda ever learned were probably "I'm sorry". The very first thing Ayda learns about herself, the foundation on which she has built her own self-identity, is that she is wronged. She was wronged at (re)birth by a previous version of herself and every version after her will be wronged as well. There's still a chance for her to wrong herself (and every "herself" after that) again. For a mistake she made to be played on loop ad infinitum, always coming back to haunt her. And just shy of chronomancy (her father's domain, not her's) there's no way for her to change that. So she learns the best thing she can do in any given situation is apologize.

[CW: discussion of parental abuse and self-loathing language under the cut]

The first lesson young Ayda (so curious, so hungry for knowledge and understanding) ever learned from Ayda Sr. Sr. Sr. was that she will never be able to know who came before her. Those previous notes were the only chance of finding out who those people were. Because legacies are made by the memories of those who knew you. And those Aydas *had* no one to remember them. They likely had no partners or close friends, and the only person with an intrinsic connection to her, her father, is so scatterbrained he can barely even maintain a coherent timeline of his own biography, let alone his children.

So Ayda hates the version of herself who robbed her of that. Robbed them all of that. She walks through her incredibly flammable library every single day with the knowledge that there are circumstances out there that could push her to just burn it all down. And all she'd have left was the ability to apologize.

(I've always been interested in why Ayda chose to become a librarian for *pirate culture* specifically. Why she would dedicate herself to documenting what would otherwise become undocumented. Maybe not every version of her ran the Compass Points. Maybe this was the inciting incident).

When Fig is forced to attack Ayda disguised as Aguefort, her first impulse upon seeing her father raise his hand to strike her was to say "I'm sorry". Not "Why are you attacking me", not "You are a horrible father". "*I'm* sorry". She has never met this man in her entire life and yet she immediately assumes she must be in the wrong if he's reacting to her with violence. Because to her, her very existence invites anger. Invites abuse. Invites hatred.

Why would it be unreasonable or illogical for everyone else to hate her? She hates her. She certainly hates at least one previous version of herself, and they're basically the same person. The future versions of herself will probably end up hating her too.

"I understand your hatred. I'm easy to hate. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I am wrong and have been wronged and am now wronging you by existing."

[wilsons-journey]

Nektarius Lore

After a little talk with a Friend yesterday, lemme share some Nekt Lore, I never shared here on Discord.

She is my self insert, but with her own lil Story in the Tyria Lore. (She is also the embodiment of my intrusive thoughts - my inner gremlin)

First some small Ideas I had so far:

She belongs to the Ash-Legion. Her good observing skills made her a good informant.

She had a Warband, but never really connected with them - due to her often choose to be alone. Too many people exhausted her.

One of her first good friends among Charr was prob. Rolan (Belongs to @/BrightWingedBat), sharing some chaotic energy like her

Later she joins the Order of Whispers and get to know my Champion Vale

She probably ends up as one "background solider" during all the Commander Business

She definitely had some run ins with Valefor (I have no Idea how this girl survived.)

Talking of survivability, its her secret talent. She survived several accidents - on accident. With more luck than sense.

she is actually deeply afraid of death

While Vale resisted Jormags Words, Nektarius fell for it. Thinking they could find another way to save Tyria, without killing the Dragons. She felt very sorry for Kralks death - developed a big pity for the elder dragons. They just wanted to live, like everyone else wants

She becomes branded by Jormag, but due to her chaotic nature he soon grew annoyed of her. Sending her on a mission in hope she never comes back. And when she did, Jormag was long killed by the Commander / Champion.

With a little help of Aurene, she got healed from Jormags influence and kept some of the icy magic.

Some random lil facts:

SAB addict and a Scatterbrain

she has a very sensible nose - and sometimes sneezes a lot (dad sneeze a-TSCHOOO)

loves to play pranks or gamble

She is fascinated by Asura technology, and develops some knowledge about that. Also trying to build some stuff with Asura tech (with less success - wont stop her from trying) At least she managed to build a "Hunger Games"-like Simulator

She is a kleptomaniac. She sees shiny, its her shiny now!

Very curious, but also quite wary of people. She often stays away. If she interacts with people its often very chaotic. And she often feels guilty about it.

She has no problem to flirt and smooch every handsome boy / girl - but she has no interest in more. But she would never resist a hug.

When I can choose one NPC to be a canon good Friend to one of my Cats, outside the normal Commander Story - it would be Canach for Nektarius.

I feel they would get along very well. And she would definitly love his Casino - she loves gambling. But we never - EVER - talk about her debt there.

Due to her friendship to Canach, she don't have to pay back, but it won't stop him from brining it up from time to time like.

Canach: So about your debt. Nekt: You don't want me to pay it back, right? :slight panic: Canach: :) Nekt: Right?! :big panic:

He likes to make fun of it and send her on edge.

She is a recurring visitor there. Not always to gamble, but because she has no home to go to. She is homeless, since the incident with Jormag.

But what does she do outside of everything else?

She is still a skilled informant and spy. I see her to bring it to use as Mercenary. She is not a powerful fighter - she knows how to protect herself - the magic she inherited from her branded time helps, too - but she will mostly offer getting information or stuff like artefacts, treasures or just to deliver some important letters. Occasionally smuggles goods.

And when she is not on duty, she definitively drags Rolan into some shenanigans, where HE has to drag them out again. (Like annoying a certain murder Cat with a grumpy face,... )

[quibbs126]

So I decided I needed a break from that beach picture I’m working on (yes I’m still working on it, right now I’m making two versions because I thought the lineart and background didn’t match), so I just decided to make this

Yes it is based on the Toy Story meme

Anyways, I did this for two reasons. One, because I realized that Reno and Ceres are basically the instigators of the game’s plot; Reno the first half and Ceres the second half. It’s also different in that Reno was unintentional; he just wanted the power of the Forest Guardian, and accidentally made the Magilith activate, causing Kuro and Fina to time travel and the story to happen. And then later when they get back to the present he’s the person they’re trying to stop from unleashing the Great Disaster. Ceres meanwhile very intentionally instigated the second half of the plot as she was the one to inform the group about the existence of the Magi Key and what it could do, as well as where to find the pieces

Second reason is just that I really want them to interact, because I think it would be really interesting, especially since likely, Ceres knows of their connection, while Reno doesn’t

I have also come up with this alternate plot where the story starts because Ceres approaches Reno and his group and has them start the time travel, which our heroes then get wrapped up in. And in doing so, we see their dynamic, which is basically that Ceres tries to interact with Reno and deep down wants to be close to him, even if she knows she’s just using him for her goals, but meanwhile Reno, whom she does not tell about their relationship (because he absolutely wouldn’t believe her and it’d probably ruin her credibility), sees her as more of a work partner, and while he goes along with her plans he isn’t fully trusting of her. And at the very end where he comes to his senses and turns on her, it does hurt her in a way he wasn’t expecting (he fully believes that Ceres doesn’t care and has no clue why she does), but she ultimately gets him out of the way because her mission is more important than her feelings, and she may or may not reveal to him their true connection

And that whole scenario is kind of one of the other reasons I wanted to draw them together. I’ve just been thinking a lot about the two of them interacting and wanting to draw that

I think I got carried away, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, drawing I made. Well might as well pivot over to the drawing process itself now

So I’m using a different brush here. I was looking for a brush for my big beach drawing, and someone suggested the Syrup brush on Procreate, and I actually had fun with it (and it is the reason I’m making two versions now), so I wanted to use it again here, and I think it turned out pretty well

I will say though, I had no clue what I was doing on the sketch with the bodies. I don’t think it’s super noticeable in the final product, but it was a mess in the sketch. I really need to figure out how I’m drawing anatomy, I swear. I can’t just keep doing guesswork

…You know actually, I don’t think I have much else to say, so I guess we’ll end here. It was a bit of a haphazard description, but I’m scatterbrained, what you gonna do?

I do want to draw more of the two interacting, I just don’t have ideas yet. Maybe in the future though

[symptoms-syndrome]

Hi! I’m curious to hear (in a vague way) what the process was like uncovering the DID if you’re comfortable answering. Like how long did it take? Did your therapist(s)/treatment team first consider other diagnoses? And anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

Hihi! This is sort of a hard question to answer for me, but I can try!

What constitutes my "treatment team" is sort of hard to define in this sense, because IDK if you mean "the ppl over the course of my life" or like "the one who wrote it on paper."

I've been seeing a therapist since I was 6 years old. I started going to outpatient programs like when I was in my early teens for Behavioral Problems. In those I was diagnosed with everything in the book so like. In that sense other diagnoses were considered? I think by the time I was 18 and kicked out of the house/able to see a professional of my own volition not connected to my parents/disciplinary programs, I was mostly labeled as BPD, PTSD, depression + anxiety, OCD, maybe NPD or ODD. I don't really give a single shit about any of those because I don't define myself by diagnoses anymore, or try not to, and my therapists as an adult told me it was majorly fucked that I was diagnosed with all that as a teenager. Most of them weren't even legit they were just labels to try and pin down why I was a Bad Kid. Spoiler for that, the answer was that generally teenagers act out when they're subject to intense trauma basically all the time and aren't listened to and are institutionalized. Tends to fuck your brain up real bad. I'm a lot better now not bc I got over the laundry list of diagnoses, but because I'm in like. A stable and supportive and independent environment.

I was officially diagnosed as an adult, exact ages escape me but probably like 19? It came as a surprise to me but fit like a glove re: my experiences with memory loss, not remembering where I am, meeting people who have met me before but I didn't remember, people telling me I did things I don't think I would, etc. It was really upsetting to hear because it's such a. Permanent and perception-of-life altering disorder. I was definitely hoping it was something that could be like. Cured more easily. It was also definitely hard to come to terms with the fact my childhood was That Bad, when I didn't really think it was before.

My therapist at the time said it was almost stupidly obvious that was what I had, even tho I wasn't like. Aware of it.

So like. How long did it take is hard to answer. Overall, if you count all the time I was being seen by psychiatric "professionals?" Over 10 years. If you count just that therapist? Like one year.

I'm a lil scatterbrained RN, so I might add more detail later or if u send another ask. I guess the question is so open and vague it's hard to answer without a full autobiography LMAO.

But I guess it would be useful to know why you wanna know. Then I could probably give a better answer. Are you considering the diagnosis for yourself? Are you trying to see if ur experience is shared w others? But also keep in mind I'm a weird little anti-psych dog who in general rejects the idea of seeking diagnosis for treatment. RN in therapy I mostly talk about my day to day struggles with whatever (like "damn, I've been really fixated on [specific trauma] this week" or "I made a friend" or "I'm really stressed about this argument I had" or "later this week im going on a date and i don't wanna fuck it up") and occasionally parts stuff comes up. Therapy hasn't majorly changed I don't think. Then again I'm real shit brain right now and my memory sucks ass. Maybe I can answer better later I just know if I didn't answer at all I'd forget.

[royalarms]

GET TO KNOW THE WRITER .

what made you pick up the current muse(s) you have? i love noctis . final fantasy xv is my favorite game of all time and i've put ungodly hours into it , but fun fact ! i actually wrote prompto from 2016-2020/2021ish ( i dont remember haha ) but immediately the game became my favorite final fantasy game , and then eventually topped my passion for kingdom hearts and crisis core and just . became my number one . i still wanted a way to experience and express my love for it , but my personality had shifted sooo much over the past several years and prompto just didn't fit for me anymore , so i opted for noctis . gave him a go and ended up connecting with him on a level i would have never though LOL . i've always really really loved and enjoyed his character but writing a protagonist always gave me the willies so i never ventured into it . now im stuck here .

is there anything you don’t like to write? there are several things i WON'T write , but i don't know if there's anything i particularly dislike . i feel like if i have the right writing partner we can make most anything fun .

is there anything you really enjoy writing? i love writing things i've never written before ! new characters , new interactions , cool plots i've never written out , etc . i like to keep it exciting .

do you write in silence or do you play music? i either listen to lyricless music or write in silence . every once in awhile i can write with songs with lyrics on but it has to be really quiet . i'll turn on my character playlists in those moments , but i honestly think i do my best writing in silence .

do you plan your replies or wing them? both ! i don't have an explanation here , it just depends on the thread and the plot (if any) and when and how inspiration strikes .

do you enjoy shipping? yes . as long as the age gap isn't weird or intense toxicity is going on , i'm USUALLY down for most things :)

what’s your alias/name? aster >:) age? 25 birthday? march 29 favorite color? red ! favorite song? ohhh shoot . i love linkin park for my favorite band , but favorite SONG ? let me check my most replayed on spotify LOL . um. scatterbrain by kxllswxtch , voices in my head by falling in reverse , and numb by the used 💀 all of them are negative tw if anyone wants to listen last movie you watched? i literally do not know , i don't watch a lot of movies last show you watched? the wit/cher last song you listened to? listening to squishy caterpillars riding on bullets by istasha ( negative n drug tw ) ............. favorite food? curry and adobo :) favorite season? spring ! do you have a tumblr best friend? i dont love the phrase "tumblr best friend" idk what that entails but i have three ppl i love dearly and talk to a lot ! @otlaw , @starshcwer , @onegil ❤️❤️❤️

tagged by: i stole thisss

tagging : you should steal it too :)

[hansuart]

Hi! I saw your recent most and I really like how Yuki and Zuri's powers affect their fighting styles. It's always interesting to see other characters with elemental kinesis in general(especially since I have one myself)!

If possible I'd like to hear more about the girls' "relationship" with their powers so to speak. You can interpret that as you will :)

The short answer is: They're powers have very much become part of them, and they're mostly fueled by their emotions and feelings. They've spend their early life just learning to control them, and they've pretty much become experts in the field. Those powers truly connect them to their heritage and I think without them they'll lose a big part of their identity.

I'm honestly open to the idea of exploring what would happen if one day they did lose that power or they accidentally hurt their friend(s) and stopped using it for a while. It could lead to some fun character deveplopment for sure >:3c

heres some doodles and more of my ramblings on their powers:

To make the best out of her powers, Zuri needs her mind to be calm and focused. To help her with that she often drinks tea and meditates. also yes Rough is joining her this time tho he doesn't really get it and its just enjoying the company

when she's angry or distressed if often leads to her powers going a bit haywire or not working well at all, and in some cases they can even get dangerous depending on her fury.

Ice and water are essencially the same but still different, and thats also the case when it comes to Yuki and her powers. She doesn't need to be calm for her powers to work the best, she just needs to be determined and knowledgeable. Which can be difficult work her since she isn't that smart and she's a bit of a scatterbrainer

She can often make it snow just by pondering on something really hard and not notice.

I mentioned it before that she can pretty much make any weapon out of ice as long as she knows how it works. Which is why she hasn't made a snow gun yet XD

And like i've also mentioned before when she gets very flustered her ice weapons melt, which ties her powers very closely into her emotions/mood.

[foundtherightwords]

The Quiet Chaos - Chapter 6

Pairing: Billy Knight (Lethal White/Strike) x OFC

Summary: After a bad breakup throws her carefully-planned life into disarray, Esme has sworn off dating forever. However, when she forms an unexpected connection with a young man named Billy, who's dealing with his own struggles, Esme is forced to face the truth: sometimes you can't plan for love.  

Warnings: mental health issues, angst, slow-burn, developing relationship, dysfunctional family, some violence (non-graphic), some smut (non-explicit)

Chapter warnings: discussion of parental neglect/parentification

Chapter word count: 4.1k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

Chapter 6 - Christmas

As Esme had predicted, her parents didn't care about Billy's condition at all. But then again, she had never worried about that. If anything, her worries were the opposite—that her parents would be too nice to Billy and smother him with their affection. On Christmas Eve, she called them again to run through a list of do's and don'ts that she'd compiled.

"Please don't whisper around him, that'll make him paranoid. And don't shout either. I know you can get very loud when you're excited, Dad. Oh, you do. Please just remember to tone it down a bit. And please, please, Mum, don't ask him a million questions, and if he doesn't want to say something, please don't make up an answer for him. Don't make up stories about him or put him into one of your books."

Mum took offense at that. "Darling, when I do put someone into my book, I only use them as inspiration, you know that!" she said. "They never recognize themselves."

Yeah, like I didn't recognize myself, thought Esme bitterly, but she only said, "I'd know, alright? He's had a very tough life, he's not a source of inspiration for you."

"All right, Esme, we'll be on our best behavior," Dad assured her.

"And please do a normal Christmas dinner for once. None of your weird foods or experimental cuisine."

"We promise."

But Esme still didn't quite believe that they would keep their promise. It wasn't that they were malicious or deceptive, they were just terribly scatterbrained and it would slip their minds. So just to be on the safe side, she made a Christmas pudding with some brandy butter and brought it along. She was determined to give Billy a proper taste of Christmas, even if her parents fell through.

She had also told Billy that if he wasn't feeling up to it, he could change his mind about the visit or leave early. But he seemed quite calm when they met at the train station—calmer than Esme herself, at any rate. He only showed a bit of nervousness when he held out a package. "I know you said I don't have to bring presents," he said. "But I made these. Are they OK?"

It was a set of wooden cooking spoons, their handles carved with leafy vines and flowers, almost Art Nouveau in style. Just the day before, when he dropped by the clinic, Billy had given her a similar present—only hers were six measuring cups, and carved with what was easily recognizable was Angua and her five pups. They were almost too cute to be used.

"Oh, Billy, these are beautiful," she exclaimed over the spoons. "They'll love it. But—"

"What?"

"My parents don't really cook." That wasn't entirely true. "And when they do, they wouldn't use fancy spoons such as these." That part was true. Dad, the cook in the family, was the type who viewed recipes as more of a guideline, and to him, anything could be used as a kitchen utensil if you were determined enough. But Billy looked so crestfallen that Esme's soft heart took over. "You can still give them those though. They're so beautiful, my parents will probably put them on display or something." 

His face brightened up. "You sure?"

"Of course!"

As they got off the train at Rochester, Esme saw a familiar figure waiting outside the station by her parents' old car. "That's my sister, Sybil," she said to Billy.

"Photographer, lives in Edinburgh, right?"

Esme nodded, just as Sybil ran up to her and wrapped her in a bear hug. "Hiya, big sis!" She bent down to Angua. "And this must be Angua! Let's see if we can find her a Carrot, yeah?" Sybil was the one blessed with looks in the family. Esme's soft and rounded profile made her look meek and sometimes dumpy, as she was wont to describe herself, while Sybil was all sharp angles and delicate, elfin features, made all the more striking by her short black hair. But as the sister closest to Esme in age—only two years younger—she was also the closest Esme had to an ally in the family.

Esme introduced Billy. Sybil shook his hand, then whispered loudly to Esme, "He's cute, sis!"

"You have a girlfriend, Sibby," Esme chided, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, I'm allowed to appreciate beauty, am I not?"

"Don't mind her," Esme told Billy, who was looking like his whole face was on fire. "She's a terrible flirt."

On the drive from the station to their parents' house, Sybil insisted on making a detour to show Billy some of the sights. "That's where Charles Dickens used to live," she would say, or "That's the house used as the model for Miss Havisham's house in Great Expectations." Meanwhile, Esme became more and more aware of a permeating stink in the car, a nauseating mix of manure and decaying flesh. By the crinkle of his nose, she was sure Billy had noticed it as well but was too polite to say anything. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and asked, "Sibby, what's that smell?"

"What smell?" Sybil replied. "Oh, in the car? That'll be the lamb."

For a second, Esme thought it was her younger siblings' stupid idea of a prank. "What lamb?"

"The lamb for our dinner." Sybil chuckled to herself. "So Dad saw this chap on TV making this thing called '24-hour lamb', right, and he wanted to recreate it, so yesterday he and I went to pick up a freshly slaughtered lamb from some lady he knows who has a farm. Had to drive all the way down to Lydd too."

Esme exchanged a look with Billy and groaned inwardly. Either her dad had forgotten his promise to do a "normal" dinner, or this was his idea of normal. She didn't know which was worse.

"What on earth is a '24-hour lamb'?" Billy chimed in.

"You dig a hole in the ground, start a fire in there, put some damp straw on top, then you put a lamb in and cover it up and leave it there for 24 hours," said Sybil, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Supposedly the meat will just fall off the bones."

Billy turned to Esme with a raise of his eyebrow, either of curiosity or concern, but Esme only shook her head hopelessly. "Don't get your hopes up," she told him. "Knowing my dad, you'll be too busy picking bits of straw and dirt out of it to enjoy it. That is if it's even edible."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Sybil said over her shoulder. "It'll turn out fine."

Esme wanted to point out the many times Dad's experiments had, in fact, not turned out fine, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle and had no choice but to resign to what fate, or rather, her family had in store for her.

***

Finally, they arrived at the cottage that Esme's parents had chosen to settle down in seventeen years ago, a low, rambling building with a sagging roof and whitewashed brick walls that were usually hidden under a curtain of clematis and wisteria in the summer, and even now, still retained a certain romantic air thanks to a web of skeletal vines. A sprawling garden surrounded it.

Sybil parked the car out front and they all went in. The front door was pushed open with some difficulty, and it soon became clear why—jackets and scarves and wellies and umbrellas were piled up in a corner of the front hall, just behind the door, nearly obscuring the floor tiles. Esme was appalled to see Sybil casually kick the pile to the side before adding her own jacket and scarf to it. With a sigh, Esme picked the pile up and tried to sort it out, but there was no place to put the clothes except for a long dresser, and this was already covered in mail. She attempted to clear off the letters and flyers and parcels, but her hands were full of clothes.

"Oh, Esme, get off it," Sybil said, not turning around. "You know that once you leave, it'll just get messy again."

Billy stepped in. "Here," he said, putting the post into a tottering stack, leaving some room on top of the dresser for Esme to put the clothes down into a vague semblance of order. She gave him a grateful smile.

The house seemed deserted, but they could hear excited voices from the back. "They must be in the garden, digging up the lamb," Sybil said.

While they followed her through the house, Billy grabbed Esme's hand and whispered, "Relax." She nodded uncertainly.

The back garden was as unkempt as the rest of the house. For some, the place might look picturesque, with the bare tree limbs and raggedy bramble bushes forming a perfectly muted background for the bright red and orange of the holly and firethorn berries, but for Esme, it just brought back memories of getting scratched by stray branches and fending off the bugs that bred like mad under the cover of the thickets. The only place that looked like it had some attention was the shed at the bottom of the garden, where her dad did his glassblowing.

Four people were gathered in front of the shed, looking intently at something on the ground and arguing amongst themselves. "I'm telling you, Dad, it's not ready yet!" This was Tiffany, shaking her head of bright magenta hair.

Sam and Dad were both waving their long, gangly arms in front of her, looking like two windmills in dispute. "But it's called 24-hour lamb, and it's been 24 hours!" Dad said.

"Yeah, it may be burned, Tiff!" Sam always took Dad's side in every argument.

Mum looked up and saw Sybil striding toward them, with Esme and Billy trailing behind. Her face broke into a smile, and she ran to them with her arms wide open. Before anyone could open their mouth, Mum had engulfed first Esme, then Billy in a tight hug. Only after she'd let a startled Billy go that she seemed to remember herself. "Oh I'm so sorry," she said. "I should've asked if you'd like a hug first, shouldn't I?"

"No, it's alright," Billy managed to say. "Very nice to meet you, Mrs. Pendergast."

"Please, call me Ivy. It's lovely to meet you too, Billy. Hello, you," this was to Esme, along with a pinch of her cheek.

"Hi, Mum." Out of all the kids, Esme was the one that resembled their mum the most, at least in terms of their physical traits—the same dark hair and hazel eyes, the same soft features—and yet the way they carried themselves was so different that most people didn't pick up on their resemblance right away. Mum filled every space she was in with big, exuberant gestures, and even her hair was always loose, flying all over the place, while Esme always hung back, kept still, trying to make herself smaller and unnoticed, her hair in a neat, tight French braid.

She introduced her dad, Tiffany, and Sam. Their greetings were no less enthusiastic than Mum's, but Esme was glad when they didn't heap their attention on Billy, instead turning toward the mound of dirt on the ground. "Ever had salt-marsh lamb, Billy?" Dad asked. "Sorry, do you eat meat? I forgot to check with Esme."

"I still don't think it's ready," Tiffany said.

"But I'm hungry," whined Sam.

"Esme brought a pudding," Sybil said. "Eat that if you can't wait."

"No!" Esme shouted. "That's for later!"

She recognized in Billy the nonplussed but amused look people often had when they met her family for the first time, as he answered Dad, "Um, yes. No. I mean, I do eat meat, but I've never had salt-marsh lamb."

"Great! This will be your first taste then! Sam, fetch me the spade."

Under six pairs of watchful eyes, seven if you count Angua, Dad uncovered the mound of dirt with the solemn air of one of the Sutton Hoo excavators. Esme expected a plume of smoke, a cloud of steam, or the smell of cooking meat, to come out, but there was nothing, except for the smell of dirt and that stink she'd smelled in the car, getting stronger and stronger the further down the spade went. Dad, however, didn't seem to notice anything wrong.

"Aha!" he exclaimed triumphantly as he unearthed a blackened lump in the shape of... yes, the shape of a whole lamb. Billy turned away, his face turning a worrying shade of green.

"That looks... that looks raw, Dad," Sam said, as Dad scraped away some of the soot and ashes and opened the piece of burlap wrapped around the lamb.

"How can it be raw?!" Dad roared.

But if the smell was any indication, the lamb was indeed raw. And, to further drive home the point, Angua took an appreciative sniff and bounded forward, ready to sink her teeth into the haunch of raw sheep. "Angua, no!!!" Esme shouted and pulled her back, just in time.

She looked around at her family. Mum was shaking her head. Dad was red-faced and scraping in vain at the hole, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. Her younger siblings were trying to suppress laughter, but a narrow glance from Esme sobered them up. Billy was still looking queasy. Her heart sank. He probably thinks we're all a bunch of ghouls.

"Dad, leave it," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "Mum, what are we going to do for dinner? Do we have anything else in the house?"

A panicked look crossed Mum's face, as if someone had just asked her to recite the first 100 digits of pi from memory.

"Are you telling me that this—lamb—was going to be our entire dinner?" Esme felt close to tears. "No sides, nothing?" But nobody was listening to her.

"It's the damned straw!" Dad shouted. "It's wet! I told you it was supposed to be damp, not wet!"

"Back in medieval times, people would've been glad for all this meat," Tiffany, who was studying history at Cambridge, said. "They wouldn't need side dishes."

"We—are—not—medieval—people!" Esme said through gritted teeth.

"Relax, Esme. It's fine," Sybil said.

"Hey, maybe we can put it in Dad's kiln!" Sam piped up. "That ought to cook it, right?"

Esme buried her face in her hands.

***

And so for Billy's first Christmas dinner with Esme's family, which took place on Boxing Day, they ended up eating Chinese takeaway before finishing with Esme's Christmas pudding, which had gone a little stale and had to be fried up in some butter, but that was actually quite delicious, so it was all right.

Still, the slight irritation Esme had felt the moment she arrived home and saw the messy front hall refused to go away. It wasn't directed at anyone in particular, just a general annoyance when the two parts of her life collided and she couldn't decide which part she belonged to, the sensible, practical one in London, or the chaotic but charming one in Kent.

The one thing that cheered her up was that Billy took it all in his strides. While waiting for Sybil to bring back the food, they lounged around the kitchen for a bit of a chat, and the inevitable question of how the two of them had met came up.

"Billy brought Angua into the clinic—" Esme began.

"Then we found her pups under a bridge," Billy followed. "We didn't meet a troll though, despite my name," he quickly added.

Everybody laughed, and Esme turned to Billy with a surprised grin. He grinned back. He must be feeling quite relaxed to be making jokes like that. Perhaps this would turn out well after all.

Once they sat down to eat (another oddity in the Pendergast household, which had no set mealtimes), Billy gave her mum the spoons, apologizing for not wrapping them nicely. Everybody oohed and aahed over them, and Dad started asking Billy all sorts of questions about woodworking, which Billy didn't seem to mind talking about. In fact, he was looking quite at home, though from time to time, he would take Esme's hand or touch his knee to her leg, either to assure her that everything was fine, or to assure himself that she was still there.

When the conversation turned to childhood, Esme started feeling a bit nervous. Mum was telling Billy about how the kids had all shown their aptitudes from a very early age—Sybil snapping away with the Polaroid camera she found at a flea market when she was five, Tiffany insisting on stopping at every historical site they came across while driving around in the camper van, and Sam going to bed as a baby with a paintbrush in his fist. "And Esme was always bringing home little injured things, of course," Mum said. "I still remember the first time. It was a worm that she accidentally cut in half while playing in the dirt. She was in tears for days after."

"I didn't know if it grew back or not, alright?" Esme said to Billy, defensive. "I thought I'd killed it. Not all worms can grow back, you know."

"What about you, Billy?" Dad said. "I bet you were the same as a kid, always tinkering around with chisel and things, right?"

Esme closed her eyes briefly. I've told them a million times, don't ask him about his life! She was trying to think of something to change the subject, but to her surprise, Billy was answering, calmly, "I suppose so. I used to carve the Uffington White Horse on little pendants for my dad, to sell in shops." His hand was clenched around hers under the table, but he gave her a brief smile to say it was all right.

Mum suddenly asked, "How come you're not wearing your White Horse necklace, Esme? I thought you loved it."

Esme hadn't worn the necklace since she and Billy started seeing each other, and she'd completely forgotten about it. "The silver's a bit tarnished, so I want to have it cleaned," she lied, ignoring Billy's questioning look.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Mum. They talked about the White Horse a bit, and then, to Esme's immense relief, the conversation veered toward prehistoric hill figures in general, and nothing more was said about horses or childhood.

It was only when they were on the late train back to London and Esme saw Billy almost visibly sag down in the seat that she realized how hard he'd tried to mask his anxiety during the visit. "You didn't have to put so much pressure on yourself," she said. "My parents really like you."

Probably even more than me, an unkind thought flitted through her mind, before she could stamp it down. Oh, she knew her parents loved her, albeit in a general, abstract way. But like? They didn't like her much. They tried to hide it, but Esme could always tell, even as a child. Kids can pick up on that kind of thing. She was too serious, too rigid for them. Well, they shouldn't have named me after a certain stern old witch then...

"Are you mad at me for giving them the spoons?" Billy asked.

"What? No! I told you it was fine."

"Then what is it?"

Was her irritation that noticeable? Esme knew that if she tried to change the subject, Billy would brood over it and become convinced that it was his fault somehow, so she spoke the truth. "It's not you. It's my parents. They always get on my nerves."

"So they're a bit absent-minded. It's not the end of the world."

"Try growing up with them, never knowing what you're going to eat, because they forget to prepare a meal, and you'll be having chocolate cake for dinner." In her anger, Esme had forgotten her self-imposed rule of not whinging about her parents to Billy. "Sibby and I constantly got into trouble at school because they kept forgetting Parents' Evening. When Tiff and Sam started school, I had to be the one that reminded them. I had to be strict with my siblings, so our parents could be fun. Sibby understood a bit of that, but Tiff and Sam never did. And all of my friends were always banging on about how they wished their parents were as cool as mine—"

"They still love you. They're still nice people."

Esme retorted, "You're just saying that because they're not your parents." Next to her, Billy flinched, almost imperceptibly—she felt it, rather than saw it, a slight stiffening of his shoulder, a tiny shift of his body away from her, and realized how cruel she'd sounded. "I'm sorry."

"No, 's alright." Billy gave her hand an awkward pat. "Just because I have a shit childhood doesn't mean you can't tell me about yours. We're not competing to see who has a shittier childhood, are we?"

"But I don't want to burden you with all this..."

"Is that why you stop wearing your necklace too, because you don't want to burden me?"

She was shocked at his accusing tone. "No! I just thought—I'm just being considerate..."

"What, you think I'm so fragile that I can't even look at a necklace?"

She didn't know how to respond to that. Billy was watching her intently, but when she didn't answer, when she couldn't even look at him, he turned toward the window and kept his eyes fixed on the glass, though there was nothing to see but darkness, broken by pockets of light from some village or town. They remained silent for the rest of the ride.

***

Esme decided to accompany Billy from the station back to his flat, hoping the walk would erase the strange tension between them, although this meant she would have to take the bus home. Billy just shrugged and said "Whatever you want," which she took as a bad sign. Silence thickened between them, heavy and sullen. More than once, Esme tried to say something to break it, but her mind was drawing a blank. Talking about it would make him feel bad, but not talking about it would confirm his accusation. So they just walked, Billy with his shoulder hunched, avoiding her eyes, while Angua scampered between them, looking from one person to another as if to ask what was wrong.

They had almost reached Billy's flat and the turn for the bus stop, where Esme planned to say goodbye, when Billy stopped so abruptly that she nearly walked into him.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I don't remember leaving the lights on," Billy said. Both windows of his flat were indeed ablaze with light.

They approached slowly. The front door was closed but not locked. Esme's slight concern edged into panic. "Do you want me to call the police?" she asked, digging her phone out of her bag.

Billy shook his head, but his hand trembled as he pushed the door open, and he looked frightened, like a—like a lamb being led into slaughter, thought Esme. It was a silly idea, but it stuck, perhaps because her dad's horrible cooking experiment was still fresh in her mind. Yes, Billy didn't look like he was afraid because he didn't know what was behind the door. He was afraid because he knew exactly what was behind it.

And what was behind it was a man. A man, sprawled on the sofa and stuffing his face with the pigs in blankets Esme had made for Billy the other day in lieu of a proper Christmas dinner. He looked to be in his late thirties, with close-cropped hair, a square jaw, heavy stubble, and muscular, tattooed arms accentuated by his wrinkled T-shirt. Angua growled.

The other man's eyes, of a lighter brown than Billy's, turned to them, regarding them coldly.

"There you are, Billy. Thought I'd missed you," he said. "A family reunion at Christmas. Isn't it nice?"

Billy seemed to shrink in front of those malevolent eyes.

"H-hello, Jimmy," he said.

Chapter 7

A/N: I totally stole the lamb story from Joe Thomas's insane episode of the Off Menu podcast. If you haven't listened to Off Menu (or have only listened to Joe Quinn's episode), I highly recommend it.

Also, some spiciness is coming next chapter (properly this time, not like the embarrassing scene in Chapter 5!)

Taglist: @quinnypixie, @accidentalslag, @etherealglimmer

[priestessofspiders]

Missed Opportunities

Do you ever think about how many people you used to know? All those lost connections, friends and relatives you haven’t seen in years, people whose names you’ve forgotten and who now exist only as faint, gentle memories.

I was on Facebook one evening, looking to see what my high school friends had been up to in the intervening years, when I received a private message from a profile I didn’t recognize, simply saying <Hello.> Her name was Stephanie London, and the profile picture was a conventionally attractive blonde woman, smiling for the camera. To be honest, there was a part of me that just wanted to block her on instinct, I’m far too used to spambots at this point to readily trust strangers messaging me apropos of nothing. But there was something faintly familiar about her face and name, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, that made me choose to respond instead.

<Hello!> I typed, <Sorry, I’m afraid I’m not quite sure who you are. Do you know me from somewhere?> I braced myself for a shady link to some porn site or something like that, but I was surprised to get an actually coherent response.

<We used to be friends in high school. I’d have reached out sooner, but it took me a while to find you. I hope it’s not weird to say, but I like your new name. Rose suits you far better than James lol.>

At this point the itch in the back of my mind was becoming excruciating, it felt like I was missing something incredibly obvious. There was something so familiar about her but I just couldn’t place it. After racking my brain unsuccessfully for a few minutes, I finally replied.

<Aw thanks! I’m very sorry, I am trying really hard to remember who you are, but for some reason it’s just not clicking. It’s been a while since high school though, and I’m sure you can remember how much of a scatterbrain I was back then, especially before I got on ADHD meds. Would you mind jogging my memory a bit?> Her reply was instant.

<You used to call me Stefan.>

Instantly it came flooding back, memories of a lanky teenage boy with thick glasses, of cracked voice laughter at cringy videos, of being taught how to port forward my IP address in order to host late night gaming sessions. I clicked back to Stephanie’s profile picture, checking again. Faintly, past the makeup and the hair, I could see remnants of her old face, a familiar twinkle in the eyes. She must have gotten a lot of work done, I remember thinking, she looks like a completely different person.

<HOLY SHIT> I typed, frantically, <I didn’t even recognize you!! Congratulations, I suppose! How have you been?>

Her response, like the last one, was immediate. I almost thought she may have written it out in advance, copypasting it from a text file.

<I know this is a little out of nowhere, and I understand if you can’t or don’t want to, but would you be down to meet up tonight?>

I was a little taken aback. I mean, how often does a long-lost friend from high school turn up out of nowhere in your direct messages with a request to hang out that same day? Additionally, I found her directness slightly disconcerting.

<Tonight?> I asked, <I mean, I’d love to hang out with you sometime but that’s a little soon, isn’t it?>

Another instantaneous reply.

<Do you have something else you’d otherwise be doing? Again, I understand if you don’t want to.> I thought about it for a second. I didn’t have anything else on my schedule, no excuse I could throw out to justify why I wouldn’t be able to. I’ve never been particularly good at lying either.

<I suppose not,> I said, <but I don’t know, it’s just one of those things, isn’t it? No offense but one kind of expects advance warning for this sort of thing.>

This time there was a pause, as though she were thinking carefully before replying.

<I’m very sorry. I’d have asked sooner, but this is really the only night I have free for a very long time. I’m sorry if this sounds weird to say, but I’ve missed you. We used to hang out basically every day back in high school, and I’ve just been pretty lonely recently to be honest. Anyway, I completely understand if you’re not able to.>

I felt a pang of guilt when she said she missed me. I hadn’t meant for us to drift apart, the winds of fate just seemed to blow in opposite directions for the both of us. I’d moved away for a while to complete college, and while we kept in contact for a year or two, we eventually just stopped keeping up. Since then I hadn’t even bothered to try talking with her. I made up my mind then and there.

<Don’t worry about it,> I typed, <I just was a little surprised is all. I’d be happy to hang out. Where are you staying at these days?> <The same old house as always,> she replied, <I never left.>

- - -

We talked for a little bit more before deciding on a time for me to arrive. Fortunately my apartment was pretty close to where I used to live back in high school, so it wasn’t a particularly long drive to reach Stephanie’s house.

As I pulled up in front of the familiar suburban home that I’d spent so many pleasant afternoons at as a youth, I was overwhelmed with an intense wave of nostalgia. It didn’t seem to have changed in the slightest detail. The tacky lawn gnomes that her mother had insisted on putting up, the lawn that was perpetually brown because her father refused to ever use the sprinklers, the faint scent of the roses which lined the gravel path up to the inviting green door, all of it was exactly as I remembered. Every step I took awoke pleasant memories of summers long past, from a childhood that seemed now so far away.

And yet… something wasn’t quite right. I suppose it seemed almost too perfect, too unchanged. Stephanie hadn’t mentioned her parents, so I assumed she must be living alone now, but if that were true, why would so much of the house have remained utterly unchanged? I especially remembered her complaining when we were kids about the how kitschy the garden gnomes were, and it was a little strange to see them still standing.

I wasn’t able to think much of it, however, before the door to the house opened, and I saw Stephanie smiling shyly in the open doorway.

Now I’m not one who typically notices beauty in others. I’ve always held that it is what’s inside that counts, and if anything it feels disrespectful to pay too close attention to someone’s appearance. But with Stephanie, frankly I couldn’t look away.

It was easier to ignore when it was just her profile picture, but in person it was much more pronounced. There is a certain kind of beauty which isn’t supposed to exist, the faces you see in the movies, on billboards, the instagrams of celebrities. It is a standard you are meant to compare yourself to, but never reach, because no living human being looks like that. And yet, looking at Stephanie, I could see that same sort of beauty, the impossible ideal made flesh. Perfect symmetry, skin as smooth and unblemished as plastic, full lips, defined cheekbones, every single part of her seemed as though it had been perfectly sculpted by a master artisan. I was a little embarrassed to be looking at her; it felt like I had walked into a black tie event dressed in a t-shirt and shorts.

Nevertheless, I called out a hearty “Hello!” and moved in for the sort of hug you give to old friends you haven’t seen in quite a long while. She hesitated for a moment, as if unused to the concept, but then quickly seemed to understand, reciprocating and hugging back perhaps a bit tighter and longer than was to be expected.

“Look at you!” I exclaimed, gesturing vaguely at her, “You’ve really done well for yourself in the past… gosh has it really been 7 years?”

“I could say the same about you,” she replied, still gently smiling, “come on inside.”

Her voice was at once familiar yet strange. Most folks don’t really know this, but hormone replacement for trans women doesn’t alter your voice; if you want to sound more feminine, you just have to practice over time, altering your pitch and tone until it sounds right. Often we don’t really sound at all like how we used to before undergoing voice training. But with Stephanie, it just felt as though someone flipped a switch; she sounded exactly like the friend I had in my youth, but as a woman now.

The interior of the house was slightly less familiar than the exterior, but still felt like an intense blast from the past. Sure there were things moved here and there, and it seemed like all of the knick-knacks and trinkets that belonged to Stephanie’s parents were gone, but the furniture was all the same, and not much else had been altered.

“So uh, I didn’t really ask about it earlier, but your parents didn’t, y’know, die or anything did they?” Realizing how utterly insane that sounded, I added, “I mean, I’m just wondering because obviously you’re living on your own, and you didn’t move into a new place or anything.”

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to take any offense at my question, instead just chuckling a little.

“No, they’re both quite alright. They just moved away is all. They were kind enough to leave the house to me though. It feels nice, having the place to myself.”

I nodded awkwardly, still feeling as though I’d made a fool of myself.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“A rum & coke if you can manage it,” I replied.

She nodded and started walking to the kitchen. I followed behind, looking around at all the familiar details of the house and trying to quell a growing nervousness in my chest. I’d always felt slightly uncomfortable around beautiful women, as though my presence was in some way inappropriate. This feeling of inadequacy was melting together with the intense nostalgia and faint uncanniness of Stephanie’s remarkable transition to form a lingering undertone of anxiety that I was eager to dull with alcohol.

I was extremely grateful when she handed me my drink, and gulped it down as quickly as felt socially appropriate. I’ve always been a bit of a lightweight, and estradiol hadn’t helped in that regard, so pretty soon my previous worry was deadened by the pleasant buzz of intoxication.

“So,” Stephanie began, “what have you been up to?”

- - -

We talked for hours, well past the point at which I had been planning to head back home. With the liquor serving as a social lubricant, I quickly found that, despite appearances, Stephanie hadn’t changed too much in the intervening years. Old inside jokes I hadn’t thought about in over half a decade just clicked back into place in my brain, the memories so fresh it was as if I had never forgotten them at all.

She showed an intense interest in basically anything I had to say, encouraging me to talk about each topic at length. Occasionally I would similarly try to encourage her to talk about her life, but she always seemed to redirect the topic of conversation back to me. I didn’t press the issue, figuring that if she didn’t want to talk about herself as much that was perfectly reasonable.

However, there were some points in the conversation that seemed a little bit… off. Once my filters had been sufficiently erased by drink, I asked a couple questions about her transition. I wasn’t necessarily surprised by it, in retrospect Stephanie had always showed the sorts of proclivities that most of us do before our eggs crack, so to speak, but I’ll admit that I was very curious as to how she’d achieved such a remarkable change.

Her responses were always quite vague, and she often seemed to not know what I was talking about. For example, at one point I asked something about if she was on pills, patches, or injections for her estrogen, and she just sort of looked at me blankly for a moment before asking me what I used. I told her I was using patches, and she nodded and said that’s what she was on as well. After a couple such moments, I got the impression she just didn’t want to talk about that sort of thing, and I dropped the topic. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, and I know that every trans person has a different experience with this sort of thing. If she wanted to keep her transition more private, that was perfectly reasonable.

It was around 1 in the morning when Stephanie suggested that I stay the night, and I accepted easily. I’d been having such a pleasant time, and even given the late hour I didn’t feel like going home just yet. I asked her if she had a spare bedroom or if I should just crash on the couch, and at that she just got very quiet, picking at her fingers a little bit as she avoided making direct eye contact.

“Don’t worry if it’s a mess or whatever, I don’t mind,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

“No, no it’s not that,” she said, her voice sounding a little distant. I was a little confused.

“Oookay, so what exactly is the problem?” I asked.

Still unable to look up at me, Stephanie murmured out “Can you promise not to laugh?”

“Of course.”

She sighed, before straightening up a little bit, but still looking at her hands, now placed firmly on her lap.

“I never really knew how to say it but… I’ve always had a crush on you. Even before you…” she paused and gestured vaguely at me. “I mean even all the way back in high school. I just never said anything because, you know, I worried about what you’d think, what my parents would think, and just… I don’t know, I probably sound really stupid o-or creepy or something. I guess part of why I invited you here tonight was, well, I just didn’t want it all to have been a big missed opportunity. I wanted a chance to tell you.”

I was a little shocked. Not upset, mind you, but certainly surprised. I was silent for a few seconds, choosing my next words carefully and trying to think about how I felt about all this. I noticed a tear running down Stephanie’s cheek. It didn’t seem to leave any streaks in her makeup. I took a breath before responding.

“Stephanie, you’re not a creep. I’m a little surprised, but you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. I’m not offended or anything like that. I mean obviously I’m a little tired right now, so I’m not going to, y’know, decide anything immediately, but you didn’t do anything wrong by telling me. If anything I’m flattered. But, uh,” I scratched my neck, a little confused, “what exactly does this have to do with whether or not you have a spare bedroom.”

Stephanie muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t really catch that.” “I was just wondering if maybe you’d… want to share a bed. Nothing sexual, or anything like that, nothing like that, but just… I’ve never had that before. I’ve always slept alone, and I just… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I’ll set up the cou-”

I cut her off before she could finish, “Stephanie, it’s fine. And I’d be happy to. You haven’t talked much about yourself tonight, and I get the feeling that’s probably because you haven’t really had a good past few years. Even if you didn’t have a crush and just wanted the company, that’s fine. You’re my friend and I trust you. Besides, it’s kind of cold in here anyway, and I’m sure body heat is cheaper than turning up the central heating.”

She smiled, finally looking up and making slightly teary eye contact with me. She seemed happier than I’d ever seen her before.

“Thank you.”

- - -

I hadn’t brought a set of nightclothes with me, but Stephanie was kind enough to let me borrow one of her nightgowns. Her bedroom was different from what I remembered, but that’s to be expected after 7 years. It felt more mature, streamlined, with minimal decorations compared to the poster covered chamber that I remembered from youth.

I set a timer on my phone to wake me in the morning. After that Stephanie and I slipped into bed.

I can imagine some people may have been more uncomfortable than I was in such circumstances, but sleeping in the same bed as friends had become pretty normal for me over the past few years. I hadn’t told Stephanie, as I wasn’t quite sure how she’d react, but casual sexual encounters between friends had been a not infrequent occurrence in my life for quite some time now, so this kind of casual intimacy wasn’t anything especially weird to me.

For her part, Stephanie seemed very polite, shy even. She was practically falling off the bed out of an attempt to ensure that I had sufficient personal space until I told her that I didn’t mind if she wanted to be closer. Even then it still took her a little while to gradually inch nearer before she finally felt comfortable actually touching me.

It was odd, her touch. She was very cold, colder than anyone else I’d ever touched. It was to the extent that I was slightly worried about her, but I tried to pass it off as a case of poor circulation. She’d seemed completely healthy during the night’s discussion, and I didn’t want to come across as rude, so I simply ignored it and did my best not to shiver too much. Her breath, too, felt almost icy on my neck.

No matter how close she got, no matter how much I warmed the blankets, she always seemed to stay cold.

- - -

I awoke with a start to the sound of my phone’s alarm going off. There was a brief moment of confusion where I didn’t know where I was. I blinked rapidly in the bright sunlight shining in from the window, trying to get a read on my surroundings.

Even after my vision cleared, it still took me a while to realize where I was.

The room was utterly barren, save for bed frame and mattress. There was no other furniture. There wasn’t even a blanket. My clothes sat in a neat pile on the floor. I changed out of the nightgown I had borrowed, though I didn’t exactly know where to put it, so I just swung it over my shoulder for the time being.

“Hello?” I called out, “Stephanie? Are you there?”

There was no reply.

I left the bedroom, checking around the rest of the house for my host. Each room was just as empty as the bedroom, utterly devoid of furniture or decoration. I was getting a bit freaked out, as I genuinely could not think of a single explanation as to what was going on.

Eventually I just left the house entirely. Stepping outside, the front yard with its gnomes and roses had been completely redone, changed to a simple, bare lawn. There was a realtor’s sign advertising that the house was available for sale.

It was as if the previous night had never happened at all. The only proof I had was the nightgown on my shoulder.

- - -

When I got home, I tried to find the messages I’d received the previous day. There was nothing, not even so much as an error message indicating the profile had been deleted.

I tried searching Facebook for the name Stephanie London, but found nothing. After a few tries, I searched Stefan London instead.

It didn’t take me long to find the profile. The picture there was much more familiar; a young man with thick glasses, smiling for the camera blandly, a twinkle in his eye. Checking the profile, I noticed that it hadn’t been updated in quite some time, with the last post having been made exactly 4 years ago to the day.

That final post reads as follows:

<Hello all. This is Stefan’s mother. I’m very sorry to announce that Stefan committed suicide last night. I don’t really know what to say, other than that he will be missed, and that he was dearly loved. I’ll be posting details as to the funeral arrangements when we’ve gotten them figured out. I’m going to be leaving this page active as a memorial to him. I love you son, and I hope you’re in a better place now.>

I think I’m probably the only person who ever got to see the real Stephanie London. I think that she needed to express who she really was, just once, before she faded away. I hope that I was able to give her the closure she needed.

[toastedclownery]

Here they are! The sillies!!

They're a group of fantasy misfits and outlaws, each trying to escape from something. They all cross paths and become a found family in a story I have in my head but they mostly just vibe in there.

Closeups and info about each of them under this

Angel Goodsprout

A fairy traveling around the world and exploring herself after escaping a magical, astral themed cult. Having been part of a pyramid scheme her whole life, unaware of her situation, made her optimistic, hardworking and considerate, but then again also naive and a people pleaser. She's a very powerful magic user but the leader of the cult put a spell on her so she can only use her powers when the sun is out.

Isaac Graves

A human disguised as a warlock traveling elf and magic territory, where humans are generally unwelcome, looking for his lost brother. He fakes having magic of his own using the special properties of plants and potions. He's cunning and emotionally shut-off but is very protective of those he cares about. Maybe bit overbearing, even. His good heart made him earn the trust of a mischievous little fire spirit.

Jasper char Elvenstone

A young elf who uses his extraordinary archery skills as an assassin. He can be pretty immature, making bad decisions like joining a gang, but also paradoxically he also acts too old for his age, thinking that doing these things will serve as vengeance for the loss of his family. He's impulsive, and cocky, and bold, but overall a good kid that's just misguided.

"Mae"

A creature of origin so ancient it has been lost to time, Mae is an old witch doctor with a keen interest in the bridge between life and death, among magic and non-magic beings. They're basically escaping death playing god with their own soul and giving themselves a very long lifespan. They are morbidly curious, a bit scatterbrained, and outright unpredictable. However they grow fond of the group and decide to stay around.

Felix Graves

Ran away from his small-minded human hometown to achieve his dream of becoming a great inventor. An expert on mechanics and a lover of astronomy, he studies the magical properties of stars and constellations to use as power for his machines. He wants to make use of his talent to help people, but he's very awkward when trying to show it. He's quiet and self-contained, and usually deadpan and brutally honest when talking to others.

Selene Noir

Another refugee of the astral cult, her magical powers are limited to work only when the moon is out. Unlike Angel, she was skeptical of the cult's methods, and her rebellious nature got her in trouble. Even after escaping, she stays distrustful of the people around her, and she struggles making close connections with others. Alternatively she is very good at manipulating and scamming, so she makes a business selling overpriced magic weapons for non-magics.

[the-anime-man]

What if Sig got to the Tome of Sealing first? AKA Tomo AU

hi again tumblr, please dont expect a whole lot from this blog, once again, but, i wanted to post like a little basic thing about this au i've had since 2021 now that i'm back into puyo again,

this is an au that Heavily relies on bits of fanon and headcanon to make it work cuz canon is puyo puyo is very fucking wishy washy but essentially, what if sig had checked out the tome of sealing from the library before klug was able to? (sorry if this is a bit scatterbrained, im not good at organizing my thoughts much,,)

(also please dont mind some of the art, im like an ok artist at best and some of this shit is from 2 years ago as well)

so like, as the absolute fucking nerd i am, i made like an initial google doc on this thing outlining most of the shit im about to summarize here (that i might link if someone asks at some point i guess idk) as well as a fanfic, didnt finish that though, i got like through barely a chapter before i stopped and then i got into sam and max but that's unrelated to now

ANYWAYS, the au is as it sounds, sig goes to precise museum and, guided by the voice of the crimson soul, finds the tome of sealing and checks it out (much to akuma's chargin,,) and then he checks out the book again,,, and again,,,, and a gain,,,, (you see where this is going)

but uh, why is it called tomo au? see im being a little shitter here and i thought maybe the crimson soul's memory would be a little shot after spending ages in a book so they might not remember their name and sig is like "you're my friend now so i'm gonna call you friend/tomodachi" but then he's like "that's too long i'm gonna call you tomo instead" so they just go along with it, for future reference, anytime i mention the crimson soul i'm gonna be calling it Tomo

wow that's really fucking big sorry,

sig has an immense attachment to tomo from the get go btw, he's like, i wanna say like 8 or so when he first gets to the book, so besides the obvious literal halvsies soul connection there's that childhood connection as well,

side note: they can speak to each other cuz of that soul connection btw, it's my personal headcanon that after slug (canon strange klug/the crimson soul) can speak to anybody who they've possessed before as well as their other half, so in canon klug and sig can hear the book talk but in this au only sig can hear them

also, the reason why tomo doesn't attempt to take over sig right from the outset is A) they dunno where the unsealing objects are and B) sig is a child and uh, another part that i'm still trying to work the kinks through of is whether tomo decides to hold off on doing the fusion dance of their own volition or if because the cyan soul (which can speak to tomo, but only when sig is asleep cuz when sig is awake the cyan soul IS sig, nother headcanon sorry) decides it's too soon, they probably have memories of previous incarnations stored in there and know that eventually sig will start showing more demonic traits but not when he's baby

wow this is getting to be a lot but we're not even done cuz now i gotta talk about what this means about shit like fever 2 and such (y'know canon things and all)

boy tumblr just hates making images smaller nowadays huh,

so when sig starts showing signs of his heritage (i.e., a bit before fever 2 happens) tomo and sig start to hatch a plan to get tomo a body back! of course, tomo is omitting some things about how they're actually going to go into sig's body cuz at this point they've been together for a few years now and sig trusts tomo as like, a best friend i guess? something like that,

so sig is under the impression tomo is gonna be released and get their old body back and tomo is under the impression that as soon as the seal releases they'll enter sig's body, join back up with the cyan soul, and return to their original form,

so sig transfers over to amitie and klug's class, (tomo) overhears that lemres is coming into town with the items they need, and they steal the shit and head to the ruins to perform the unsealing

SPOILERS! shit goes wrong

ignore how shitty the ms paint art from a couple of years ago is, might change the hair to be more red in future art

for reasons (that i also need to workshop because to be honest originally it was a "whoever unseals it gets their soul swapped with whoever is trapped in the book" but like??? idk if that's how it should work when it comes to these two specifically), sig and tomo swap places instead of a fusion happening,

sucks balls for both of them cuz this is like the Last thing either of them wanted out of this tbh, sig obviously because well, trust got broken and ended up trapped til the artifacts are stolen (klug either swaps roles with amitie or sig, haven't figured that one out yet either) and tomo most certainly doesn't want sig trapped, as they wouldn't want anyone to experience the loneliness of being sealed away like they were (except klug, fuck klug specifically) (also the chronicles drama cd mentions that part of tomo's character in it so it works for my purposes)

this image wasn't necessarily specific to tomo au but i thought it would fit anyways, sorry it's a bit blurry my phone wouldnt focus on the damn thing properly

and after fever 2,,, i kind of dont have as clear of a story? or a plan? there's some tension between sig and tomo for at least a little while but sig eventually forgives them, as well i don't know how i would tackle something like sig's secret if at all?? but yeah that's the main shit to this au, sorry it's all so very long! this has been on my mind for a few weeks now and it was on my mind for months back in 2021, so i just have a lot i'm throwing out here into the wind, if you got this far: thanks so much for reading!

here's some bonus shit for getting to the end of the main shit:

tomo calls sig "little blue" sometimes, since he's yknow, younger than them and blue but calls the cyan soul their "other half"

if you couldn't tell from the first image, since sig has his bookbag, he carries tomo around in that, but if he's stopped somewhere he'll leave the book open next to him so tomo can see around (hard to see with the covers in the way)

sig was already probably ostricized for yknow, his autistic tendencies, the book did not help with that, but it gave him a trusted confidant :)

sig actually starts developing his demonic traits earlier than in canon due to his proximity to tomo, but not by much

klug has stolen the book before, both demon halves were not pleased with this and klug has not attempted to steal the book again

sig can supplement his own magic power with tomo's for an incredibly large boost, and tomo doesn't mind doing so, this gives sig almost the exact same amount of power as the full demon used to have and also changes his right eye to red

OH, both relevant to this au and my own interpretation: the full demon's name was wisteria, but neither sig nor tomo remember it until either are reminded of that

ok that's it go home now bye bye

[purlturtle]

Bering and Wells Advent Calendar, Day 2

Never Get Involved With Your Flatmate, a collaborative writing event: everyone writes one chapter of a loosely connected getting together AU!

Here's my contribution for Day 2!

#2 Never have a crush on your flatmate

(fic is under the readmore, or on AO3 if you want! The whole AO3 collection is here!)

The apartment feels different, with Helena in it.

Oh yeah, and Steve too, of course.

And yeah, probably, probably that’s just because Rebecca and Jack were there for so long and had their own specific vibe, and Helena’s vibe is decidedly different – Steve’s too, of course.

Helena is all… “mad scientist”, is what Myka wants to say but doesn’t. All that stuff she carried into Helena’s room. But you don’t call people mad, do you. “Scatterbrained genius” is also out of the question. She… finds herself reluctant to think of Helena as a genius. Even if the “scatterbrained” fits, though. There’s no doubt about that. And Myka is 100% sure Helena has lived by herself before moving in here. Because Helena just… Helena just leaves things lying around, doesn’t tidy them away. And the thing is—

The thing is, it doesn’t bother Myka? When typically, that kind of behavior really ticks her off and leads to a lecture by – at the latest – the third offense?

Steve, by contrast, is none of this; he seems to be a pro at living together with other people. Myka barely notices him and his quiet friendliness, whereas Helena, Helena seems to be everywhere, either actually physically present, or extant in some reminder, like a magazine lying open on the quiet common room’s coffee table or a dirty pot in the sink or her mascara forgotten on the mirror ledge.

It’s an old copy of NatGeo open on an article about cold fusion, and a cosmetics brand Myka has never seen before – probably from the UK, she reasons – and the remnants of someone making oatmeal, and Myka… it warms her to know that Helena is interested in cold fusion and that Helena probably will lament when her mascara runs out and that Helena likes to cook herself breakfast. That is what she takes from all these things, not the annoyance of someone leaving their stuff lying around.

And it’s when she realizes that – that it warms her – that she knows she has a problem.

Pete’s rule, “do not fuck your roommate” is, as crude as it is, extremely sensible. It is. It only complicates things, and if it goes sour, you’re stuck living with a person you can’t stand to be around. Myka staunchly avoids the thought that Jack and Rebecca made it work, even though that is literally the reason that those two moved out: they fell in love as roommates, and then moved out together to live on their own now.

But how often does that work? What are the odds? Pretty long, and then when it goes bad, “you’re fucked for having fucked,” as Pete has it.

And the first step to avoiding that, one that Myka has followed stringently with Rebecca (yeah okay, and Jack too), was to not develop a crush. That’s her corollary, to Pete’s rule. Don’t even start, just so you won’t be tempted. Especially not when someone’s eyes sparkle like that, and someone’s hair swishes like that, and someone’s smile seems to bloom every time that someone looks at her. No. Roommates are roommates, they’re out of the question, one hundred percent. Bam, done. Rules are rules.

No, she should be annoyed at Helena’s stuff lying around. She absolutely, one million percent should. She should find Helena and��

(ask where her mascara is from) (listen to her talk about cold fusion) (tease her about oatmeal vs. porridge)

… and damn well tell her not to leave her stuff lying around.

That’s what she should do.

Myka palms her forehead and sighs.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

She needs to get this in hand, nip it in the bud. Rules; she needs more rules.

[mineofilms]

0

Okay… Let’s get real and let’s get dark… Isn’t that what “horror” is all about?

I am taking an extended break from politics/social media. I will still be here, but I am done defending both sides of this BS. We're not getting anywhere anymore. Both sides are terrible. What we all actually argue over -is over the concept of "less bad." Not which one is better, but rather which one is “less-bad.”

That isn't the way to be.

I am considering not even voting now I am so disgusted and mentally exhausted from this struggle. Probably fabricated by a few different groups of rich assholes on both sides. I might write one more essay on the topic of political theater because I have one started and a lot of notes on the topic. After that, I am making a very considerate effort to ignore both sides moving forward.

I realize I have said that before, a few times I can actually recall. I realize this. I am aware. My failures are obvious.

I am also finally shifting my writing focus to horror/science fiction, telling stories, freaking people out, maybe do something cool, and creating characters over dealing with think-tank BS for Rich Assholes and Intellectually Challenged Groups of People or ICGPs...

We all get sucked into this bullshit and I am just done allowing this to affect me.

I ain't nobody's tool or puppet.

People want to know what I am all about. I am a decent, too honest for my own good, dude who suffers greatly for a long periods of time. I am brilliant when I write, while sounding like an idiot when I speak live, in the moment. Scatterbrain is an understatement when talking live. That is why I write long-format, to begin with. So that I can slowly break down, disseminate and assimilate information. I know nothing else. My brain literally works different and connects dots to things in different ways that NONE OF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND. Most of you do not even try. I notice… The only thing that motivates me to be this way is spite.

I have a tendency to push buttons, do things to make others upset with me because I am addicted to the reaction of knowing I made someone so mentally-off their rocker, that they cannot function till I am no longer included in whatever activity we were in. I am more addicted to that in recent years than sex. I literally look at this feeling of spite as something better than sex. I know it isn’t right. My wiring is off. Been saying it, few listened, I am fine with it. That is why I try to stay away from most things or just make fun of everything, or bring some lighter humor to it. I realize it’s only funny if one is a cynical nihilist, like myself. I know most of you probably are not. I will lean with probability on that one. I will assume most of you are not.

So yeah. I hear that. I can lighten up. I can do that. However, if I pee my pants-laugh, I am posting it… I only really care about showing how both sides are fundamentally wrong. That this is a big illusion. We act like reality is supposed to be in a binary world but we're not. We as a species do not understand nor respect 4D… Politically; we get ‘terrible’ and ‘not-as’ terrible, piss/poop. You have to choose which one you want. I want neither, most would never want piss and/or pooh, ever... Yet, here we are. We are supposed to choose one. Now, that to me… Those are the dummies. The ones that concede to this, accept this and vote anyway for piss or pooh. No winner can exist under those conditions and here we are.

If you want to explain your side of that or want to prove that wrong, please, do so. I'd invite anyone to do that. I wrote this as a response to someone who wanted me to look into something political from the right and make a judgment on that.

This isn't a peer review… We are not peers... We are friends... Remember that…

I am too FK’n good for this and so are all of you…

I am sorry this is the world we live in.

This is why I plan to punch God in the dick the first chance I get.

Not kidding…

Nihilists don't believe in belief as the main attribute to make a thing real.

What is seen and inferred by the observer is.

We all should be working to get away from negativity. Not attract it. If these things in reality that macroscopically you cannot affect bug you so much.

Unplug…

I do it...

I am doing it again…

Granted not at the level I should. However, I will start with this and see how it goes. If I feel I need to completely unplug, I will do so.

I have spent the last two weeks working on fiction rather than talking shit about politics that I have no control over and just giving my opinion based on what little I infer from. During some downtime I’d made up memes because they made me laugh. Yes... I am that guy that will straight-up laugh at others' misfortune. I won't apologize for that.

I sin… I sin with intention to sin… I am the worst kind of sinner. I sin because others expect me to be the opposite. Who are they? Nothing and no one... That is the real reality out there.

Do what you love with who you love because, after all this suffering, yours, mine, our impact on the universe is zero... This is a real science theory; known as the Zero-Energy Universe Hypothesis. It suggests that the universe's total energy is zero, with the positive energy of matter balanced by the negative energy of gravity, making everything ultimately cancel out.

Let that sit in for a minute…

Everything you do, and affect in reality will at any given moment of the Universe’s everlasting timeline will equal ZERO. You do not affect Jack… Nothing you do matters from this Point of View. This does not include the fraction of time you do exist in. You affect reality as long as your energy can. Once it changes back to/from/whatever/wherever/everywhere/all at the same time, the influence and evidence of that effect drops to zero. If you are an above-average human, it might last longer. Look at David Bowie. How long do you think some entity, anywhere will be able to know what Bowie did and created? It only lasts as long as it lasts, after that, good luck trying to convert that energy back to its original form.

Reality is never perfect in the concept of what we humans think of as perfection. In reality perfection and infinity are one-in-the-same. That; “on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”

Remembrance of Earth's Past or known as (The Three-Body Trilogy) by Liu Cixin • Book 2: The Dark Forest

This series is sometimes referred to as “existential horror.” You get lost in the concept of “what if” this could all be at play at some point in Humanity’s near or perhaps distant future. That “what if” this is all some sort of simulation or video game where the plot is so fixed that any choice you make has no impact, imprint or evidence on the outcome of the game. That no matter what you do in the game; you end up at the same boss fight at the end, with the same life, the same weapons, the same everything. It's these types of environments where the lack of realism is felt and where we eventually realize that something is not right with said reality. Human beings possess a kind of intuitive alarm in our minds. I hear my father’s voice, as loud and clear in my mind. I know that voice. He is no longer with us. I hear a voice that isn’t a voice. It is a thought, but we describe it to others as a voice. Others do not hear what you heard. They only know of it because you described it to them. However, they do not actually know for themselves. Another example would be; we trust when we look up at the Moon that it is there, but you, I, most, have never been there to touch, see, step foot on it to know it if is actually there or not. Granted, we do know that it is there. We see it from Earth, we see its impact on the tides. We feel its gravity. Our mind alerts us when something doesn't feel real. That is usually how we know we are in a dream. Some things seem real, some seem normal and then you see a giant spider with I Heart Mum tattoos on all its legs in the sky where the Sun should be. Eventually, the brain will tell you what is real and what is not real. It is when our realities are flipped upside down and inside out, like a tesseract, that feelings on reality become existential horror. If we were in a simulation of reality and everything was so perfect that we’d begin to perceive the artificiality of our surroundings. We already do this. Social Media… It is plastered everywhere on our social media. No shit…

Apply all that to your common sense. How does reality feel right now? Especially with the political arena we are in. Something ABSOLUTELY does not feel right here… Yeah, we mean nothing. God cares not for you, me, your kids, your freedoms, their suffering, your suffering, and mine.

With all that...

All we have are those moments of love with those we love the most.

Become obsessed with that!!!

Not this Bull-Ass-Shit and it totally is.

It doesn't matter who we vote for.

We all lose…

It's ALWAYS been that way…

Love, Respect but even this is fueled by spite more than those other two put together.

That is my great addiction, SPITE…

0 by David-Angelo Mineo 7/25/2024 1,706 Words

[hp-lonesome-actual-art]

Hey hey so uh…this has been collecting dust in the digital photo album for a long while. I made it back in 2020 as a fun little personal project to try and encapsulate the silly story shenanigans within a fictional multi-fandom roleplay thing I did alongside my cousin. Originally it was just for fun and animating the events from the previous year, however I began to work on it as a Christmas gift for her. It was never finished as is VERY obvious given how the beginning is mostly talking without any visuals…I never got around to doing that part lol. Worked on different audio sections spontaneously so most of the actual animating happens somewhere in the middle. However I recall showing snippets of the animation process with my cousin, so she was able to see some of the work regardless of the completion.

I believe I was either 14 or turned 15 at the time of making this (my birthday is very close to the end of the year so it’s hard to gauge). And it was left unfinished when my cousin died early on in 2021 (she was at the age of 16). I don’t expect anyone else to make sense of what I’m talking about, given how it’s very much an inside joke we created between us and never meant to be shared from an outside perspective. However I haven’t had anyone else to reminisce over these events with and it’s saddening knowing this is a chapter of my life which will always be neglected going forward, due to how in depth the narrative was and the difficulty of getting others to understand it. Even the way I recorded this explanation/audio is very janky and not put together concisely despite being a recap. So sort of stuck in a scatterbrained state for the rest of my life lol

The main point of it all is just….absurd crackship fanfiction-esque character interactions and relationship building. But on a personal note, it means a great deal to me. Because unabashedly making up wacky stories was what made my childhood feel so vibrant and what connected me to my cousin for so many years. It encouraged me to follow my passions of storytelling and character building, and to not take life so seriously. Just indulge in what makes you happy and don’t be afraid to share those passions with others. We both shared a strong attachment to My Little Pony growing up as well as other online fandoms, and I’m grateful for the short lived time I spent with her talking about those shared interests

Then of course, there’s this other one I actually posted to my YouTube in 2021 albeit very subtlety to not garner attention. I’ve been purposely obscuring it from online perception because I’m terrified of the judgments others would place on me. I know people aren’t welcoming of seeing a character they recognize being misconstrued into a different world and with a different story then what is canonically accepted. I get that this is more like an original character scenario and not attached to how he (Snatcher) typically is viewed. So please be aware of that. This was a personal project I spent a shit ton of time on through the school year and made it as a way of coping with the loss whilst expressing appreciation for what could have been. Honestly I don’t know how I managed to color so many frames from it. But it’s also a neat time capsule to see how much I’ve improved animating since then, and a lot of the credit goes to the dedication of making this

Another thing to point out is that I had no fucking clue how to color Snatcher and it shows lol. His expressions are a bit hard to see at some points due to not giving him proper lighting to balance the dark color. But hey that’s fine, like I said this was the most ambitious I had ever gotten for a project and I’ve learned a lot from it. But most importantly was that I got it done as a tribute to her life and these characters we loved <3

Although yeah uh….the version I posted on YouTuber prior to this (“Tribute to Quincy”) had some sort of editing issue I was unaware of until the next day. The animation got corrupted and was glitching in footage, and that sent me into an anxiety attack for a couple hours. I was uncontrollably sobbing myself to sleep that night or so, because the building paranoia that my relatives watched the video made me feel overly vulnerable and fearful even more-so then online strangers watching it. So I don’t think I was in a good mental place to have made the animation public back then, even with the various precautions I took. The video glitching was just the final straw. Think I avoided animating a while afterwards too. So uh….just to say that the intended heartfelt meaning behind the animation got distorted from those events and now is a strange mixture of shame and love whenever I watch it again. I think my perfectionism was just eating me alive at the time, and I felt like I’d let my deceased cousin down somehow? Or that people would only have a surface level understanding of the deeper meaning I wanted to portray. Idk I was operating on a lot of faulty logic at the time with my loneliness controlling a lot of my worldview. The only positive is that experience taught me to never force yourself to work hours on end animating on a holiday….because it will make you internally miserable and susceptible to believing falsehoods about yourself and how others perceive you. Also that miserable Christmas was the exact moment I received the epiphany that I’m afraid of judgment. Before that point it was always just an unnamed nagging feeling that I didn’t know how to describe. Anyways point is terrible experience never recommend :P

Hey I’m putting an edit here because it’s occurred to me that there’s this audio I have of my cousins voice discussing the H&Q roleplay story. I’ve kept it close to me for a long while, maybe in the hopes that someday I would animate it like I had for mine. But I think given how my YouTube is around 240+ subs I can’t bring myself to get vulnerable again or release anything more about our roleplay story. Maybe on my secondary channel, but for now I’ve laid it to rest for personal privacy reasons. Anyways this is her voice recording she made in my room when visiting (she’d noticed I was writing down summaries in my sketchbooks and journals about our story and asked if I would let her read it word for word) I gave her the go to use my iPad for it, and I’m grateful I did. Otherwise I’d have no proof that she collaborated with me on these things

Once again, this is all information that was shared only between the two of us. Characters we made up and played around with. It won’t hold much meaning or significance to anyone else, but I still feel the need to share it. Because when else will I ever be allowed to

[keefwho]

March 24 - 2024 Sunday

10:54pm

5/10

This morning I cooked myself in the shower a little. I really craved more tuna spaghetti so I made that for breakfast. I made my coffee and started on finished this other artist's commission for DS. She commissioned said artist 3 years ago and they have since ceased contact and deleted their social media presence. I found great value in getting DS what she paid for. My morning was spent working on that and taking frequent breaks. I was scatterbrained even though I was trying to deliberately stay focused on one thing or the other. Before lunch I tried joining DV's server but I honestly wasn't in a social mood and I knew that, I was trying to distract myself more than anything. I left pretty quickly to have 'me time' and make lunch. Lunch was spaghetti and meatballs but with macaroni noodles. After lunch while I drank my coke, I worked on DS's pic some more. I got it done and she loved it which made me very happy. I felt great getting to do it, I felt a real sense of purpose righting the wrong of this shitty artist. Not too long after she was trying to do her taxes which she couldn't since her W-2 didn't actually come in like she thought. Instead she worked on her fursuit and we chilled. We watched 2 episodes of Monster High which were good as usual and 1 episode of She Ra which was also great. We watched some furry con content while she finished up and switched to Roblox. We tried this Name The Character MLP game that was pretty easy, then played this Natural Disaster Survival game that was better than the classic imo. I HAD to show her this video I saw earlier on Twitch of giantess D.Va thigh-clapping an entire city and we watched a few other growth fetish videos in awe and horror. In bed we did our puzzles, read Monster High, and I played more Kingdom Hearts. I beat Agrabah today.

~~~

Today I didn't do a good job focusing like I was trying to do. I couldn't shake some of the thoughts I was having. I thought I knew what I needed to do to live true to myself today but like I didn't have the capacity to. I think I needed a real break today, a break from all the things I've been stressing over but it's hard to escape from stuff that is so important and ever present. I was very afraid of being alone today for example even though I knew it would be good for me to focus on myself for a bit. But its a conscious effort to do that and I was tired. I hate how my difficulty connected with others stems directly from how disconnected I am from myself. I feel like I'm living a lie when I'm around my friends or like I'm just pretending to be me sometimes.

3 things I liked about today:

Tuna spaghetti breakfast.

Finishing DS's commission.

Watching Monster High and She Ra with DS.