#I fear I’ll someday stop doing art due to life making me do other things to live

[imperfectartisgood]

Hey :) I’m Laura. 24 she/her. I study art in college.

This is where I post my sketches, ideas, or trashy art. I have expectations of everything needing to be perfect. But that’s impossible!!

So here’s where I can dump sketches and whatever new thing I’m trying. Feedback or fun suggestions are welcome!

[amyscascadingtabs]

✨creator tag meme✨

i’ve been tagged in this by @feeisamarshmallow @dolston17 and @arnies-bitch and i love doing these every year (self love!) so, even though this year has been a year of far less fic-writing for me for various reasons... here goes ❤️

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

listed chronologically in terms of date published;

💫 i’ll walk through hell with you

i know i chose this one last year as well, BUT, i did write and publish the two-three last chapters of this in 2020 so i’m including it again. i’m so freaking proud of this one. it was an experience to write and i did SO much research and i had such fun with it. writing the two last chapters was such a high and i remember i wrote the sixth one in like three days where i just couldn’t stop. it was also the last fic i wrote and published with my original peraltiago kiddos leah and olivia santiago-peralta and it was lovely to get to say goodbye to them in style. plus the way i literally predicted trying.. my mind ❤️ (i do have a document of the similarities and how i worded it vs how the show did it... if any fan of this is curious)

a favourite quote: 

But what I was actually trying to say was…” Jake blushes, and she can tell there’s a moment of emotional sincerity coming. “I’m with you. I know that. I also know that as long as I’m with you, all the bad stuff is survivable, and all the good stuff is a million times better. And I’d rather have hard days with you, and Lee, and I guess soon whoever this is,” he holds his hand to her stomach through her sweater, “than good days with anyone else.”

“Me too,” she snivels, having to wipe the tears on her shirt sleeve because of course, this is making her cry. “How’d you get so wise all of a sudden?”

“Married you,” he shrugs. “And had kids. Also, I got hella old.”

💫 paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans

was this possibly the only fic i wrote this year that was (almost) baby-free? probably. i blame it on season 7. but yes; i wrote a fic about rosa dealing with her breakup from jocelyn and it was great fun and made me want to write even more rosa (which i did!). she’s just great, and writing her with amy is incredible. plus, i got such amazing guidance from @vernonfielding with this one which i think truly brought out the best in this story. 

a favourite quote: 

“I hate it,” Rosa mutters. “I didn’t get a fucking choice. I never knew how much of a difference that made.”

“Well, now you know. It sucks. But...” Amy leans her head to the side. “Maybe that’s a good thing, too?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If it hurts, that means it mattered, right? If you miss something, then there was something to miss in the first place. It means you opened yourself up and built something of meaning with someone. I know that doesn’t make it easier -”

Rosa snorts. “No, it doesn’t.”

“But it might mean that something can matter again,” Amy says, fixing her eyes on Rosa’s. “Someday. Even if it feels impossible right now.”

💫 bracing for the winds i always summon

we all know i love some sweet amy content... this was one of the things i wrote early on in covid quarantine life, and it brings out a lot of memories. i do still consider going back and editing the last parts so they can fully agree with canon, but i’ve not had the energy quite yet. either way, i’m really proud of the way i wove canon and minor episode details into this one. we got such limited pregnant amy content and i wanted more! i’ve reread this one a ton of times, because it’s just.. satisfying to me. i answered a lot of my own questions in it. filling in the holes!!

a favourite quote:

She’s felt protective of this life since the day she found out about it, but it’s a great and positive change to be able to feel like she’s starting to know the child she’s protecting. She doesn’t know his name, although it keeps being debated, or what he looks like aside from the gray-and-white sonogram pictures, but she knows he’s most awake at night before they go to bed and that he moves like crazy to the sound of Jake humming renditions of his favorite Taylor Swift-tunes to him, and it feels like the most important information she’s ever known about someone.

Maybe she’s okay at making babies, Amy thinks. She’s wholly certain this child is too good for her, is still worried he’ll be taken away at a moment’s notice, but right now he’s here, and he’s making her want to try her best.

💫 (three times ‘cause) i’ve waited my whole life

i didn’t write very much this summer for several reasons, but what little motivation i had for writing, mostly went to this one. it was originally meant to be for father’s day and i published it in september, so i missed out slightly there, but i’m still really proud of it. writing jake and his feelings about fatherhood is something i’ve always enjoyed so much, and this was 13k words of doing just that. i’m proud of so much in this fic, and i’m really happy i actually finished it in the end. god i love jake and baby mac ❤️

a favourite quote:

Jake is amazed by how much better fatherhood has gotten with time. It was always the most amazing thing to ever happen to him, but it was so different when his son was a newborn. Mac was rarely awake for the first weeks, and when he was, he was either stuck to Amy for feeding or crying because he was overtired or needed his diaper changed. Jake always loved his son, but for the first month or so, he felt pretty useless around him. The daily attempts at bottle-feeding, and the precious times Mac fell asleep against his Jake’s chest as they walked around the apartment at night, had made up most of their bonding time together. It was still wonderful, and Jake can miss the time when Mac actually stayed where you put him, but in the end, it’s got nothing on what fatherhood is like at eight months in. Now, Mac interacts with them, laughing and smiling and trying to babble gibberish back at them when they talk to him. He’s always on the move, like he’s anxious to miss out on anything the world has to offer if he sits still for too long. Judging from the way he’s currently trying to use the tree next to them to get up to a standing position, Jake wonders how long they’ve got left until he’s walking. It’s clear that Mac has his own personality now, no longer just traces of it hidden in a newborn’s constant needs, and every day of fatherhood seems to bring a new adventure.

There had been a time when Jake wasn’t sure if he wanted this. Little did he know, it’s better than anything he could have dreamt.

💫 when all your heroes get tired (i’ll be something better yet)

last but not least, my second sleuth sisters fic of the year and second rosa fic too! i’ve thought about writing this since i watched lights out; i love writing rosa and amy so much and it’s always fun to write jake and amy from someone else’s perspective, especially as i think the choice by the show to have them keep their pregnancy private when everyone had already figured it out was so interesting. i love supportive rosa and i love the relationship she’s going to have with mac and i love her secretly loving babies. they’re so cute it’s fucked up!!!! anyway, yeah; i love writing rosa and this was such a fun challenge.

a favourite quote: 

There’s a tenderness even to the way she speaks to him, like love is packed into each word. Rosa thinks of the way Amy hid her pregnancy for months in fear that something would go wrong, and how scared she was that giving birth under less than ideal circumstances would somehow make her a bad mom. She doesn’t seem as scared anymore. Rather, there’s an air of quiet confidence over her when she’s holding him, and it’s moving to see.

“Slow down, McClane,” she whispers, thumb stroking over his cheek. “I know you’re hungry, but if you keep going like that, you’re going to puke, okay? We’ve been through this.”

“I’m proud of you,” the words spill out of Rosa, and Amy blinks.

“You’re proud of me?”

“Yeah, I’m proud of you.” A shy smile flutters across Amy’s lips. “But if you ever have another kid, I’m not going near you a month before you’re due, okay? I’ll transfer precincts or something. Never again.”

Amy laughs, but Rosa just stares at her, and she goes silent. “Got it. Cool. That’s fair.”

tags 2019/2018 ❤️

i’m tagging @johnny-and-dora, @letsperaltiago, @amydancepants-peralta, @b99peraltiago and @nessa007 to do some self love over any creations this year you're proud of ❤️❤️❤️

[journal-of-an-outlaw]

The Price to be Paid

Hey gang! 

This is my very first Tumblr fanfiction. I used to write waaaay back but it’s been awhile. Just finished my first playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2 and of course needed to write something about my story with it. 

Feel free to message me with feedback or thoughts, like I said it’s been a few years so I’ll post this to Ao3 after awhile. Please like and reblog only, no reposting. 

Chapter 1 

“See that one? Easy. Go nick his watch.”

You laughed and smiled over your shoulder at Abigail as you walked over towards the cart that had stopped from one of the nearby farms selling apples in the middle of town, red and bursting to be eaten. A man who was picking out which ones looked best out of the pile didn’t seem flustered by your sudden appearance which was good. It made the next part easier. 

“Oof! Excuse me sir, I didn’t see you there. Are you okay? Oh, let me help wipe that off your shirt.” 

Coffee bled a dark brown down the man’s white shirt as he hastily moved to grab something to stop the spread, and you were ready with your handkerchief. While he snatched it out of your hands, you removed his pocket watch without him knowing, the pressure of your hands on his torso masking the motion. The cold coffee had been sitting on the edge of the cart as if someone had forgotten it in their haste to leave for the center of town. He huffed and hawed and made a bigger fuss than you could have hoped for, but the nearby prying eyes only saw a silly girl who managed to spill coffee onto the boy buying apples. 

You smiled one last time at him and batted your eyes then flounced down the street and around the alley to meet Abigail. She laughed and grabbed your shoulder while you showed her the watch; no engraving or photo slipped inside which made you relax at the fact it wasn’t overly sentimental. 

“Now see, this here is exactly what you can pawn off. A good 8 dollars for this, plus whatever else you can grab adds up fast. Then maybe...a way out?” her eyes were kind as her mouth twisted into a coy smile. 

You smiled back at Abigail. The past few months while she and her gang were in town you had grown close. She hadn’t divulged too much about the people she ran with and that you could understand. The world was dangerous and full of opportunities and you couldn’t judge her for the choices she had made to keep her and those she cared about safe. You had never really left the town you were raised in and your family was your ‘gang’, but their secrets would never haunt others that you choose to surround yourself with. You knew she had a man, maybe not a husband but someone she loved. And a son that she loved more than anything in the world. Although she’s never told you outright about him, you’ve seen her buy (or steal) little trinkets and toys that no grown man would want. That’s when Abigail taught you the same tricks. How to divert the attention of shop owners so your hands could dart into your pockets with stolen food, or how to nab items to pawn to build up your own funds when you bump into folks and cause a scene. You had been eyeing the mountains outside of town a lot more lately, and thinking how great of an escape you could make. 

“Where would I even pawn these? Do I walk in with everything at once?” you asked her. She contemplated for a moment. “You don’t want to walk in with arm loads of stolen things, but a few here and there should be okay...maybe clerks will let you trade them for goods! Like for food or clothes and such. There’s a good pawn shop in Rhodes, but that’s a long ways from here in Blackwater.”

Your hometown, or at least the place you had been raised in, was hot, dry, and desert like most of the year. The people were kind and you liked being situated by the river. On particularly hot nights you would sneak out and sit by the slow and lazy moving water, imagining it was carrying you someplace new and far away, where no one would know you and you could start over. But you knew that idea was just that and there was no escaping. Small fantasies were all you had. Some nights you yearned for your life that began in Boston, but Blackwater was the only home you had ever known.

Abigail brought you back to the present with her hand on your arm. “Y/N, I might have to leave soon. I don’t want to but there are things I can’t change that are set in motion by the people I’m with. You’re...well I guess my friend and I wanted to let you know.” You laughed at her hesitation to call you a friend. Knowing her it isn’t an insult. If anything, she means it as a way to say she doesn’t get close to many people and has somehow chosen you. 

“Abigail I appreciate you telling me, but I’ll see you again! I am not worried.” Sometimes your blind optimism got the better of you. Damn those novels that you got lost in. Few things brought you pleasure like the chapters of a book. 

The two of you clasped hands and parted for the day as the sun set behind you. Slowly but surely you were building a collection of items that had been lifted off the residents of Blackwater and were going towards your future pawn trips. As much as you loved the town and its dusty, dirty humbleness there was a darkness that lived there. 

You neared your house and felt your heart drop to your stomach as the parlor light flickered on meaning your mother was not home, but your father was. Dad had a mean drinking problem, and as the man in charge of  some government organization had power which mixed terribly with his vanity. He wanted everyone to know that he and he alone was in charge. 

Climbing up the steps quietly you hoped to sneak by. That damn fourth step gave you away, and you silently swore as your father barked for you to come back down. 

“Y/N! Get down here. How dare you walk by and not say hello to your father?” You mumble an apology and kissed him on the cheek, the smugness in him as strong as the whiskey on his breath. As you turned to head to the kitchen for dinner he grabbed your elbow hard enough to make you wince. “Were you in town today,” he asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. He must have seen you, or heard about Abigail somehow. “Y-yes father, I spent the day in town. At the market, there was a wagon from a nearby farm…” you drifted off and tried to walk to the other room. Your father stood abruptly, but was distracted by your mother opening the kitchen door. She was a force of pure good and the only thing that could tame your father’s wild ways. Her face beamed and invited you both for dinner. 

“How was town today, Y/N? The apples look delicious.” You mother winked at you and motioned to the three red apples sitting on the counter waiting to be baked into a pie for dessert. While in town you didn’t even notice her so she must have moved quietly. The roast chicken and potatoes were delicious and you couldn't eat fast enough. After dinner, your father went out to the back porch to smoke while your mother sat and played cards with you. 

“Mother, why don’t we just leave?” you whispered. This was a conversation you had had many times in the past. “If we packed and left at midnight he couldn’t track us. We could go to the mountains, move west or even north again! A new city with no one following us and we could make a new life. Work in an art gallery or a farm or...just some place nice and safe. Where no one could hurt us.” The darting of your eyes was not missed by your mother who had never known about your father and how his rage manifested late at night. He always did have a knack for hitting you in places that no one else would ever see.  

Her hand was soft as it wrapped around your own. You knew this fantasy would never happen but you always hoped someday she would finally agree. 

“My dear, we musnt run away from those things that we fear. Fear only increases when we turn our backs to escape rather than face it head on.” 

********************************************************

The next day in town you met up with Abigail again. You knew the time was coming for her to leave from the way she clung to you a little tighter and laughed more forced and often. It made you sad to think that this bright light in your life lately would just be gone due to...whatever it was that would drag her away. Loyalty and family all meant something to you of course. But it was still upsetting to think that this exciting time would soon be over. 

“The last thing I’ll teach you as a thief is this. In order to pull off a good heist, you have to believe. With everything you have. A poor orphan left to die on the side of the road? Believe. Someone who just got robbed and needs a ride to town? Believe. Someone who isn’t being abused by a man somewhere in town? Believe.”

She stared you down hard during this last line. You flinched and moved to cover the bruise that had been exposed when you rolled your sleeves up from the heat. A soft expression met you when you looked up to her blue eyes. 

“I...It’s nothing I promise.”

“And that, hon, is exactly what I was talking about. You have to believe. Make it out of this town, safe. Please. If not for me, maybe just for you.” You watery eyes meet hers and you realized that it’s obvious to everyone but you that leaving may just be your last hope to being happy. The only issue you have is leaving your mother behind with the monster that hides behind the eyes of your father. His rage wasn’t always there. Mother said as a child you lived happily in Boston just the three of you. It was supposed to be four, and that’s where the trouble began. When your brother was lost a few days after his birth your father couldn't stand it. The whiskey was his crutch, and it soon became more of a constant burden. Every day it seemed he stumbled in from work already drowning in the vile stuff. Even the thought of its scent brought you gagging now. Your mother says that’s the reason you had to leave the northern city and move to the nowhere town of Blackwater and start all over again. That drink and the havoc it caused. 

While you had the time the two of you decided to celebrate. Sitting in the saloon you clinked your drinks and cheersed to seeing each other soon someday. Abigail loved hometown whiskey and your poison of choice was gin. Many drinks later and the two of you stumbled out to the main road, needing fresh air after leading the whole bar in a great rendition of a popular song. You swayed in the heat that met you outside of the doors. A huge commotion down by the water caused half the town out to come bursting out to the roads behind you. Galloping horses, screaming, and gunshots were all you could make out. Damn those drinks and whatever was in them! You couldn't see more than four feet in front of you, and everything beyond that was a big old blur. 

“Y/N! We need to move. Now!” Abigail somehow sobered up and was in charge of the whole situation. “Get behind that building and pretend you don’t know me-” but her words were cut short by a man grabbing her arm and yanking her down the road. 

“Abigail!! Hey! Let her go!” You chased, well, more like stumbled after, the pair and beat his arm with your fists. He released Abigail and grabbed your hands, shoving them down by your sides and forcing you to stare into his eyes. 

“Now what in the hell are you doing?” You stare dumbstruck into his face thinking that you might have landed yourself right into one of your novels. Beautiful blue eyes searched your drunken face and you couldn’t even speak. His eyebrows pulled together and crows feet showed around the edges of his eyes, years of the open sun and road changing the landscape of his face. Stringing coherent thoughts together was a struggle when Abigail shoved the man. “Arthur! Let her go she’s my...she’s my friend.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows, “Abigail I have to get you back to John-”

Three men raced around the street corner on horseback and shouted in your direction. “Those three! Stop them! They’re linked with them gangs from the riverboat!” 

You swung around to face Arthur and Abigail. “What have you done. Your gang! What did you do!” 

Arthur swore and grabbed you by your waist. “Abigail, get on that grey horse there. The bay is mine.” She nodded and took off down the road. You cursed and swung as hard as you could but it was no use, this man had you captive as he put you on the horse and followed Abigail. The lawmen were not too far behind and you heard the bullets they fired whisk by you and hit the buildings down the street. From the back of a horse you watched the faces of people you knew zip by faster and faster, and with them the memory of who you were confined to be quickly slipped away. What a strange turn of events in the past few months. Abigail had taught you how to pickpocket and thief your way hopefully to a new life, but instead of taking that route here one was riding you off on a horse. It scared you, but you couldn't look back. 

A sharp and terrible pain grabbed you suddenly as a bullet met your left side below your ribs. Screaming, you almost fell off the horse but managed to clutch onto Arthur’s shirt with weak fingers. He turned around at the noise and seemed upset as his face filled with worry when looking at the blood spilling onto your shirt. The pain proved too much and the last thing you remember was landing on a hill of grass with dust swirling all around as the sound of pounding hooves raging your ears from all directions.

[judedeluca]

Last Friday I Tried To Kill Myself: My Rant On Why Heroes In Crisis Is Destructive Garbage And Why Stories Like This Need To Stop Being Made

TW: Suicide, rape, abuse

I’ve made it no secret I’ve been in therapy since 2012, and I’ve especially been vocal about my dislike for DC Comics’ latest event book, “Heroes in Crisis,” which just released its last issue on May 29th 2019.

I tried to write something the other night but I didn’t like how it sounded so I deleted it. After my session with my therapist earlier in the day, she convinced me to simply write down what I feel regardless. And so I did. I typed and typed. This is pretty long under the cut. I don’t know if I got carried away. I think I did.

I need to be clear I did NOT just try to commit suicide because of how much I hated a comic book. I’d like to believe even I’m not that pathetic. I tried to kill myself because of a number of reasons which sort of snowballed together this previous Friday.

Look this is angry and long and it sounds ridiculous but I just wanted to write and get my feelings out and I’m sorry okay? I’m, just, I’m sorry. For being pathetic and a disappointment to my friends and letting this bother me so much.

But I’m talking about “Heroes in Crisis” because this book has been negatively affecting me since it began publication, and the state that it left me in this past week only served to exacerbate the negative thoughts I had to endure, and I briefly reached a point where I had a knife to my wrist.

I’ve been attending therapy for the past seven years in order to address trauma and abuse I suffered through in my adolescence. In grade school I was bullied, and from 6th to 12th grade I was sexually abused on two separate occasions in two separate schools from four different people. In middle school I was assaulted by three boys who weren’t much older than me on the bus ride home, where they grabbed my head and shoved my face into their crotches as all the other kids laughed. In high school a classmate molested me twice during art class, and spent the rest of that time trying to make me apologize after I smacked him in self defense.

In 2009 my family dissolved when my parents unhappily split apart, which placed me as the unwilling recipient of my father’s, mother’s, and sibling’s emotional baggage while my own problems were ignored. During the loss of my support system I juggled two jobs along with graduating from college, I came out of the closet and have been struggling to figure out both my sexual and gender identities, I made my first suicide attempt in 2013, and my best friend died in 2016 along with four other people I cared about or who saw me as a friend.

Seeking therapy was something I had to do on my own. I tried counseling sessions with the people at my college but despite their best efforts it didn’t do much to help. I never received counseling in middle school for my sexual assault and my parents weren’t of much help either despite it was clear I developed some significant behavior problems. In 10th Grade I did spend some time with a guidance counselor because they feared I was suicidal due to my depression around my bad grades in Chemistry, but again this didn’t really help.

God I realize how analytical and detached this is sounding and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m just listing everything. Ugh.

Aside from my suicidal thoughts I suffer from depression and PTSD. I think I’m a genuinely bad person and I’ve often thought I brought the abuse I suffered as a kid onto myself because I was a weird boy. I’ve wondered if I have a right to feel ashamed of what happened to me because it wasn’t as bad as what other people have gone through. I frequently think of myself as a shameless, greedy, manipulative person who doesn’t deserve to be happy because I use people. I’ve truly said some awful things to people and I know I’ve been blocked by a couple of people online and not without good cause. You need to understand that. My own sibling once said I was a wicked, blackhearted person.

I have trouble not assuming the worst of my parents and sibling because of how often I would find myself stuck in the middle of their arguing, which got me labeled a martyr whenever I tried to play peacemaker which I only wanted because I hate seeing them unhappy. I assume the worst about situations and I’ve spent countless nights lying awake thinking over and over again about past mistakes and how much I wish I was dead, or that I had died instead of one of my friends because they made the world a better place and I don’t. It’s easy for me to believe the world would be a better place if I died.

Often my problems had been ignored by the people I turned to for help. Ignored, looked down upon, or just belittled. It became hard for me to talk to people because it felt like no one really cared about what I was going through or that I wanted help. Or they misunderstood and their attempts to help failed because they didn’t really know what was wrong.

Despite all this I want to believe therapy has helped me deal with problems better than I had before, and helped me to take pride in what I have accomplished. I graduated cum laude with no student debt, I’ve held onto at least one job for over a decade, and I’m currently writing for three websites that have let me change my perspective on things and given me space to grow as a writer. I believe I’m better able to recognize boundaries and to let my feelings be known, and to know when not to engage in stressful situations. I’ve been trying, TRYING, not to let me depression and negative thoughts affect me too badly.

It’s not easy, but it’s better than not doing anything at all.

So, where does “Heroes in Crisis” fit into this.

Well.

Through middle and high school, comics were pretty much the only thing that managed to keep me going without having a complete breakdown. Well I did have other interests and I still do. I could never survive on comic books alone.

I didn’t really have any friends I could rely on or talk to about my problems, not in real life or online. I got lucky in high school since there was a comic store one block away, which meant I was now able to regularly buy comics instead of the odd issue here or there. It was after I graduated high school I finally began to make some friends through online message boards and by meeting people at comic conventions. So comics didn’t just keep me going, they helped me find the people who HAVE been able to help me and see me as an individual worth knowing. My very first best friend in the whole world (NOT the one who died) is a professional comic artist I met through DeviantArt. “Stuck Rubber Baby” helped me realize and be honest about the fact I’m queer, and it was through commissioning comic artists I’ve felt more comfortable about exploring my sexuality.

As cheesy as it sounds the presence of comics in my life has indeed helped me a great deal, and I want to professionally write comics someday as a way to repay some of that back and try to make the world a better place.

I’ve always bought a little bit of everything but I’m mainly focused on DC Comics. My favorite teams are the Titans, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Doom Patrol, and the Justice Society. Ask me my favorite Flash, I’ll pick Jay Garrick or Wally West. My favorite Green Lantern, I’d pick Alan Scott and Kyle Rayner.

Suffice it to say I really haven’t been happy with most of what DC’s published in the past ten years. I’ve been especially vocal about my dislike for books such as “Rise of Arsenal,” “Titans” by Eric Wallace, and pretty much everything Scott Lobdell’s worked on. Like a lot of people, I thought “DC Rebirth” back in 2016 was a step in the right direction, that they were finally cleaning the mess they made with the New 52 initiative.

“Heroes in Crisis” proved me and a lot of other people wrong.

But as a person struggling with depression and PTSD, this book offended me on a whole different level compared to anything those other books have done.

So you’ve got a place, Sanctuary, where heroes and villains can receive counseling for their respective problems and possibly get help. That sounds like a great idea. And then the first issue opens with the reveal every patient has been gruesomely murdered save for two who believe the other is guilty. And it gets worse from there.

FIRST: It turns out Sanctuary has no actual doctors or therapists. It relies instead on a computer programmed with the supposed best traits of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

SECOND: The patients are put in virtual reality chambers where they relive their respective traumas over and over again as a way to confront them.

THIRD: There doesn’t seem to be any real security except for a couple of robots, and anyone can just walk in. Which means Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman haven’t been monitoring the place until AFTER the massacre.

What followed was than eight issues of a supposed mystery that wasn’t a mystery at all. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman do almost nothing to figure who was responsible for this, while Lois Lane is given files of all the Sanctuary interviews which she PUBLISHES, leaking hundreds of secrets that were meant to be private even if she obscures the real names. The investigation falls to Booster Gold and Harley Quinn, who both believe the other is the killer.

It eventually turns out the killer was Wally West, who accidentally unleashed a burst of energy that killed those around him and in a fit of extreme suicidal despair violated the corpses to look like a mystery so he would have enough time to release the Sanctuary files and then kill himself believing it was the only way to make things right. He doesn’t die but turns himself in at the end.

I-I don’t have the energy to give a complete rundown, I really don’t. Suffice to say the book has problems. Racist problems, homophobic problems, and ableist problems. The series IS a problem.

Since the first issue was released I hated, I HATED, this comic with every fiber of my being. I hated the stilted writing and I hated the gross, overly sexualized artwork. I hated it was another event series built around cheap shock value deaths meant to drive up sales and garner controversy to make more sales. And I especially hated the premise, that this Sanctuary was supposed to be a place of healing but was anything BUT. The DC Trinity make no attempt to get real doctors to help them provide help for their comrades and friends, delegating everything to a computer that’s supposed to have their best qualities and assuming THAT is a decent substitute for qualified psychiatrists and therapists.

The very IDEA that Superman and Wonder Woman could be so arrogant and conceited to believe they could substitute for licensed medical professionals is appaling. Even Batman on his worst days would never be so inconsiderate.

And then there are the VR chambers, where the heroes relive their traumas over and over and over again until they can get over them. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. To experience such pain over and over again. The comic even demonstrated through characters Lagoon Boy and Wally West that going through their trauma again and again clearly wasn’t helping. Lagoon Boy relieved the Titans East massacre HUNDREDS of times. And this seems to be the only real option Sanctuary allows besides the confessionals.

This, this NEGLECT. Sanctuary isn’t a place for healing, it’s a dumping ground! These people are secluded and essentially kept in solitary confinement where they have almost no one but a computer to talk to. A computer that does absolutely nothing to help them.

I spoke to my own doctor about this and she agreed with me none of this was healthy and that the book itself was extremely damaging and poorly thought out.

And I have spoken to her about this a LOT over the last nine months, because with each issue that came out I felt myself getting more and more worn down. I would dread the last Wednesday of the month knowing the next issue would arrive. And let me tell you this wasn’t the only thing I was talking about in my sessions, but it figured a lot into my past discussions and my therapist respected that. I’m glad I have her in my life, she’s a consummate professional. 

I’m not talking about simple fan boy hate. This comic DRAINED me and struck more than a number of nerves. The apathy and insensitivity that went into crafting this book reminded me far too much of what I’ve gone through in life and not for the better.

For starters, the way Tom King portrays the problems the characters go through is nothing but a joke. We’re treated to multiple confessional sequences where different characters talk about their issues in a nine-panel grid layout featuring some of the most stilted dialog I’ve ever read. King shows absolutely no research or care in the characters he talks about, ignoring their backstories to make up nonsense and present it as deep when in reality he’s gutted them from the inside out.

The one that bothered me most was Roy Harper from the first issue, in a confessional sequence one page AFTER his corpse is found.

Tom King took nine issues to completely destroy and misunderstand Wally West’s character, even though he only needed one page for Roy Harper.

Of course Scott Lobdell spent eight years destroying the character, so King didn’t need to do much.

Roy and his daughter Lian have been two of my favorite DC characters for years. I’ve been able to relate to Roy’s issues a lot over the years. Not his past drug addiction, but his struggles with depression and abandonment issues and his fight to try and be a better person despite everything he’s gone through. He was raised in a Native American community and probably has a better understand of racism than most white people could dream of. He’s a devoted father who tries to be the best dad he can be for his daughter. But most importantly, he knows he can screw up and he knows he’s not perfect. He just wants to be good. He’s a complex and multifaceted person who is more than his trauma, and I’ve long admired that. I’ve wished I could stop beating myself up over my past mistakes and just focus on doing good instead of hating myself for not being perfect. As someone who never really had much support from my parents growing up and that feeling of being totally alone despite being surrounded by people, I empathized with the neglect he suffered form Green Arrow and the way he was essentially abandoned in “Rise of Arsenal” when he needed help the most.

But is any of that discussed in “Heroes in Crisis?”

No.

Roy’s abandonment and depression are ignored so Tom King can churn out some nonsense about abusing prescription meds given to him by doctors for his superhero injuries before he switched to heroin because it was cheaper and safer. Not because of his depression. He only started taking the meds because of his injuries and he got addicted, which I’ve seen a number of fans who suffer from chronic pain complain that this is ableist for presenting them as drug addicts.

God I hope I’m remembering that right, I’m sorry guys.

“So you go to a needle. To save your kidneys. And some money. But really, isn’t that what superheroes do? Save things?”

Objectively one of the worst things I have ever read in ANYTHING.

But it doesn’t stop there. Pretty much every character given a confessional more or less has the problems they truly did survive ignored for nonsense that never occurred or is completely out of character to the point it feels like these are SUPPOSED to be jokes. Firestorm talks about his head being on fire. Green Lantern Hal Jordan doesn’t know what “Will” is. Raven says her father, an inter dimensional monster who has tried to turn her evil over and over again and whom she hates, loves her. Minor character the Protector is revealed to be addicted to multiple drugs and was only an anti-drug crusader because he thought it was funny. That was just CRUEL.

I... I have spent so long being ashamed of a lot of the abuse I went through and it is still hard for me to talk about. Do you have any idea how disgusted I am with myself whenever I try to tell someone about what happened to me in high school? When I have to figure out a way to say that “He tried to stick his finger in my ass” and not think about how the people reading or hearing this must be laughing at me it’s so pathetic? Or when I think about the crying fit after my first day of high school begging my mom to take me out of this school and she tells me to suck it up?

And so this bothers me, because I frequently fear that my problems are just a joke. And I see the characters whom I resonate with have their problems degraded and treated as poorly thought out jokes.

Why were some of these characters even here in the first place? To deal with their problems? Even though some of them WERE ALREADY TRYING TO GET HELP. Roy in particular had his Titans teammate Lilith Clay as his substance abuse counselor, but none of that is mentioned in the lead-up to “Heroes in Crisis.” The help that Roy was already getting was ignored. His efforts at self improvement were ignored by those around him.

But it’s not as bad as the reason Wally West was in Sanctuary. In “Flash War” Wally regains memories of his twin children Jai and Iris and is told they’re not in the Speed Force but SOMEWHERE. And Wally tries to find them and can’t. So instead of Barry Allen getting the Justice League to help with the search, knowing the disappearance of these children are one example of how the universe has been damaged, Barry and Iris West allow Wally to be taken to Sanctuary to essentially get him to shut up about his missing kids. He is abandoned by the people he viewed as parents. And this is what leads to Wally’s breakdown. Despite knowing his children are out there somewhere, “Heroes in Crisis” tries to demonize Wally for wanting his family back and it’s used to make him into a suicidal mass murderer. Wally’s problems make him into a villain. He’s driven mad with grief when he hacks the Sanctuary computer thinking no one has gone through what he has, and is broken when he experiences all that trauma at once. All this because he wanted something that was perfectly rational for him to want.

Wally’s trauma is used to dehumanize him.

The dehumanization doesn’t stop there, especially in the case of Poison Ivy who is turned into a plot device for Harley Quinn’s sake.

Never forget this was a thing that Clay Mann drew and DC would’ve used before it got leaked.

This was supposed to be the cover for the seventh issue, Ivy’s bloody corpse done like a pin-up.

After being treated as Harley’s motivation for most of the series, Ivy’s revived but in such a way she’s lost most of her humanity. She gets turned into a rip off of Swamp Thing and her body is more plant than human, no longer having nipples or a vagina. She’s been murdered and brought back in a way that will let DC sexualize her as much as they want now that she’s not human anymore. But this is supposed to be treated as GOOD because she’s supposedly more powerful now and she’s alive. Like that doesn’t change the shameful way she was killed, and how she came to Sanctuary hoping to get help for the awful things that haunt her and it got her killed.

Ivy’s long been a very complex character herself and many people have looked at her as a strong, interesting, intelligent queer woman who ultimately only wants to save the Earth and be with the woman she loves. But she’s frequently the villain in her stories and often told she doesn’t understand what real love is. Instead of being recognized for the complex character and inspiration she is, Ivy also has her trauma used against her as an excuse for to be sent to die and LITERALLY be dehumanized. So what does that say to the women who resonate with her? The queer readers? What does that say?

The leaking of the Sanctuary files is also supposed to be seen as good. Wally claims he did it because he thought if people saw someone like him could make a mistake, they’d get help before he did something bad like him. That if they saw their heroes had problems, they’d get help too.

IT’S TRYING TO VALIDATE THIS VIOLATION OF PRIVACY AND HOW ALL THESE PROBLEMS ARE TURNED INTO A MEDIA SIDESHOW THANKS TO LOIS LANE AND SUPERMAN.

And Wally turns himself in he’s left to rot in jail, more alone than ever. Where’s the supposed help now?

But Booster Gold gets to hang with Blue Beetle and Harley’s with Ivy and it’s supposed to be about hope by showing no matter what mistakes you make it’s not too late and blah blah whatever that last issue was. It tries to pretend all this suffering and misery was worth it because now Wally really can represent hope by being an example!

Bros before heroes!

These people went to get help or were sent to get help, and instead they were ignored. They were killed. Their problems turned into jokes. They had their problems used against them after they died when all they wanted was to be better.

WANTING TO GET BETTER IS NOT A REASON WHY ANYONE SHOULD HAVE TO DIE. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TREATED LIKE AN AFTERTHOUGHT LIKE THIS.

One of the worst thing out of all this is knowing NONE OF THE CHARACTERS USUALLY ACT LIKE THIS. The reason why Wally accidentally killed everyone is because King makes up a retcon involving the Speed Force that was never, EVER mentioned in any Flash comic before. He makes up things on the fly to justify why any of the characters are there at all. Someone once said how, and I’m paraphrasing, “A story should be made to fit the characters, the characters shouldn’t be made to fit the story.” It’s been clear to a lot of people this book was blatant character assassination and Dan Didio’s latest attempt to finally get rid of Wally West because he hates him and all the other legacy characters so much. A story about PTSD that could’ve been meaningful and helped people got hijacked to destroy a character. To use their trauma as a tool to make them do something horrible. To exploit trauma for shock value and dehumanize not just the characters but the people who read these books and identified with the struggles and I

HATE IT!!!!!!! 

It hurts because so many people care about these characters, and Didio would use a story that could’ve been uplifting to carry out his petty hatred.

This has been it, month after month for me. I’d get mad, and I would try to take my mind off it. I’d write fan fiction and commission artwork making fun of “Heroes in Crisis,” I’d try to vent on the internet and explain why I hate this comic. I’d connect with friends and other fans who’re equally unhappy, and I’d just feel myself getting worse and worse. I’ve had trouble sleeping thinking about this comic, stress dreams and laying awake at night before I’d start to think about how I’m a bad person too and wishing over and over again to die and end everything. To stop being a blight on the world and give it to someone who deserves to live. More importantly, that crushing sense of not being able to do anything to make this better. This powerlessness to try and change things for the better. Wishing I could do something to make it better and thinking about all the other ways I’ve failed in life. The loved ones and friends who died and I couldn’t help them. The unhappiness in my family. The state of the world. And then I’d think about how much I hate myself even more because there are more important things to worry about in the world, like what that rapist monster in the White House is doing to this country and to anyone who’s not a straight white man.

The week the final issue came out I knew right off it was going to be a train wreck and I was right. A disappointing ending to a disappointing story. More feelings of anxiety and self loathing and a feeling that my problems are nothing but a joke to mocked and exploited.

While all this was going on I had other things to worry about. In March my grandfather was hospitalized with a number of health problems due to a urinary tract infection. He spent a week gradually becoming confused and losing energy before he was taken to the emergency room when he said he was having trouble breathing. It turned out he also had a cyst, a clot, and bleeding in his brain. As me, my mom and sibling worried about his health we also had to worry about our house because my grandfather pays most of the rent and if his pension had to go towards a nursing home, we would have to move. So while worrying about my 92 year old grandfather’s health I also had to worry about possibly losing my house. And while he was recovering at the rehab hospital he had to go back to the ER again on Easter when we were told he fell during the night. He’s in another nursing home and he’s doing better thankfully, but he’s also the last grandparent I have and I’m not ready to lose him when he’s held onto his mind for so long.

So what exactly happened when the ninth issue came out that pushed me?

This past Thursday while I was at work, I get a call from my mother saying she thinks someone might be in our house because she went downstairs into my grandpa’s apartment and all the doors were open. I don’t know why she didn’t call the police or what she thought I could do since I wasn’t even in the Bronx. *Sigh* I tried to get my dad to come pick me up sooner so I could check out what was wrong and I was trying not to panic even when my mom texts me saying she’s okay but she locked her bedroom door and she’s got a blunt object. Then she says maybe it was nothing after all...

And then I get home and I see the garage door is wide open and it’s a disaster, as if someone trashed the place. I can’t get my dad out of the car and he just says “Call the police” as if he doesn’t care. I run into the house and begin checking the rooms in my grandpa’s apartment before grabbing a kitchen knife and going back to the garage. I then tell my mom what’s happened to the garage and it’s like I’m invisible. I can’t even get her outside to look and she’s more concerned about getting her dinner from around the corner. She tells me “It’s not like no one’s gotten in the garage before.”

AFTER SHE GETS ME WORKED UP THINKING SOMEONE WAS IN OUR HOUSE. AND I COME HOME AND THEY MIGHT’VE TRASHED THE GARAGE.

I literally can’t understand what was going through her head when she gave me this runaround. And I call her on it the next day, telling her how scared she got me and how it felt when she acted like I was making a big deal of nothing. I was frightened she could’ve been alone in the house with an intruder, because obviously she felt the same way if she wanted to lock herself in her bedroom. She STILL acted like it was no big deal and it’s like 2010 all over again and I’m being expected to drop everything to help her and she won’t give me any courtesy or empathy.

And then not even an hour later that Friday I get an email from my boss about a secret shopper thing and I rush to get my phone seeing he’s tried to call me. And he’s saying he’s mad at me because of something I did on Tuesday that might get our distribution license suspended or taken away completely. I’m thinking this is because of me. Because I screwed up. And I’ve had this job since I graduated high school and I might’ve ruined it completely.

And that mixed with how it’s like my mother has played fucking mindgames with me and all the other feelings and the general anger and hopelessness and thinking over and over it’s not going to get better I picked up that knife again and held it to my wrist while my boss was still on the phone.

I had it pressed against my skin and wanted to dig it in deeper.

I kept thinking “I CAN’T DO THIS I CAN’T DO THIS” seeing everything all at once, over and over again and...

I-I don’t know. Maybe just a part of me that said not to do it or something. Maybe because despite all my talk of wanted to die I don’t.

I don’t want to die.

So I put the knife down before I cut myself.

I went to work at my second job and I scheduled an emergency session with my therapist, and I tried to write.

So it’s Monday morning and I’m typing this and wondering now, if anyone actually reads this what kind of shit will I expect if people actually bother to read it.

I’m a loser who needs to get a life

I read the story wrong

I didn’t understand the story

I need to get laid

I’m just mad my favorite character died

I hate it because Tom King’s a good writer

I’m a contrarian who hates it because it’s popular

I don’t know what I’m talking about

I’m a whiny f****t

I’m conceited enough to think Tom King may ever actually read this and have him say “I’m sorry you reacted this way”

This isn’t the story King wanted to tell and he had good intentions

OH SCREW YOUR FUCKING “GOOD INTENTIONS”

My teachers had “Good intentions”

My parents had “Good intentions”

AND I AM STILL FUCKING PAYING FOR IT

I am so sick of hearing about “Good intentions.” Just because a person had good intentions doesn’t absolve them of messing up! King apparently handed in a basic outline and let editorial pick the characters. If King had good intentions, he would’ve bothered to do research on the characters instead of turning them into jokes. If he had good intentions he would’ve done a better job of showing how therapy actually CAN help people. He wouldn’t have given us a story all about death and suffering and say it’s about hope. If he had good intentions he wouldn’t have let Didio use this to get rid of Wally West.

You want to talk about people with ACTUAL good intentions? How about we talk about the people out there who’ve written about abuse and trauma and suicidal thoughts and how to address those things in ways that MATTER. In ways that don’t alienate people and can grant a better understanding of ways to act.

In ways that say “I see you. I understand you and know what you’ve gone through. You’re stronger than you think.”

Let’s talk about Jeremy Whitley writing “The Unstoppable Wasp” where Nadia Pym has a manic episode and attacks her friends, and has to be talked down from killing herself by her friend Priya because her own brother committed suicide.

Let’s talk about how Priya describes the world Nadia would create if she killed herself and convinces her she deserves to live because she makes everyone happy and she is a good person no matter what she is thinking right now.

Let’s talk about Magdalene Visaggio’s “Eternity Girl” where Caroline Sharp is a suicidal immortal superhero who wants to destroy reality because she thinks it’s the only way she can die, and her girlfriend Dani convinces her that she can build a new world for herself instead of destroying this one because Caroline’s stronger than her misery and has the power to choose what she wants.

Let’s talk about Chris Claremont’s disgust at how Carol Danvers had been brainwashed and raped and sent off to live with her rapist while her friends did nothing to help her and thought this was a HAPPY ENDING

Let’s talk about how he had Carol dress down the Avengers for the shameless way they treated her and abandoned her when she needed them

Let’s talk about Jim Salicrup and Louise Simonson working on the “Spider-Man and Power Pack” special which showed the right ways to address child abuse.

How Salicrup was able to make Spider-Man into a sexual abuse survivor without it being a joke and how his story helped a little boy tell his parents what happened to him. And how this helped Spider-Man accept what happened to him was not his fault.

How Simonson wrote about the Power Pack supporting a friend being sexually abused by her father and how they convince her she did nothing to deserve this.

Let’s talk about Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run which showed that trauma is not the end of someone’s existence and that people can be happy despite what’s happened to them

Let’s talk about George and Marion who despite the trauma of having lost their bodies and being used as slaves they still choose to smile and enjoy life and love each other

Let’s talk about Kate Godwin, a transgender woman who changed her body to match the person she was inside despite what people said about her and treated her, and found a community that supported her and loved her and is a strong, good woman with the power and the empathy to help others

A woman who was outraged when a person tried to make her believe she’d been gang raped and needed trauma to make her life more meaningful.

SO TALK ABOUT ALL OF THEM AND TELL ME ABOUT KING’S “GOOD INTENTIONS”

NO ONE NEEDS TRAUMA IN THEIR LIFE TO MAKE IT MEANINGFUL. FINDING HAPPINESS AFTER YOU’VE SURVIVED SOMETHING HORRIBLE DOESN’T MAKE THAT SOMETHING HORRIBLE JUSTIFIED.

You can’t look at stories like “Heroes in Crisis” and say “Oh it’s okay because in the end it was worth it because it taught us something” and NO. IT IS NOT OKAY. HAVING YOUR PROBLEMS LAUGHED AT AND MOCKED AND DEGRADED AND TRIVIALIZED IS NEVER OKAY. NOT FROM THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT. NOT TOTAL STRANGERS. NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO DO THAT.

So yeah, maybe I am fucking pathetic for ranting about this and I should get a life and talk about more important things but I don’t fucking care! I’m angry about this and I’m gonna be angry for a long time! I’m angry about this story and I’m angry about how it affected me and the people I care about and people I don’t know and I will always be angry with myself that I tried to kill myself because of how this book made me feel and affected what I was going through.

Because stories are important to our lives. They can help us get through every day and they can make our problems not seem so bad. They can give us the strength to look at the bad parts of our life and think maybe they can change. That WE can change. We read about these people and we connect with them. We see things in them we wish to be like or things that are already in us and it can make us feel like we aren’t alone.

And even when stories aren’t enough they can help us find the people who can tell us these things. To help us find people who would care about us, and to care about them so maybe WE can help them. They’re a gateway.

So no, it’s not just a fucking comic book. And no, I don’t care what the intentions were. And I don’t care how pathetic this all sounds.

This, this was a bad story. This was a harmful story. And people deserve better. We don’t deserve to keep living in an age where stories like this, that can make us feel like we’re nothing, keep happening. We deserve stories that show us our lives are not defined by our trauma, we are NOT jokes, we are strong, and we deserve to live. That is not what “Heroes in Crisis” was and you will never convince me otherwise.

I had problems long before this story came out. I do not blame it for things that happened to me before. I do not blame it for my assault and abuse. I blame it for making me feel more like I don’t deserve to live and that what I’ve gone through doesn’t matter. I blame it for making me feel like my hard work and attempts to make my life better are meaningless.

This is not okay.

You wanna fucking blast me for this, go right ahead.

[dragimal]

ok this is like. MAJORLY self-indulgent, self-psychoanalyzing rambling so I’m putting it under a readmore, but my thoughts have been spinning in circles over this for like. practically my whole teen/adult life. and I just need to put it down somewhere

idc if anyone wants to read this or respond or anything, again I’m just basically trying to vomit out my thoughts until something makes sense

so like. anxiety. I know I have it, that’s the ONE Problems Disorder I’m 100% certain I’ve got, to whatever degree it matters

but that’s kinda the thing-- to WHAT degree, and DOES that matter? at what point can I say it’s a legitimate part of me, and at what point is it something negligible and unobtrusive?

b/c here’s the other thing-- anxiety is, in fact, a strong aspect of my self-image. it’s something I associate strongly with as a character trait, and I tend to relate to ‘meek’ characters

I know part of it is a defense mechanism. I had to make myself small, being raised by my mom. she’s a whole other rant, but essentially she’s a very defensively prideful person, and any attempt to steer a conversation towards your own accomplishments/needs/interests is met with a blank look and a swift topic change back to herself. (and god forbid u bring up her faults, that would guarantee manipulative guilt-tripping at best, screaming and crying at worst)

but there’s also another convoluted level to this defense mechanism. I recognized at a young age, on some subconscious level, that pride was/is my mom’s greatest downfall. so I internalized that as, “pride (and even more broadly, confidence) is bad and and a danger to those around you” 

not to be Homestuck on main, but Dave’s first conversation with Dirk struck me on a level of personal experience that few other pieces of media have ever hit, particularly this bit

obviously the physical aspect of this abuse is beyond me, but the emotional manipulation, and Bro subsequently ruining a generally positive concept (the concept of heroism, in his case) hits incredibly close to home

my mom exuded confidence and always told me that confidence in myself over all else would save me, but she ultimately ruined confidence for me. I know there will always be this underlying thread of fear that if I’m not afraid-- that if I allow myself confidence-- that I will become like her. that I’ll hurt people with my pride

now this is all shit that I’ve known abt myself for a long time, and I know I’ve even mentioned some of this in passing before. but here’s what’s fucking me up nowadays: what happens when you cling to anxiety like this? what happens when you craft a disorder into your personality? where does subconscious reaction end and deliberate masking begin?

b/c here’s the other thing: I don’t truly hate myself. not rly-- not on the level I would say is dangerous or clinical. some of it may very well be real, but I definitely play it up. like play-acting at under-confidence

and it’s not like I don’t have pride either. I have tons of pride for various things I do or accomplish, namely academic studies, crafting/art, and just like working standards in general. when I can eloquently describe/argue my point, or accurately craft something to my inner image, I feel very real pride

but pride hurts. I feel pride, but equal to that is the shame I feel at feeling pride in the first place. it’s genuinely painful at times to accept a compliment without argument NOT because I necessarily disagree (tho there are definitely times where I DO actually disagree), but to accept a compliment is to admit I have pride in the thing being complimented, and THAT is unacceptable

and it’s not like my fear is unfounded either. I’ve hurt ppl w/ my pride before-- and this isn’t my anxiety making me self-critical, I KNOW this for a FACT. it simply comes with the territory of all that “gifted child” bullshit in school. yeah I was one of those. thankfully not a very outspoken student (the anxiety in my younger days was a lot more real and visceral), but I do still distinctly remember moments where my academic pride gave me an... inflated sense of presence over those that didn’t get the material, I guess u could say

I know there were times I made ppl feel small, due to my pride. hell, times I got overly, fearfully defensive of my knowledge or artistic skill to the point of talking over others and making them feel stupid. no one deserves to feel small, and it fucking tears me up to know that I did that to ppl. that I still knee-jerk react in that way sometimes, even now, and it still slips out

and isn’t that just proof that I can’t appropriately handle pride? that I’m not mature enough for confidence?

and it’s not even all about making myself small for others’ sake. half of it is this incredibly selfish knowledge that not living up to my own standards will fucking kill me if I let it

I feel like every ‘gifted kid’ experiences a chain events that starts at, “wow I’m so smart, I’m great at every subject!” and ends at, “christ I’m fucking garbage at literally everything.” we’re taught that success is in being able to do something well the first time (or at least quickly and with little effort), so if we’re not immediately good at something, we shut down b/c we were never taught that success is actually in the effort at the task

this has been talked to death by others so I don’t want to bother w/ it too long, but the critical thing to note is that there’s there’s this eventual sense of defeat in everything you do, when ur brought up w/ this mindset

I used to be somewhat competitive in certain things when I was younger-- the rare sports I played when I was RLY young, academics obviously, etc. or at least, competitive with my own personal standards, if not necessarily against other ppl. but every failure and mistake made me so upset that the angst was like. genuinely dangerous to my health

I used to play golf on a team in middle school, and every time I whiffed it I would get SO angry at myself that my dad literally told me that that level of upset would kill me someday and that I rly needed to stop

so I took that to heart and just. stopped caring

every time I whiffed it after that point, I was just like, “ah, well, what can ya do ¯|_(ツ)_/¯ ” this attitude definitely lowered my blood pressure, but it also rly killed my motivation to like... improve. b/c the thought of even trying to improve brought up all these feelings abt trying to meet my own standards of success, and how much it would hurt to fail

when u don’t set any standards u gotta meet, then when u fail u don’t rly fail, y’know? “well I didn’t even try, so it’s actually fine”

obviously I couldn’t give less of a shit abt golf anymore, but sometimes I wonder if my cold-turkey drop in confidence played a part in killing the interest itself? I know that sports and physical activity were never rly my thing in the first place, but did I perhaps give up so hard that I convinced myself that I didn’t even like those things in the first place?

I know it happened w/ academics at least: start to struggle with math? now I hate math. chemistry? that sucks too. etc etc

I kinda side-tracked here w/ all the talk of ‘gifted kid’ stuff, my point is that I have a vested interest in humbling myself-- to actively craft the persona of a meek, humble person

and I’ve been wondering if that, in and of itself, is manipulative. like, is it manipulative to let others think I rly lack THAT much in self-confidence? that I rly hate myself that much?

it certainly feels that way when I knee-jerk reject a compliment abt something I do, in fact, feel pride in-- when the shame at that pride is too much. but my friends don’t know it’s that reactive shame-- they think it’s that I rly don’t have confidence in that thing

but god, how do I even explain this fucking tangled, convoluted bullshit over my reaction to compliments? that I have to be small or I’ll hurt someone? that I do feel pride, and that’s the problem? what does that even MEAN to someone outside my own head??

and that’s not even to get into whether that manipulation is like, actually some subconscious tactic to get MORE compliments! am I fishing? when I make a post like this, am I actually just fishing for more compliments? is that what I’m doing??

I feel like I’m running in circles here, nipping at my own goddamned heels abt pride and shame and what is real and acting and does it even matter if nobody gets hurt?

do people get hurt? ppl get hurt when I allow myself pride, it’s happened before. but now I’m realizing that my self-hate may hurt ppl too-- my self-deprecation often goes too far, and it hurts the ppl who care abt me

how do I explain that self-deprecation is safe? a shield to hold back my pride? hell, it’s more accurate to say it’s a safe way to EXPRESS my pride in a way that ppl don’t detect. I acknowledge my faults, and if I frame it in a socially-acceptably comedic way, I get the pride of making someone laugh! it’s SAFE pride!

but is it? but is it, when it hurts ppl to hear me self-hate?

is there any way to feel pride safely?

I’ve never thought of myself as an actor, or as someone who can lie well (or at all). but can I lie, when I also believe the lie? is it a lie that I have anxiety? that I hate myself? that I have no confidence?

how much of me is real? how much does that hurt others? how do I carve out the parts of me that hurt others how do I make myself smaller in ways that are genuine and lasting and don’t hurt people??

I want to be small. I like being small. but am I small? or am I playing at being small?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

(cashing in on that safe comedic validation babeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy)

[curewhimsy]

Speaking Out synopsis (updated, working title)

NOTE: This is an updated version of a post I made previously.

———

TW for prejudice and violence I guess?

Why do I write such long detailed summaries when I’d be better off just writing the damn thing itself...?

Also despite taking place in Whimsica, this summary has like no quirky fantasy elements besides Margot’s monocle being mentioned once.

Margot character description

Catina character description

———

22-year-old Margot LaRoche is very shy—too shy to speak out about her opinions and feelings, despite her wish to make a positive impact on the world. While other students can be found socializing at college clubs and parties, Margot prefers to only go on campus to attend her classes.

In her first year of college, Margot meets Keith due to being paired up with him for a writing project in Language Arts class. He seems like a friendly and outgoing guy, and they have an interest in books and literature in common. Keith begins socializing with Margot and develops an acquaintanceship with her that becomes more like a friendship as time goes on.

However, Keith sometimes says offensive things about certain subjects that inadvertently upset Margot and feel like attacks. Over time, he starts doing it more. Keith doesn’t see it that way, but Margot thinks he is being hurtful.

Examples of his statements are how “r-tarded” it is that people are always complaining about inequality. He also implies a prejudice towards black people, saying they are generally “louder than other races.” He also bragged about how he once bullied a kid who had a disability, right in front of Margot.

Margot feels very uncomfortable and often hurt by Keith’s statements, yet she ignores them, or sometimes even goes along with them, due to her fear of speaking out and possibly losing her only friend.

In her second year of college, Margot meets Catina Leon at the library. Catina is a cheerful and friendly girl who takes interest in Margot and becomes fast friends with her. Margot notices a difference between her relationship with Keith and her relationship with Catina. Despite knowing Catina for less time, she genuinely enjoys spending time with her much more.

Weeks later, Margot and Keith are studying together at the library and chatting. Keith is saying his usual offensive things, and Margot is going along with them. Catina is eavesdropping and is shocked by what Keith is saying. She knows Margot well enough to figure that she wouldn’t agree with Keith’s statements. She notices that Margot looks very uncomfortable.

Catina schedules a meeting with Margot after school where they can talk alone. She says to her, “That guy you were studying with... who is he? You don’t agree with him, do you?”

Margot responds by shaking her head and saying, “I don’t. His name is Keith. We met in Language Arts class, but he always says offensive things like this...”

Catina is surprised that Margot is so afraid of standing up to Keith, given that she is so eloquent and that her dream is to better the world and give voices to people who need them. But she also understands her hesitancy. Catina decides to help and encourage Margot to cut Keith out of her life.

“I’ll always have your back, Margot. Okay? That’s what friends are for.”

The next day after Language Arts class, Keith once again spits out an ugly remark about how the messages about equality they teach in class are “r-tarded.”

“I don’t appreciate your use of that word.” Margot says to Keith once they’re out in the hallway.

“Um, okay?” Keith says. “Like, what brought this on?”

Margot begins to lecture Keith about the hurtful connotations of the word, then conveys her feelings on why equality is a very important lesson to teach in class.

“Why so angry? Someone must be on their period.” Keith says to Margot.

Margot was planning on peacefully ending her “friendship” with Keith. Suddenly, she feels anger pouring out that she cannot stop.

“Want to know why I’m speaking out? Why I’m angry? Because I’m sick of your shit that I’ve been silently putting up with all this time. Your words are extremely hurtful. You may not realize it, but everything you say impacts others. I’m not going to sit here and take it anymore.”

“Want a medal to go along with that massive ego of yours? Don’t pretend you’re so righteous just because you don’t agree with me.” Keith says.

”Shut up Keith.” A voice says. Someone is also helping Margot stand up to Keith. It’s Tory, one of the guys in Language Arts class.

Tory also thinks Keith is very rude and insensitive. Two more people begin to stand up to Keith. Their names are Andrea and Omar.

Catina is walking by, and sees the commotion going on in the hallway, which by now is emptying out. She sees Keith hit Margot onto the floor, calling her an “uppity bitch” before walking away.

Catina runs towards Margot to comfort her. Margot is in pain and her monocle is cracked. Margot had lost her courage and self-esteem. The impact had also stressed her benign brain tumor, which had been growing beneath her skull, undiagnosed at the time. This resulted in Margot becoming very dizzy.

Catina is taller than Keith so she threatens that he’ll be “catching these fists” if he ever goes near Margot again.

Andrea says it’s unlikely Keith will be going near Margot again, because this offense could get him expelled...

As soon as Keith is out of sight, Margot begins crying and shaking, convinced she really is a coward. She is hurt emotionally far more than she is physically. Margot, who aspires to make a difference in the world, feels hopeless because she couldn’t even stand up to one person.

“You’re not a coward.” Catina said. “You stood up to him. You stood up for what you believed in and spoke your mind.”

Tory tells Margot that he thought she was courageous, and that everyone wanted to stand up to Keith too. But nobody else felt brave enough either until Margot was the one who dared to.

The group goes off to tell authorities about what just happened, hoping Keith will get expelled for violence and hateful actions...

So I was originally going to have Keith just be expelled... But I decided that it would send more of an impactful message if Keith actually did not get expelled. Margot and the rest of the students that stood up to him would then have to band together and fight for their justice. Situations like this happen far too often in real life, where a seemingly undefeatable higher power perpetuates injustice and it takes the combined effort of many people to overthrow it.

I also want Margot to eventually develop and build much more courage. I want her to be able to stand tall and to speak passionately with authority and confidence about what she believes in.

I also thought of a small tidbit... I thought of Margot accidentally ending up enrolled in a theater class by chance after a mix-up occurring. She also cannot drop out of this class, so she decides to participate. The class ends up being very good for her self-esteem, and encourages Margot, who has a hidden love of theatrics, to come out of her shell. She also learns how to speak with poise and confidence, which is a very useful tool in life. She even meets a few true friends in the class.

I’m also thinking This is Whimsica and it Needs More Fantasy so I’m also maybe planning this fantasy magical girl twist and Keith is some sort of villain or something...? (My mind is Very Simple.)

All I know is that Margot needs to fight Keith as revenge for him hitting her. One day. Someday.

[wakasagayhime]

very long, very personal post

tldr, im still not drawing but here’s a detailed account of everything that’s happened in case anyone is confused or misinformed

alright. let me start out by saying i’m not going back to art just yet. it still hurts to do anything art related and i’m still trying to find a way to heal from all of this. i need some kind of professional help first, and i don’t know how long it’ll take afterwards for me to begin feeling like myself again. i don’t even know if i’ll be able to get any kind of professional help at the moment; my university’s counseling center told me, in short, that i’m so mentally ill that their services would not be enough for me and i’d have to look elsewhere (which is reasonable, tbh, they’re almost always completely booked so it’s difficult to actually even talk to someone there in the first place, i only got to talk to them to begin with because i nearly killed myself one night after having the most intense panic attack of my life where i felt like i was actually in the process of dying) and as if that weren’t enough, if you follow me on twitter you’d know that my mom finally left my stepdad, but this means that we no longer really have a home to call our own and are now living with some of my mom’s friends. on the bright side, miso is a lot freer and gets to explore the house as he pleases, but on the downside money is tight and my mom is trying her best to find a place to live while working two jobs and trying to help pay for my tuition. long story short, i want some kind of professional help badly, but all the bullshit that’s been happening in my life makes that difficult. 

anyway, i understand that i’ve worried a lot of people through all of this, and i’m sorry. i truly, genuinely am sorry for everything that’s been going on. i blame a lot of it on myself not being strong enough. if i were stronger, i wouldn’t care about some stupid internet trolls, or some random grown man in florida stalking all my social media. if i were stronger, i could take my life back. i wouldn’t feel the need to constantly contemplate suicide, or to torture my own body by starving because of my physical form feeling like the only thing i have left to be in control of. if i had only been stronger, like my old stupidly foolish overconfident 16 year old self who got into fucking STEVEN UNIVERSE DISCOURSE of all things, maybe i wouldn’t care. even when it first happened to me, after the initial shock and hiatus, i was pretty much back to normal almost instantly.  but this kind of trauma is sneaky and will gradually eat away at you more and more while you pretend to be ok, and then eventually you reach a breaking point and it’s taken over your life. that’s why i’m still obsessing over that day two years later. that’s why i can’t be left alone on december 13th this year, or else i know for a fact i will harm myself in some way. (don’t worry about that though, burger is going to hang out with me that day and i’ll be fine.) still, even though i keep telling myself my past self was stronger, i do know that she really wasn’t. she was still struggling with depression, anxiety, and self harm issues. maybe it just manifested differently for a while. maybe she felt unstoppable at some point in time because she finally found a girlfriend and got a cat. i got into so many fights that weren’t worth my time or energy at all, and part of me wishes i could be that confident again, but i also know that was my downfall to begin with.

i have followers who haven’t been around for longer than a year or maybe less than two, so i might as well give everyone a true, thorough rundown of what happened leading up to that day, the day of, and after. 

i’m sure a lot of you who are worried about me at the moment have seen the recent callout for colboh and his involvement in what happened. i’ll be honest--i don’t know the full extent of his involvement, and i want to believe his foolishness ends at not leaving artists who have blocked him alone and uploading their shit to booru sites when they explicitly state not to. so let’s just start there. i honestly don’t remember if it was before or after i first blocked him, but he uploaded one of my NSFW drawings to danbooru when i first shared my NSFW blog. (PROTIP: if you’re a minor, don’t share your NSFW art with anyone. don’t care if you’re 17, i was about to turn 17 myself. it will bite you in the ass. as such, some of this is my fault.) i quickly contacted danbooru asking them to delete it, and they did--but that artwork subsequently ended up on gelbooru as well, and i was unsuccessful in my efforts to remove my art from there.  

fast forward to december 13th, 2016. it was a normal morning. i was getting ready for school, but also being dumb and lazing around in bed browsing tumblr. i saw a post from a blog that shares Funny 4chan Screencaps. my art was in it. the art was of a very muscular yuugi, a drawing i was proud of, especially in how much gay energy i thought it radiated--but this drawing was being used in one of those typical “here’s a touhou, i wanna fuck her! am i right guys? let’s talk about how badly we want to fuck her” threads. seeing my art used for this was appalling. my first mistake was reblogging the post and saying how it was wrong, and how my art shouldn’t ever be used for such a purpose. my second mistake was making a text post AND tweets expressing my disgust at the situation, thinking no one who frequented /jp/ would ever see, sure that it would be a big waste of their time to concern themselves with some random dumb “”sjw”” artist. i also probably shouldn’t have specifically called them “gross neckbeards,” in doing so i absolutely struck a nerve with basement dwellers everywhere. i got to school and during my second period class, suddenly felt a strange urge to look at /jp/. why i did that, i still don’t really know. maybe i was expecting hate. maybe i was trying to see if they used my art for something gross again. i don’t know. either way, that moment changed everything forever. i saw the screencap of my tweets posted for everyone in their  circlejerk to see. even worse--i looked in the thread, and someone had also posted the NSFW art colboh had uploaded to danbooru, mocking it and calling me a hypocrite for drawing two girls having sex while also saying i don’t like my art being used for those kinds of threads. this is what truly ignited the amount of hate i saw directed towards me in the threads. i got called a bitch, a drama whore, got told to kill myself, and in one reply etched into my mind forever, someone said something along the lines of “we should all call her local gang and have them rape her, she just needs a good dicking.” there were multiple threads, too; i don’t know how many, but there was another one about me after the first one was deleted, in which someone edited a typical fat balding NTR hentai doujin style man into art i made of kagerou nosebleeding at wakasagihime. more disparaging comments were made. in both threads, people expressed their hatred and dislike of my art, some calling it garbage, some just saying it’s “bad,” etc. some people said the threads were unnecessary and rude, but they were a kind few in a cesspool of violence.

i don’t know who started these threads. i can’t assume anything about anyone, but whoever did this was definitely looking through all my social media out of bitterness and hatred, or perhaps even following me on both my tumblr and twitter considering the timing of the threads immediately after i complained. it eats at me that i most likely will never know who did this to me. i’ll never know who hated me so much that they decided to completely destroy my self esteem. if whoever it is who did all of this is reading this and feels any ounce of remorse, i’m begging them to reveal themselves and why they did it, but i know the chances of that happening are incredibly slim. someone, i can’t remember who, maybe it was queenly, told me they hope someday i reach a point where i don’t have to worry about that because i won’t care in general, but i still don’t know if i’ll ever reach a point where i stop caring about all of this.

like i mentioned earlier, after this all first happened, i was destroyed. the next day, my school’s GSA happened to have a vote for whose art would be on the club t-shirts, mine or someone else’s. mine lost. i broke down completely--anywhere i went, i wasn’t good enough, not for anyone. for days, there was a constant feeling of horror and fear  in my chest, something i’ve only ever felt so intensely when one of these threads resurfaces or i suddenly relive my trauma due to other things triggering me. i took a hiatus that lasted a few weeks, i believe i came back sometime before the new year. i thought i was ok, and i pretended like i could go back to being myself. but as time went on, and i continued living with the weight of that day on my back, i became weaker and weaker. i stopped drawing as frequently as i used to. my final year of high school started and i ended up falling into such a deep depression that i constantly skipped school and eventually attempted suicide in november 2017.  the suicide note i wrote cites that day as being one of the main things leading me to my decision, telling whoever did this to me that i hoped in my passing they’d have to live knowing what they did to me. my attempt only failed because i swore to take every pill left in the bottle and there were only four pills. had it been full, i’m not really sure what would have happened. i was sent to a mental institute afterwards for a week. being there was the absolute definition of hell. i was alone. i cried myself to sleep every night. they claimed to be a place where people were improved and got help, but i did not get any help at all. they basically imprisoned me for trying to kill myself. when i got out, i was only glad to be alive because i just wanted to be able to talk to my friends, my family, and my girlfriend again. it still shocks me that i was able to graduate from high school considering how much school i skipped before and after my suicide attempt.

sometime before that school year ended, i became extremely upset one afternoon and decided to run away from home. i had what happened to me and what was said about me that day running through my head. i tweeted that i hoped maybe in running away i’d end up being raped like they wanted, like how i deserved. someone who i considered a friend replied to this with, “fuck you.” after all of this was taken care of and i was safe at home, i responded that i was sorry, that i wasn’t thinking right when i made the tweet. she responded that i was, and blocked me. i tried to explain that i said what i did because of the threads about me on /jp/ and the one response threatening rape, but this was disregarded and, seemingly, ignored. a few days later, the former friend in question started sending me anon hate on tumblr, asking me why i want attention so badly, accusing me of making light of actual rape victims by saying such a thing. i explained myself, but to no avail. i blocked her on tumblr, and left it at that. but then, at the end of the school year, when i was proud of myself for finally getting through high school without killing myself or failing or anything, i stumbled upon the second thread. the date the thread was created lined up exactly with the time between me running away from home and me receiving anon hate. she can try to act like she didn’t make the thread all she wants, but i’m not an idiot. the replies were also eerily similar--people in the replies remembered me, a year and a half after the original thread. some replies mentioned me having attempted suicide months before. some mentioned my NSFW art again. i had a massive breakdown and nearly drowned myself in the pond down the road. it was a wet, rainy night, and i sat on a bench by the pond sobbing loudly, trying to find some way to want to keep living. but i couldn’t. i might have gone through with it if it hadn’t been for burger coming and talking to me and giving me a ride home.

entering college, i thought things would be easier. in a way, they are. i have more freedom with classes. this semester, i attended almost all of my classes, almost every day, just with the exception of me being sick some days and me accidentally oversleeping once, and then one day when i just didn’t feel like it. but things continued to get worse for me--i developed an eating disorder for many reasons, one being the time i spent a year prior depressed caused me to gain a significant amount of weight, and the other being i had sworn off self harm in the form of cutting. i found that i was able to get the same gratification from starving myself. at one point, it turned into a game of sorts, where i tried to see how long i could go without eating anything. my record was a little over 72 hours. being constantly hungry or in pain this way felt like something i deserved in a way, but also something to distract me from the pain of realizing i was losing my love for art. i was in denial about it for months. i tried to keep drawing, but everything i drew upset me, saddened me, and even angered me. i looked at anything i made and only felt disgust. it was the one thing i used to love doing more than anything, and now i only felt shame. 

in november, i acknowledged this and decided to quit for good. recently, i discovered colboh had uploaded more of my NSFW art to gelbooru, even though i specifically stated on my blog to never upload my NSFW art to image sharing sites, specifically right after he uploaded my art the first time. by the time i found this, i had already sworn off art for good, but looking at the comments on my art on gelbooru (and rule 34--i guess they’re connected upload-wise like danbooru?) filled me with so much sadness and shame, not because they criticized my art, but because they said horrible things about my depiction of kagerou. for those who don’t know, i headcanon kagerou as a trans woman, and one thing i do not regret about my time as an artist is how that depiction has helped numerous trans women feel good about themselves and their bodies. seeing so many disgusting comments deliberately misgendering her and making other transphobic remarks hurt me on a completely new level. my trans friends have been such a source of strength for me through all of this and seeing that made me feel disgusted, especially with myself. i felt like i had failed them. i had made so many trans women happy, only to see a man i blocked two years ago had uploaded my art to porn sites, tagging it with dehumanizing words like “f*ta” that i specifically tell people never to refer to my art with, displaying that art for the exact same crowds of people that ruined everything december 13th 2016 to continue to pick apart. one comment even told me to kill myself, effectively bringing back every memory of that day. 

speaking of that, another thing i want to touch on now that i’m up to speed with the details of everything that’s happened related to the original threads two years ago, is kagerou. i’m positive you all know that i really love kagerou imaizumi, and that she’s my favorite touhou character. it’s embarrassing to say, but she’s brought me so much comfort through all of this. sometimes if i’m sad, i’ll imagine her giving me a big hug, or i’ll look at cute pictures i have saved of her, or something along those lines. it’s pretty cringy for a fictional character to make me happy, i know, but i’ve grown so attached to her and she really means a lot to me. and another thing that made me want to swear off art is because she’s loved by so many others that i don’t think my depictions of her do her any good. i’m constantly compared to other artists, and it’s never good. even in the threads, i’m told i should be more like those other artists and these things wouldn’t happen to me. i am not allowed to love kagerou imaizumi. i draw her as a hairy trans lesbian, and that disgusts people. hell, the fact that i draw lesbians in general disgusts people, which sure fucking sucks because i constantly hate myself for not being attracted to men and being able to draw happy lesbians made me feel better about myself. but i’ve ruined kagerou for so many people, especially with my stupid kagewaka bullshit. maybe that’s why those artists unfollowed me. maybe it’s a combination of that and my constant breakdowns becoming far too annoying. i think all the popular artists who used to like me and then unfollowed/softblocked me are really glad to see that i’ve given up. and that’s something else that saddens me too--even as an artist, in my own community of touhou artists, i often feel like i’m lesser, and that i don’t belong. maybe it’s because i’m so foolishly outspoken about my opinions that they dislike me. maybe it’s because i’m a woman, and a lesbian at that. i don’t really know why they hate me so much. i wish i could belong somewhere.

and i think that’s what it all boils down to in the end. i’ve lost all sense of belonging. when i was 14 and people started noticing my art for the first time, i finally felt like i had something. like i belonged somewhere. after being bullied through middle school and having to deal with abusive friends and an abusive dad, it meant the world to me that i finally had something. but it didn’t last long at all. it all came crashing down, not just because of others, but because of me. i was the one who was cocky, getting into fights that weren’t worth it. i was the one who provoked people and made them hate me. i was the one who complained about /jp/ posting my art in their threads. i know people want to believe that i’m a saint, but i’m not. i have myself to blame too. i at least want everyone to understand this, above all else. there was so much i could have done differently to prevent this all from happening, but i didn’t. i was stupid and naive. i was a massive fucking idiot, and now look where i am. i lost everything. i thought i had friends, i lost them. i thought i loved art, i lost that. i thought other really talented nice people liked me, i even lost that. all i have now is an empty shell of my former self. i don’t know what to do with it. i don’t know how i’m going to rebuild myself. it’s so painful to have to keep living like this. i don’t know if there’s any fixing me at this point. i’ve lost so much, i feel permanently broken.

but despite all of that, despite everything i’ve been through, i still receive so much love and support from my followers and friends and it means so much to me. it means the world to me and has kept me going through all of this. knowing that people care about me and want to see me get better and improve makes me want to try to fix myself even if i am broken beyond repair. i just want to thank you all for being that source of strength for me. these past few years have been so hard for me and time and time again i still get love and encouragement from so many people. from the bottom of my heart, thank you. there is nothing more precious to me than those moments when i feel like i do truly belong, when i feel loved, when i feel like i’m not alone after all. for those moments, i’ll keep trying. even if these threads keep continuing and breaking me further, i’ll keep trying. even if every last artist in this fandom comes to hate me and my shitty art, i’ll keep trying. it’s still painful to draw right now and i have a long way to go before i can share art with anyone again, but for you all, i’m going to keep trying my best. at the end of the day, i know everyone’s encouragement and love is worth far more than hate threads urging me to kill myself. 

i’m sorry how long and personal and unnecessary this is, but i felt like i had to set things straight. if you read all of this, i applaud you. if you just kinda skimmed through to read the last paragraph, i also appreciate it. again, thank you. 

[summertime-children]

WIP Challenge

Tagged by @kikithedeceiver​ (thanks~)

Tagging: @starspatter​, @cookiehoodie​ and Meli if she ever sees this bc I want a snippet of all her unwritten knkd fics (?) (and if any writer out there needs a nudge to share their WIPs, feel tagged!)

Challenge: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

I’ll do what what Kiki did and post titles of my WIPs with comments and short fragments of them? I’ll share here only my kagepro WIPs (so basically kidokano/Kano ones lol). A little warning before we start: it’s going to be very long lol bc I can’t finish fics to save a live and I have... lots of ideas, plus I never get to talk about them >.> Also they’re going to be getting gradually worse bc I’ll go from newest to ancient-est. (Full disclosure tho, those aren’t raw quotes from my WIPs bc some had so visible grammar errors, I just had to fix them + I always put notes in my works, like every second word lol) Here we go.

Listen

Comment: This is the freshiest one, I was writing bits of it merely the day before, and because of that I still naively believe I will finish and post it soon, so I won’t say anything more about it.

”I want you to understand. You… need to know there’s so much to love about you!”

“Haha like what?” he laughed with bitter sounding laugh, something that must had slipped as it was followed by a face she had occasion to see only a few times- a face of regret. Regret of choosing wrong words, wrong mask to put on or forgetting to put her at all.

Different ways to say it

Comment: Just a short fluff where Kano’s snarky bottomness is showing lol

“You should’ve asked ‘Can you kiss me?’ instead.”

Kano is dumbfounded for a few seconds before he snorts.

“Right.” he begins with a playful grin “Let me fix that. Can you, Kido Tsubomi, the fierce leader of Mekakushi Dan, my girlfriend, my sun, my stars, the love of my life, the love of my thousands other lives, do me an absolute honor and light up my da-“

He didn’t even manage to finish before he felt the pair of soft lips landed on his, catching his words.

New chapter

Comment: Won’t say much about it because it’s supposed to be a gift for certain someone~ But here’s a little sneak peek ���

That was weird. They never really talked about having any pets. They talked about having kids (as much as stating that they want to make a family together during several separate occasions counts), but the topic of having pets was never brought up and in a timespan of living together and even moreso of living alone together, they already had plenty of opportunities to get one. And yet Kano always knew that when Kido pictured their future family together there was also present a small ball of fur waving its tail and he could see it in her eyes at that moment more visibly than ever.

GrimReaper!Kido x Vampire!Kano

Comment: I was very disappointed with the knkd fanwork of that one Halloween art, so I decided to write something that would satisfy me (with no success so far rip).

The black figure that merged with the ubiquitous dark hanged up the big scythe they were holding on the wall, among the collection of similar but different in sizes scythes, proceeded to take off their shoes (but then put them quickly back on, changing their mind as soon as their feet met with the concrete) and pulled off the black hood of their cloak to reveal the long green hair, something that finally stood out in the darkness, before walking deeper into the room.

I can’t wait to fall in love with you

Comment: Inspired by well, that one sentence that is in the title and lowkey (?) by Meli’s lovely fic~ It’s the kind of fic that I myself call “(not) soulmates au”. It revolves around the idea that after so many timelines of falling in love with each other, they’re just bound to fall in love again... Even when they don’t remember their past lives...

“Oh man, I can’t wait to fall in love with you.” Kido turned her gaze towards the blond lying next to her on the couch. Her widened from being taken aback by his statement eyes met his golden, cat-like ones, tinted with the strange warm spark that she could feel she had yearn for a very long time. It lasted only a second though because soon her brows furrowed and her gaze dropped from those well-too-familiar (given the circumstances) eyes to her hands.

Two cats

Comment: Set in the sort of the au where they never died? On one winter day Kano takes stray cat to his house to take care of. It’s solely Kano fic btw.

Forgetting for a moment about his own advice (why he should had kept repeating it in his head) he looked over his shoulder to see if his stalker was still there and in that moment their gazes lock. “Crap.” He couldn’t help but think ‘curiosity killed the cat’ as a pair of similar eyes to his stared back at him.

hbd kido

Comment: Product of my procrastination. (As you may tell, I have a problem with it). One year I was slightly~ more productive and was kinda disappointed that I didn’t manage to write Christmas fic. So then I thought that I could save some time and write this fic where Kido has joint Birthday-NewYear party with Christmas decorations still lying around (including mistletoe *cough cough*) just in time for KidoKano Day killing not two, but even four birds with one stone. It’s sort of high school au btw.

“Hi.” The boy tried again. His face was embellished with wide grin and slightly flashed cheeks and in his hand she noticed a can of beer. Oh no.

“Hi, Kano.” She said with disinclination. It wasn’t like she didn’t like the guy. Even more, in the normal situation, like average day in the school, she would find a conversation with him a nice or refreshing thing. He was one of a few people that actually knew about her existence and despite her previous prejudice he turned out to be a pretty nice guy.

Christmas Event

Comment: I’m not sure what Christmas event that was for lol.

For Kano it was this time of a year when his Mother would stay home the whole day instead of going to work and she would be more kind to him. Though he wouldn’t call it exactly this way (it’s not like he felt she wasn’t kind to him normally after all), but she was definitely more forgiving.

Affectionate meme Requests

Comment: Requested for the writing meme in the year 2016. Keeps it as a reminder of how big loser I am (?) (just what this post manages to do so far lol) The prompt was “love bite” >.>

From her spot she couldn’t see him quite clear, due to the still turned off lights, so it was only up to her imagination to decide whether he recollected his mask or not. Maybe it was the second after all, because excluding two golden eyes that shone at her there were two bright spots that stood out in the dark, both marked on his skin.

M!KidoKano

Comment: It was supposed to be male!Kido x Kano fic and yeah... I’m emberassed about it tbh. Like, by the fact I wanted to write it itself. Idk now I find it rather weird to genderbend only one person from the pairing, especially in the fic and for that reason I won’t share fragment from it. Sadly it’s one of my better written pieces lol and going back to it I see I made male!Kido no differnt from the regular Kido... which makes it a good genderbend I guess, but also completely unnecessary.

Angsty Kano fic

Comment: I have no idea lol There’s almost nothing written there.

Even Greater Fear

Comment: Despite what title may suggest it’s more fluffy than angsty. KanoKido family fluff where Kano gets anxious about how happy he is now and that he might someday lose it too. Featuring my knkd fankids, Naoki and Reika.   

“Mom, dad is sad!” announced Reika with reproach. This she wasn’t expecting.

“What?” Tsubomi asked out of surprise and was followed by a low groan coming from behind the couch that could belong only to her beloved husband.  

“No, I’m not.”  She watched how the expressions of her children slowly changed from the ones of concern to the ones of disappointment and disgust.

“And he’s denying it.”

Inverted

Comment: Silly engagement scenario. If I ever finish that, it'll be my comedic genius’ peak I swear (?)  

He was clearly getting more nervous, the longer the searching wasn’t bringing any results. He let go of Kido’s hand and got his another one to help him search for whatever was supposed to be in that pocket. However, after a while his movements completely stopped and with some kind of dread in the eyes he whispered under his breath, “It’s gone.”

Time

Comment: Angsty setomary fic I wanted to write for SetoMary Spring (anyone remember that?) 

When she moved out to her new family the first thing she noticed was that time has significantly slowed down. Oddly, somehow it did accelerate at the same time. It was hard to explain and she herself couldn’t understand the feeling nor did she give it much consideration, but for the first period of living in that new world, new pace of that very activity- living- has struck her.

One in a million

Comment: An actual soulmates au (with the variation of the red thread concept). It’s way too ambitious for me lol (starting with the fact that it’s supposed to be multi-chapter story). I won’t share a fragment of it bc not much’s written and bc tbh there would be spoilers, in case I ever do post it. I could write about the concept in a seperate post though because I did a lot of world-building for it. (A lot for me, ok?)

Clear and present

Comment: Ghost AU. Baby Kano hides one time in the abandoned, partly burned mantion and that’s where he meets the ghost of (scary) green-haired teenage girl he befriends. Somehow got inspired by that anthology comic? Also I would listen to this song while attempting to write it lol. Not much was written though.

What I didn’t

Comment: This one’s rare. My only attempt at writing harutaka fanfic. (Funnily enough last safe was on kidokano day?... many years ago.)  In the manga Takane was pretty excited to give Haruka a present for his birthday, but he had an attack and was hospitalized so she didn’t and it wasn’t said (?) if she ever gave it to him later. So my idea for this fic was that she didn’t and how she was now trying to give it to him after three years. Took huge inspiration from this song: {x}

She didn’t have to wait long until there were heard slow, but at the same time hurried footsteps behind the door and soon it was followed by the sound of doors being unlocked. The doors before her opened revealing the light-brown-haired boy wearing excited smile and slightly oversized green sweater with embroidered reindeer. And one of these was just the warmest thing in this cold winter world.

Sneeze like a kitten

Comment: Inspired by one line from Gravity Falls lol It was just another thing I wanted to add to list of similarities between Kano and cats and I’m sure it would bring Kido joy too ;3 But as much as I still find this idea cute it is so awkwardly written lol. I kinda appreciate that it’s from Rin’s POV and that I tried using kinda fancier English for that reason (as fancy as I knew back then lol), but I guess first person fics will always sound weird. It’s set in a different route I guess where they sort of met before the orphanage.

Soon I noticed all her glances seemed to be directed at small boy with blond hair sitting alone on the bench, a little away from the playground. At first I was fairly surprised, not understanding why this particular boy had become her spot of interest, but giving more attentive look at the boy made me instantly realize reasons of her intent glances.

Connection

Comment: I have almost nothing written there and I barely remember it, but from what I can see it must be my original idea for the “formal event” prompt from the very first kanokido week. I... think it was sort of an au where they never died and they met at some sort of fancy party held by Kido’s parents where Kano was a waiter.

Oof that’s all (I mean all from the folder on my pc, but I won’t be getting into that). For a fair portion of it, I gotta objectively say there’s absolutely zero chance of me ever finishing them, but then (aside from the freshest ones that I still have on my mind) revisiting all those WIPs made me really want to revive some of them owo (some I would have to completely re-write tho OTL)

[bluboothalassophile]

Hi blue what do you think about an auto with a half angel Jason with damaged grace due too the pit and Raven trying to help him fix it? Could also make for a great one shot I think.

Hello,

Hm… Not really sure, but I’m always up for demons and angels, so I gave it a shot. Hope you enjoy! =)

BloodyUseless Angels!

Grumbling she continued lugging the dead weight of thebroken fallen angel as she tried to get to where she was going. Her weapon (a patheticstick) in hand, because she still didn’t trust the unconscious angel.

Why the FUCK she was doing this was beyond her. Truly beyondher.

She was a bloody demon, she had snapped and snarled; evenbattled this very angel continuously for well over a millennium. Now! Now shewas lugging his useless ass through the damn dessert.

Her tail lashed in irritation as she continued with thestruggle.

He had a mangled wing, white of course, an eagle’s wing too;very rare from what she had seen amongst the angels. His brother has hawk, orfalcon wings, hell, his little brother had the wings of a bloody owl!

“You’re fucking useless,” she snapped at the broken angel,her own wings were a mess from tumbling after him.

Now, despite her horns, and her demon heritage, her grandfatherhad been a fallen angel, giving her angel’s wings, but she was a demon. A damnproud demon! her grandfather was a far better fucking ruler than the asshole upin heaven. And if she ever saw Zachariah again she was punching him in theface!

“But the angel back Raven,” she mocked. “Let it die.”

He groaned then which had her yelping, dropping him and takingup the canyon walls. She peeked over the edge, he didn’t move. She glared atthe angel as she slowly pulled herself over the edge, her raven’s wings puffedout to make herself bigger. Carefully she picked her way back down to the damnangel and holding a stick of wood she p held it to whack him as she nudged hisside with her foot.

“Fucking angels,” she muttered. then she went aboutcontinuing her task of dragging the damn angel along with her. She wanted tohate him, she did, she was vastly peeved with herself for doing this. It wentagainst her demon nature, but it had nearly killed her seeing him fall, sobrokenly. His grace was leaking out of his vessel, and his wing was broken. Shehad battled him for a millennium, never ceasing, but now… now she was savinghis ass.

It was probably because she wanted to be the one to killhim. That had to be it.

There was no way that she had a trace of angel instincts withinher body, nope, not an angel bone in her despite the wings!

It had nothing to do with how handsome he was, nope. Thatwas not a factor.

Or that he’d been a constant, the only constant in her life,and somedays she looked forward to their battles. It was a well perfected dancebetween them. And she didn’t want to go about having to train the next idiotangel in the battles.

“Ow,” there was a tired tenor behind her. She yelped as shetook to the skies, her weapon drawn back as she glowered down at the angel ashe slowly moved.

“Good you’re awake, promise not to blast me and I’ll helpyou!” she shouted from her sky as she flapped her heavy black wings.

“Raven?” he sputtered.

“No, Lucifer himself, of course it’s me you bastard!” shesnapped.

“How did I…?” he started, then winced.

“Hold still you idiot,” she snapped as she landed lightly,she kept the stick in hand as she moved the bandages she had wrapped around hiswound; it was actually part of her tunic, but that would be overlooked forobviously humiliating reasons. She secured it again, not touching his grace infear of being smited; which would be no fucking fun, and looked at the angel.

“Raven…” he smiled a bit.

“Jason,” she answered icily as she glared at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving your useless ass for reasons fully beyond my comprehension.”That was the truth of it.

The angel got a dorky smile on his face.

“Stop that, it makes your face look weird,” she snapped.

He laughed.

“You’re officially freaking me, the demon here, out, knockit off,” she spat out.

“Sorry… sorry, I can’t help it,” Jason said as he fell backon the sled she had fashioned off of a bush.

“You better help it or I’m leaving your useless ass here andwill train a new angel in defeat.”

“Sunshine,” he smiled.

“Great, now I’m dealing with a delusional angel!” she threwher hands up in exasperation as she stalked to the head of her sleigh again andresumed dragging his useless ass to the only place she knew could fix an angel,or a demon, alike. She hadn’t used it personally, but she had witnessed othersuse it before.

“You could say you’d miss me, little bird.”

“I’m not a bird, I’m a bloody demon, and I wouldn’t missyou, I just don’t feel like training your replacement!” she spat out.

“You’re an angel, darling accept it.”

“Like fucking hell I am, and if you don’t shut up I’ll leaveyour ass here and just train your bloody replacement in the art of losing!” shespat out.

“That’s what you think,” he smiled.

“Seriously, stop that thing with your face!” she snapped.

“It’s called smiling.”

“I know! It just looks seriously creep on your face, stopit,” she ordered.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“The Lazarus Pit, now shut up! I’m concentrating!” shesnapped and continued her hike. The angel was mercifully silent.

~~~*~*~*~~~

Jason stared at the small demon he had always seemed tobattle, her black hair, black wings, dark horns, black tail pale form alllooked more stunning than any of the angels he knew in heaven.

He closed his eyes and breathed past the pain.

What no one knew, what he had always known, was he loved thedemon who was currently trying to save him. Had loved her since their firstbattle; not that he ever went easy on her. But then…

Raven was a Princess of Hell, she didn’t go easy on himeither.

He was pleasantly surprised though that she was the onesaving him, and he wondered if he could make a demon fall for an angel as hehad fallen for her.

[tillymint7]

Peter Appleton and Adam Carr 🤩

The next lecture I want to share with you all was a shared lecture from Peter and Adam whom are our university lecturers. Peter is also an internationally renowned artist and Adam is an internationally renowned curator and art writer who started out as an artist.

Peters work concentrates on the development of sound. Peter said he played guitar which was his true love so he wanted to see if he could get away with putting music into his art work. I love the idea that he wanted to get away with sharing something he loved in his artwork, which to me shows how fun the life of an artist is, always doing the thing you love and getting paid for it. We are so lucky 💞

Sharing something that speaks to you deeply is something that artist should always do, finding ways of sharing something that really speaks to you through an artistic medium. By doing this we are sharing part of ourselves, we are baring our souls, laying the deepest parts of our creative mind bare for all to see. That’s one of the things that makes being an artist both exciting and scary or brave and crazy all at the same time. 😜

The sounds Peter initially created used a broken drain pipe, which he found by chance on his way out walking one morning, he realised he could make a sound using random everyday objects combined with the elements. He then started experimenting with amplifiers and movement. The outcomes are truly transcending, some sounds are deep, eerie almost alien like sounds, some where delicate and haunting and others comforting and familiar. Some even remind me of whale sounds. To me it feels like the elements are communicating with you through Peters sculptures. Truly magical!

To Peter the look of the sculptures/object comes secondary to the sound they create. Peter often tested and create his sculptures on the beach where he had space and the elements to work with. The sculptures used wind and solar panels which at the time were very expense and very hard to come by as they were new technology. Because of this also of Peters work was situated outside amoungst nature causing that stark contrast between the industrial man made object and nature. It’s not trying to be something it’s not, it is what it is, unapologetically standing out proudly on the landscape.

Some of structures themselves Peter quite honestly discribed them as ugly, especially he said when he thinks back to his first few crude creations, but I completely disagree. I actually thought many of them were honest, beautiful, organic in form and industrial all at the same time. Peter was definitely an artist born way before his time. His works to me is fascinating and has definitely not dated one bit! I know I’ve seen recent works by other artist trying to create similar work, whom have quite obviously been influenced by Peters ground breaking art works.

Unfortunately a lot of the sculptures themselves no longer exist. Like Neil Morris said to us making large works is like owning a horse. You need places to store them. If that’s not possible unfortunately they have to be dismantled or sometimes even disposed of. The only evidence left of most of Peters works are the cracking dated videos. I do find this rather romantic...they are lost but not forgotten, all that remains is a naustalgic form like a portal through time transporting the viewer back to where they once existed.

Most of the videos have been uploaded to YouTube. I would definitely recommend for anyone who is interested, to hunt down the videos to hear them first hand. They are so clever combining scientific, invention and art in such a unique and unforgettable way. I wished we had more time to go over Peters work but unfortunately we had half the usual time we would not allowed due to it being a shared lecture.

While Peter was talkig. I also thought about my own work. Quite a few of my artworks involve movement and sounds it’s something I seem drawn to creating. I can definitely see myself looking further into Peters work for my research. In fact I have started collecting videos of the elements myself over the last few years and I even took a video of me spraying water over plant pots creating sounds in the beams of sunlight. We are so lucky having so many talented artist at our disposal everyday!🤘

Peter has also created a CD, which is still available to listen to and buy online. He said he is also in the process of creating another CD but it’s been a long labour of love. I hope we get the chance to hear it someday soon.

The second lecture we had was with Adam Carr whom is also our head of year. Adam started off his fine art degree creating and showing his own work, but by the second year he was organising and curatoring exhibitions showing his fellow students works. In the end he stopped showing his own work altogether and just showed other students work.

Adam is also a published art writer and writes for many art magazines. He said he doesn’t see his writing as a separate entity, to Adam it’s all part of his practice each one thrives off the other.

The exhibition that propelled Adam into the limelight was his Post-it exhibition. Where artist did artworks on Post-it Notes and they were randomly stuck all over the exhibition space even around the desks and monitors like a immersive invasion art piece. This kind of presention of work is something that really interesting and as a artist. I have produced immersive installations before and definitely plan on creating more in the very near future.

The news about the unique exhibition travelled and so did the exhibition itself. The Post-it went to Columbia. The Post-it in Columbia initially only involved 10 artists Adam said he didn’t really know enough Columbian artist so he asked each artist to nominated 5 other artists to take part in the exhibition. This allowed Adam to learn even more about known and emerging Columbian artists. It was also brought to Adams attention that the exhibition itself was also environmentally friendly. It took up very little space and could be packed into one suite case, which was something Adam had not thought of in relation to the work before, but this became facinating to Adam as he realised there was another layer to the work that really spoke to people especially right now in our current environmental crisis.

Adam also decided to sell works at an art fair and asked known artits to create large volumes of printed works that could be given away for free. The stall itself obviously sold out very quickly and spent the rest of the show rather bare. Unfortunately Adams intention was misunderstood by the other artist at the art fair as they saw this idea as tactically taking potential customers from their stalls, they felt they were being upstaged and loosing business not realising it was an artistic statement. Apparently there was an unfortunate fall out that has since thankfully been resolved. 🤗

To me Adam definitely loves to look at things in completely new and unique ways. He likes to challenge the norm and seems quite mischievous in the exhibitions he creates, just like Rory, he has a cheeky mischievous approach to his work. He also likes to highlight under represented artists which is also something Dan Howard - Brit is drawn to. It’s so good to hear there are so many other people passionate about helping other artist achieve their dreams.

Adam has now became a partner in a gallery in Columbia but due to Columbia’s current state of political unrest Adam is currently struggling with what step to take next with the gallery. I can definitely see how that could be a difficult decision. The gallery itself looks gorgeous set back in the Columbian landscape. I feel for Adam because he seems to have quite obviously fallen for South America for its art and its people. I hope he finds a way forward.

Adam also announced an opportunity to send in a proposal for a photography exhibition he is organising. I will have to have a more in depth chat with him about this at some point. Photography for those of you who have seen my Instagram is definitely one of my loves. I’m very amiture, but we all have to start somewhere. 😜

Adam obviously has a photography obsession himself and apparently had to cut his images down for the lecture. Once again I think it was a shame for him to have to rush through his images because I really wanted to have the chance to see each image in more detail as well as having a chance to hear more about his work.

In the Q&A it was lovely to see Adam and Peter chatting so passionately about the work they do outside of the university. Adam just like Peter also likes to get away with bring his interests into his work. Adam is currently working on a works involving bike riding, due to his new found love of cycling.

This idea that works can be born of absolutely anything is so freeing, but sometimes I find that part quite hard. Not having any limits can often open up so many options that you don’t know which way to go next. Sometimes I find that this is the hardest thing.... to me it’s never hard to come up with the ideas, but its certainly hard to decide which of the multiple paths to choose to wonder down in the hopes of getting lost along the way and finding something truly transcending and thought provoking.

In relation to my own practice I’m definitely going to try and involve more writing as I do feel it adds to my practice. I seem to be drawn to documenting everything through photography, random notes and sketches. I not that great at it yet, but I’m sure with time an practice I’ll vastly improve. Writing this blog has certainly helped eradicate some of the fear I had in relation to people reading my thoughts and experiences. So thanks to my degree it’s onwards and upwards! 🤘💃

[rainygalaxynerd]

Brave New World - FINAL CHAPTER

Warnings: If you’re still with me, nothing new.

Summary: Set app. a year after the chapter “Days”

Word count: App. 2.200

A/N: I did it!!! I finished it! I can’t believe it. *Ugly crying* Now what am I gonna do??? (Finish the follower inserts from my 300 follower celebration before I hit 400, maybe? Finish recording Force of Habit, one of @littlegreenplasticsoldier ‘s many masterpieces? Do the recording of Mirror Mirror, I’ve been wanting to do since I wrote it? How to choose, how to choose...)

This is part of a chapter story (in case the caption didn’t clue you in). Link to mobile friendly master list here.

Tagging: @winchesterprincessbride @jencharlan @twenty-onepages @kbrand0 @fangirling-instead-of-working @mrsjohnsmith @deandoesthingstome @vibou25 @jotink78

“You’re not hunting alone. It’s too dangerous. Call someone else, got it?”

Sam grinned and slapped Dean’s shoulder. “Was planning to.”

Dean raised his eyebrows and put a hand to his chest in mock pain. “So that’s how it is, huh? Trying to give your poor, crippled big brother a freakin’ heart attack on top of everything else?”

Sam scrunched up his face, processing. “I didn’t catch that,” he finally lamented. “Unless you said something about a boar, nippled pig mother. And was there something about an art attic?”

Dean flipped him off, not quite managing to bend his index finger.

Sam grinned. “How very British.” He put an arm around Dean’s shoulders and steered him away from the wheelchair. “Come on, let’s get you home and put some real food in you. You can get back at me when you’ve had some of that pie Caitlin made for you before going to work.”

Moving On

“Dean!” Caitlin squeezed between two stacks of boxes, higher than herself.

She found him in the kitchen, staring at a metal circle between two handles.

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s a corn cob scraper.” She sighed.

“Why do we have a corn cob scraper?”

“To scrape kernels off the cobs. Can’t you just put it in the box?”

“But I’m gonna hafta carry the box to the truck and from the truck to the house. I’m not gonna pack stuff we don’t need.”

Caitlin crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows. “I used it three days ago for that cream corn you gushed over so hard, I thought you’d sleep with it and banish me to the couch.”

Dean’s eyes widened. He pursed his lips and scrutinized the scraper for all of two seconds before tossing it into the open box next to him. With a shrug, he picked another item from the drawer. He stared at it. “What the fuck is-”

“Just throw it out. I only ever use it when I make pies and I don’t think I’m gonna do that anymore.”

Faster than lightning, Dean put the thing in the box.

Caitlin smiled, shaking her head. “Dean, I just wanted to know if you and Sam agreed on when to pick up the appliances this weekend?”

Dean buried his hands, elbows deep, in the kitchen drawer, feeling for more stuff. “Yeah, um, sure.”

“So when are you picking them up?”

He glanced up, eyes wide. “Saturday, I guess. Or Sunday, maybe.”

Caitlin glared at him until she burst out laughing. “Jeez, you’re tired. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll text Eileen and figure it out.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean sighed and threw himself on the couch. He ran a shaking hand across his face and let his eyes drift shut.

He woke up to Caitlin gently massaging his neck and shoulders. “Mwhah?”

She pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I talked to the company and the houses are so close and the total order for all of us is big enough to warrant free delivery, so that’s taken care of.”

“Mmh.” Dean pulled her closer, overbalancing her. He made an ‘oof’ sound when her weight hit him. Then he wrapped his arms and legs around her and kept her there.

“Are you secretly an octopus?” Caitlin relaxed against him.

“No, I’m a homeowner. But if you’d asked me ten years ago if I thought I’d end up as an octopus or as a homeowner, I’d have gone with octopus.” He lifted his head a bit to look her in the eyes. “It’s weird how bizarre it feels to be normal.”

“You’ll never be normal. Doing normal stuff won’t change who we are. You’ll never be a civilian, Dean.”

He squashed her tight against him, chuckling at the way her breath whooshed out of her lungs. “You’re right. I just… Fuck, I…”

“I know. I get it. But, Dean, you would have had to stop someday no matter what. You could have ended up dead or far worse off than this. Anyone who didn’t know you before will barely notice that you’re a bit more clumsy than most. There’s still so much you can do.”

“But I can’t hunt. I can’t save lives. If something ever happens to you, or to Sam, Cas, Eileen… I can’t protect you.”

“I know. That’s life for most people. You can still do a lot of good.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Caitlin was silent for a while. “You could help Sam with research.”

“Or I could get a job at Biggerson’s, flipping burgers. No way, I’m gonna sit and read about monsters and lore and not get to kill ‘em myself.”

“I bet you’d be the employee of the month all through the year.” Caitlin’s grin broke free. “You’d look so dashing in their uniforms, with the cap and the stripes-”

She cut off, squealing, when Dean tickled her sides, showing no mercy.

Her phone buzzed and bought her a respite as she read the text, almost hiccuping from laughing too hard.

“Who’s writing? Did Charlie kill Garcia’s character off again? Has Cas been arrested again? Is it Eileen?”

“It’s from Brad.” Caitlin showed him the message, sad smile on her lips.

I JUST WANTED TO WISH YOU GOOD LUCK IN KANSAS CITY. YOU’LL BE A GREAT DOCTOR. I HOPE EVERYTHING IS GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN WITH THE BIG MOVE. ALL THE BEST, -BRAD

Dean read with a frown. “You gonna answer?”

Caitlin sighed. “I don’t know. I hate knowing his psychiatrist’s reading over his shoulder. My answer wouldn’t be just for him.”

“I know he hasn’t had it easy but I still don’t get how you can forgive him.”

“Well, you weren’t there for his trial. It’s his story to tell, but trust me; he already paid his dues and some.”

“You mean they… Nevermind. I don’t wanna know.” Dean shook his head, holding Caitlin tighter to him. “Will you have to go back here and testify every other week when Cody’s appeal starts?”

“I’m sure they’ll ask me to.” Caitlin shrugged. “I won’t.”

Dean opened his mouth.

She spoke first. “I know they might repeal his death penalty without my testimony but he’ll be behind bars for the rest of his life either way. Cody might deserve to die but I’m against capital punishment on principle.”

Dean raised his eyebrows, questioning.

“Sure, there are humans worse than any monster you and Sam ever hunted, but once they’ve been caught and locked up, they’re not doing any more harm. How do you distinguish between them and the people that might have been possessed or otherwise influenced by something that will never be acknowledged in a courtroom? How do you know the difference between a Brad and a Cody if you weren't smacked in the middle of it? I didn’t even know the difference when I was sixteen, would never have known if they hadn’t taken me last year.”

“But what if he ever gets out? Some bureaucratic mistake, a legal technicality, early parole due to good behavior. As long as he’s alive there’s always a risk.”

“He’s not the only threat out there. There are Djinns and Demons and Daevas and drunk drivers and diseases, just to mention a few beginning with the letter d. I spent ten years in hiding, playing it safe. I’m done living in fear.”

Dean let out a deep breath when she nuzzled close, her nose tickling his neck. For a while, they just lay there, enjoying the closeness. Then he spoke, his voice rougher than usual. “I’m surprised you don’t think Sam and I are killers, with that attitude.”

“Dean. You protected people. It’s not like there’s a court or a prison for human eating or killing, sentient creatures out there.”

“Always so rational.” Dean licked Caitlin’s cheek, laughing when she tried to get away, sputtering in mock outrage.

The licks turned to kisses and the kisses turned to nibbles. Caitlin gave in with a content little sigh, ending in a gasp when Dean used enough pressure to make her really feel his teeth around her earlobe.

Dean snuck a hand under her blouse and undid her bra.

The doorbell rang.

Dean huffed a half laugh, half sigh as Caitlin sat up and redid her bra clasp. He put his hands on her hips. “Can’t we just ignore it?”

Her eyes softened and her movements slowed. “What if it’s important?”

“They can leave a note.” Dean’s hand snaked up her back again, destination obvious.

The doorbell rang again, followed by a quick rapping rhythm, Dean knew all too well. He let his hand fall with a sigh of regret. “Or they might unlock the door since we were dumb enough to give ‘em a key.”

They scrambled to their feet and looked halfway respectable when their front door opened to reveal Sam and Eileen.

Looking at Dean and Caitlin’s still frazzled appearance, Sam grinned. “I’m sorry, are we interrupting something?”

Dean flipped him off. “I thought you guys were busy in Kansas, painting protective sigils in invisible ink?” He signed a few keywords out of habit, though Sam most likely understood just fine, interpreting the movements of Dean’s lips.

“Yeah, we just… something came up. I wanted to tell you in person.” Sam did that weird thing where it looked like he was looking up from under his lashes, all shy and uncertain.

Dean’s jaw clenched, wrinkles of worry creasing his forehead. “Sammy, what’s wrong?”

Sam sputtered. “No, no. It’s not like that, nothing bad. But… It’s just… I guess Eileen and I will have to stop hunting, too.”

Dean's eyes flitted between the two of them, mouth open and eyes wide.

Caitlin broke into a wide grin, something unspoken passing between her and Eileen. “Congratulations, you guys,” she exclaimed, hugging first Eileen and then Sam.

“Could someone tell me what’s going on?” Dean grumbled.

Caitlin bit her lip and watched Sam expectantly.

Sam smiled wide, dimples carved into his cheeks. “You’re going to be an uncle, Dee.”

Dean’s eyes went impossibly wider, his mouth agape. A blissful smile slowly spread before he froze, frowned, and narrowed his eyes. “If this is some stupid joke about that mutt you’re planning to adopt-”

“No joke. Though we do plan to get a dog, now that we won’t be traveling as much as expected.” Sam grinned. He sobered a little. “Dean, I know you don’t like talking about it but you practically raised me, man. You’ll be there, right? If I need help?”

Dean swallowed hard and engulfed Sam in a crushing hug. “Of course, little brother.”

They didn’t get any more stuff packed that day, leaving the chaos behind to eat out.

Over desert, Dean nudged Sam. “So what are you gonna do, college boy, if you’re not hunting?”

Sam chuckled. “Be a college boy, I guess. Charlie dug up my old scholarship and refurbished it. I guess I’m going back to law school. I won’t become a procedural lawyer as long as I’m deaf but I guess pushing pens isn’t so bad.”

Dean glowed with pride. “That’s… Holy fuck, Sam, that’s awesome.” He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m really happy for you, man.”

“Thanks.” Sam took another bite of his salad and chewed slowly. “So, what about you, Dean? Any idea what you’ll do with your time while Caitlin’s busy at the hospital?”

Dean made an awkward shrug and lowered his gaze to his plate. A sly smile appeared on his lips. “Maybe I should take some child rearing classes. At least one of us should know what we’re doing, this time.”

Eileen almost choked on her water.

Sam kicked Dean under the table, his expression grateful. “You didn’t do too bad the first time around, you know.”

Dean grinned and Sam knew he walked right into what was coming.

“Imagine what you could’ve achieved if I had known more, college boy.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

It was late, and they were both a little buzzed from toasting so many times when Caitlin turned to trace the handprint on Dean’s shoulder with a finger. “Did you mean it?”

Dean, almost asleep, grunted, opening one eye halfway. “Meanwha?”

“You, working with kids?”

Dean shrugged. “Dunno. Those ankle biters can be vicious.”

“But not as scary as monsters, right?” Caitlin chuckled.

“Way scarier.” Dean smiled. “I guess they’d be easier to handle than engine parts, these days.”

“I never told you, but when the Djinn had me, I dreamed of you. Us. Together.” Caitlin blushed.

“You did?” Dean pulled her closer. “What was it like?”

“You…” She smiled, her cheeks heating further. “You were a nurse at the pediatrics ward. You were amazing with the kids.”

Dean gaped at her. “A nurse?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

Dean pursed his lips and tilted his head, considering. “Don’t nurses usually end up marrying handsome doctors?”

“Shut up, Winchester.”

“Why? You could be Doctor Winchester, parading you trophy spouse, nurse Winchester around at fundraisers. Doc Winchester’s got a nice ring to it, don’t it?”

“Dean, seriously, can it.” Caitlin rolled away and lay on her back. “You’re such an ass.”

Laughing, Dean poked her side. “You’re the one who dreamt me as a nurse, Doc.”

Caitlin glared at him with narrowed eyes. “I did. I saw you put a glove over your head and down over your nose, making it look like a pig’s snout and blow air into the glove until it came off your head, whizzing across the room.”

Dean laughed harder. “That’s… that’s priceless. Next time I get my hands on a glove, I’ll try it.”

“Screw you.”

“Really? I thought you were mad at me?”

“Dean!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll stop. Sleep tight, Caitie.”

Caitlin turned to kiss him goodnight. “You too, nurse Dean.”

“Whatever.” Dean drifted off, his smile lingering.

[rboooks]

·  Got tagged by @authenticaussie , @awkwardonthedancefloor , and @fire-lark

      Always repost the rules

·        Answer the 11 questions posted for you

·        Create 11 new ones

·        Tag 11 people (if you want!! No pressure <3)

Answers under cut

My questions!

1. What’s the best time of the day for you?

2. Tell me about your latest Plot bunny!

3. What got you into your current fandom?

4. Do you remember your dreams? 

5. What's one smell and sound you can’t stand?

6. Give me your life quote. A quote from you.

7. Favorite food?

8. Do you have any side blogs? Which ones do you use the most?

9. How long does it take you to create something?

10. Whats the first thing you do when you wake up? 

11. Favorite anime, cartoon, book and movie? 

Tagging:

@authenticaussie, @yaoifanatic4ever @wordsdrippinginink @pinkfluffycookie-chi @awkwardonthedancefloor @simplymoemega @sabo-writer-princess @leafyxthiefy @lorena12me @livinforluffy @corvida-e 

- authenticaussie

1.       What do you think you smell like!! 

I think I smell like my favorite shampoo? It’s apple! 

2.       Got any new projects that you’re really excited abt?????

Right now, I’m excited about getting my asks done since I kinda got addicted to writing them.  

3.       What was one of your biggest life changes?

When I first open the book Inheart! I got addicted to reading since then And reading really saved my life. :3

4.       What countries have you traveled too?

I’ve been to Mexico!! 

5.       Where do you want to go? What do you want to see? (I want to see the Thai murder museum ;u; and the Rock museum)

I want to visit France, japan, and Canada.  I would love to see the Northen lights and  Niagara Falls someday in my life. 

6.       What are you most worried about right now? What will you do to stop the worry?

My mom’s health, I usually have to remind myself that it will get better if we watch what we eat and I write some bit to calm down.

7.       If you had to give yourself a new name, what name would you pick?

Marina! I always loved the sound of it!

8.       What quality about yourself do you value most?

 I don’t know... um...honesty? I am very blunt. 

9.       What’s in your fridge? Is it Edible?

A pizza and yes! 

10.    When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a vet. I really liked animals as a kid but I have a fear of blood so...

11.    What is one of your favorite desserts?

Can’t go wrong with chocolate cake! 

- Awkwardonthedancefloor

1) What is one project that you’re most proud of?

I helped build the house I live in. Pretty proud of that. 

2) What’s one word that does not describe you? And you never want to be associated with?

I can’t describe myself very well but I wouldn’t use bully and I would never want to be called one.

3)  Have you ever broken something that you couldn’t fix, no matter how hard you try? (Like an egg?)

I broke a glass hummingbird that my dad bought me and it was the first in my blow up glass collection so I was hurt. Tried to superglue it back. 

4) Who do you love the most in the world right now? (Family, friend, s/o, etc)

My family! I can say it’s a tie between my big bro and my little sis. 

5) What’s your arch nemesis? (for me it’s mayo, and mean people, and chinese)

I still hold a grudge against bullies. 

6) If you could play rock paper scissors with anyone in the world, who? ( They can be ancient people, like “the last emperor of china”.)

Masashi Kishimoto. I would play rock paper and scissors with him.

7) What was your most successful lie?

I can’t lie to save my life. I will come clean because I feel so much guilt so none are successful. 

8) Who changed you?

This one is hard...I’ll say my high school teacher, Mrs. Minyard. She got me to be a little more outgoing. 

9) If you could go back to the past, but could not interact with your past self…what would you do? (no notes, no warnings, no advice)

I can’t interact with myself but you never said I couldn’t interact with others I knew. So yes I would. May mess with time a bit. :3

10) If you could be a plant, what plant would you wanna be? (I wanna be a tree, like a giant ass tree so that I could look down on all the tinier trees.)

I would be a...weed. You would never be able to get rid of me!!!!

11) If you were stuck on a deserted island….. Yeah, that’s the question. “If you were stuck on a deserted island…”

if I were stuck on a deserted island I would dig a ditch. Then I would die in it. Because I can’t survive if left alone for too long. (Also at my funeral they would have to say “We left her get out of our sights and she died in a ditch somewhere!”)

-firelark

1.       What is your favorite quote from One Piece (or any other anime)?

Favorite is from Naruto “Those that who break the rules are trash but those who abandon their friends are less than trash!” but from one piece it’s “Thank you for loving me” 

2.       Favorite fictional genre?

Tie between Romance and fantasy. :3

3.       If you could wish for one thing, no limits, what would it be?

I would wish for a thing to keep let me wish without limits more so I could cheat the system. 

4.       Oldest/middle/youngest sibling? Or an only child?

I’m the middle child of three! 

5.       What is worse? Being too hot, or being too cold?

Being too hot. I hate the heat!

6.       Tell me a funny story!

I scare myself a lot. The other night while I was on my phone I notice that a shadow moved across one of my walls and I screamed, falling flat on my ass as I scrammed off the bed (which is next to said wall). My bro raced in asking what was wrong since he heard me scream but I realized something. It was my shadow. My own Shadow that moved with me, scared me.  

7.       What’s the first word that comes to your mind? Type it down :D

Food.

8.       Do you have a favorite plot bunny/art idea you haven’t been able to work on yet?

Yes! I have this one where it’s a girl who is reborn into the One Piece world as Sabo’s twin sister. Pretty much the whole idea of her is that she isn’t a fighter due to her body being weak there (It’s normal by our standards but in OP she is considered “sick” and Garp won’t train her. It’s a risk to her life) but she want’s to support the ASL boys somehow. and ends up being like a Franky to the Gray Terminal by feeding the people there, gaining the loyalty of the trash dwellers and taking control of the underworld of Dawn Island.  Which she uses to help the boys and once they set out to sea, keep tabs on them. 

9.       When did you start writing/drawing/creating in general?

I started writing in like 7th grade. 

10.    If you could make a crew of characters to sail on the Grand Line, who would you choose?

Hmmmm. Are we talking Cannon here? I take the ASL bros, Marco, Whitebeard,  Robin, Cavendish, Bartolomeo and Shanks. If we talking Fandom I’ll take Jeremiah Cross, Riskua dracule and Ross Outlook  (My own Oc that I’ve never finished lol)

11.    If you were to go on a trip, where would you like to go?

I’ll love to go to France, Japan, and to the beach!

[pinklinksandkinks]

Meredy Incarnation AU: Mermaid Heel

Age: 19 Dress: Very strict and formal with dark blues and buttons on the uniform. Instead of muff, she has a modified hat that covers her ears and matches the uniform with the same dark blues and fabric. Hair is pulled up in a no-nonsense fashion that keeps it tucked up out of the way when “working” and in a loose ponytail when “at leisure.” Personality: Chilly and stiff and completely lacking a sense of humor. She takes things very personally and is fiercely judgmental about things in black and white. However, she’s also extremely loyal too. She never really grew out of her GH personality tendencies for making others’ pay, and instead of Gray, the target is now Jellal. Relationships: Kagura is her partner and her “twin” They earned the nickname “The Twin Blades” and are rarely seen separately. Millianna is below a rival but above a guildmate. The rest of Mermaid Heel she tolerates for Kagura but has no special ties to. After the Games, she takes a special interest in Sting and Rogue, due to the similarities. Magic: Like Kagura, she tends to rely more on her actual steel katana than her magic, although unlike Archenemy, she has no problems drawing her blade out of the sheath. However, she does use her magic for energy blades as a back up and for longer range support. She has extremely good control and range after the years of practice.

Amazing Art: Here and Here and Here and Here and Here!

Amazing Fic: Here!

“Good block.”

“Is it good enough though?” Meredy queried, wiping the sweat from her brow and rubbing her hands on the hakama pants to dry them before griping her sword for the next round. “To kill him.”

Kagura’s gaze was flint, icy rage tempered under her iron will, and without warning she cut her practice sword across, forcing Meredy to throw up a hasty block, sloppy but enough to save herself from a nasty bruise.

“Two blades are better than one,” she replied steadily, “As a team, there is no chance of failure.”

Meredy considered it for a moment before nodding, “I suppose it is time we have an official name for our partnership. What do you think about Twin Blades…?”

Eyes wide open was the first thing she noticed, sliding back, lips burning at the contact and heart slamming, almost lost in a high of success and release but not quite, not enough.

Carefully, her partner wiped the corner of her lips, tracing the bottom lip with a swipe and gently nibbling it in that way she had when she was conflicted - it was a small thing, a nervous habit, but she knew everything about the other woman’s ticks and quirks.

No movement, no words, not even sounds, it was as if she were stone, waiting for the spell to be broken, for her fantasies to come to life and free her from this cruel trap of longing, the storm of feelings locked inside of her, raging and howling to be vindicated.

Shattered, it was shattered, yet there was no cartoony evil laugh or regretful blubbering to announce the death of her fantasies.

Only a look filled with pity.

“Kagura, what is wrong with you? I don’t understand what is going on! You cannot do this alone; stop, Kagura, stop! Let me help you!”

The swordwoman paused, whirling nearly soundlessly on her soft leather soles, to glare at the young woman behind her. Her spotless white uniform glowed in the velvety darkness of the warming early night

“You were not helping me earlier when you hid that you know how to find Jellal.”

Meredy’s eyes flew wide at the cruel accusation, but she didn’t back down. Instead, squaring her shoulders up and matching Kagura’s glare, the other half of the Twin Blades didn’t back down.

“That is unfair, and you know it. Besides, I saw you just across the square; you knew he was there in front of you. Stop mixing personal problems into our partnership!”

Tone glacial, in complete contrast to the small, violent tremors run through her tense form, Kagura retorted, “I apologize for thinking there was anything personal between us in the first place. Clearly, I was in error.”

Quivering, sharp and deadly, the blade paused just shy of the bobbing, delicate hollow of the throat, nicking a single drop of crimson as her control slipped and composure cracked.

“Ul? Why?” A bare whisper, a lost, lonely child speaking up years later. No answer, no explanation, just her shielding him. Betraying Meredy again. Taking his side again.

Within a flicker of an instant, a tempest surrounded them, lethal and focused, one which Kagura easily threaded through, catching Meredy’s silent signal. Meredy had faith that Kagura would not fail.

It was time to lay the past to rest, along with Ul.

“Ooo, you’re so cute and adorable!”

Meredy jerked back, brow furrowing and fingers twitching, fighting the urge to call forth an energy blade to skewer the overly enthusiastic woman from Fairy Tail.

“Ah-ah,” Mira tsked, as if reading her mind, and Meredy felt a flash of fear, although she refused to show it - her discipline was better than that, and Kagura had taught her well. “You’re like a cloud of angry bubblegum cotton candy!”

“And you’re a demon,” Meredy shot back, stepping out of range. A shiver went through her as Mira smiled oh-so-sweetly, “Only when people are naughty.”

“If you ever,” Meredy leaned into his space with a grim look, “Mess with anyone from my guild again, I’ll geld you.”

Lamia Scale’s ace paled further, trying to move away and apologize and explain it was just a match, when a rusty chuckle scared him even more.

Smacking him on the back, hard, she gave a grimace-y smile and intoned, “It’s a joke, a joke.”

Kagura, drunk and ruffled already, burst out laughing until she was red in the face while the Ice Mage gave a nervous chuckle.

“Phew, a joke, yes, well, ahem…” he cleared his throat, eyes pleading with someone, anyone to save him as she stiffly draped herself across his shoulders, jabbed him in the ribs with her sword hilt and promptly puked on his shoes.

”I love your smile. It reminds me the smile of the person whom I want to marry someday.”

Meredy’s eyes flickered towards Kagura, unsure if she should shove the man out of her space or try another joke - the last one hadn’t gone over as well as she’d hoped.

“I didn’t smile,” she replied, frown deepening, and added, “So I don’t see how I could possibly remind you of anyone.”

Hibiki groaned, murmuring something about a stupid dare, before trying again, “Hey, where’d you smile go?” She quirked an eyebrow at him as he fished around with a beaming smile of his own and pulled a fist out of his pocket, “Here it is!”

OH! 

Reaching forward she pinched his nose and made a fist with the thumb peeking out, proclaiming, “GOT YOUR NOSE!” Bopping his nose with flourish, she gave a genuine, youthful smile, that left him stunned.

[beowulfs-booty-call]

3, 7, 13, 20, 48, 53!

Ciao! Hey, so sorry about being late on answering! We had a whole bunch of snow today, and guess who had to do some shoveling? So, thanks for asking, it means a ton to me!

Let’s get started, eh? I wrote a MASS TON and I really wanna apologize in advance for that!

3. do you miss anyone?

Gah, tough question! Truth is, I do miss people a lot, not just one person. There’s the people who I spoke to once before, and slowly, we just drifted apart and just stopped altogether, there are people that I can't exactly speak to without feeling uncomfortable due to what they did to me, and, then there are the friends and family members who moved on with life and I didn’t have the opportunity to catch up or get in contact with them.

But, I realized today, I missed the memories more than I did the people at times, and, I had to accept it, really. In one way, it’s like, I miss Felix, this worker who was my mother’s friend at the Veteran’s Affairs. He was like the father I never had, he inspired me to start drawing, when I got interested in science, he came along and helped me build a robot! Later on, in life, when I was beginning to suffer from emotional problems with my family and I was “banned” from coming to the VA because my mother feared I would tell her coworkers stuff from home, Felix understood. I wasn’t allowed to give my number to any of the staff or patients, which, I respected and understood, but, I always hated that I couldn't call him for support or talk about things on my mind. I was really a super curious kid, and, he’d treat me like an adult, taking me to lunch when he never had to, but he’d always have some topic on his mind to talk on. “Do you ever wonder why the sky is blue?” and I’d respond, “Well, it’s reflecting the sun’s light, right?” at age 8 because he and I were such Nat. Geo fanatics. “Sure, but, when you think about it, why is the ocean blue then?” and he’d go on this amazing lengthy talk about what particles were and even bits of politics. 

People never really “got” my relationship with Felix. He was like a dad, a teacher, and a best friend when I needed him. When the chips were down, he was there, ready and willing to say whatever I needed to hear because that’s all he ever wanted for me. As an 11 year old, I started feeling like I was bothering the guy, he was driving sports car as a working computer technician (IIRC) and I thought he probably had kids and a wife on the side while I was taking all his attention away. When I asked, he just laughed this silly laugh a dad would do, put his hand on my shoulder, and say “I don’t have anyone with me like that. Your my kid whether you like it or not!” 

And, soon, time came for him to retire. I was around 14 at the time, my art started blooming unlike what I had thought at first. I could draw unlike most people used to tell me, the bullies in my catholic school who would draw comics with me as the butt of the joke? Flushed down the drain when I won an art award for outstanding painting in my eight grade year. Felix left the VA, but before he did, I wanted to make it up to him. I painted his favorite cartoon Felix the Cat (That’s how he got his name when he came over from Puerto Rico, we call him Manny as an Americanized name, but Felix was his real name after the cartoon cat.) on canvas and left it at the job so he’d get it during his going away party.

...Sadly, he never did receive it, my mother never brought it to him. And, just like that, the first father I had in my life left to retire, and the only thing I had left of him was the painting he wasn't able to take with him. ...I wanted so bad for him to see how good I grew to impress him, and maybe, get a “You did so great, son!” from him. My father and I have a very strained relationship, and, Felix was one of the only people who pushed me so far to be the best person I can be.

Truth is, I miss him dearly. I missed him showing up out of nowhere just to see me, and ask the big questions to me. I miss when he would hug the kid-me and scruff my hair and ask what my next “major discovery” would be. Sometimes, when I walk around, taking some Photogs, I get a glimpse of him in my pictures. And I’d double take, “Is that...?” and realize my mistake. Before he left, I remember visiting his office for the first time; He had pictures of me and him hung up with the words “Best Kid Ever” written underneath a picture of me and him with my robot (We made it out of plastic bottles!). He even framed a picture I haphazardly drew as a 3 year old, where I painted some mishmash of colors on printing paper. 

He had smooth jazz music playing in the background, and we spoke about things like two old men talking after years apart. “How’s the next presidential candidate doing?” “Only as good as his VP!” We’d joke, but, he knew I wasn’t doing so well with the way my mother and father were being at home. He saw straight through me, and, holding the framed picture he said aloud, “You know, I always joke about how famous you’re going to be someday, but you know what? When you become the president, or whatever you put your mind to; You’ll get an old man coming into your office and he’ll say, “You remember me, sonny?”

I didn’t understand what he had meant by the statement, and so, I laughed it off a bit and just said, “Manny, of course I’ll remember you, how’d I ever forget my first ever friend?” Despite me being so cheery, he smiled a bit sad, placed the framed picture down, and remarked. “I know, kiddo, but I’m not going to be here forever. I wanted to let you know, every time I saw you, I saw myself in you. I didn’t have the same things you did, and sure as heck I didn't have the brain you do, but, you’re one special boy, Chris.” 

I wrote it all in this old ratty journal like some giddy school girl, but, when I look back on it, I miss the fact that there was someone who supported me like he did. Emotionally, I wanted to please someone, I wanted someone to love me when my parents didn’t and tell me “You are needed, you’re special to me. Even if given the choice, I’d never replace you.” 

I miss having someone I could look up to, instead of always being the person everyone looks at as an example, I suppose. I had to take a few moments after writing this part so I can write it just as truthful and legitimate. Turns out, I’ve been keeping it bottled up for so long, I just felt so relieved talking about it!

7. what was your life like last year?

Oh gosh,

Last year was er... Not exactly the best year for me, trust me.

I dealt with a lot of problems besides emotional issues, along with getting more comfortable with myself. I broke up with my ex at the time, and, besides losing contact with people, I had to constantly remind myself not to bottle my emotions. It wasn’t because of my breakup, but more so bottling up my emotions and not giving myself the decency of talking about it or getting it off my chest! I thought I pushed people away because of who I was, when, in reality, it’s just part of life. I took a lot of time out to assess my life, and, life itself. My sociology teacher thought of me as “enlightened” because of that, really! 

To explain, I know now that life is filled with people coming and going in life, but at the same time, there will always be people who gravitate towards you. Usually more than not, they’re the people who stay by you when you least expect it. Things and sayings like that? I’m known for, even when comforting someone or just talking about life in general. I’ve lived a long life filled with both suffering and pleasure, and most people note that with the things I’ve lived with and took up, I’m an old soul in regarding them and observing them.

Besides that, I also had major problems bouncing family duties/issues with an exhausting school schedule that ultimately left me with one class failed and the others at B’s and C’s. My grandfather, who, more or less is my rock besides my grandmother, fell ill with cancer earlier in 2016. It had gotten progressively worse during the school months, and with the emotional issues I got from the problems with my parents such as coming out as Pan/Bi, and a witch, it wasn’t pretty. We also had to deal with financial issues, which, I’ve come to accept. I most likely will have to transfer schools for my four years of school because my college is a tad bit more expensive in the long term than the present. I’m hoping that when I return to the dorms this february it won’t be a tough transfer experience, since because I failed a language class I will either have to retake the course (likely not easy since I do not have my access code to change right now, it’s in the dorms, and, I’ll still be meeting my counselor to discuss the transfer as well) or find something else to satisfy the requirement. I’m also hoping that if anything, if I cannot find a class when I return, I can always then simply take the lesser class filled course I made for myself and simply transfer to my next school and simply then take up whatever needs to be done there, as the transfer school is one of Criminal Justice rather than a liberal arts university I attend now.

In all seriousness, as bad as the last year was, I grew up as well, both in art and in myself! I rewatched and got back into Sailor Moon, and it’s definitely effected me as a persona and understanding my identity, even getting back to my spirituality as a Hindu-Pagan! So, 2016 for me was about learning more about myself while learning to accept myself, flaws and all.

13. how do you feel right now?

Right now? Pretty contemplative, I’m somewhat sad about things that happened in the past, but, I’m more happy that the things that did happen, did, in the end; Had they never, I wouldn't be as strong as I was before. It’s a bit taxing, but, I love that feeling, it reminds me I’m more powerful than I think. I even practiced a bit of some meditation with my goddess, Parvati! It’s a grounding practice I do, so, I’m ready for anything, even if I don’t feel 100%

20. what is your favourite song at the moment?

Actually, it’s Teedra Moses’ “Be Your Girl” ! It speaks a lot about how I feel about someone special I know, if you disregard the whole pronouns thing! I love how smooth it is, but there’s also a remix by Kaytranada here which is more fast paced and techno? Both are pretty dang fluid!

48. turn offs

Easy,

Erotic Beatings, “showers”, “Cleanings”, Assholes (and not the hot kind), Racists, Emo/Grunge? (Like, the whole “I’m better off alone” sort of person, no one loves me/understands me so therefore I must scream. Personally I feel that everyone deserves time alone, but people shouldn't outright push people away unless they hurt them.) Misogyny and classism, People who try to take others down a peg for their religious beliefs (like pagans), aaaand people who hate the idea that mannerisms and lifestyles are “gay” or too “gender” focused. Like when someone thinks a guy who speaks with his hands or crosses his legs are “those™” people.

53. 5 things that make me happy

1.) Getting better at what I do, (Tarot, drawing, writing, etc) and observing it!

2.) Summoning demons/Occult (Gems are an easy way to make me happy!)

3.) Drawing!

4.) Asks, being tagged and tagging my friends,(My friends also counts!) and just knowing I’m acknowledged!

5.) My favorite characters! : Amy Rose/Coco Bandicoot/Beowulf/Princess Peach

Thank you so much for the asks, dude! I sincerely mean it!

[inhalareexhalare]

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.

With a spiritual kiss of "we'll meet again," I leave a sleeping Karu with a promise to bring home a pasalubong.

Pasalubong may be translated into souvenir but all the pure gentle love and homely coziness of the word is sacrificed, so here: pasalubong.

Today I traverse an unfamiliar path.

So much excitement!

I haven't felt like this in a long, long time. As expected, I overestimate time. I'll probably reach our meeting point very early haha

2018-11-24 09:06 Philippines Saturday

Someday, these new babies will grow a little more like this.

The Rotarian commandment slab. My mom and dad both contribute/d to this goodwill organization with blood, sweat, and tears.

Oh damn I didn't notice the smell until I looked closely. It's a dead dog's body. Looks like it was torn to pieces. Did somebody want something from its insides? The face is gone.

Cruel. I wonder what happened? And why?

Century City Mall. I reach my destination! More insight and discoveries await.

I like his brand by the way. It fits my practical needs and suits my masculine style.

All that's left is wait. Malls usually open at 1000 and this one does too apparently.

And then Isla texted me if we can meet at 1030 instead. (I thought I told her I'd be on free data haha I hope she checks her FB. Can't respond via SMS.) Sure can! This is exactly why I brought Hudson.

To Karu:

2018-11-24 09:39 Philippines Saturday

Isla's running late HAHAHA

It's unusual if on foot or within campus, but definitely usual on the road. Road plus car means heavy traffic. Hahahaha

The entrance lights are so cute, but I still think it's a waste of electricity and energy.

Five more chapters and I'm done with this book. I've decided to stop still for now though. Let the tales sink. Suck it in. Take in the environment around me.

Breathe.

Feel.

Focus.

2018-11-24 11:00 Philippines Saturday

I had the most interesting talk with Theodore today. HAHA

Ever since that day I impulsively expressed that I thought he was a chill person and I feel easily comfortable around him, he never gave up on trying to get along with me despite my seemingly cold and antisocial nature.

I'm very grateful for that. I haven't had a more one on one talk with him than this so it feels stupid yet heartwarming HAHAH

Karu's been having a lot of bloody nightmares lately. So this is what an experienced fighter can dream about. Vivid sensory pain and lucid fight sequences.

2018-11-24 11:26 Philippines Saturday

Isla and I will get noms first.

A fascinating concept. Well, the concept of a food court is old, but the way they pulled it off is new! I thought it was just one restaurant!

And wit, there is wit everywhere! The number one social language: humor.

sneakpeekLET ME IIIIN!!

okay back to food court

I am so proud of Isla. She's quitting work to pursue med schooolll CCOOOOOLLL

We talked about everything over lunch. Also the future potential Peak resident psychologist thing. She pointed out that ethically, it's not recommended for people with close association with each other to be psychologist and patient due to conflict of interest and high possibility of dependency.

I'm now wondering if it's actually God's gift that I am antisocial.

But I must be careful about this matter. I've been bothered about this topic for years. Because to my experience, most toxic feelings root from a sense of alone-ness and as cheesy as it sounds, sometimes all you need is a friend. 

Then again, a psychologist is not a hired friend. I think the better thing to do is be kind and maybe also a friend, but must focus on helping the patient make other friends, generally.

Open and widen their horizons.

On to books. There’s time!

There’s a lot I wanna showww 

also a dead fly I found n a back cover

iSN’T IT JUST AMAZING HOW THEY MANAGE TO APPRECIATE the ART OF TELLING A STORY SHORTLY ON ONE PAGE?

2018-11-24 12:00 Philippines Saturday

A LOT HAPPENED

I deviated hahahaha I didn't paint Karu as the horizon.

I painted the horizon as something in his perspective. So you could say he IS the perspective.

Early in our relationship, I used to share my anxiety to him and told him I'd be so happy to die holding hands with him.

And breaking up once in our relationship (it was a wise decision too—due to his need to clarify his own feelings on his own first), I told him how I'm happy to see the horizon beside him, "holding hands or not."

The horizon being the vision, the future, the hopes and the dreams that we move towards.

2018-11-24 16:19 Philippines Saturday

Pasalubong! A grasshopper, because he used to be nicknamed "Tipaklong" back in the varsity team (arnis, basically a wooden extension of the arm. Simply, stick arts.) Or was it back in taekwondo days?

Tipaklong is grasshopper, as you may have already guessed, and he was called that because he's swift and light on his feet. More of a kicker.

We had bloody fun today.

So much love.

My appreciation for Isla is immeasurable.

2018-11-24 18:00 Philippines Saturday

Watching Karu sleep soundly while I prepare dinner for us feels so comfy. 

This is my treasure.

It's warm in the heart. I'm happy when I see him rest because he usually barely does. And it's self-destructive.

As the second eldest in our siblings, I always had a sense of fulfillment and ease when my siblings (even the eldest brother) were at ease. 

I remember fanning my little sister Nynaeve to sleep when there was a blackout. Also patting her thigh lightly in a slow rhythm to help her get to sleep. 

I'd tell Justice (the youngest brother) stories and trivias that kept him interested, curious, and full of wonder with life until he got to sleep. 

I'd ask so many questions to Kevin, whether he knew the answer or not and watch him be passionate about some things, especially mechanical apparatus or toys.

Sigh.

Life is hard. But God is good.

2018-11-24 20:00 Philippines Saturday

An unexpected guest of Karu's is here. I quietly stepped out of the house to hang around at my secret spot again.

I don't feel hatred. Or sadness.

I'm just in my quiet space at the moment. Although I am taken aback by the (I'm sorry to say) unpleasant surprise. (I though we discussed that any guest must be given the headsup first whether it's a good time to visit here or not. Apparently it only applies to Karu, oh well x_x)

(Yknow, actually, Karu probably only forgot because he's busy tending to himself. I understand because he's currently depressed.) I'm still staying out here though. I don't wanna have to deal with people right now.

I'm making distance to give it more thought, and see a better perspective.

Karu's depressed and prefers to keep away from me. Since Gallagher is more than welcome to be in his presence, maybe that will be best.

I have a tinge of envy but I think this could help Karu sleep better.

I'm way calmer with facing my heavier moods now. That's good.

Monsters, of course, never really disappear. We don't get to destroy them. Destruction only leads to more destruction.

We don't lose our monsters. We just learn to live with them better.

Must never forget to pray.

Walking is so liberating!

2018-11-24 23:05 Philippines Saturday

Karu asked to read my entries and of course I let him.

Karu tried to explain. He said that towards myself, like to Theodore and Job, he feels like a moving-forward person. So it becomes difficult at times that he's facing a problem that he doesn't feel ready to confront yet. This is the difference with other people, who don't know his stories yet, so he can freely talk about past stuff.

I cried a bit, and tried to hide it since he didn't have to know, but he found out the truth anyway, from realizing that, in this case, he cannot rest in a place like me then.

I've become a walking irony. I'm the one who always tells him to rest, but apparently he cannot because he feels too driven to take the move forward around me, leaving behind the important patient wait for the heart to catch up.

We cleared it all out in the later half of our conversation though.

Turns out Karu has a fear of being vulnerably at his worst around me. He feels that he will destroy me like he did to other people.

He feels like I don't deserve to witness his shitty parts.

But destruction is a two-way thing. There's stimulus, and then there's reaction. He can't take all the blame for "destruction." Breaking up for example is not a full reason to lead to a person's psyche to fall apart. That didn't happen to us. In fact, it only made our individual identities stronger and more solid.

God does not allow man to separate what he has put together. For a sacred union to fall apart, there is only one reason: a severe lack of faith.

I told him he's just gonna have to trust me.

I shared how it's also difficult for me to find the words or even just the voice when I'm being shitty. But we have to strive to tell our story anyway.

That's the thing about trust.

Trust doesn't have a certain guarantee. It's a leap of faith.

I told him that I married both his two sides, I married a beautiful bipolar musical man, and I want to get to know both of them, even the shitty parts, so I can understand and give love accordingly.

I am glad that he feels somewhat better, although he is still in his down. I like how he's started to open up a little and I feel like we're closer now than ever before.

I encouraged him that when I see his shitty sides, I don't really think how shitty it is. It actually reassures me and I think, "oh, he's just as human as I am."

We hug the “night” with many lofs.

2018-11-25 03:00 Philippines Sunday

[moth-lesbian]

A lot of highschoolers seem to think that the academic kids (uni level // wowo advanced classes) are some kind of ethereal beings who are smart and have their shit together but I'd like to let you know that...

👏we're all idiots🎉

And here's some reasons why!

On the first day in my academic geography class 3 different kids fell out of their seats and this proceeded to happen everyday by different students until Friday. There's nothing wrong with the chairs people just like to "push the limits".

On the first day, in that same geography class, someone asked if there was going to be flooding because of Hurricane Irma. Which was a totally legitimate question, but the teacher had literally just finished saying that it was predicted to be a category 4 hurricane. I feel like you could assume that there's probably going to be at least some flooding.

The amount of bs that is pulled off is great. I don't know a single kid who doesn't bs there way through homework, or tests or really any type of project. We're all just idiots who have perfected the art of how to bs their way through school.

I only know 3 kids who can actually ask their teacher a question when they're confused. All we do is ask eachother how to do stuff because we're a self-conscious bagels who don't want to seem like idiots by asking the teacher a question. In my opinion, the "if you ask a teacher a question it means you're an idiot" stereotype is a really harmful and false stereotype. To be completely honest, the stupid decision is not asking the teacher a question (but that doesn't stop me or my friends from not asking because hah opinions are scary).

The amount of procrastination is unreal. Everyone always says things like "I'll get this done as soon as I get it so I don't have to worry about it during the week" but we all know that that rarely happens. Most of the time kids will bs their way through a project 1-3 days/hours/minutes before it's due and somehow get just the right amount of bs, obscure observations and facts to get a passing grade. I literally did this all through my history and geography classes last year and I managed to pull a 93% overall grade out of my arse.

No one has any time management. One of my friends who seems "perfect in every way" and has obscenely strict parents, manages to stay up 'til 3am reading smut. I don't think anyone gets any sleep except for me (on a good night when my brain stops thinking of frickin' book ideas I don't want to write at 4am and wake up at 6am if this is what creativity is I didn't sign up for this Susan) and like 1 other kid.

No one is okay. Maybe it's just my class, but it's like we're all that one song by mcr. I don't care if someone seems dreadfully perfect there👏is👏something👏going👏on. I only know a few academic kids who seen mentally okay-ish, or have an okay home life, and most of them are people I don't really know (by that I mean there's probably something under the surface that they haven't told me yet. Wow that sounds horrible but I'm not wrong). If there was a top 10 list of mentally healthy kids in my class I'd make it on that list. To put that in perspective, I wrote a suicide note at age 8 and held a knife up to my neck at age 9 (pretty s*itty way to kill yourself tbh glad I didn't do it. Like that butcher knife was v blunt and I probably would've died from blood loss and not decapitation). I'm doing really well right now but like heckity heckin' heck everyone else isn't.

Staying with the theme of mental health, the line between death jokes and cries for help is really blurry (You could say it's blurrier than Tyler Joseph's face ;)))) I'll leave). Who is suicidal and who is just self-deprecating? Who is suicidal and self-deprecating? No one knows. It's like a really depressing game of guess who.

So, maybe you're an academic kid who relates to these things or maybe you're a college level kid who can use this to understand that the cocky academic kid is really just compensating for their crippling fear of failure. But whoever you are, I want you to know that we're all going to die someday therefore we're all equal when we're gone and that even the most perfect people are struggling to fit into society's slim definition of greatness. Don't be afraid to talk to someone of a different socioeconomic status, who knows, you might start a beautiful friendship (or maybe they are actually just a prick, but you would have never known for sure if you hadn't taken that risk).

I'm going to go back into my cave of procrastination now.

Bye famalam

Ps. I'm sorry if there's a plethora of spelling mistakes in this I'm tired