#and I felt shitty not really being able to communicate with my mom on her birthday 😕 just kinda sat there

[floral-hex]

I think this is maybe the best compliment I’ve ever received.

Also, I was pretty much deaf for the last few days, so… take the good with the bad

[hms-no-fun]

so, (SPOILERS FOR FIONNA AND CAKE but its relevant to the question but im gonna put a bunch of line breaks just in case lol)

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so fionna and cake ended with fionna basically being like, you know, youre RIGHT god, if magic came back my wish would simply be twisted and it would suck, there will be no rule breaking miracles! I will now work as a struggling minimum wage employee in seattle and Be Happy about it. i sure am glad the threat of losing everyone i know and love set me straight!! sorry to send u this really random thing the ending just felt like such a slap in the face and i wanted to ask someone who knows that exact Seattle Struggle. this is absolutely me appealing to the Writing Gods to back me up that the ending wasnt very good lmao but if i have a direct line to the craftsgoat i simply must use it for something stupid at least once

FULL SERIES SPOILERS FOR FIONNA & CAKE AFTER THE BREAK!!!

i really disagree with your read on the ending. it didn't feel like "just struggle with seattle minimum wage forever and be happy about it" at all to me! the whole instigating incident was that fionna wanted to transform reality into something that she personally thought would be better, without taking into account the fact that other people exist and have internal lives just as complex as hers. she comes back to her original world to find marshall and gary holding hands, explains to them the magical adventure she's been on and the fact that their world is about to transform into something unrecognizably magical, and they receive this with abject horror! fionna doesn't know whether simon becoming ice king again will erase marhsall & gary's burgeoning relationship, which makes her realize that in her quest to escape the boring, oppressive reality of working odd jobs to make ends meet, she's only ever focused that energy on how to make things better for her.

i really want to dig into this because it's a key theme of the show. there is a destructive selfishness innate to the "heroes" of this universe, who feel entitled to the joyous empowerment of being able to defeat anyone and everyone they see in open combat. cake has a whole musical number about this! simon's arc in the last two episodes was betty grabbing him and shaking him until he finally asked himself, how would my life have been different if i'd just once let the woman i loved steer the ship for a while? and then of course we see the lich in a reality where he succeeded in eradicating all life, only to find himself desiccated and without purpose, begging the god of chaos for an answer it cannot give. brian david gilbert's ice prince seems perfectly put together and successful, until the reveal that he's outsourced his madness to someone who didn't accept the terms of the crown's curse. this didn't solve the fundamental problem, it just inverted the roles of its expression by making princess bubblegum into the mad candy queen. nothing about the status quo has changed, simon has simply given himself a more dignified role in it.

this is a story about what happens when people in struggle behave as though they are the protagonist of reality. when fionna says "this is the world i want to fight for" she's not fighting for the right to get another shitty minimum wage job. i think you've really missed something by accepting that conclusion when cake the cat is right there saying that her magical self IS the version of herself she wants to live as. being a normal house cat for her was, arguably, a form of body dysmorphia, and the show lets her keep that magic at the end! the thing is, their world IS changed by the events of the show! the status quo is altered!

like, what do we actually see everyone DOING when the credits approach? we see this entire disconnected community banding together to rebuild the city together, and we see a huge crowd of protesters outside marshall's mom's place demanding that she lower rents. we see people connecting with other people, including three outcasts from other universes escaping to this more boring one for their own safety. i loved this ending honestly, because it felt to me like an attempted refutation of the very idea that you can magically transform reality into something better overnight. if fionna'd gotten her original wish and made her world into, like, candy world, then... what? let's say they play it as like, at last people are freed from the shackles of capitalism and everyone just gets to be weird funky critters going on adventures or whatever. what would that, as art, actually say? what would that mean to us in the real world? if we're going into this cartoon looking for some kind of revolutionary energy (which IS present in the text, much to its credit), what actionable or symbolically resonant message are we supposed to take from a story that resolves its problems with magic? at that point, it ceases to be relevant as anything more than pure fantasy, because it has abandoned any connection to the material reality WE are trapped in.

i don't want to magically transform the world overnight. this whole show goes out of its way to explore how trying to transform the world overnight, in a world where such a thing is possible, is a really fucking bad idea for a whole host of reasons. regardless, such things aren't possible in our world. so going into the finale, my worry was that they WOULD turn fionna's world into another candy world and just say, ah, the revolution is when you think the right things so hard that the material plane bends to your will.

that's neoliberal thinking. that's like the essence of the failed leftist project of the "end of history" era from the 90s onwards, when marxism was systematically rooted out of academic cultural analysis and replaced with the delusion that if you can just get people thinking the right things, you can affect change in the world. well here we are, it's 2023 and all that magical thinking has got us is a world on fire and a civilization of human beings so thoroughly disempowered that they would literally rather pretend to be a tortured anime protagonist than exist in this boring, shitty, violent reality. you can't think your way out of oppression. raising labor consciousness is, at best, step one. you want to know why unions are winning big right now when they've been completely useless in this country for decades? it's because they've stopped giving a shit about optics they can't control and remembered that the boss's value does not exist without labor. you do not necessarily need marxism for this, marxism is simply the most accurate articulation of the fact that workers who make the things a capitalist sells can kneecap the capitalist by refusing to make the things they want to sell. change doesn't happen with the publishing of a book or whatever, it happens when enough people in real life press their material demands hard enough that someone in charge is left no choice but to listen.

so for me, fionna & cake ending the way it did was a huge relief, because it wasn't espousing magical thinking. the solution to fionna's ennui and economic anxiety was not to just get another job and be happy to live in the world as it was-- it was to create a sense of shared community and struggle, uniting the not-seattleites in their survival of a near-apocalypse and using it as a jumping off point for fundamentally transforming the state of that world as it exists. fionna had to realize that her problems are everyone's problems, and that making her life personally better at the expense of everyone else's agency is just an act of kicking the can of responsibility down the road indefinitely. no one who gets their wish in this show is happy to have gotten it, or avoids punishing others who didn't ask to be involved.

the "canonization" of fionna & cake felt like a reaction to the idea that we in our world are permanently isolated from the fictional realities we create where change seems to come so easy, and the powerlessness that can engender. instead this show is saying, okay, let's say we are in continuity with these fantastical realities. what do we actually DO with that? how do we make this world more fun, more interesting, more fulfilling for everyone to live in? the answer is the same as it's always been, and no other answer would ever feel satisfying: you do it by organizing the workers against the current arrangement of the state with the explicit goal of transforming it for the better.

what does simon do at the end when he gives fionna her world to her? he says that no one person should have that responsibility, that it's been in one person's hands for too long. so he gives it to her in the form of a dandelion, whose blown seeds merge with and become part of everyone trying to survive the scarab's attack. the idea here is that while no single person ever possesses the power to transform the world on their own, the world itself belongs to all of us, and it is within our power to transform it together. those who hoard power want us to believe that this is not the case precisely because the basis of their power is fraudulent and maintained through the violence of the state.

as someone who does live in seattle for better and worse, as much as i do wish i could make literally anything better right the fuck now by whatever means necessary... the fact is i can't. and it does no one any good to labor under the assumption that i or any other individual has that kind of absolute transformative power. the solutions are all right there, and they are simple, materialist propositions whose only difficulty lies in how successfully we've been propagandized to think that the individual is God, or at least speaks on His behalf. there's no thinking our way out of this pickle, and no one's gonna do the hard work for us.

as to the question of how you actually get people in real life to get together and do all that hard work... well, personally i think it's unfair to ask a 10 episode cartoon show to give you any kind of actionable advice on that front. i might even go so far as to say that such an expectation is an expression of the very same magical thinking which the show tries to push back against! in any case i liked it quite a lot and i hope this rambling answer encourages you to revisit the show and reconsider some of your takeaways

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Birthday Angst

Pairing: Shigadabi

Rating: T

Contents: Angst, Angst with a happy ending, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, getting together

At least he's not homeless this year. 

That's the first thought that he has when Dabi slips from his bed and heads towards the bathroom to get ready for the day. At least he's not spending his birthday freezing on the streets again. No, this year he'll spend it in shitty meetings, and then training some shitty recruits, and then finally getting to lock himself back in this room and avoid the others for the rest of the night. 

He's pretty sure he used to like his birthday. When he was little and his mom made a cake and his dad always took off so he could be home to play with him and unwrap presents. And then he went wrong and those things slipped away. Mom still made cake, always did for all of their birthdays, but it would be a quiet, dower affair as she got more and more worn down from her treatment in the house. And Enji was never home for any of them. Not until Shoto. 

And then there had, of course, been the coma. He missed a few birthdays. Pretty sure he missed two when he'd woken up afterwards too. The first couple of years on his own were so survival- focused that he didn't think much about the date unless he had to. This is probably the best birthday he's had in years if only for the fact that he knows where he's sleeping tonight and that he'll be able to eat today. Hell, this may be his last birthday if Shigaraki's timeline comes to fruition. He pauses as he brushes his teeth, that thought rolling through his mind and leaving something... strange behind. He's never been sad about his inevitable end, but there's a weight to the thought that comes now that he's never felt before. He finishes up, rinsing his mouth like he can send that unpleasant heaviness down the drain with the minty foam. 

Whatever. It's just a day, and just like him, it doesn't matter anyway. 

///

The first round of meetings goes fine. He's kind of already in a shit mood, and apparently everyone else is too. Not that he can blame them, it's fucking freezing, and apparently they're gonna get hit with a hell of a snowstorm starting later tonight that's likely to shut down their operation for a day or so. Geten, the freak, is blowing off training the new recruits with him to go deeper into the range and get some of his own training in, which clears up Dabi's afternoon. Compress and Spinner can't do anything with their work while communication and supply routes are down, Ujiko is apparently trapped at the actual hospital so Duster's treatments are on hold, and Toga and Twice are more than happy for any excuse to call it a snow day and find something more fun to entertain themselves. But that means that he's left with nothing to do for the rest of the day to occupy his time. 

He waits until the others have mostly filed out of the meeting room before he pauses Shigaraki, "Hey, boss?" 

Shig stops, giving a curt glance at Re-Destro and getting him to scurry out of the room before he turns to address him. "What is it, Dabi?" 

He worries at a staple for a second before sucking it up, "Don't suppose you have any side projects I could work on while things are slowed down?" 

Duster raises a brow at him. "Not off the top of my head, why?" 

"Just looking for something to do." 

He doesn't love the scrutinizing look that he gets from the other man at that. "You do more than enough around here, Dabi. I would rather you take the day off, to be entirely honest." 

Which, that is kind of weirdly nice of him. He's been weirdly nice to all of them since Kamino, and Dabi really, really thought that was just because he didn't want them all to scatter to the wind without AFO's backing. But he's come to the unhappy conclusion that being around AFO just made Shigaraki worse. He was so volatile and childish when he was under his thumb, but the second he was out from it, he'd immediately grown the fuck up. Started acting like a leader. Become someone worth following. Someone... he may feel a little bit guilty about abandoning halfway through this fight, so he tries to ignore that. Keep him and the others at arm's length as they all seem to get closer and closer. 

"...Fine." He grabs his laptop. He'll find something else to do today if Duster's not gonna be any help there. He's rounding the table, ready to head out when Shig catches his sleeve and pulls him to a stop. 

"...Is something wrong?" 

He bristles slightly. "Why?" He almost misses Duster wearing the gross hands everywhere, but especially over his face. Because he feels like a pinned insect with those red eyes boring into him. 

"You seem more agitated than normal." 

"Nothing's wrong, it's just shaping up to be a boring as shit day." 

"Why don't you go do something you like? It's not like we've had a day off since summer." 

Really hates that those eyes see how that kind of makes his brain stop working because, fuck, does he even have anything he likes to do? Training? Working? Surviving? That's all he's done for almost a decade. He's pretty fucking sure he hasn't cultivated any interests outside of that. 

"...Dabi, what's actually going on?" Hates himself more because a few weeks ago he probably would have just told him to fuck off, maybe with a shower of sparks for good measure. But instead, today, because he's stupid and childish himself, he feels his throat going a little tighter and can't quite meet his eyes. 

"...It's my birthday." There's a slight pause and Dabi pulls his arm free of the loose grip Shigaraki had him in. "Whatever. It doesn't matter, I just would rather be busy." He turns and heads towards the door. "I'll find something else to do." He gives a forcefully lazy wave over his shoulder and keeps moving. 

It doesn't matter. He shouldn't have said anything. It's just another day. Last birthday or not. 

///

Dabi, unfortunately, doesn't find anything to do. Hawks is MIA because of the incoming storm. Skeptic, like the other non-League lieutenants, doesn't live on site, and left with the others before the weather got too bad, so he can't bother him about hacking into Endeavor's servers again to see what his dad and brother are up to during his internship. The rest of the League seems to be settling into the common area for games, food, and movies for the rest of the day. Toga comes and invites him to join in with a big smile and bright eyes. 

"Come on, we're all gonna wear our pajamas and have like a sleepover! I'll paint your nails black." 

He ignores how her expression falls when he tells her, "Not interested," and shuts his door on her before she can try again. He's not even sure if he wants to be alone today, but he also knows he doesn't want to pretend to be personable either. The others will have their fun without him and hopefully Duster will keep his mouth shut about what he said earlier. 

So Dabi smokes his last joint, gets food brought up to his room for lunch, and then promptly burrows back into his blankets to shut out the rest of the world for a little while. 

///

He wakes a few hours later, but not enough. Only ten o'clock. Fuck, damn near slept through this fucking day that's doing something unholy to his head, but he still couldn't even get that right. Knows immediately from how high his quirk has creeped that he's not going to be able to get back to sleep without cooling off for a bit first. Tempted to just go take a shower, but after a glance out the window, seeing the heavy blanket of white that's fallen since he was asleep, he pulls on his boots, digs out his cigarettes from his coat pocket before leaving that behind, and heads out of his room, up to the roof. 

He puts footprints into the four inches of snow that has already accumulated, more falling steadily around him and blanketing the mountaintop in white, as he heads over to the railing. His skin steams in the frigid temperatures, but it's not an uncomfortable sensation. His broken body was made for the cold after all. Dabi leans against the railing and shakes out a cigarette. Only two left, he'll have to get more if he doesn't want to bum the nasty brand that Twice likes off of him. Dabi lights up, letting the flame flicker on his finger for a bit too long, until it feels real as it starts to sting, and then he lets the snowflakes douse it. Smokes as his skin slowly cools down to a more comfortable temperature and just lingers in the silence. The sky is that ambient dark of deep winter, of heavy clouds, that bounces around and diffuses the hidden star and moonlight all around him, reflected off the falling snow. It brings a false warmth that he can just see by and if he were a different man, maybe he'd say that this was peaceful. Today it just feels lonely. 

He finishes his first cigarette, mars the white snow further when he puts out the butt and leaves a gray ash streak in it. Then he lights up again. Halfway through that one when the door creaks open. There's a slight pause and then fresh footfalls crunching through the snow towards him. He spares his unwanted company a glance and finds Duster, bundled up in his big coat, making his way over. 

Shigaraki doesn't say anything, just moves to stand a foot or so away, claiming his own spot on the railing and watching the snow fall. Knows the boss doesn't sleep much, thought he just would play his games or something when he wasn't. Didn't know he came up here. They stand and watch the snow quietly for a few minutes before there's a slight rustling, and Dabi sees Shigaraki place a modest gift bag on the space between them without comment. 

He snorts slightly, seriously? He finishes his cig and flicks this one off of the edge, tempted to do the same with the bag for nothing other than spite. But he doesn't. Instead he rolls his eyes and peeks inside. 

There are three things swamped in the black tissue paper, the pack of his brand of cigarettes is an immediate and welcome surprise. The little velvet jewelry box is a bit more concerning though as he reaches in to see what that is. He flicks it open and finds a new set of ear cuffs, black titanium with what looks like three bands of sapphire that mimic his staples set into them. Which, that's a pretty pricey gift, but given the unlimited plastic they were all given, he supposes it's not really that much to Duster. And, at the bottom, so it stayed flat and unjostled, is a slice of cake with mixed berries and a black candle on top. 

"...Didn't take you for such a sap, Duster." He takes out the piece of cake, finding a fork attached to the side of the box. 

"I don't think it's particularly sappy to try and show my second that I value him being around." Shigaraki tells him in the same even tone. 

"You didn't tell--"

"No." 

Silence stretches between them again and Dabi opens the cake, after a second he lights the candle with his pinky, letting the flame flicker for a moment. Then he blows it out. He doesn't make a wish. He doesn't think there's a single force in the universe that would give him something he asked for, but he knows that those same forces have been conspiring to take away the things he wants throughout his whole life. He won't offer up something else they can tear away from him. He sinks the fork into the cake and takes a bite. The sponge is light and airy, the frosting a whipped cream that's not nearly as sweet as he was expecting, and the berries bursting with a pleasant tartness. He didn't know that Shigaraki picked up on the fact he hates sweets, doesn't know what to make of the fact he'd brought him the perfect cake. 

He takes a bite and then offers the fork to Duster. His boss hesitates only for a second before he takes it and has a bite of his own. And they pass the fork back and forth as the snow falls until the dessert is gone. It's colder, later, and the snow is thicker than it was when they first came out. Both of their footprints have a fresh layer of snow filling them in when Dabi caps the empty container and puts it back into the bag. He wonders if it's late enough to not be his birthday anymore. 

"...Thanks." 

It was hard enough to make himself say that, he's glad that Shigaraki barely acknowledges it. "What did you wish for?" 

"Nothing." He tells the other man, actually turning so he can see how that lands. 

Duster meets his eyes, and his are... too sharp. Dabi knows immediately that Shigaraki has seen right through him. That he knows why he wouldn't make a wish, why he didn't tell any of the others, why he hid away and tried to pretend. And it's not pity in his eyes, not something that turns his stomach and makes him wish he'd been able to keep his mouth shut earlier. It's just... quiet. Maybe something close to... acceptance. Though maybe, maybe there is a little hint of something mournful in that look too. Or maybe Dabi's deluding himself. 

Shigaraki starts to move away from the railing, but this time Dabi catches his sleeve. Moves, slowly, but sure enough before he can think better of this. Presses a kiss to the very edge of Shigaraki's lips. Soft and light, quick, before he's pulling away, a little worried he might have sealed his fate of having this be his last birthday. But when he pulls away and lets go of his sleeve, Shigaraki doesn't look disgusted or annoyed, doesn't look like he's about to tell him that was inappropriate and that he crossed a line. 

Instead he reaches with very deliberate slowness, and Dabi lets him. Settles a hand against his cheek, the leather of his gloves cold, the one uncovered finger stroking gently along his skin, just above his staples. Red eyes watching him to see if he flinches, if he backs away, but he doesn't. And then Shigaraki leans in. His kiss is pressed against Dabi's lips. He wonders if Tomura's mouth always feels like shattered stone or if it's just because both of them have been standing in the cold for so long. It's a light press of their lips, and he starts to pull away just as quickly as Dabi had, but he catches the other's wrist and keeps him there. Moves in closer and parts his lips with a soft sigh. Already let him have so much today, maybe Duster will give him just a bit more. 

And he does. He presses back in and kisses him firmer, deeper, his tongue flicking over that parted seam of his mouth and slipping inside when Dabi invites him in. They both taste like berries and Shigaraki kisses him like he knows he's never going to get another chance. Like he's wanted to. Like he'll be... sad when Dabi's gone. It makes that heavy weight that's been hanging on him all day focus itself and shatter his chest into sharp fragments of bone that are cutting into him with every breath and each increasingly rapid beat of his heart. But he doesn't stop. He tangles his hands into Duster's hair and pulls him closer, kisses him a little hotter, a little hungrier, and Shig meets him there. Kisses him until Dabi's body is steaming in the winter air as his skin steadily grows warmer, but both of their breaths are filling the air with steam when they part. 

Red eyes on him again, a question in that look. Dabi pulls him back in. 

Okay birthday, he supposes. Though he was wrong about knowing where he would be sleeping tonight. 

[ts-witchy-archive]

Hello! I've seen a bit of wiccan (?) things for a while, if I were to start I wouldn't even know how to start though. (my autistic ass does not leave the house and my mom would probably think it's weird to make strange concoctions of things) I also don't really know how deities work and how do you find out which one your communicating with? Tbh I've always felt like someone is around but whatever god it is seriously fucking hates me /hj Been better since I started medication but like the luck I have is 50/50 good bad and that is probably not normal. If you answer this it'd be very helpful.

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

I just want to start by defining a few terms for you :)

Wicca/Wiccan: A pagan religion that focuses on nature, magic and witchcraft. It was founded in the mid 20th century and Wiccans primarily worship 2 Gods which are personifications of nature.

Witch: Just a person who practices witchcraft. It's a non-gendered term and a non-religious term/practice. Not all witches are Wiccan but all Wiccans are witches. Witches can be absolutely anyone

Personally, I'm not Wiccan so I can't really tell you much about that but if there is one thing I know, it's witchcraft! There are many different places to start but I'm going to condense it down as much as humanly possible. It'll probably feel like a bit of information overload so just try to take it slow and relax. Enjoy the learning.

My favourite book for beginner witchcraft is 'Witchery: Embrace the Witch Within' by Juliet Diaz. She is a fantastic author and wonderful human. Everything about the basics of witchcraft you could need is in that book (imo). You should be able to find a pdf online if you can't get a physical copy.

As for youtube channels with solid content:

Harmony Nice: She covers everything Wicca. She has a playlist with all her Wiccan/witchy content witch is linked here

The Witch of Wonderlust: Olivia has been a favourite witchy youtuber of mine for a while. I wouldn't recommend jumping into her videos without any prior knowledge but once you have a grasp on the bare bones it should be okay. Here is a playlist she made with everything you could possibly need when beginning witchcraft. SOrt through the videos and see what peeks your interest.

The Hearth Witch: Another wonderful account if I remember correctly. Her videos used to be on the longer end (30-60mins) so if you have a short attention span then maybe not but she has a wealth of information.

I also recommend joining a few discord servers, following a few pages on tumblr just to get acquainted with the community and terminology.

Okay, on to the deity work situation. Deity work is generally considered more intermediate in the witchcraft community. key words being 'Deity WORK'. Worship is completely fair game. Setting up an altar, praying, leaving offerings, doing activities in devotion to the deity is absolutely something you can do relatively quickly.

As for IDing a deity, most people do it through 'divination' which is things like tarot, a pendulum, dice, bone throwing, and other ways. Most people also ask for signs that a specific deity is 'reaching out' to them or wants them to pay attention. You can also politely ask someone who is volunteering their time on tumblr or a discord server to find out for you via divination. If they don't say their doing free readings, obviously, don't ask.

Finally. luck is luck. It makes no sense for a literal God to hate a human. We all have periods of shitty luck and awesome luck! I wouldn't blame that on anything. Sometimes bad things just happen unfortunately. But sometimes amazing things also happen, even if it's just as small is finding 5 cents on the footpath.

That was so long. Congrats if you made it to the end because I nearly didn't when writing this. I hope this helped a bit. Feel free to reach out if you need a hand with anything. Thanks :)

[alostlittleriverlotus]

Little note: semiverbal/semispeaking and also have disorganized speech. difficult for us to communicate. also being a system and I specifically being a shell alter means I experience different feelings/beliefs around things from other alters so...if we are kinda wishy washy/not perfectly stated then uh that's why. It's very difficult and confusing for us.

Rant about our experiences with psychs and mental health professionals and feelings around our those experiences.

going into the office to meet with the psych and dealing with being outside the expectation of what they thought I'd be like when depressed is weird. And a lot of the questions asked about what we experience mentally was very confusing for our mind. it's just...weird. The more we think about that appointment and the more we realize how it still kinda hurt us, shut us down. Some of our aggressive abusive persecutor alters are especially upset at just being labelled intrusive thoughts. But it's just another reminder that ultimately, no one truly examines you. Since we've been diagnosed with GAD, all of our symptoms have been lumped in under that by multiple professionals. Told that our anxiety is purely biological based with no trauma causing it at all.

We have been told by our mother that people will not expect that you will be anything outside of normal (her words) unless you tell them. It's why we've wanted a diagnosis for so long. So we can have people believe the reasons why we act the way we act. But we are unsure where we want to go with professional help.

also most of the wording for trauma was based around being life threatening situations and witnessing abuse. but I was never in a truly life threatening situation and I didn't witness abuse, I WAS abused. So once again, the fact we've been abused goes completely ignored and we just lied about having an average relationship with our mom.

I can't remember a lot of the appointment cause of our system. Which is fine. But just what I can remember rubs me the wrong way. My mom always acts confused when we say something is good, but then change our minds. But it's hard for us to know in the moment. We are malleable and agree with most things which also leads to us avoiding many things since it CAN risk harm for us. Being paranoid and avoidant helps us stay safe because our system isn't the safest. So we often agree with and seem happy at "getting help" only to process it later when alone and feel really unsatisfied with what happened. She expected us to be almost stereotypically depressed. We had to lie about our suicidality cause we knew it wouldn't be good. We lied about our risk taking/self destructive behaviours. Cause we know that trying to explain how it is for us will make no sense.

Professionals have always led to us feeling more isolated. Our abuse is hidden, no one believes it except for our friends, no one sees it. They feel an able bodied able minded person that SHOULD be functional. They will assume I am untraumatized. They would rather call us an entitled brat that doesn't care about others than actually examine us. We always went in expecting these experts would help. But they really...don't. The most okay therapist we had did help us with our anxiety. Our shitty previous psych and therapist got us on meds. This psych is managing our meds and has actually fucking explored autism and adhd for us. But for what we really want to seek help for...is entirely forgotten and ignored. And with...with programs that prevent us from being able to open up, that make us defensive and shut down, that work to keep our abuse, our reality hidden...we feel like there's no answer.

Our main goal now is to move in with our wifey and they can help us seek help since they can see things outside of our perspective and also know everything that we cannot remember cause of our system and shut down and silence. But really. We have felt so failed because we believed professionals would actually want to help us, would be able to see what was going on, would know better. But really, they don't. And being disillusioned by this when we believed getting professional help would help us just hurts. Our meds help thankfully, especially with our OCD intrusive thoughts. But for the unwrapping our trauma, yeah. They fail. We are only somewhat good now because of our own hours and years of research and finding communities that get it.

But it's just a reminder that even years later, still we are invisible. We will be overlooked and ignored. I really don't care about such things anymore until I have my wifey by my side since they won't talk over me and won't try to downplay my issues like our mother.

I dunno. Just needed to vent. It's been weeks since our last appointment and we just feel uneasy about it. It's hard going from the belief everything is great because they did the bare fucking minimum to feeling unsatisfied because of the stuff you didn't like and didn't appreciate.

We've been failed by a lotta doctors for physical and mental stuff, but the ones that ignore our trauma and circumstances especially with the rigid yet confusing wording of situations really...really affects us bad. And it feels like a hopeless reminder that no matter what we do, it is exactly what our abuser played off. Our system is meant to be hidden, it is meant to keep us silent, it is meant to be difficult to undo. And the failings of professionals to help even with our "lighter" trauma makes us feel hopeless about ever dealing with our programming and tbmc trauma. We hope we can find a good specialist one day. But fr. Having professionals ignore even what feels like "light" and "obvious" trauma to us (compared to other shit) is what hurts us, but we are also so used to it.

And we shouldn't fucking have to be. The mental health system does nothing for people that sit outside of specific neat little expectations. Even with the meds we have, we didn't start them until we were 18 despite struggling for years. Our shitty therapist literally was shocked we hadn't been on meds if our anxiety was that bad. Yeah, welcome to our life. If everything is "that bad" yet we never get help for it. Online communities and other mentally ill people have done more for us than anything else. Because we got advice from people that had similar situations to us. Reminders and stuff online have done more help for us than most professional shit. When professionals repeatedly made us more suicidal and wanna hurt ourselves and made us feel responsible for our emotions even when we were a fucking MINOR BEING ABUSED.

So yeah. We have our beef. And we just...hope for a better tomorrow.

[akkpipitphattana]

‘ever realised one of your friends is a terrible person’ SPILL

if i were to spill completely, we’d be here all week because this has happened to me on MULTIPLE occasions, but i’ll give a brief rundown of The Big Three as i’ve come to call them

-the toxic codependent homoerotic adolescent girl friendship is basically a trope at this point, but i had one of those and she was like. a genuinely awful and terrible person. i met her in like kindergarten and dealt with her bullying/manipulation/abuse until like eighth grade when i finally dropped her. they reached out to me in like my senior year of high school to apologize and explain themselves and i have forgiven them and we follow each other on social media and stuff now. they’ve grown and learned since then, they were a kid in a really shitty and abusive home so like i get why they were the way they were - especially cause their parents did some insane shit to my family as well which was a whole thing. but still they Were shitty and awful to me and there’s not an excuse for that, so i doubt i’d ever be able to be real friends with them again, so we stick to liking each others posts occasionally on insta

-had a friend from fourth grade until my sophomore year of high school who just completely ghosted me and the rest of our friend group after they got really depressed and stopped coming to school. and here’s the thing, i obviously know how bad mental illness can get and we all were really sympathetic and worried for a long time. when i tell you it took a year for this friendship breakup to happen because we were all really forgiving and trying to be there and understand what was going on with them, i mean that. we had multiple interventions, multiple attempts at getting them to talk to us. meanwhile they were also constantly posting on their twitter and communicating with their online friends but couldn’t send a single response to our pages of texts asking if they were alright. there was one time when one of us texted them to check in and then they SHITTALKED HIM ON THEIR TWITTER like lmao?? he was trying to be a good friend?? one time we showed up at their house to drop off something and try to invite them to see a movie with us that weekend and they HELD THEIR DOOR SHUT so their mom couldn’t open it and let us in. and they were also REALLY WEIRD AND FETISHISTIC of our trans friend when they were around. like “uwu smoll bean” levels of weird

-friends with her from fifth grade until literally this past summer, but she was just genuinely a horrible friend and person for so long and it took me so long to finally cut her off cause i didn’t wanna risk losing the rest of my friends but they all had issues with her too lmao. she always seemed to target my insecurities and make me feel shitty about things she knew i already felt bad about. and she was also a huge hypocrite, insanely self centered, and also weirdly mean and judgmental?? like she had the weirdest shit to say about the queer community despite BEING queer herself and i was always like ??? girl what. and her victim complex was fucking crazy, she somehow managed to make three of her closest friends telling her she had been a shitty friend and should probably be better about that into us saying all that cause she’s black. like girl in what world does me pointing out that you’re really weird about my mental health and are acting like a hypocrite have to do with racism. what does you inviting our friend to visit you and then nearly abandoning him to go to a party bc he doesn’t like them and also pressuring him to drink after he told you he doesn’t want to have to do with racism. answer quickly.

[purgatorihorror]

TRIGGER WARNING...... mention of SELF-HARM .

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I don’t really know where to begin writing this. I wanted to make a video, but it would be far too long, so if you’re here reading this blog post thank you.

I will start out by saying thank you SO much to everyone for the well wishes, and for having my back that night. After a few days I felt very ashamed of myself for wanting to end my own life over something so stupid. After going to the hospital and getting help, I don’t feel ashamed, but I feel sad. I feel sad that with everything I went through last year with thinking I was going to die from pancreatitis that I forgot how lucky I was to be here. I feel sad that I hurt a lot of people in the community who care about me for even attempting or even having it cross my mind. It turns out this goes beyond just being upset at myself for thinking that I hurt someone when they accused me of copying their YouTube content, but working with my doctor I’ve come to realize that there was much more going on with me internally. We’ve come to the awful realization that I haven’t fully healed from the trauma of my past, and the wounds of my past were pretty much just masked with medication and not really diving into fixing the problem at hand. Not only that, but the shitty truth of the matter is my mom is not getting any better. She is at the end stage of emphysema and COPD. She’s getting more tired easily. She has been hospitalized in ICU twice in the last year which is more than she was when she was first diagnosed with the disease. The only thing even keeping her out of the hospital is a breathing mask that she now has to wear when she sleeps, and if she doesn’t wear this mask she’ll either die or be hospitalized again, I don’t even want to think about it, but I am being completely honest here about everything that has been going on with me, and as much as the truth hurts, it’s just that, the truth and sometimes the truth fucking sucks. We honestly don’t know how many years she has, or if she even has a full year. I hope she will be around to watch Brandon and I get married, but it’s not looking good to any of us. Brandon and I lived with my family since 2016, and were supposed to move out in 2018 until Christmas day of that year when she almost died. We chose to stay and help her, and help my family. We wanted to help pay for her medication. I wanted to help care for her, bathe her when my father and brother worked, feed her, and just tend to her basic needs. I did all this despite the emotional abuse I had to deal with from my father. My depression and anxiety kept getting worse and worse, but we stayed for her. My mom and I weren’t that close when I was young. I had some behavioral problems due to early mental illness and I was NOT an easy daughter to live with. However, we became the best of friends after reconnecting. I’d wish and wish with every bit of my heart that I would’ve been better when I was a child/teen, but she forgave me and that meant so much to me, and we became the best of friends. Growing closer to her I saw her health deteriorate more and more. Unfortunately she was already diagnosed with COPD already, but she wasn’t seeing a doctor and continued smoking cigarettes for a few years until she realized she had to stop. After she was hospitalized in 2018 and I thought I was going to lose my best friend, we became even closer than that and I was constantly worried about her and scared that I’d lose my mom. Over those years she just got worse and worse. 2018 was when she had to be placed on full time oxygen at home, but the more she became hospitalized I knew it was just getting worse. The Christmas season before last she was hospitalized once again, but this time they weren’t sure if she was even going to come out of it. Luckily she was able to come home for Christmas. My mental health was getting worse though due to the emotional abuse from my dad. Always calling me a whore, piece of shit, telling me I was going to hell for having Pagan beliefs instead of being a Christian, calling me a no-good liberal communist bitch, things much worse than that that I can’t even mention here. It hurt a lot. Then he would try to buy me things like candy and whatnot and then say that I’ll always be his little girl. I was so confused because if he thought that way, if he loved me, why did he treat me so poorly? It really messed with me and confused me, I didn’t know what to think and when I tried to think it just felt like my brain was short circuiting all the time if that makes sense. The year before that I had gotten back on medication for my mental health, but last year is when I started doing therapy sessions again. Among doing therapy sessions with my doctor who I grew to love and admire, she helped me dive deep into things and I realized that I was broken, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get better. I started to remember things from my childhood, like how my dad threatened me with hell if I didn’t follow Jesus, which apparently sparked something called thanatophobia, which is a severe irrational fear of death and/or the dying process. Not only did we dive into the things my dad said to me over the years and how he treated me, but we found out that I truly have not healed from the wounds of my past. I was physically and mentally bullied throughout my entire time from elementary school into high school... it just got way WAY worse when I was in high school. I wore all black clothing, band shirts, hoodies, skinny jeans, dyed my hair black, etc. and that’s when the bullying got worse. I live in the bible belt so people would walk up to me and shout “Jesus loves you, Antichrist” any chance they got. I even got bullied by kids who dressed similarly to me, some of the “emo kids” joined in at times. It got so bad to where one guy in particular would go up to random kids and pay them a dollar to come up to me just to say “Jesus loves you, Antichrist”. Not only that, but I was always called ugly by both girls and guys. I couldn’t really get a boyfriend because people just found me so unappealing, which I guess led me to really believe that was the case. It got even worse to where the bullying got physical and it was never a case where girls would beat me up, but some of the guys were getting physical with me. I won’t go into all of the instances where this happened just because this is already going to be long as it is, just 2 that stuck out to me and really damaged me beyond belief. One instance I was listening to my MP3 player on the bus and I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head, like a tugging stinging feeling, I remember I put my hand back there and there was a little bit of blood, so I looked behind me and the guy who instigated a lot of my bullying (and this was the same guy that paid people to come up to me and say “Jesus loves you, Antichrist”), had apparently ripped a chunk of my hair out, he was laughing at me and so were the people near him. Luckily my stop was next since I was the 2nd stop, so I tried to get off of the bus quickly because I was embarassed and just wanted to be out of there, and I tripped over something, I forget exactly if someone tripped me or if it was someone’s backpack in the aisle I tripped over, but I fell and the whole bus began laughing at me and it made me feel SO much fucking worse than I already did. At that point I was crying a lot and I was just excited to go home. Well when I got home (at this point my sister and her then boyfriend lived with my family) my sister’s boyfriend was an asshole and as soon as I walked in he apparently said he found some video diaries I made of just me venting about the things that I was going through in school and began kind of making fun of me for it, so I was crying worse and went to hide in my closet. I don’t know how long I was in there for, but I just wanted to be in darkness away from the world. Not really sure what happened after that. The other time that stuck out to me was the time I was staying over at a friend’s house and she wanted to walk over to her friend’s house who everyone called “Turtle” as a nickname (I forget why exactly) and when we got to his house he had some of the guys over that happened to bully me in school for my appearance and who always accused me of being a “devil worshiper”. I had a bad feeling in my stomach and told her I didn’t want to be there, but she wanted to smoke some weed with them so I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I did stay silent the whole time. None of them really spoke to me, and I don’t know how much longer after we arrived that this happened, but one of the guys left the room for a while, and when he came back everyone in the room including “Turtle” began chanting “Jesus loves you” and “the power of Christ compels you” from The Exorcist, and it turned out the guy had left to get a cross so they can hold it up to me like I was a vampire or demon or something. I tried to run out of the room, but Turtle’s 20 something year old brother (yes, a 20 something year old joined in on bullying a child) blocked the door and he was kinda big so I couldn’t get out. I was held down and the cross was pressed to my forehead so hard that it cut into me a little bit. I think they were trying to “baptize” me in a very crude way or drive some kind of evil out of me. My friend got them off of me and started screaming at them, which at that point I just wanted out and had run down the stairs and out of their house. She ran after me and tried to comfort me. I told her this is why I didn’t want to be there, but she just continued trying to comfort me. When we got back to her place I told her I just wanted to go home. I lied to her stepdad and told him that I was feeling sick and he took me home. I told my brother what happened, but not the rest of my family. I couldn’t really take the bullying anymore, so I started doing harder drugs with my sister’s boyfriend, like pills and stuff. I already smoked weed, but I just didn’t care anymore at that point and wanted to feel numb. I drank a lot, and he taught me how to crush up Klonopins and snort them through rolled up bills. I would even go as far as to take 3-4 of those things on top of hard liquor, not really caring what happened to me, I just felt numb. I began drinking a LOT more and would go to school intoxicated in hopes that it’d make me care less. It didn’t work at all and the bullying got much, much worse. I started faking sick a lot so I wouldn’t have to go to school and my school had a certain amount of days you missed before you and your family had to go to court and I ended up missing more than 10 unexcused days and we did have to go to court. The judge we met up with threatened that if I didn’t start going to school I’d be taken away from home and forced to go to juvenile hall. He showed my parents and I a video of what it was like in one of those places and I got scared. I told him and my parents that I couldn’t take the bullying and that’s why I wasn’t going to school, but the judge said that I had to. There were even times when my mom had gone up to the school to speak to the principal, but nothing was done. I felt so alone and like I had nowhere to go. It was the weekend after that and I knew I had to go to school Monday morning. No amount of drugs or self-harm I did took the pain away, so that’s when I tried to kill myself, and I almost succeeded until my sister found me and my family took me to the hospital. I obviously survived, but told them I couldn’t go back to that school and that I’d rather not be alive. That’s when I was pulled out of school and home-schooling was decided. I was put on medication and diagnosed with severe depression, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and PTSD. The PTSD was diagnosed because of the blackouts. I’d blackout and it was like I’d relive everything that happened to me, and would be scared as hell when I snapped out of it. I was home-schooled, had a teacher come to my house and help me with virtual schooling, and I had therapy at a place called Waccamaw Mental Health. Until I was 18 and my family didn’t want to pay for it anymore, that is. Without going to therapy and seeing a doctor I also could no longer get medication, so I had to stop taking it once it was out which made me sick. I got used to not having it for a while, though. Not only did I need severe help with the mental damage the bullying caused, but the PTSD was also me reliving my sexual assault that I went through when I was 15 caused by my sister’s then boyfriend’s best friend Billy. I had to keep that a secret for a long time. I was drugged and I was r*ped. It isn’t until recently that I realized that I have NOT fully healed from ANY of this and I really, really fucking want to. I learned this because I started having night terrors again recently where I’d wake up in a cold sweat, scared that something bad was going to happen, almost like I was reliving the bullying and the assault. I thought it had all gone away, but since November I have been having horrible nightmares, and in these nightmares I can feel EVERYTHING. Those old wounds started to re-open so I started working with my now therapist trying to come to terms with what to do about it. That’s when I started hardcore meditating and listening to a guy named Dr. Joe Dispenza on how to change my brain patterns and re-arrange my life if that makes sense. It’s been helping, but it will take a while for those old wounds from trauma to heal.  Among dealing with the night terrors and nightmares, dealing with the anxiety and phobias, I’ve been upset and scared to lose my mom because the horrible truth of the matter is we really don’t know how much time she has left. We don’t. She has her good days and she has her bad days, but I am constantly worried about her and stressed about the day I finally get that call that no kid wants to get. Going through my mom dying, the nightmares, my phobias, depression, anxieties, and our recent financial struggle with us scraping by I have been SO stressed and depressed, just wanting everything to work out and be okay. Despite that I have been trying my hardest not to let my feelings show online, where I want to spread love and positivity, hiding behind a smile because I want to make people feel good and be there for others and make others happy even though on the inside I am aching, I still wanted to spread kindness and love because I want to make sure my friends and followers know that they are loved.  I have started doing YouTube a year ago because that’s something I’ve wanted to do since my teens, but never could afford a camera until my fiance gifted me one for Christmas last year. I was excited because I could finally make videos and become a content creator like Sam and Colby (if you don’t know who they are they explored abandoned/haunted places). I decided to make a horror themed channel because my fiance and I had a horror podcast we were doing before that, so I was happy I could finally make videos for YouTube. It started out rocky because I am SO nervous and have really bad social anxiety on camera. I am very awkward and you can even hear it in my voice that I am a bag of nerves. I did this for a few months until I got really sick with a colon infection that spread to my pancreas causing my lipase levels (pancreas enzymes) to elevate, and when that happens it’s called acute pancreatitis. I was sick for an entire month (I think? or at least it felt like a month) and when I finally started seeing a GI doctor he gave me a chart to help me change my diet to a more low-fat diet so my enzymes would go down. They finally went back to normal and after a CT scan everything looked good including my gallbladder, so I could have a more balanced diet... but I went through that entire time thinking I was going to die because my cousin died from chronic pancreatitis and liver disease, so I was scared. I finally started making videos again, but I hated how sickly I still looked from all the weight I lost from being so ill. I still haven’t even fully gained all of that weight back. Hell I haven’t even had a period in 3 years and still haven’t had one. But when I started making videos again I was very self-conscious about how my body looked basically very bony and skeletal, so I started dealing with body dysmorphia. I began talking to my therapist about it and that’s when I learned what that was, I was unhappy with my appearance. I thought about maybe wearing a costume or something to help with my social anxiety and in November I talked to my therapist about that, and she said it would be a great tool to help me get more in my comfort zone and loosen up a bit on camera. So I decided my Halloween costume would be perfect. I could create a character, Purgatori the Pumpkin Queen after the Pumpkin King in Nightmare Before Christmas. I love Halloween and all things Halloween so both my therapist and I thought it was a great idea. After Christmas we were still worrying about money and how we were going to get by, so I thought I’d finally launch my Patreon to help support my family. I could add different things to different tiers, get back into writing and upload some of my short stories that I have written and my paintings, I could make my family some money while also making extra content. I started doing the videos with the costume. I made 2 so far, my Halloween Ends review and my breakdown of the extended cut of Halloween (1978).  I was scrolling through Twitter and Instagram one day and noticed one of my followers talking about someone copying them on YouTube and I felt bad for this person because I know how hard it is to work and edit, especially with someone like me who suffers with severe migraines and editing can make that worse, I decided to send them a DM showing my support and thought maybe this person needed someone in their corner. I didn’t want anyone to be in pain so for my new year’s resolution I wanted to be there for more people, so I messaged this person. They never got back to me so I figured they were just busy. I even subscribed to this person’s YouTube channel to show my support. Us content creators have to stick together, right? And I didn’t want ANYONE feeling sad. A couple days went by and I noticed this person still didn’t get back to me and noticed they left me on read, and I still thought maybe this person was busy or a lot of people may have been trying to message them so I didn’t think anything of it. This person then put out a video and I watched it, and they said it was an update on the copycat so I continued watching it wondering if maybe they’d give clues to who may have been doing this to them, and I wanted to know who to steer clear from, but then they mentioned the person they were talking about tried messaging them shortly after their post trying to do “damage control”. With my anxiety I kept thinking “I really hope they’re not thinking of me”, so I talked to a few of my close friends and they agreed that our content was not the same and that there weren’t any similarities so I felt a little better, but I was still worried that this person thought I was copying them because I didn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s pain if I could help it, and if they did think it was me maybe I could clear the air. I finally messaged them and asked them if they thought it was me, and holy crap it was - they thought it was me. They thought that I had watched their videos for the year they’d been following me and got inspired from them, which is NOT the truth at all, because apparently this person cosplays and does some reviews. I felt HORRIBLE that they thought it was me because it was completely unintentional. They said they had a hard time believing me that I’ve never watched their YouTube videos, but I assured them that I haven’t and that I was so sorry. All I was doing was trying to help my social anxiety and I thought my Halloween costume would be perfect, and I can create a character for my channel - the pumpkin queen. I thought it suited me because I could make my channel Halloween themed too and kinda reconstruct it, because I love Halloween and everyone who follows me knows how much I love Halloween. They also said I was copying them because I was writing horror stories for my Patreon, and they told ghost stories on their channel - which is something I never intended to do on my channel, I just wanted to do reviews, rankings, tier lists, etc. just horror content in general. Maybe some true crime here and there. My mom wanted me to start writing again anyway, and I’ve been writing since I was 13 years old so I thought it’d be perfect for my Patreon, because I wanted people to feel like they were getting their money’s worth if that makes sense. I felt so horrible. So horrible that I unintentionally caused someone pain. I felt so guilty that I tried to kill myself again. Not just because of this, but I was already going through SO fucking much at the time. So stressed. My mental health was HORRIBLE which I was getting help with anyway, but it felt like this was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I just wanted everything to stop. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted all of the stress to go away.  I am getting extra help now. I am lucky that I didn’t succeed because if I did I wouldn’t be here right now. I am just happy to be get the EXTRA help that I need which means more therapy and my dosage being raised on my medication. Working with doctors I realized that I really didn’t copy anyone. I didn’t, and now I feel that with every shred of confidence in my body that I didn’t steal anyone’s work. I’m not sure why this person singled me out, because I found out there were other masked YouTubers out there and other costumed YouTubers. Now that I know that there are more costumed YouTubers out there I want to give them recognition because I didn’t realize that was a thing. My doctors don’t want me to stop doing YouTube. They don’t want me to stop writing or creating or painting. They think I should continue with the costume, but I will say this - to anyone who is a masked YouTuber or costumed YouTuber, you are amazing and I thank you for your hard work.  Honestly if this person really thought for certain I was taking from their work I wish they would’ve just simply messaged me and asked me if it was my intention, or just talk it out with me. But the fact that they made a video falsely accusing me of something that I didn’t do, and even going on to say that they “know how this person is” really hurt me because I don’t sit there and go out of my way to hurt or manipulate people, and it leads me to believe that this person didn’t really know me at all or what I was going through. 

The reason why I write all of this is not to gain sympathy. I do NOT want sympathy. I do not want people to feel sorry for me. I wanted to explain everything, and when I mean everything, I mean EVERYTHING. All of my traumas, everything I’ve been going through recently, because I’ll be honest guys, life has NOT given me a break. And the reason why I explained everything that I went through regarding the bullying and sexual assault is not because I am blaming this person, it is not because I thought this person was bullying me, but just because I have come to terms with the reason why I have been so stressed, and why my depression and anxiety has gotten worse - because I have old traumas that haven’t healed. I am 28 now and thought by now everything would be better, but my doctor said trauma is different for everyone and everyone heals differently.  If you do know who this person is, I beg you PLEASE do not send them hate. Do not call them out. Do not harass this person. There is enough pain in the world, and I truly don’t know if this person meant any harm or not, but I am done with the drama and the fighting. My mental health is more important. I am not fully coming back to social media yet as I am still healing, but I will be posting on my Patreon because I want to contribute to my family in anyway that I can in these really tough times. My fiance has been the best and there for me, he’s taken care of me and he hasn’t left me, and I am so fucking grateful for him. I am so grateful for all of you too. Thank you so much. I have read all of your well wishes and I want to apologize for causing you all worry and pain. I will take a while to heal, but I am determined to get better mentally, not just for me, but for the people around me. I just really want people to be more mindful, because you never know what a human being is going through on the other end. 

I am so sorry for this being so long, I just had a lot to come to terms with. Maybe this will help someone who is going through something similar not to feel so alone. It was important for me to talk about some of this stuff too, because I can’t spend my life running away from my trauma. I have to face it and deal with it.

I love you guys. I love the Mutant Fam. I love the Horror Community. Thank you for listening.

- Tori 

[rollforfelicity]

My friend Kitty Stryker sent me an ARC of her book Ask Yourself: The Consent Culture Workbook, and as I started reading and got the the writing prompts at the end of the first chapter I thought, "I think I want to put my thoughts on Tumblr." So here we are. The suggestion in the book is to read a chapter a day and have it take 4 weeks, but disclaimer in advance: I'm not particularly good at doing things daily, so that will probably not happen, but I'll at least attempt.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time summarizing what each chapter says as I go, because the chapters aren't too long, and people should get the book if they can. I'm mostly going to summarize the prompts and then process my answers.

The first chapter sets the groundwork for what Consent Culture could look like, and asks what "consent" means to the reader, and what "consent culture" would look like in my life.

I imagine when people imagine a book about consent culture, their mind immediately goes to how that relates to sex, which the book does talk about. I don't know how much I'm going to talk about sex as I go through the book, especially I'm a pretty private person when it comes to things like that, but in this prompt I found most of my thoughts went to interactions that have nothing to do with sex.

I grew up in a very tight-knit family. I was homeschooled, and my mom is very co-dependent, and although she's a great parent and I love her, that does kind of mean that boundaries weren't really a thing I was taught about growing up, and even with friendships outside the home, I found myself being treated in ways I didn't appreciate, but with no understanding of how to convey that. I've had to do a lot of work in the past few years of realizing that I can tell people when I don't like what they're doing to me, and giving myself permission to uphold my own boundaries (which is an ongoing process).

Interestingly, playing so many TTRPGs has helped me with this a LOT. Being able to say in advance, "this is the kind of content I don't want to engage with at the table" and being encouraged to say something when I'm uncomfortable has definitely helped me to do those things in real life as well.

Anyway, this is to say that there have been so many times when I've felt like I don't have the agency to say "no," to things, and have instead said nothing, and saying nothing has been taken as "yes," and then after the fact I have told myself "Well, you didn't communicate how you were feeling, so they didn't know. And it already happened so now there's no point in mentioning it." Which is a really shitty feeling.

Consent, to me, is a two way street. Because (if you're interacting with someone in good faith at least) other people can't read your mind, so if something is happening and you don't like it, for the sake of maintaining your relationship, you should speak up. But I have also been in plenty of relationships where I haven't been given much of an opportunity to object to things, or if I do say something, I'm made to feel as though I'm disappointing or hurting someone's feelings. People have to seek out genuine answers to questions like "Do you mind if I..." and "How do you feel about..." and take no for an answer.

Something that would improve my life would be me continuing to work on myself so that I feel empowered to say "no" or communicate what I need from others to feel comfortable. It also means that culturally, people check in more often and are less sensitive to being told no.

For example, I have started making sure that I let players know when I invite them for one-shots who the other players will be. This is so that they aren't surprised by someone they'd rather not work with. In doing that, I've had to ask myself, "So what do I do if someone says they don't want to work with another person I've cast?" If I have no answer to that, am I really concerned with the consent and comfort of my cast, or am I just virtue signaling to make myself feel good about how "informed" my cast is? Making sure that I have actual consent from players is more than just asking the questions, it's about respecting their answers and working toward a solution that everyone is satisfied with.

[oswinunknown]

vent below the cut

cw for intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and just, bad thoughts

and if your a friend of mine, this isnt on you, its just my mind being stupid rn

this is gonna be more of a ramble than a vent but just...

im so tired.

like, mentally, ive got so many things to juggle rn.

grades, irl friends, online friends, home life, anxiety being even worse rn, and :/

right now i cant form the right words, type the right things to say, talk to people the way i used to

before it came so easily to me

now, whenever i get better at talking irl, me talking to ppl online worsens, and same vice versa

and i dont know what to do about it

whenever i interact i have these pillars that help me in communicating. however sometimes one of the pillars fail, and suddenly anxiety comes wooshing in and my entire overall skill of communicating is gone

i cant go a day now where i dont type something or say something or do something where i think "oh i look weird, i look fat, im probably offending someone, they dont want to talk to me im probably annoying and shitty, people dont actually like me, they just hang out with me because they dont want to hurt me, im being too sad, im not being funny enough, im not being creative enough, im not active enough, i cant make a conversation anymore theyre probably tired and want to leave me, i dont talk abt (shared interest here), oh shit ex-friend who i still feel guilt over is closer to me and now im constantly doubting my friend skills, im probably some fat weirdo to people on the bus-"

...i just

i dont know

id talk abt it to someone but as the resident friend therapist for years now, i still dont know who to tell it to

i have one friend who ive vented to the most, but even then shes having her own world of issues and i dont want to add on to it with my stupid brain being shitty.

and too, im getting so sad just from hearing bad things

kids in my backyard are getting more and more rude and more adult in the worst way like cursing each other out and using violence, rage, and crying as a way to get what they want and i hear it every day

my family is too busy worried abt funds n my brother not doing his fucking school work

my other friends i either feel like would get annoyed at my venting (even if ik that theyd listen, anxiety says otherwise)

and even now, just ranting abt it makes me feel shitty bc im just being so fucking stupid rn

and too, so many people i know personally and care for are in shitty conditions and i want to be there and comfort and listen but i keep on taking in stories abt shitty people doing terrible things and it just ruins my mind and mood

but i want to be there, so i listen, because i care

and too, my mom watches shows like that on tv really loudly, so ill still hear it

i used to be able to take really loud rooms and chaos and stuff

now im just

tired.

i havent felt like i could breathe in days

i just want this to be over and to feel better again.

[bi-bard]

I Miss It, I Miss You - Rory Gilmore Imagine (Gilmore Girls)

Title: I Miss It, I Miss You

Pairing: Rory Gilmore X Platonic!Reader

Based On: chemtrails

Word Count: 1,008 words

Warning(s): Rory being shitty, yelling

Summary: Rory never thought about the possibility of losing (Y/n). She should’ve known that people will only wait so long before they get tired. How long can one person go unwanted before they decide they deserve better?

Author's Note: I don't write in the third person very often, but I'm starting to explore new things and falling in love with things that I haven't written in years, so it felt like a good time to try.

I... think I interpreted this song wrong, but I think my idea still fits for the most part. (I really read very far into two lines in particular)

Lizzy McAlpine - “five seconds flat” Writing Challenge Masterlist

-----------------------------------

--Third Person P.O.V--

Rory thought that she and (Y/n) were fine.

She was convinced of the fact.

She was convinced that both of them were in agreement on that fact.

They had been friends for as long as either one of them could remember. School and activities together. (Y/n) had joined the Gilmores for their Friday night dinners on countless occasions. Rory had been adopted into the (Y/l/n) tradition of sharing encouraging messages on the Monday of every week.

They were a part of each other's family.

After moving to start college, Rory felt comfortable and like there was going to be someone there that was other than her mother.

She developed a pattern that she never really acknowledged. She would call (Y/n) whenever she was upset and ask them to come visit. (Y/n) never voiced any concern over this. They would just listen and show up, ready to support Rory in any way they could.

Rory tried to do the same, but (Y/n) rarely seemed to voice any concerns. She tried to make herself available, but they just didn't talk about their own problems very much.

Rory assumed that (Y/n) had been fine.

That was probably (Y/n)'s fault.

At least, that's what (Y/n) believed.

Can't support someone when they don't voice that they need support.

However, (Y/n) never acknowledged what had gotten them to that point. Why wouldn't (Y/n) speak up? Why would they not voice if they needed help from those around them?

The answer is quite simple, really. Guilt.

If Rory had listened, (Y/n) had voiced concerns, but only when they felt like it was completely necessary.

Rory always seemed to need (Y/n)'s comfort, so (Y/n) wanted to make sure they were available to help her. The only time it felt like they had a conversation that wasn't about comforting Rory, (Y/n) had to be the one to initiate it.

Whenever (Y/n) asked for help, Rory always felt distant. Either Rory would be too busy or would never seem to be truly listening, just waiting for the chance to turn everything back to whatever problem Rory was having at the time. It never felt worth the effort to voice what they were going through because there was no reaction that felt genuine.

(Y/n)'s step back was slow.

Not being able to drive out to see Rory all the time. Then, they were missing a few calls and rambling off something about being busy. Then, communication slowed to a stop.

(Y/n) stopped pushing and Rory didn't mind. (Y/n) wasn't useful at the time.

(Y/n) didn't talk to a lot of people about their friendship with Rory. It wasn't their place to claim if Rory was a good friend or not. They just knew that the two of them weren't good for each other.

It would've been fine. Just normal growing apart.

And then Rory and (Y/n)'s trips home lined up.

(Y/n) thought that the chances of seeing Rory were going to be pretty slim. They were wrong. Rory showed up on the doorstep of (Y/n)'s family home, asking to speak with them.

If (Y/n) had known about the risk, they would've asked their mom to turn Rory away. But it was all too late when Rory walked into their room and closed the door behind herself.

"Hey," she said awkwardly.

(Y/n) turned around to face Rory. They felt frozen in place.

"Hi," they replied. "What's up?"

"Wanted to come and visit," she shrugged. "It's been a while."

They nodded in agreement.

"Why has it been a while," she asked. "I mean... we haven't talked in a while."

"Phones do go two ways," they shrugged.

"I know," Rory nodded. "I tried to call for a while. You were always busy."

"I was too busy to drive to your school and comfort you," (Y/n) explained. "I would've been free to chat."

"What," Rory scrunched up her eyebrows.

"I... I got tired of being a therapist," they continued. "I couldn't do that anymore."

Rory just looked confused.

"Whenever you called me, it was to ask for help with something or to ask me to come over and comfort you. I was fine doing that... but I can't handle that all the time. I'm not meant to carry the weight for both of us."

"Friends are supposed to support each other."

"Where was my support, Rory?"

"What," she asked.

"You never questioned why I didn't speak about my issues very often," (Y/n) asked in response. "You always needed the support and then, when I did voice something, you would make me feel guilty or just simply unheard. I can't spend my life like that. Not anymore."

"I... I didn't know-"

"You would apologize for it," they cut her off. "So, you can't act unaware. I'm not going to push for something that has hurt me. I just won't."

"But... we're supposed to be best friends."

"Then you should've treated me like your best friend."

Rory couldn't help but notice how drained (Y/n) sounded. Like the very act of explaining this to her dragged out so much energy and pain. Pain that Rory knew about and didn't help with.

"I'd like you to go," (Y/n) said.

"No," she refused. "Not until we fix this."

"Rory, no."

"You are my best friend. I need you."

(Y/n) shot up from their chair, feeling every ounce of anger come back, "That's the problem! It's only when you need me for something!"

Rory froze.

"You need to go. Now."

Rory took a moment to let the words settle in before turning around and leaving as quickly as she could.

(Y/n) let themself drop back on the chair.

They let out a sob before covering their mouth with their hand.

Reliving it hurt so much. So much more than (Y/n) thought it was going to. After trying so hard to heal, it felt like it was all a waste of time.

(Y/n) took a deep breath, It doesn't undo your progress. Everyone has setbacks. You just need to be able to keep working.

Just keep working.

-----------------------------------

Masterlist

What I Write For

Some Original Characters

folklore/evermore Writing Challenge (and Masterlist)

Maisie Peters - “You Signed Up for This” Writing Challenge Masterlist

[maddiwrites]

The Hybrid (Prologue)

Pairing: JJ x Reader

Summary: The Pogues rekindle their friendship with their old childhood best friend and JJ’s first crush, Y/N. Old feelings resurface for JJ and Y/N, possibly leading to a summer neither one of them could ever forget. Due to past trauma, Y/N is reluctant to let anyone into her heart, but JJ never backs down from a challenge, even if he knows it will come back to haunt him in the end.

Note: So happy to be back with another series!!! I honestly really missed posting. Unlike Secrets of the Shore, updates will be slower because I don’t have them all written out yet. A couple things I wanted to let you know before you read. I based Y/N’s family off of Gilmore Girls. I thought they were the perfect fit for this story and the show in general and I just love their dynamic. (Including Luke who I renamed Steve for obvious reasons). Chapter 1 will explain more obviously but I wanted to give you guys a little snippet of the characters and relationships. So let me know what y'all think!

Word Count: 3.3k

Outer Banks. Paradise on Earth. It's the sort of place where you either have two jobs or two houses. Two tribes, one island. As you know, the Outer Banks is essentially divided into two groups. If we want to be blunt - it’s the rich and the poor. Figure Eight is home to the rich. Aka the Kooks. With houses bigger than necessary with extra rooms that go untouched, boats the size of homes on the Cut - the other side of the island. Most people who live on Figure Eight are your naturally raised assholes. People who don’t know the value of a dollar and take advantage of people who do most of their dirty work that lets them prance around the island with perfectly manicured fingernails. These hard workers are the Pogues. They live on the south side of the island where most Kooks wouldn’t be found dead. They serve fancy meals at the country club for shitty tips, mow lawns, and work their asses off at any other job for minimum wage. The drastic difference in lifestyles tend to cause many spats and arguments between the two communities. Especially between the teenagers who still don’t know how to control their raging emotions or know when to bite back their tongue. For the Kooks, every fight is a fight for dominance where as the Pogues fight for equality - to put the Kooks in their place. Many of these fights happen at summer parties where the two groups clash to find a good time with their friends filled with alcohol, drugs, and good music.

That’s where they find themselves tonight. The infamous Pogues. John B, JJ, Kie, Pope, and now Sarah Cameron. Although born a natural Kook, she’s earned her spot next to the adventurous teens and her boyfriend. Unlike her brother Rafe who basically is the leader of his notorious group. Topper and Kelce are his best friends who follow him blindly.

The Pogues watch them from their spot surrounding the keg. Kie purses her lips in distaste as the boys cat call for the ladies around them. Somehow most of them finding it flattering. Sarah sips on her beer to hide her embarrassment, often wondering how she and her brother grew up to be so different. Pope and John B stay mostly disinterested, only worried if they try to make a pass at an unwilling girl or fire a degrading comment at their short tempered friend. JJ Maybank is known around the island for his trouble making behavior. Usually if he gets in trouble for fights, no one ever asks who the other people were in the scuffle. Because if JJ Maybank is in the fight, he’s the one who started it, right? Wrong. In fact, JJ usually is never the one to start it. He’s good at keeping his head down and only speaking when spoken to when it comes to the Kooks - the only form of advice worth taking from his father. But his short temper is something the Kooks his age loved to take advantage of because they liked getting a rise out of him. It was like an adrenaline rush.

Luckily, tonight both groups were keeping their distance, either only talking to each other or random Tourons that have found their way to the party. This is usually JJ’s favorite part of a boneyard party. Finding his one fish in a sea of many that he can reel in just for the night and never have to worry about seeing them again.

He has his eyes set on a beautiful blonde making her way to the bonfire when all of a sudden Kie’s voice pulls him out of his trance.

“What’s she doing here?”

JJ follows her line of vision, spotting you walking down the wooden steps that lead to the beach, pulling your best friend behind you by his wrist. He first notices your smile and how it brightens up your entire face. Then of course his eyes scan down your slim but athletically toned body. You’re wearing a pair of jean shorts and a cropped white T shirt that says UNC across the chest. Who knew someone could look so good without even trying?

Well JJ did. He’s known it for a while.

“Careful. I think you’re drooling,” John B whispers in his best friend’s ear.

JJ pushes him away and mutters, “Shut up. No I’m not.”

But maybe he was.

Y/N Y/L/N is a unique resident of the island. Unlike majority of the island, she doesn’t fall in either Kook or Pogue category. She’s what everyone calls the Hybrid.

People who work hard for what they have but haven’t fallen to be Pogue status. Quite literally living in the middle in a place they call the Crest.

Your story is well versed among the gossipers of the island (which tends to be just about everybody).  And mainly that’s because of who your grandparents are.  Claude and Doris Y/L/N. Two of the riches people on the island, living in a three story house on the beach. Many people fear them, others envy them. Most feel both. Even Ward Cameron walks on egg shells around them, which is quite often, considering he works for Claude. They’re the kind of people who have never heard of Barefoot wine or Walmart. They keep their noses up and turn a blind eye to the suffering communities around them. Thirty four years ago, Doris gave birth to a daughter that couldn’t be more opposite than them. Lorelai Y/L/N was a wild child. A rule breaker. She snuck out at nights, dated boys her parents would never approve of, dabbled in breaking the law here and there. It didn’t matter how many times her parents disciplined her. She always managed to make her parents’ life a living hell. 

No one was surprised when word got passed around that Lorelai had gotten pregnant at eighteen. Although it was with another Kook, she brought shame upon her family name when she refused to get an abortion, even when her mom tried dragging her by her hair. 

Lorelai risked everything by running away from her parents’ home in the middle of a windy night. With only one suitcase, the baby daddy out of the picture, and less than a grand in her pocket, she managed to make a life for herself on the South side of the island. She worked two jobs, found an affordable apartment for cheap rent, and managed to save some money before her babies were born.

Yes, babies. As in more than one. Five months after running away from home, she gave birth to twin girls and they instantly became her entire life. With the help of her best friend Steve, who she met one month after being on her own, meeting him at his automotive shop when she very much literally rolled her junky car into the garage, she raised you and your sister on the Cut. The two of you are her greatest accomplishment. Every now and then, she mentally throws up a middle finger to everybody who doubted her, proud of who the two of you have become. 

Right before you turned ten, your mom took a business risk and opened her own Cafe. The Bikini Beans cafe, very popular amongst both Kooks and Pogues. The business did so well that she was able to move the three of you out of your shitty apartment into a beautiful one story home with three bedrooms in between the Cut and Figure Eight, aka the Crest, the summer going into your freshman year.

You actually used to be best friends with John B Routledge, JJ Maybank, and Pope Heyward. It was easier being friends with them than the girls, finding more joy in sports and rough housing than makeup and gossip. 

Doing the same summer that you moved, your mom pulled you out of Kildare County High and placed you in Outer Banks Private Academy. Aka Kook Academy. Around this time, your grandparents had also become more involved in your life, and you wondered if they had somehow bribed your mom into forcing you to transfer schools. You tried asking her during one of your many fights that started with you begging her to keep you at Kildare County High, but she quickly shut you down and told you to be grateful. That was ironic coming from the woman who ran away from the people giving her an expensive high school career. 

You had no choice but to do what your grandparents wanted and attend Kook Academy. Making friends was a lot harder there than it was in Kildare County High. You managed to make one friend in your freshman year. Andre Cortez. Due to an incident a couple years back, you built thick walls and Andre was the only one able to break them down. You were grateful for your friendship, but hanging out with him was nothing like hanging out with the Pogues. 

When you transferred schools, you lost touch with the Pogues slowly. Your life became busy with school and playing dress up for your grandparents and the boys were starting to work. Eventually all contact was cut and ever since, you’ve felt a void in your heart.

“Look,” You tell Andre. “I told you I would be your wing woman and I’m not backing down from what could possibly be the most important role in my life.”

You didn’t notice the Pogues or any of the stares around you. It’s true you’re not much of a party girl. I mean, you’ll go out here and there, have a drink or two, but you felt more comfortable at places where you weren’t surrounded by drunk and horny teenagers. 

“He’s probably not even here,” Andre says. He’s trying to look nonchalant but you notice the way his eyes dance from face to face of the people around him. 

“He told you he was going to be here, right?” You ask him with one brow raised. Andre nods. “Then, we’ll find him.”

Sarah and Kie never made any effort to talk to you at school, but to be fair, neither have you. You’ve heard mixed reviews, some people call them spoiled brats, ungrateful...some even go as far as calling them ‘The Cut Sluts.’ Of course you never take any of those things to heart. You can’t judge a book but it's cover. Plus, they’re friends with your old best friends. They can’t be that bad for John B and JJ and Pope to be hanging out with them, right?

“You think she'll come over here?” Kie asks. No one’s ever said it out loud, but her friends wonder if deep down, Kie was a little jealous of you. Because you were their first real girl friend. You were the first girl they ever let in and opened their heart too. That was a tough pill for Kie to swallow when she originally thought she was that girl. Of course the boys don’t like you any more than Kie and vice versa. But sometimes Kie wishes she could have grown up with the boys the same way you had. 

“Probably not. Unless she’s drinking,” Pope says and motions towards the keg they’re near. 

“I have an idea,” John B says and fills up a red solo cup. He hands it to JJ. “Why don’t you go offer her a cup.”

JJ snags the cup out of John B’s hand and glares at him. “Fuck off, dude.” 

“Do you guys ever see her around at school?” Pope asks the girls.

Sarah shrugs. “Not really. She doesn’t really get a long with my old group of friends.”

Kie rolls her eyes. “No one gets along with your old group of friends.”

Sarah playfully shoves Kie by the shoulder and they laugh. 

“I heard she turned down Raymond Easterling a couple weeks ago and he didn’t take it very well,” Pope says, remembering the words he heard from the kids in his class roaming the school hallways. 

Raymond goes to Kildcare County High with the Pogues. He’s known to be a trouble maker and a class clown. He works with JJ at the country club. The kid can make JJ laugh sometimes, but he wouldn’t necessarily say he likes him all that much. He can be an arrogant asshole with an ego bigger than it should be.

“She turns down everybody,” Sarah says. “Some people at my school call her ‘The Heart Sucker’ because she can pull people in with the snap of her fingers and break their heart just as quickly.”

Something stirred in the pit of JJ’s stomach.

“Hey! Where you going?” John B calls out to JJ who’s making his way deeper into the sea of people on the beach. 

“Taking advantage of a good boneyard party, my friend,” JJ calls back and slugs the rest of his beer. Looking left and right, he searches for the blonde he had eyes on earlier. Because right now, he needed a distraction. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The party starts to die down a little after midnight. Some people leave to find another party, some are passed out in the back of their cars, and others had already found what they were looking for - someone to leave with. 

The boneyard party wasn’t as bad as you expected it to be. You had found a couple of kids from your school who were nice enough to make small talk with you while Andre left to find a guy named Devon, a Touron he’s been talking to who’s renting for the entire summer. 

Now you’re waiting for Andre to come back so the two of you can walk home. You find comfort under a slanted palm tree towards the back of the beach, scrolling through random apps on your phone to pass the time.

“Y/N?” You look up from you phone and smile when you see your former best friend inching closer to you, squinting in the dark to see if it’s really you. 

“Maybank? What are you still doing here?” You stand up and pat the sand off your hands on you thighs. 

Your heart skips a beat in your chest when you look at him. He’s beautiful. Lucious blonde hair, perfectly tanned skin, piercing blue eyes. You always knew JJ was going to grow up to be gorgeous. He was cute when he was younger. At least you always thought so. 

“I was just leaving, but I thought I saw you sitting here and wanted to make sure you were all right.” He knows it’s not like you to stay this late at a party, especially all by yourself. When he first saw you sitting there, he didn’t know if he should say something. Mostly due to nerves of seeing you again. But the other Pogues had already left and he didn’t trust anyone else at the party to be near you alone late at night. It didn’t matter if you were sober or not. 

“Aw. Was JJ Maybank worried about me?” You tease. Talking to him felt easy. As if you never stopped being friends. A few years ago, you and JJ had the best banter. Despite constantly bickering back and forth, John B always swore the two of you would get married one day. The two of you just always clicked like a natural connection. And even now, when only seeing each other every now and then for a few minutes at a time, it felt normal. You smirk when JJ rolls his eyes. “I’m kidding. Yeah, I’m okay. Just waiting for my friend to come back from his little rendezvous,” You say. 

JJ nods. “Did you have a good time? I feel like I never you see at these things.”

“Yeah. Parties aren’t really my thing. But Andre was nervous to meet this guy he’s been talking to for a little while so I came for moral support.”

“Looks like he didn’t need much of the support.”

You shrug. “It’s better that way, anyway. I don’t mind waiting for him. What about you?”

“What about me?” 

“Did you have a good time tonight? I hear your quite the ladies’ man at these things.”

“Come on, Sparky. You know better than to believe everything you hear.”

Your face lights up at the mention of your old nickname. You use to always be busting out the seams with energy. On days where the boys just wanted to chill and play video games, you would drag them to the park for a game of kick ball. Or when they wanted to sleep in after a long week, you showed up at 8 am to drag them out of bed to catch the morning waves. So one day JJ started calling you Sparky, and it stuck with the rest of your little gang. You always pretended to hate it, but secretly you loved it. 

“Oh I don’t believe everything I hear. I do, however, believe what I see. And your arm around that tall blonde in the little black dress looked quite convincing.”

You first saw JJ at the party when he was making his way to the pretty girl by the water. Your teeth involuntarily clenched and there was a twisted feeling in your stomach you couldn’t shake whenever you looked at them. 

In that instant, JJ felt grateful for the dark sky. He felt the rush of heat rise up his neck to his cheeks before he could stop it. He knew the motivation to see that girl was because of you. He just wished you never saw it. But he didn’t know why. 

“I walked her home. She wasn’t my type,” JJ plays it off. 

“I didn’t realize you had a type,” You giggle, but a small part felt relieved to hear this. “So what is it? Your type?”

Hybrids with a Pogue attitude, bright smile, beautiful eyes, and a mouth that could make any sailor turn around, JJ thought. 

“I don’t know. Haven’t figured it out yet.”

You roll your eyes playfully. “Well, when you figure it out let me know.”

“Why? So you can transform into my ideal girl?” He teases.

Now you’re the one thankful for the dark sky. “In your dreams, Maybank. But so far, I do have the perfect wing-woman track record, so if you needed help -”

“I don’t think I need any help in that department. Thank you very much.”

You throw your hands up in fake surrender. “Ooo. Touchy subject.”

JJ rolls his eyes at the same time your phone pings with a text message. You pull it out of your shorts pocket and open the text from Andre, telling you to leave without him because he’s gonna stay out late with Devon and won’t know what time he’s going to be done.

“Everything all right?” JJ says, watching you read the message.

You lock your phone and stuff it in your back pocket again. “Like I said. Perfect wing-woman track record.”

“That was Andre?” 

“Yeah. He’s most likely not coming home tonight.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“At least one of us is,” You joke. 

JJ’s grin slightly falters but you don’t catch it. You have no idea how much he wishes the two of you could be equally as lucky. Together. 

“Well, I should probably go,” You say and bend down to grab your flip flops.

“Let me walk you home,” JJ offers. 

“Oh no. It’s okay -”

“You’re cute. It’s wasn’t up for debate. I’m not letting you walk back by yourself.”

You scoff lightly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Just humor me.”

You roll your eyes and smirk but choose not to argue. In fact, you’re excited to spend more time with JJ. It’s been so long.

“Fine.”

“And here I thought you might’ve grown out of your stubborn phase by now.”

You shove him playfully by the shoulder. “Shut up!”

And just like that, it felt like old times.

[hockeyboysiguess]

four calling bird -> four broken sticks | a. matthews

a/n: it’s me, again, hoping you aren’t yet sick of christmas fics from me. if you aren’t, here’s a link to the rest of this 12 days of christmas series!

word count: 4,161

warnings: two curse words and some angst. 

“How many broken sticks is that today, Matts?”

Auston didn’t know the answer and he didn’t care about the answer either. He just cared that his stick was broken and he couldn’t practice his slapshot with a broken stick. And he needed to take a slapshot right now, and another one, and another one. He needed to send a puck through the netting, through the glass behind it, and bury it deep in the wall behind that. Maybe his feelings for you would get buried with it if he could just hit the puck hard enough.

“I think he’s at two,” Willy supplied as Auston grabbed a fresh stick from the rack that unfortunately wasn’t pre-taped. He’d broken all of those already. 

“You missed one,” Mitch corrected. “That’s the third one he’s broken.”

Auston started a fresh roll of tape, starting with the heel of his new stick like always.

“I’m right here,” Auston reminded his teammates who were talking about him like suddenly he was invisible as he taped his stick lazily. One of his worst tape jobs in awhile, but he didn’t really care. “I’m not breaking any more. Just in case you were wondering.” 

That promise worked for another twenty minutes. Until Mitch dared to ask the question everyone had been avoiding. 

“So, did you tell your mom you broke up and that she’s not coming with you for Christmas yet? If not, you kind of need to tell her. You can’t just show up without her.”

And there came the fourth broken stick as the final whistle of practice came, with Auston thinking about the inevitable phone call with his mother and really having to say it out loud that he lost you after everyone told him ad nauseum not to lose you because you were so much better than him. You were so much better than him and Auston couldn’t pretend he was even half of the person you were. He couldn’t even think about watching you shove your things in a box as you raced out of his place, or the drawer that your things had inhabited now sitting empty, or the fact that his mom loved you and he hadn’t told her you weren’t coming to Arizona. He really couldn’t think about losing you a week before Christmas, the time of the year that was supposed to be magical and pure and good and joyful. Instead, Auston was pretty sure he hated Christmas now. 

Auston knew for a fact he hated Christmas as he pressed his mom’s contact on his phone while climbing into his car. He loved his mother and loved talking to her. He loved that he was going to get to go home for a few days and spend the holidays with her. But you were supposed to be there too and telling his mom was the last barrier that made the breakup real. A large part of Auston still thought he’d open his eyes in the morning and your hair would be in his face and your bobby pins would be all over his bathroom counter and your clothes would be haphazardly stuffed in your drawer and overflowing into two of his that technically weren’t yours but might as well have been. 

But then his mom answered the phone and he knew that wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t a nightmare. Well, it might still have been a nightmare before Christmas, but it wasn’t all in his head like he desperately hoped it was. 

“Hi, mijo!” She greeted him with a warmth that always made him feel like he was back in Arizona, but today it also made Auston feel sick to his stomach because he was about to break her heart, never mind the fact that his was already broken too. “How are you? How was practice? We’re all so excited to see you both tomorrow!”

Auston let out a long breath, the kind that let his mom know there was something heavy and unspoken that was going to disrupt the Christmas cheer she’d been building since the Leafs schedule came out and she realized Auston was actually going to be able to make it home for Christmas this year. 

“Actually, um, about tomorrow…”

He trailed off, mostly because his bottom lip started to shake and his eyes started to get cloudy, but also because he wasn’t sure exactly how to admit that the girl his mom adored, who she fully and honestly wanted him to marry, wasn’t coming with him for Christmas this year or next year or any of the years after that. She was gone. He lost her and it was all his fault.

“Mijo, what’s wrong?” 

Auston bit his lower lip hard, hoping that would stop the shake and make his eyes gloss over from a pain that wasn’t in his chest. The words were so timid coming out of his mouth, syllables broken, shattered as they left his lips, “She broke up with me, ma. She’s not coming for Christmas.” 

Ema Matthews didn’t mean to; she wanted to be supportive of her son, but what came out was, “What did you do, mijo?” even though she should’ve just asked him what happened.

“I guess I just didn’t love her enough to overcome how shitty it is to date me,” Auston mumbled, replaying the night over in his head as he spoke. “Sorry for swearing, mama.” 

Auston remembered your sweater from a few nights ago when you showed up at his place, your snowflake one, subtle office appropriate Christmas, is what you’d called it in the moment. Auston had laughed, until he saw an empty box in your hands. He was confused when you set it down on the counter and didn’t take your shoes off. You didn’t bend down to pet Felix like you always did. Your shoes got kicked off haphazardly by his front door and then you pet Felix and then you came over and gave him a kiss. It was your routine when you came over, but this time your shoes stayed on, you barely acknowledged Felix, and there was an empty box sat on a counter in place of kissing him. 

“Auston,” you had sighed and he knew the second he heard the way you said his name that you were breaking up with him. He had been so scared of ever hearing it that he’d imagined every single way it would sound if you were going to do it. Finding you, and you somehow being willing to date him, had been the biggest blessing Auston had ever received. He had always thought that some day you would wake up and realize you could do so much better than him, so he’d imagined what it would sound like when he couldn’t sleep at night on the road without you. He thought if he familiarized himself with every possible permutation of it that when it eventually happened, he wouldn’t cry in front of you, that maybe he wouldn’t beg for you to stay even though you shouldn’t want people who don’t want you. 

It didn’t work. The way you said his name made him cry.

“Please,” Auston had said softly. “Please don’t do this now. Please. It’s Christmas. I know that stupid, but please don’t break up with me at Christmas.” 

You had hung your head and sighed again, “I’m sorry, Aus. I just, I can’t take it anymore. I’ve tried. I’ve tried for so long to just tune it out, just focus on you and us but lately everything has been just so loud that I can barely hear myself think. My friends and family are getting harassed. It’s not just me anymore. It’s too loud. It’s too much. And I don’t want to spend Christmas with your family knowing I just want to end it. That’s not fair to you or your mom or anyone.” 

“How is showing up at my place with a box to dump me for stuff I can’t control without even having a discussion fair either?” 

Auston had tried to fight back. He had tried to have a conversation, to communicate, something he had been absolutely awful at when you started dating. You had been so patient, so kind, and so steadfast with him as he figured out how to be a partner, how to meet you halfway. Here you were, after he worked so hard on himself because he thought if he worked hard enough maybe he could be worth a small part of you, acting like it wasn’t enough, that everything he couldn’t control mattered more than him. Unfortunately, sometimes, people can try as hard as they can, with all of their might, and still lose. He was so good to you, so good with you, but in the effort of fixing himself, of learning to be a better partner with as much of his energy as he had to give, he’d slipped a little in one area. Auston didn’t protect you enough from the noise and you were damaged because of his lack of ability to shield you from the press, from the fans, from every hungry person who fed on other people’s drama and suffering, from people who didn’t want you and Auston to be happy. Auston lost because he didn’t have more to give than he was already giving you. He lost you because what he had to give just wasn’t enough like a rejected Christmas present, rejected not because the gift inside wasn’t beautiful, but because it came with a toxic addition that Auston had tried not to wrap up with him, but failed. 

Driving down the street, all the Christmas decorations seemed to be mocking him. This was supposed to be his best one in a long time, getting to be back in Arizona with his family, plus getting to spend it with you. If Auston had drawn up his perfect Christmas at the start of the year, what he had planned was what he would’ve drawn up. But even the best laid plans, even the most carefully selected gifts, didn’t always pan out. 

“I’m sorry, mijo,” his mother told him softly, any earlier traces of disappointment over losing you from the family gone. She’d have to work through that herself later. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Auston felt like he was supposed to want to talk about it, about what it felt like to lose you and what he was feeling like now that he was being forced to become settled in it even though that was the last thing he wanted. Auston didn’t want to talk about the breakup though because he just tried so hard with you and he came up short anyway. Talking about shortcomings that couldn’t be fixed, because he could never fully shelter you from the noise of everyone else, wasn’t healthy. He could do everything in his power, use all of his energy, to protect you from it all, put zero effort into your actual relationship, and he still couldn’t do it. Talking about something Auston would always fail at and how it had cost him you wasn’t something he was all that interested in with the wreaths on the light posts and the Christmas carols on the radio station that you had insisted he play in his car mocking him. 

“Not really, ma,” Auston admitted softly. “Kind of just need to be alone tonight.” 

“Of course, sweetheart,” she mumbled as assuringly as she could. “Do whatever you need to do.” 

What Auston needed to do to feel better was drive over to your place and beg for another chance, a chance to do it better. He couldn’t even fully protect you, but maybe he could find more to give somewhere in him and do it better, while not being a worse boyfriend for it all. Except Auston knew you didn’t want him to try. You hadn’t asked for him to try. You had just broken up with him, just like that. Now, he was spending Christmas where the only gift he had received so far was his own heart shattered, given to him in an unwrapped box. 

“Yeah, I think I just need some time,” Auston sighed, running a hand through his hair before returning it to the steering wheel. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“If you change your mind and want to talk, you know you can call anytime,” Ema tried to assure her son softly. 

Auston just hummed softly in agreement, before telling his mother Merry Christmas and that he'd see her tomorrow. He tossed his phone careless into the cup holder, one of the side buttons hitting the side of the cup holder and greeting him with a picture of you kissing his cheek, arms wrapped around him, love obvious in your closeness. He hadn’t been able to change it yet, but your face squished against his cheek in that photo made his eyes tear up whenever he saw it. Luckily, the only lucky part of the last few days, he just pulled into his garage, so he could let the tears roll down his cheeks without worrying about not being able to see the road. Like every night since you’d left, Auston slept on the couch that night, the Christmas tree you had insisted on getting, mocking him in the corner. His sheets smelled too much like you to sleep in that bed, so he picked the mocking Christmas tree instead. 

Auston was on autopilot as he grabbed his bag, the one he’d left space in for your extra things that you wanted to pack that lived at his place. He didn’t fill the space he’d left for you because it was still your space. Like yesterday, the Christmas decorations and the Christmas music and the fake gingerbread smell coming from every shop in the airport mocked him as he waited for his flight. He just wanted to be home where he thought being around his family would feel enough like Christmas that he’d feel at least marginally better. He felt better when his mother wrapped her arms around him as he stepped off the plane, and when the warm Arizona sun hit his skin on the wall to the car. But it was all as temporary and out of place as the snowy decorations littering his parents’ home. Snow didn’t fall in Arizona and he didn’t have you anymore. 

His mom tried. His dad tried. His sisters tried. They all tried to cheer him up, shoving an ugly sweater over his head and a Santa hat on top of it. But he couldn’t engage in it. His mind was on you, on how you were supposed to be here, how he wanted to ask you to move in as part of your Christmas gift. He had a key made for you. He was so ready for you, for you and him for as long as he could see into the future, and now he just hated your favorite holiday. His bed felt too big that night, but at least the sheets in Arizona didn’t smell like you even though the space next to him was clearly meant for you. 

Auston woke up the next morning feeling hungover even though he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol. He rubbed his eyes slowly and reached out to the space you were supposed to occupy, finding nothing but cold sheets and an emptiness that felt so much more vast than half of a king size bed. His phone reminded him that it was December twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve, but it had never felt less like Christmas for Auston. Christmas was supposed to be sickeningly sweet, like all the candy his mother would stuff in his stocking later tonight. It was supposed to be happy, and maybe that was the worst part of it all, that Auston felt like he was supposed to be happy but just couldn’t be. Hhe lost you and he felt like he was letting everyone down by not being happy, by not being filled with Christmas cheer that was just making him feel so sick he couldn’t even eat his reindeer shaped pancakes his mother made, like she did every Christmas Eve morning. 

“You want to help me with the cookies?” his older sister asked him, trying to will Auston away from where he’d settled on the couch after being unable to eat his breakfast.

“I’m fine,” he replied with his eyes still trained on his phone. 

He was flipping through photos of you, something he knew would only hurt worse, but he couldn’t stop. He was trying to find out when something had changed, when you stopped looking at him with all the love in the world, the look that people had made fun of you for ever having about him of all people. Now that Auston was looking back on it, maybe they were right to do so. Maybe he was inevitably going to ruin what he had with you and everyone else had seen it from the start, noticed the inevitable unmarked intersection where you would crash into each other. When you crashed last week, it seemed only Auston walked away with any damage, shattered like an ornament that fell from the top of the tree, only to have the fragments of him carelessly tossed in the trash, no attempt made to repair him. 

Auston didn’t leave the couch except to move to the outdoor couch at his mother’s insistence and then back to the indoor one after the sun had set, time passing as it always did but affecting him less. He felt the same from moment to moment, an out of tune, incongruent symphony of thoughts of you, good, bad, and all the gray area in between, like the poor excuse for a symphony the carolers probably behind the knock on his front door would make that interrupted his private thoughts. His family was in the kitchen and he was closest to the front door. He didn’t want to answer and be faced with the prospect of ruining the Christmas spirit for a van-load of local children, but he didn’t have much of a choice when his mom called out for him to answer the door. 

Auston didn’t bother to look out to see who it was, choosing instead to get the shooting of children’s Christmas caroling dreams out of the way as quickly as possible. 

“Hey, guys, I appreciate you coming by, but we’re not really-”

Auston’s words caught on the tip of his tongue when he fully opened the door to see not the group of Christmas carolers he thought he would, but to see you standing there. You had nothing but a broken smile and a small duffle bag, the kind of small that indicated you didn’t know if you were about to be getting right back on a plane or if you were going to be allowed to come in. It was a kind of honest small, one that didn’t want to hope for the best, just expected the worst. You were wearing a Christmas sweater, one of your ugly ones. It was too warm for Arizona, sweat on your temples and the sleeves pushed up to your elbows as evidence of this, but Auston knew you wouldn’t take it off. He knew so much about you. He knew your favorite color, he knew that you always slept at an angle in the bed with the comforter bunched in your arms, he knew you loved Christmas with a passion that rivaled Santa Claus himself, he knew why you had broken up with him, but he didn’t know why you were here. 

“Hi,” was all you offered and it didn’t serve as an explanation. 

“What are you doing here?” Auston managed to put together the question from all the others crashing together in his mind, questions and statements and incoherent thoughts clashing and making it hard to come up with anything specific to say. “What? How? Why?”

You ran a hand through your hair and let out a long breath, before taking your bottom lip nervously between your teeth. You had a thousand reasons, really more than that as to why you’d bought a ridiculously expensive one-way ticket from Toronto to Arizona on Christmas Eve, why you’d squished yourself between a grandmother with a purse of overflowing powdery mints and a crying infant to show up at his door. None of your reasons were clear now though, all of them jumbling together, tangling up into an indistinguishable mess in your mind that only led to one statement that you weren’t sure if it even properly captured everything you needed to say to him. 

“I never want to spend Christmas without you, Auston.” 

There was so much unsaid, so many things Auston had been feeling since you walked out with a box of your things, leaving him with nothing of you but his memories, the photos on his phone, the gifts he’d picked out for you but never got to give you, and a dread of the holiday he had come to love with you. There was so much those nine words didn’t cover, so much hurt and agony underneath them. But fuck if they weren’t the prettiest bandage Auston had ever seen in his life. 

“I never want to spend Christmas with you either,” Auston breathed out, words spoken with relief so real and honest you felt like you could touch it.

You adjusted the duffle bag in your hand, shifting it from your left to your right as you looked at Auston. He looked horrible, dark circles under his eyes, a hollowness in his cheeks, but his eyes were so hopeful looking at you now, bright and deep, exactly like he looked the day you fell into him for the first time and decided to stay. His eyes were like Christmas morning, a beautiful promise breaking through the heaviness of a December that carried pain it wasn’t supposed to understand. You took a deep breath and hoped nine words, hope, and a little Christmas miracle were on your side. 

“Baby, can I come home for Christmas?” 

Auston didn’t hesitate. He knew his answer through and through, “Only if you stay for every Christmas forever.” 

You felt the tears sting your eyes as you stepped toward him, head nodding up and down as you accepted his terms. You thought you could handle being without him if it meant all of the negativity you felt from other people was no longer a factor. Except you couldn’t have been more wrong. People were still mean. The world still had a lot of darkness in it. All you had done by leaving him was create more darkness for yourself when his love and the light it brought left with him. Crawling back into his arms, feeling the familiar warmth of his chest, you felt his love wrap around you tightly, and your world became just a little brighter again. 

“I love you and I’m so sorry,” you mumbled into his ugly sweater covered chest. 

“Shh,” he mumbled softly into your hair. “It doesn’t matter now. You’re home for Chrismtas.”

You squeezed him impossibly tighter because if you let go, he might slip through your fingers like smoke, a figment of your imagination evaporating in front of you. You clung to him and he held you just as firmly, fearing the same thing, fearing his Christmas miracle would cease to be real if he wasn’t holding you. Hell, you weren’t a Christmas miracle. You were the best thing he had ever gotten in his entire life, the best gift the universe ever gave him. This year for Christmas, Auston Matthews lost you and got you back. While he could’ve done without the losing you part, he had you back. You were right here, in his arms, where you belonged and Auston Matthews wouldn’t be spending Christmas without you. He never had to spend another Christmas without you, the real Christmas miracle, the fact that his Christmases would forever include you now. 

You were home for Christmas. You were home for forever. Home was Auston and Christmas just isn’t Christmas with thousands of miles between you and your heart. But you were holding him now and you knew that waking up in his arms on Christmas morning was the only way you ever wanted to wake up for every Christmas in the future, starting with the one coming in a few short hours that you knew would make you crave the next one as soon as it finished. 

You loved him. He loved you. Love was inherently complicated, the joining of two people. Christmas uncomplicated it all, boiled everything down to the most simple thing possible; Auston Matthews was your person, and you wanted to share every Christmas with him. So, you walked into the house and started with this one.

[ursie]

Kay so my dinahollie daughter oc is named Lizzy. I probably should organize a doc or something going more in-depth on how her powers work but the basics is that her canary cry is VERY powerful and bc she can’t hear it she instinctively goes to a pitch that can be felt instead. It’s a very low pitch unlike the high screech of her mom and it’s a lot less directed, instead coming off more like a sonic pulse then something that can be aimed.

The logic I’ve been working with is that canary cries have limits triggered by the same part of the brain that keeps you from biting off your own fingers. While black canary ears are stated to have a special protective layer that protects her from her from loud sounds she still has limits. When Lizzy lost her hearing as a kid, she lost the mental block that limits the volume of her canary cry. She can basically set off a sonic bomb with a whisper. Unfortunately she also struggles to control her powers and has to put in a LOT of discipline to not make any verbal sounds, as she can’t really separate between normal verbalization and use of the canary cry.

Not being able to verbally laugh or cry or even whimper when in pain effects her emotional state a lot. She can’t really afford to have any bottled up emotions so she’s very very expressive and open about what she feels about pretty much every single topic. Shes putting almost all of her self control points into controlling her powers so she’s also very impulsive and can be a bit immature. Other heroes when they first meet her tend to put off by her, as she comes off as very childish and petty in more casual settings but tend to change their minds when they see her pull a bullet out of her arm in stone cold silence.

She has her dad’s strong sense of justice and temper and paired with how she is constantly emotionally exhausted from controlling her powers means she is very very open whenever she has a problem with someone. Ultimately she becomes a bit of moral compass for her generation of the justice league, very quick to point out when other heroes pull bad stunts or use their power inappropriately. When she found that old man Batman was spying on her, (worse: using her aides to spy on her) she made sure EVERYONE knew what he did and exactly how extremely pissed off she was by it. While admittedly a lot of the “what is Lizzy pissed off about today” things are on the more petty side of things, she does end up pointing out a lot of genuinely bad stuff that the others hadn’t even noticed or processed as bad until Lizzy pointed it out.

Unfortunately learning sign language was very difficult for her as she used to a be very verbal thinker like her mom and losing her hearing forced her to completely retire how she processes information. She basically refuses to learn how to read lips bc 1) she hates making eye contact and 2) if you are worth her attention YOU will find a way to communicate with her. 3) every time someone tells her she should learn they will relieve a long essay/lecture on how lip reading is difficult and imprecise and that it’s shitty to expect deaf ppl to learn when it would actually be easier if hearing ppl just learned sign language. She has a special watch that allows her to project holograms with text on it and will shove her messages into the faces of anyone who tries to ignore her when she’s talking to them. (The watch is what old man Batman planted a tracker inside, and she made it very very clear how much of a violation that was.)

Lizzy is also a very playful and silly gal who loves her friends also she’s a lesbian :)

OMG I LOVE THIS SM????? Literally where is the fic I’m invested 🥺💕🙏👀📝

[wispforever]

if youre still doing the character thing, how about spirit or marie?

I sure am. How about Spirit And Marie? Both wonderful characters. I’ll do Marie first, then Spirit. Thanks for the excuse to infodump, really. You people are too kind.

Marie Mjolnir

My first impression of Marie was the same impression I get of most female characters in anime. It’s either “why do their clothes have to look like that” or “oh god here comes the obligatory sexist heteronormative romance”. For Marie, it was more of the second. They mention in the same episode she’s introduced that Stein is her “first love”, which told me that if she had a large place in the plot, her assigned male counterpart around which to orbit would be him. Though I’ve never read the Soul Eater manga, I believe they do end up getting together there (I could be wrong). Whatever the case, I was relieved that Marie’s and Stein’s relationship (though heavily implied to be romantic, at least on Marie’s side) was left open to interpretation in the anime. I’m just very sick of cool badass female characters like Marie being reduced to the man they pine after. So, I guess my first impression of Marie and my impression of her now are largely the same. While I appreciate the moments we get to see her strengths and ability to operate on her own, I do think that her character really suffers because of the whole sexist “oh gosh all I want is to find a husband and retire” “oh my I have to take care of Stein” like okay, I had enough at the cat girl smothering Soul with her humungo-tits. I had enough at sexualizing underage girls and women in general. I had enough at making sexual harassment a punchline. That being said, when we push all of the shitty writing to the side, I admire Marie for her strength and how she interacts with the children, Crona in particular. Which leads me to my favorite moment(s).

The relationship Crona and Marie have interests me the most, since I’m really drawn to the parallels between Marie and Medusa. As parental figures (and as characters), they’re about as different as you can get. As Crona’s mother, Medusa is obviously abusive. Along with being negligent, she abuses Crona mentally, emotionally, and physically. In general, Medusa is a person who doesn’t appear to value interpersonal relationships, putting it nicely. She instead is more focused on her own interests, often to the detriment of those around her. Crona is Medusa’s only immediate family (besides Arachne who she is estranged from), and so they suffer the most from her refusal to show even a shred of human decency or warmth. They suffer especially because they are her child, meaning they’re stuck with her essentially, and repetivie abuse between family members like a mother and child often becomes complex because of the necessity of having a parental figure in your life to support you as you grow up. Medusa teaches Crona that their boundaries don’t matter and that they are only good as long as they are useful and do as they’re told. This is what makes Marie’s influence on Crona so cool to watch. Marie is caring by nature, loving and nurturing by nature. Her very wavelegnth is healing. She is kind and does what’s right reflexively. Marie is the exact embodiment of what Crona always needed but what, even upon being rescued by the academy, still felt so foreign to them: unconditional love. Crona struggles to understand why the other kids helped them, why Maka felt the inclination to stop their battle and save Crona instead by trying to understand them, why the kids are still so kind to them even after everything. They do not understand that love is not a bargaining chip. It isn’t leverage in an argument. It’s not a tool for emotional manipulation. Love is caring for the people close to you, just because. Love for the sake of love. The other kids and teachers at the academy are the ones who are able to pull Crona out of all Medusa’s lies, and Marie is a Huge part of that. Even though I have greivances with this being the largest part of her character and what that implies for female characters in general, it doesn’t stop being so beautiful to me that she could help Crona heal in this way. Marie = best mom for the win

Most of the story ideas I have for Marie involve her relationship with Crona or Stein. Say, this covers my unpopular opinion too. I don’t like Stein and Marie as a couple, but I really enjoy writing them as friends, because even though I don’t really jive with them being together romantically, I think their dynamic is an interesting one to explore because they Are so different.

Getting into that a little bit more, I’d like to start by saying I don’t care if other people like Stein and Marie being a couple. That’s great doods, keep doing you. The fanart’s adorable, the meta’s fantastic. Whoever you are, SteinMarie shippers, ffs keep kicking ASS. This is just my preference and opinion. Zero shade in this house. That said, because of my frustrations about Marie’s character I discussed in the first paragraph, I don’t like the idea of her and Stein being together romantically. It’s really a classic sexist trope: the troubled man and his sweet nurse. I’m also just fed up in general with the hetero-nonsense, so there. However, they are both wonderful characters that I enjoy very much seperately. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve only seen the anime, so I can’t speak for the manga as far as their relationship or Marie’s character in general.

Oh shit I accidentally already talked about this one lmao [see the second paragraph]

One headcanon I like to think about when I’m writing Marie is that she likes women (in addition to men or not) and she struggles with comphet. Just something interesting I like to think about. It’s really fun for me to take characters who have been written as pining or had 10 million failed relationships and be like “say what if they can’t find a husband cuz really what they really need is a wife”. I’ll talk about that more with Spirit inevitably.

Spirit Albarn

My first impression of Spirit, obviously him being a cheater, really came with a lot of distaste. I come from a family that was torn apart by infidelity, among other things, so it really rubs me the wrong way. However, his saving grace for me was that he genuinely loves his daughter. It appears that, whether it’s played for laughs or not, he just can’t find fulfillment in his romantic relationships. The reason is left up to the veiwers. Spirit, ultimately, is not just a shitty person, which is how most cheaters are protrayed in media. “Well, they cheated because they don’t care if they hurt people”, “they cheated because they are shit and that’s it”. That’s a fine explanation if you plan to do nothing with whatever character you’re describing, but Spirit is relatively recurring and is shown to be neither mean-spirited or emotionally unintelligent. It bothers me that his cheating and routine sexist behaviour isn’t taken seriously enough to be a subject that Soul Eater tackles and deals with. But that’s fine. I’ll just do it myself. At any rate, I still feel that same way about Spirit’s character, but I find it intriguing that he seems to genuinely want to become a better father and is actually a pretty good dad when it comes to his interactions with Maka. If Soul Eater had been brave enough to develop him more, maybe delve into the reasoning behind his impulsive romantic affairs, I think Spirit as a character could have been done more justice. It seems to me that he could be suffering from some of that wonderful compulsory heterosexuality that I mentioned before, then becoming confused when the woman he claims to love leaves him feeling empty. Rattling my gay little cage

When I think of my favorite moments with Spirit, I think of his moments with Maka, but I’m gonna hold off on that until I get to favorite relationship(s). In reference to what I talked about in the first paragraph, one moment I find really interesting when I’m thinking about my interpretation of Spirit’s character is the scene where he and Maka are on the roof talking. Maka asks Spirit why he cheated on her mother if he did, in fact, love her. He doesn’t appear to know the answer, and he doesn’t really understand how to effectively communicate that, though he was shitty husband, what he really wants now is to try and be a better dad. We hear his inner monologue, and he says something like “I love you [Maka] and your mama. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. That’s the truth.” Every time he says “its the truth” it sounds more like he’s forcing it. This is actually something that is SO strange to me. Even if I didn’t project a queer narrative on to the characters I love, I would look at this and be like “huh that is a Weird thing to say in that specific way”. Why does he say it like that? Why does he have to say it more than once? He’s only talking to HIMSELF. It isn’t like he’s trying to convince Maka. Why does he have to convince himself?? Could it possibly be because he’s reached a conclusion about his romantic/sexual orientation that he’s been trying to swallow his Entire Life??? makes ya wonder, doesn’t it, queers?

Just like I said when I talked about Stein, most of the stories I have in mind with Spirit center around that sweet gayness. But also, I like to think of ways Spirit could come to terms with his sexuality, how it might have affected him when he was young, his relationship with all these women, with his wife. I love to think about him being a dad at 18 and trying his best, but how much responsibility that must have been. Lots of great ideas when it comes to Spirit.

Um? unpopular opinion would be all the standard like I said with Stein lmao. “Oh no!” scream the heteros, “that they/them on tumblr is making Soul Eater queer we canst not allow that in our church!!!111!” But besides that, maybe even the fact that I think he’s redeemable?? Idk most everyone I’ve met thinks Spirit is funny at least and just calls him a dumbass and a slut (affectionate). Doesn’t mean anybody thinks cheating on your wife 56 times is okay so. I like this fandom, it’s chill here. My favorite is when I see my art tagged like “aw the stupid man and his crazy bf” like YOU ARE RIGHT

My favorite relationship when it comes to Spirit (besides Stein cuz if I start talking about them again I’ll never finish this ask) is the one he has with Maka. If you can call it a relationship lol. I guess I just find Spirit’s approach to Maka as a parent really refreshing. Not that the parents in other shows don’t love their kids or whatever, it’s just that the loving parent always seems to be paired with some other trope that makes their character hard to approach. especially in anime. Like the perfect mother who dies in the first episode, and we spend the rest of the show mourning her. Or the father whose love is somehow everlasting even though he’s never home. It’s really the fact that Spirit is even THERE that I love. He knows what Maka is up to. He talks about her. He’s invested in her life, and he loves her. All he wants is to spend time with her, and though he’s sad when she turns him down, he doesn’t push her. god dammit I just like a dad who actually loves his kids without all the usual strings attached like. oh my kids are a huge pain in my ass, but I love them in spite of it. oh i’m a man so can’t relate to my children in a meaningful way but i try. Get the fuck outta here with that shit. I want all the dads to get so happy when their daughters wanna hang with them that they throw up like Spirit. Give me the guy who loves his daughter so naturally, whose daughter is such a huge part of his life, that it doesn’t even occur to him stop trying even if she literally wants to murder him. That’s Spirit. jfc

To end with a cute little headcanon, I really love to think that when Spirit gets older and starts losing the color in his hair, instead of getting white or grey, his hair turns a pale pink color cuz he’s such an aggressive redhead. Wouldn’t that just be adorable? late 30′s, early 40′s, Spirit starts getting little pink streaks in his hair and then bam. Little pink old man Spirit XD

There ya have it. Thanks for the ask, and feel free to send more.

[fbfh]

miss missing you - percy x reader

 1.1k words

 pls listen to miss missing you by fob and conspiracy and where the lines overlap by paramore

The end of the summer could pretty miserable for a lot of reasons

But you always tried your hardest not to focus on that

Communicating with other demigods was pretty hard sometimes

You couldn’t really call or text, and writing letters was hard unless it was in greek, but that could seem pretty suspicious

But love can make you pretty creative

Over your years of being together, you and Percy have worked out a pretty good system

You managed to get your hands on old fashioned camcorders, dvd players, and blank dvds among other things

You film little video diaries every day, burn them onto a dvd, and mail them to each other

You’ve also gotten into the habit of filming during your time at camp half blood, too

The only consistency you have nine months out of the year is getting a big orange envelope from percy with a dvd of his face, polaroids of him and his mom, and little notes in greek

The singing thing started when he had a particularly rough week

He was behind in school, drama had erupted with the few friends he had managed to make, and his mom had the flu

He missed you so much it physically hurt

All he wanted was to feel your touch

Maybe hear your voice in person instead of through shitty dvd player speakers that stopped being made in 2006

He kept thinking back to being at camp with you

Those moments when you smelled like chlorine and your hair was warm from the sun

He missed the taste of your lip balm, the strawberry one with spf you only used in summer

When you would hug him and the knot from your tied up camp shirt would poke his stomach, the way your laugh blended seamlessly with the crackle of the bonfire

And now it was abysmally icy outside, and his seasonal depression was in full swing

“I just miss you… miss your voice. I can’t catch up on my homework because every time I try to, that song conspiracy by paramore won’t stop playing in my head even though I haven’t listened to it since middle school, so… I dunno what’s going on up here,” 

He smiled, rubbing the back of his neck, but you could tell he was really struggling

The next video you sent included a clip of you singing and dancing along to conspiracy in your kitchen, followed by your step parent asking what you’re doing up this late

It ended with you in your room, bidding him good night

You included a polaroid of  you kissing the teddy bear he got you for your birthday, and written on the back in greek,

“Remember ‘where the lines overlap’? What a banger ♥️”

You went back and forth for weeks, sending clips of you singing old songs you listened to in middle school among your other videos

You’d talk about school and camp, you’d dream about the future together, talk about getting a little apartment together after you graduate

Every time Percy came home and saw his mom holding an envelope with that specific look on her face, he knew something from you had arrived

That was the main thing that got him through each semester

Any time there was a school break, you tried to meet up with him

What felt like half an eternity later, you were both cramming for graduation

He had gotten into a college close to where he lived on a swimming scholarship 

The minute you got home from graduation, you ran into your room to pack for camp

You were coming early this year and nothing could stop you

You even risked an iris message to Percy while you got ready

You had no idea if you would be able to pull off the surprise you’d been working on, but you were going to do everything possible to make it happen

After you hung up, you finished the smaller surprise for his birthday

That summer was among the best you’d ever had

As august drew nearer, you started to get nervous again

Chiron had dropped by a few days before Percy’s birthday to give you a letter in person

“It seems important”

It was

You were beyond elated, things were finally falling into place

Once it was finally Percy’s birthday, you had pulled him aside to have a quiet moment together to give him his present

He unwrapped it, and gave you a confused look, a smile already unstoppable on his face

“All of our songs,” you said, “in chronological order.” 

And there it was

All of the songs you’ve sung and danced to numbered in blue fine tip sharpie

He pulled you in for a tight hug

You savored it for a moment, his hugs are always amazing

They’re so enveloping and warm

After a minute you mutter, “There is another surprise,”

“I was going to wait until the end of camp, but I can’t hold out on you anymore.” 

You pull the letter out of your pocket and hand it to him

You explain the plan you’ve been working on for months

You used the gifts from your godly parent to get an internship at a great company in manhattan

“I’ll need to do some training, complete some coursework, but…” 

He stared at you in disbelief

“I’m staying in New York”

He pulled you into another hug, this one tighter than before, and kissed you so warmly you thought you’d melt

After you finally pull apart, you grab the cd case and slip in a piece of paper you’d written the title of the mix tape on

He reads the title you wrote out in greek

‘Songs to dance to in our kitchen’

Our kitchen

He laughed in disbelief

“So no more mailing videos?”

You shake your head

“No more mailing videos,” 

He realized this really was the end of an era

But the beginning of a new one

Once he realized you weren’t going to be separated any more, he suddenly felt strangely nostalgic for all those times you got through together

He mentioned this, and you joked, “Oh, I can move back in with my parents if you want to keep doing that,”

“No way,” he laughed, pulling you into a hug, “I’ll miss missing you, you know, now and then... but I’d much rather have the real thing.” 

“So would I,” 

And you both got what you wanted 

Dancing in the kitchen together to songs you used to cry to

But this time everything felt alright

[zeppelin-and-unicorns]

Black Peonies preview

A/N: This is the first chapter of the J/H soulmate AU fanfic I’ve been working on for a really long time. I do not plan on posting it on AO3 or ff.net for now, because I have yet to finish writing the last couple of chapters.

That being said, I hope you enjoy this sneak peek.

Trigger Warning: Explicit child abuse

Chapter one:

January, 1970

Steven Hyde walked through the dark streets of Point Place alone. Mr. Forman’s brother from Chicago got hurt, and the whole Forman clan went to see him for the weekend, which means that Hyde had nowhere to go.

He stayed with Kelso and Donna for a big chunk of the day, but Bob doesn’t like when Donna has boys over after it was dark out, so he and Kelso had to take off.

He walked Kelso to his home, because Hyde was not in a hurry to get to his own house. It was a Saturday, and Edna tends to go a little crazy on Saturdays, that’s why he would often sleep over at the Forman’s.

He was lucky Bob and Midge made them snacks too, because Edna rarely buys any food for the weekends. She tends to spend the little money they have on booze and drugs.

He spent as much time as possible walking around, trying to avoid going home to Edna, but there wasn’t much he could do, it was very cold outside, and he didn’t have a nice jacket to keep him warm, he needed to go home. It was trashy, but at least there was heat. He hoped Edna would be passed out by now, but he doubted, it was still early.

The minute he reached his block, he sighed. He could already hear the sounds of beer bottles clinking and the voices of his mom’s stoner friends, she definitely was not asleep, crap.

Someone threw a beer bottle at his direction, and the glass shattered all over the shitty pavement. He glanced at the direction the bottle came from, and saw his mother’s laughing figure sitting on the porch. Fucking fantastic.

“Home already, kiddo?” She asked, slurring with her words and blowing the smoke from the cigarette in her hand.

“It’s cold” He shrugged, and tried to get inside the house before his mother would start with her usual drunken ramblings, that usually ended up with her blaming him for her shitty life.

His mother grabbed his arm to stop him and he sighed in frustration.

“You couldn’t have stayed with your friend today?” She asked bitterly

“He’s outta town with his folks” He answered, hoping she would drop it and let him go to his room.

“It wasn’t enough for you to ruin my career, now you have to ruin my weekend too?” She said, puffing out another cloud of smoke

“Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I had somewhere else to go” Hyde answered 

“Aren’t you a smartass?” Edna taunted him, and laughed slyly.

“I want to go inside, it’s cold” Hyde said simply, if he learned something from all of his 11 miserable years with Edna, is that there was no use in arguing with her.

“I know something that will warm you up in a second” She slurred out and laughed, forcefully grabbing his right hand on her bony fingers and putting out her cigarette on his skin.

He felt his skin burning and tried to pull his hand off her tight grip, the pain brought tears into his eyes and it was almost unbearable. But she held on tighter, pressing the burnt stub onto his skin as she laughed.

"Tears?" Edna mocked at the sight of Hyde's teary eyes "Aren't you supposed to be a tough guy?"

He held himself back. He wanted to tell her to fuck off so badly, but he knew better. If he did, he would have to spend the night wandering the streets, and he wasn't in the mood to freeze to death.

She flicked the bud onto the snow, and finally let go of his hand. The pain didn't go away though, in fact, it got worse. He thanked a God he wasn't so sure he believed in for making Wisconsin winters so cold. He would be able to hide the burn by wearing gloves and ease the pain by shoving his hand onto the snow that probably accumulated by his bedroom's dingy window.

Hyde glanced one last time at his stoned and drunk pathetic excuse of a mother and headed inside the house, holding his right hand on his left one.

Sometimes he wished the soulmate thing wasn't real. He doesn't like the thought of an innocent girl suffering all the pain his mother puts him through.

But he knew better, the universe never cared about his wishes, otherwise he would have a different mother. He just hoped that the girl who had the bad luck of being his soulmate had a strong support system or whatever, because his shitty reality isn't changing anytime soon.

Meanwhile, in Point Place's community theater…

10 year old Jackie anxiously tried to peek through the closed blinds, today was probably one of the most exciting days of her life, she was about to play on her first piano recital ever! She was trying her hardest to not be nervous, because she’s a Burkhart, and Burkhart’s excel on absolutely everything they do – according to her mother. She practiced every day for hours, she wanted to be perfect, because both of her parents promised they’d watch her play today.

“Miss Burkhart, it’s almost time, are you ready?”

“Yes I am, Mrs. Crawford! I have my sheet here with me – even though I don’t need it, just as a precaution” Jackie said excitedly, and her music teacher smiled

“You’re going to do great, Jackie” She said with a small smile “Go wait over there, you’re up next” 

Jackie nodded and went to wait where her teacher indicated. Her heart was beating so fast, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. She couldn’t wait to be praised by her parents.

They already missed her dance recital, and neither of them were there when she won the trophy for “Prettiest Ballerina”, but they promised they would attend her piano recital, that’s why she decided she would play one of the hardest songs, so she could impress them.

She knew none of her colleagues had the ability to play this song; most of them were playing “Fur Elise” or “Ode to Joy”. She wanted to be the best, so she chose “Clair de Lune” by Debussy, one of her father’s favorites songs. He likes to listen to it when he’s smoking his cigars, so she made sure to learn just to make him proud.

When she heard Mrs. Crawford calling her name, she’d put on her stage smile, the one her mother taught her so long ago. When she entered the stage, she glanced at the audience, trying to find the familiar faces of her parents. She didn’t see either of them, and she had to repress the urge to cry.

They bailed on her, again. They promised they would make it!

She took a deep breath and saw Martina’s familiar face. She was giving her a sad smile, and Jackie sighed. She likes Martina, but she would never fill the hole left by her mother. It’s not like Martina wants to be there anyways, she only went because she’s paid to do so.

Jackie quickly forced a smile and went to sit at the piano bench. If her parents didn’t want to be there, that’s their loss. There was a good amount of LOPP’s mothers there, she hoped they would tell her mother later how she played beautifully, and her mother better feel bad.

She stretched her fingers the way Mrs. Crawford taught her, and placed the music sheet on its proper place. The second her fingers touched the piano keys, she felt herself relaxing a bit, and when she started to play, she genuinely smiled. The first couple of minutes of the song went smoothly, some people even clapped when she mastered the transition from the slow part of the song to the slightly faster one.

Then she stopped playing, and not because the song was over.

Out of nowhere, she felt a blinding pain on her hand. She whimpered in pain and held her right hand with her left one, tears involuntarily falling from her eyes.

Mrs. Crawford quickly ran to see what was going on with her best student, and she sighed when she saw a black peony forming on the girl’s hand. 

“It’s burning, Mrs. Crawford” Jackie cried, and the older woman placed her hand on her shoulder.

“I know honey, you know what that means, right?” She said, and Jackie nodded.

That means that her soulmate was hurting. Again.

Last week Jackie got a new flower on her shoulder, and the week before that, she felt like someone was slapping her on her face.

Thank God that bruises on the face don’t leave flower marks, otherwise people would see her as a freak, because she feels like she’s being slapped or punched on at least once a week.

Mrs. Crawford guided her out of the stage, and made her sit on a small bench near the dressing rooms. Jackie carefully rubbed her hand, the pain was starting to subside a little, the black peony marking the exact place where it was hurting.

“Do you want to go back and start again, Jackie?” The woman gently asked, and Jackie shook her head.

All she wanted to do was go back home and pray for her soulmate to get the help he needs. She doesn’t know why he gets hurt so often, but she wanted it to stop. For both of their sakes.