#and this isn’t like the uncommon worst cases. this is COMMON

[nocturneofrecollection]

I think mostly car culture but also the internet has irreparably stunted people’s ability and care to drive well it’s insane how many people will openly brag about being a dangerous driver like it’s fun and quirky and not something that gets people killed in the thousands every year. Some laws are unjust but i promise you distracted driving and speeding laws are there for a reason not just to make your day a teeeeny bit harder

[ferahntics]

Kirby horn headcanons

Aight so seeing people have positive reactions to my wing rant (70+ notes is a ton for my brain, yeowza--) really encouraged me to share more ideas, so let’s get to horns now!! Again, this is 100% my take on things, which can absolutely differ from person to person c: Feel free to go nuts with your own!!

For wings, click here!

Horns are something that grow in during mid-adult years at earliest. So, for Kirby’s species I’d say that might be... hm, maybe 800-ish years? 1000 might be more accurate, but like wisdom teeth, wildly depends on the individual, some get them sooner, some later, and some don’t get them at all. But for the most part, horns are not something that happen before adulthood.

(age of kirby’s species is very finicky so its hard to tell what’s considered adulthood for their kind. In the anime it’s mentioned Kirby woke up 200/300 years too quickly, so.. perhaps that could be considered early/late teens? Hard to say for sure.)

Although for the most part they’re just for aesthetic purposes, unlike wings which are a crucial asset to the species, some horns can also be useful in a battle, depending on the type.

I imagine they do need to be taken care of, otherwise there is a chance it could result in some form of infection, or in them ‘overgrowing’ - similar to real life’s animals with hooves when they’re not taken care of properly, which at the least causes great discomfort, and at worst, could actually be a health hazard.

These horns are durable, but it’s not rare for them to get broken down in battle, in which case, proper care is that much more crucial - because the horns themselves still contain the nerves, so it is a major injury. (Deer horns shed overtime and regrow, but a lot of bovine horns have keratin outside, and bone inside - I imagine Kirby's species is similar in that aspect!)

Common horns would include: Tiny spikes, standard goat - straight or curved, and curly ram ones. These are small enough that they serve no real combative advantage. 

Uncommon horns would include: Ibex, multiple horns, singular, and oryx - these are more suitable for combat, although the longer ones like the oryx could be very clumsy to work with due to the sheer size of those.

Rare horns would include: antlers (usually that of a stag) or just horns that 'split' in some way like a branch, corkscrew-shaped, and although not technically horns, antennae are possible too. The antlers can be vicious in battle, but a huge risk comes with them - like with stags, these antlers CAN get stuck and leave them vulnerable. Antennae are usually not combat-friendly, but in some rare cases they may be able to produce some form of energy depending on the specimen. They are very sensitive, however, and can get overwhelming and lead to sensory overload.

These are unique, which would include horns made out of gems, crystals, or some form of element, taking a non-corporeal form - perhaps not to the extent of mythical like the wings, but still something that needs to have certain requirements met. So for example, say they have some form of fire that crown the head like horns. These, I imagine could even be iridescent, and maybe if we go a step forward, may change color to go along with the other person’s mood or mentality. Horns can also be asymmetrical!!

Now, if we look at Galacta, who's horns change when becoming the Aeon Hero (light or dark), I'm not sure if that would particularly affect wether that's rare or not? Since it is a transformation, which I'd say isn't too uncommon, regardless if its elemental like Kirby's or just visually different, like Galacta's.

Also like with wings, I assume it IS possible for certain characters to not have horns at all. But unlike with wings, it’s not nearly as hindering.

[outoutdamnspark]

Omegaverse Pt. 2: Heat/Rut Cycles (SFW)

Second installment of my a/b/o headcanon series, for @smallestapplin​~

<- Part 1: Biology (sfw)

(cw: none. purposefully made to not be gross. under cut for length.)

Ω Presenting usually happens anywhere between 13-16. An omega's first heat and an alpha's first rut are considered one of, if not the roughest they'll ever go through. It's puberty cranked up to 11 and, in a sense, all at once - which means their body is now rapidly trying to readjust itself and it's Not a Good Time™️. Betas usually get the (slightly) better end of the deal, since they only go through about a week's worth of what feels like the worst case of allergies they've ever had... with the added bonus of being able to smell everything. After that, however, they're pretty much home free. 

Ω Heat and rut cycles are biyearly, meaning a person will typically have one heat or rut every six months, two total in a year. Less isn’t entirely unheard of, though not all that common if someone isn’t taking suppressants. More is... well, it’s not immediately concerning, but speaking to a doctor is still advised, just to make sure everything’s alright.

Ω For the first few years after presenting, up until roughly the age of 20 or so, an alpha/omega's body will still be going through a bit of a transitional period - thus their cycles are completely separate from any sort of typical puberty hormones. At this stage, heats are mostly just like a bad fever, skin sensitivity, and heightened senses to the point of being almost unbearable. Ruts, on the other hand, are more akin to a bad ADHD episode, with loss of focus, directionless overabundance of energy, and a weird mix of both under and overstimulation. The instinct to find a heat/rut partner is completely absent until physical adulthood to allow the body ample time to acclimate. It is not uncommon for individuals to experience a physical revulsion to the idea of a heat/rut partner until that threshold of adulthood is reached; this is the body’s natural defense against unwanted attention.

Ω (I.e. No. Underage. Anything!)

Ω Nestmates, and heat/rut partners are not the same thing. Heat/rut partners are pretty self-explanitory, but nestmates are nonsexual partners (oftentimes family, close friends, or other packmates) that act as a companion during a heat or a rut. Sometimes, especially in the case of siblings or parents with very young children, nestmates will share a communal nest for most of the year up to a certain age, with a secondary nest being made specifically for heats and ruts. This promotes pack bonds and later allows newly-presented adolescents to practice building their own nests as needed.

Ω For heats, a nestmate will usually act as a cuddle-buddy and will generally offer support and comfort throughout the worst of the heat. For ruts, the role is very similar but can also include play-wrestling to help expend the alpha's excess energy. (Packmates unconsciously recognize the pheromone signature beneath the scent of heat/rut, and so the only instincts triggered are platonic, typically focused on protection.)

Ω For an adolescent omega in heat, let them build a nest in a nice dimly-lit, climate controlled room, with plenty of comfort snacks and their favorite soft things to snuggle with - preferably scented by someone they're close to, like a parent or other packmate. This will help them to feel secure whenever they have to be left alone for whatever reason. (Sometimes having another person nearby is too much for their senses to comfortably handle, and sometimes it's just not feasible to have someone there with them all the time.) It's also best to check in on them at least once a day to make sure they're alright. For an adolescent alpha in rut, the setup is mostly the same, though some form of external stimuli is highly recommended. Stress balls, stim toys, chewy foods like jerky, or anything tactile. (Things like handheld videogames can be used, but there's always a chance something might get handled too roughly, so proceed with caution.)

Ω Heat/rut drunk is a thing, but not quite what everyone assumes it is. The "drunk" state typically only happens either with a trusted heat/rut partner, and/or in an environment where the individual feels completely safe and secure - for example, a well-stocked, well-scented, nest in a locked apartment. Neither an omega nor an alpha are ever truly unaware of their surroundings - especially if they're spending their cycle alone. At no point will they be so far gone that they won't negatively react to any unwanted attention, such as an intruder in their nest or an unapproved would-be partner. (It’s all consensual here, folks!) In the event of such, preservation and/or territorial instincts will kick in, effectively overriding the heat/rut to make sure the alpha or omega is clear-minded enough to react accordingly. This can lead to what is known as a Botching.

Ω Botched heats and ruts are, sadly, exactly what it says on the tin: a heat or a rut that has been either interrupted due to unsafe conditions, or was doomed from the start by virtue of being stress-induced. Either way, it's a case of the person's body and instincts (and sometimes the environment itself) actively warring with each other. (Think of it like how your body produces adrenaline to cover up pain in order to get you out of danger; the pain and injury still exist, and you'll be even worse for wear once the adrenaline wears off, but until then you at least have a chance to get out of the situation.)

Ω While going through any sort of botching is utterly terrible, it can be argued that botched heats are the worse of the two experiences; an omega in heat is in a very vulnerable state, whereas an alpha in rut is already loaded with excess energy and stands a better chance of bouncing back more quickly.

Ω In a normal heat, an omega's instinct tells them to find a safe place to nest down; in a botched heat, survival mode kicks in to try and suppress the heat symptoms long enough to get to safety, but it's essentially a bandaid over a proverbial bullet wound. Paranoia and panic can set in, making it difficult to consider anyplace as a safe and suitable nesting site, and, in extreme cases, their instinct might be screaming at them that nowhere is safe - especially if moving to another location means leaving behind (or simply not having) any nesting materials, comfort items, or food and water. (Symptoms include fever, chills, abdominal pain or muscle spasms, extreme fatigue, extreme anxiety, body tremors, and insomnia.)

Ω Botched ruts tend to look more like an extreme hangover or a concussion. They come with sensitivity to light, sound, and scent, an aversion to touch, heightened irritability, insomnia, headache, and sometimes nausea. An alpha in a botched rut will have their instincts rattled, making them defensive and territorial. Just like in a botched heat, an alpha will find it difficult to trust anyone around them or find anywhere “safe,” as paranoia and anxiety override the typical rut symptoms in a bid to scare or fight off any perceived threat. 

Ω Unfortunately, a botching usually lasts for at least a couple of days, as the body still has to flush out the last of the heat/rut that should have been - which means the poor soul going through it is going to be in pretty rough shape, both for the duration and for about a week afterwards. Post-botching, the alpha/omega with be exhausted, jittery, unfocused, possibly dehydrated, and sore - as though arthritic or anemic. They may experience depression for a month or more afterwards, as well as mild anxiety. The best remedy for a botched heat/rut - both during and after - is to give the individual a safe, secure place to hide and spend the remainder of their cycle. The presence of trusted nestmates is almost always immediately effected, with items scented by them at a close second; favorite nesting materials or personal items are also advised, as are small, dark, quiet, well-stocked (sometimes over-stocked, to alleviate any fear over lack of resources), well-fortified areas for new nests to be built. Closets with locks or a spare room in a packmate’s home are good examples. (The heat/rut itself can rarely be salvaged entirely, but the negative symptoms can be lessened or quelled with the introduction of familiar people, places, or things that typically bring the alpha/omega comfort or elicit thoughts of safety. As with many things, cuddles are often the best remedy.)

💥💥💥

Next up! Behaviors & Characteristics

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

“You are too young to decide you are lgbt+, what if you change your mind? You’ll ruin your life and regret it”.… Let’s do a little reality check on statements like that.

They are based on the idea that identifying as lgbt+ is this huge, life-altering, irreversible decision - but is that true? Let’s assume you identify as lgbt+ for a few years as a teenager and later, as an adult, you don’t feel that way anymore.

Asexual and aromantic: The worst case with those two labels is that you don’t have sex or not date for a few years. This wouldn’t hurt you and is actually not uncommon at all - straight, cis people can also be single for multiple years or start having sex a few years later than their peers without ruining their entire life. If anything, we should be happy about that: Even if you only identify as asexual because you are young and not ready for sex, it still means you won’t have sex before you are truly ready for it (and there’s no risk of STDs or accidental pregnancy!).

Gay, lesbian, bisexual etc: Worst case here is that you date someone you later aren’t attracted to anymore. This is a fairly common experience anyway: Many adults look back at their teenage crush, think “What the heck was I thinking” and laugh about it. First loves are often “experiments” that just teach you more about yourself and what matters to you in a relationship. Your first love doesn’t need to be true love, so it’s not the end of the world if they were the “wrong” gender.

Trans, nonbinary etc.: The worst case for a teenager is in almost all cases simply that you have to go through the effort of telling people to use your birth name and your old pronouns again (and maybe you will change your clothing style or get a hair cut). The only medical option available to teenagers are puberty blockers and their effects are reversible! So, next to changing back your name and pronouns, there may also be the task of talking to your doctor about stopping puberty blockers. But that’s about it. No matter how much transphobes yell about it, it just isn’t true that doctors take one look at their teenage patients and go like “You get surgery! And YOU get surgery! Everybody gets a surgery!”. Generally speaking, doctors do not perform gender affirming surgeries on (or prescribe hormones to) minors at all. (Even as an adult, the journey to surgery is so long and oftentimes difficult, there’d be plenty of time to change your mind.)

Even if you end up changing your mind, you’ll be okay. There’s unnecessary fear-mongering around this topic. Teenagers (and adults) constantly change their mind about all kinds of stuff - exploring and learning new stuff about yourself is a normal part of life. You won’t ruin your future.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

[consange]

Marriage Equality & Empathy

Nobuko Yoshiya, a Japanese author, was one of the countries first to publish lesbian fiction, her first work starting serialization in 1916. She was a lesbian, and found love in a mathematics teacher in an all girls school in the early 20s. At the time, as you can probably guess, Japan did not (and still does not) have marriage equality. Luxuries such as sharing property, tax relief or even medical decisions for each other were not offered to gay couples at the time. The couple did obtain these benefits though: Nobuko adopted her lover of 30 years. What is marriage, after all, if not becoming family? This solved their issues, but I’m sure readers may pick up on another one it created.

Becoming family through marriage is one thing, but adoption would put them in the realm of incest, even if it’s by a technicality. Fortunately, incest is legal in Japan, and in many other countries. The couple encountered no issues with legally being mother-daughter, and recouped some benefits otherwise denied to them due to marriage inequality.

I’m sure all but the most stubborn of people could accept their odd arrangement: after all, they were in an established relationship beforehand, and it’s not like they are actually related. No one would call this relationship incestuous.

If they were to have the same or a similar arrangement in America, they would potentially face anywhere from 2 years to a lifetime in prison. Two adults, in a loving relationship, going to prison for years or decades. Now, obviously they would not have to enter such an arrangement in America since we have Marriage Equality right?

Many people will remember the Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) push and subsequent win for gay marriage in 2015. I certainly do, I was driving at the time and had to pull off to the highway shoulders so I could recover properly. It was an amazing win, and certainly a moment I will never forget. But I think calling it Marriage Equality is dishonest. It isn’t equal unless all consenting relationships can marry, and related couples can not marry. This includes cases like Nobuko and her “daughter”, it includes cases of people who meet later in life and discover they are full or half-blooded siblings. It includes cases of people who meet as adults due to a parent remarrying, and feel a spark of attraction.

What are these laws protecting against? Do these couples not deserve their love recognized? The ability to make medical decisions for each other if the worst were to happen? To share ownership of their dream home?

The common response is “it’s to prevent birth defects or weakening the gene pool.” This response is the most concerning to me, because it implies a direct connection between marriage and having children. Marriage is not about building a family together for everyone, and it is entirely possible to start a family outside of marriage (as many people choose to do, or are forced to do.) It highlights the assumption that the purpose of marriage is children, which, speaking as a gay person, is an uncomfortable assumption to make.

There are of course other responses about the sanctity of marriage (divorce does away with that quite well), it’s disgusting (this should sound familiar for anyone who was gay in the 90s), it’s unnatural (again, feels very familiar), etc.

People can not see themselves having this sort of relationship, so they can’t empathize with the situation. They think it is an uncommon occurrence. It is something that doesn’t need discussed because it just is “always wrong.”

In 2015, when I pulled off to cry at hearing that gay marriage was now federally legalized, I didn’t cry because I was in a gay relationship, hoping to be married. At the time, I was in a straight relationship actually. I wouldn’t figure out I was gay for another year, largely in part due to the ruling. I cried because I saw a struggle of people who deserved the same rights I had, and while I couldn’t completely understand their feelings, I believed them to be genuine.

Years from now, I hope I get to pull off another highway, or excuse myself from a conversation, and cry again because of another victory for marriage equality. I hope that the couples out there who desperately wish to marry get their chance. I don’t condemn anyone for feelings I may not understand, just like what was afforded us in the years leading up to the 2015 ruling.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Humans 101.”

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I have had the WORST motivation the past few weeks, but I thought you might like to see some more of Krill. Hope you all have a great day!

Krill walked up the university hallway turning his head to look out the window at the vast expanse of space before him. It had been a very long time since he had been to University, in the Vrul sense of the word, which was less like University and more like on the job training, but he had recently accepted an assignment at the Intergalactic Institute of Biological Science. Granted, he wasn’t a real professor, not fully, but an adjunct who had signed on to do a series of lectures for the next few months while he waited for Admiral Vir’s return. 

Since Simon had become acting Captain of the ship, it seemed that there was less and less reason for him to be there. She wasn’t experienced enough to take on the real dangerous assignments that the Admiral had excelled at, and due to her rule following nature, and the assignments they were sent on, mostly diplomatic and exploratory in nature, Krill had found less and less use for himself on the ship. He didn’t expect to be gone forever, and he doubted he would be able to leave at this point.

He couldn’t return to his home planet, not now there was a standing order for his termination, which he was planning to avoid with great prejudice. Though he found it wildly Ironic that they had asked him to come teach, when many of the professors at the school were, in fact, other Vrul.

It was with this small piece of amusement that he scuttled into the lecture room: Large and circular with seats rising on all sides and a projection hub right in the middle. The room was already packed full despite him being five minutes early. He had been told his lecture series would be popular, but he hadn’t expected there to be standing room only, and even then, there were students sitting on the floor, and a few Vrul floating in the air high above other students' heads.

He moved to the center of the room to set up his projections and, from the corner of his eye watched as a few of the front row students shifted back slightly. The Tesraki, Rundi and Finnari students didn’t seem to notice, but the Vrul students certainly did, sarong at him like he was some sort of freak.

He  could hear the whispering, and he reveled in it.

It was nice to be intimidating sometimes.

Overhead the lights flashed once, and then twice, and the entire room went quiet expectantly looking down at him with their wide eyes.

He drew himself up Resting two of his hands together and another two behind his back as he began pacing his way around the projection field. Students Continued to whisper quietly, “Good morning class, My name is Dr. Krill Galaxy renowned trauma surgeon, and the galactic leading expert in xeno-medicine with an emphasis in humanity.”

There was a uiet muttering around the room.

“I have been acting medical officer aboard the UNSC Omen once Harbinger for more than two years, and I have practiced surgery in hospitals From Andromeda and Irus to the milky way and Earth.”

More shifting wide eyes and some nervous muttering.

He looked around the room shrewdly at all the new faces, “How many of you are interested in working with the intergalactic community.”

A slow raise of hands.

“Then I should probably let you know. Humanity has begun to profuse through all the major sectors of space, business, government, shipping, sales, medical. Humans are everywhere, and humans can do anything. If you wish to work in the wider intergalactic community, you will be working with humans, and many of you will work extremely closely with humans.”

Nervous expressions all around.

“I noticed many of you, the Vrul students especially have noticed the strange effect that spending time with humans can have on an individual.”

He looked around and saw some acknowledgement.

“The colloquial term for it is called the humanizing phenomenon and it will happen to you no matter how hard you try. Scientists have said that you will become more aggressive in order to interact with humans, your movements will become more predatory, you will come to focus on facial cues and the pitch of voices to determine emotion, and soon,you will even begin to utilize human body language in order to communicate better with them.” He motioned to himself, “Out of all the alien species,I have spent the most time with humans, and as you can see, I communicate primarily in a way that humans would understand, mostly with nonverbal body cues. I don’t often use my helium sack as I get in the way with keeping up with humans.” he turned to look around at the room, “Human’s no longer scare me. As pack animals, your social influence is often more important than your physical influence. Given the fact that I have built myself up in social influence within a human pack, I no longer worry myself with being round humans. In fact, I Have never been safer in my entire life.”

His antenna vibrated slightlin amusement, “In fact it is well known that I already have a termination order placed on my head by the Vrul council.”

There was a shocked gasp from certain Vrul parts of the room.

He swaggered about the room a little smugly. He didn’t usually get reactions like this from people.

“They actually took me from an assembly meeting with the GA and brought me back for termination, but one of my humans, as I certainly do consider them mine as much as they consider me theirs, came and rescued me single handedly.”

Another murmuring from around the room.

“How did he do it?”

They waited.

“He used his complex human vocal cords and clapping to simulate a beat. In that way he disabled all the guards, and climbed his way up the guiding rope to the council chamber.”

More soft muttering.

“If you make friends with a human, you are probably as safe as you are ever going to be, especially if you happen to become friends with a very audacious human=, in which case there is nothing that they will not do for you.” He spun on the spot, “Enough for introductions, I will please have you open your files to page one of the textbook, and we will go over a brief discussion of human mechanical anatomy.”

There was a shuffling around the room as Data pads were produced.

Krill brought up an anatomical projection of a human. Looking up it amused him to know that this anatomical model, the one used in almost every nonhuman textbook, was modeled on one single human, that being Adam Vir, all accept for the right leg of course, which was modeled on another human of similar height.

“Humans are are omnivorous bipeds with an endoskeletal structure supported by a vascular system. I know a lot of you have been wrongfully told that humans are primarily carnivores, though that is not true, while human can eat a variety of foods, there are humans that choose to live without eating meat, and they can be sustained on a herbivore diet if they wish. As you can see here, the front facing eyes of the human mark them off as a predator species, though this isn’t always the perfect indicator. Vrul eyes are on the front, but, as we know, Vrul also have prismatic vision that is more closely related that of insects on an earth-like planet.” he glanced around the room, “These predator classifications only exist for a class of alien known as the vascular type, which uses a pump to push fluid through the body. As you know Vrul, Burg, Gromm, and Lumins as well as a few others are not represented in this category.”

“Can anyone tell me which species ARE classified as the vascular subtype.”

There was a raised hand and he pointed, “You there.”

“I can provide a short list sir, Tesraki, Rundi, Humans, and Drev to name a few, but the Drev are a notable outlier for this rule because their war-like culture has supported the slow movement of the eyes towards the front of the face despite them being a herbivore species.”

Krill nodded, “Very good. Yes, humans are in fact a REAL predator species, however it is important to note that the greater 80% of human diets are supported by fruits and vegetables. Based on the amount and distribution of consumed foods, humans are actually closer to herbivores in their dietary choices than they are carnivores.”

There was a soft muttering around the room. Either disbelief or interest, he couldn't tell.

“Historically, humans would have evolved from tree dwelling omnivores, though their diets would also have been primarily fruit, and maybe insects as hunting only really came after they moved to land based travel on two legs. As far as earth animals are concerned, humans are not a top tier predator, and years of life in padded habitats using technology have actually dulled their hunting senses and abilities. A human COULD take a chunk out of you with their teeth, but they certainly wouldn’t WANT to. It would definitely be a last resort. Following that, humans only eat cooked meat as they can grow very sick on consuming certain raw products.”

The class shifted and whispered to each other.

“Yes, I know you have been told many strange and odd things about humans, but most of those are heavily exaggerated. However, it is true that humans are more versatile than most of us. Humans can run, walk, climb, throw, jump and swim, and while they don’t do any of those particularly well, their ability to do all of them  to some degree makes them the most versatile alien in the GA. Furthermore humans also have a multitude of senses, ones that are common to most of us balance, heat cold, pain, etcetera, but there is one sense that they have which is very uncommon in the galaxy, and that is a sense of smell.”

All around him, students were taking notes, “This is the ability for a human to detect particles in the air and, often, identify their sources. Everything sheds particles, and the human nose can pick up those particles. For instance humans generally like the smell of Iotans because Iotins shed compounds similar to foods that humans like to eat. Once upon a time it might have been used to help humans detect poison or other predators, but like I have said before, a human is a middleman in abilities. All of a human’s senses are relatively dull in comparison to some of their earth counterparts.”

He turned to his projector and flipped it to the anatomical structure of a dog, one that had been oddled off the only dog that many aliens had ever met.

Waffles the admiral’s dog.

“This creature’s sense of smell is powerful enough,they have been known to track a sent trail for miles through densely wooded forests. They can smell a change in hormone and pheromone levels on other creatures, and are even being used to detect certain diseases. The best a human can do is smell a cooking meal.”

He walked in a wide circle looking out at the students, some of them looking excited, others staring on in trepidation.

“Human eyesight is on a similar level to their smell. Humans have binocular vision which makes their depth perception quite good. A human is perfectly capable of snatching a flying object out of the air as their predatory instincts draw them to movement. This also makes humans very adept at navigating through obstacles like they might once have had to do in trees. Furthermore, it allows them to guess distance to prey during hunting.” He switched to a picture of a drev, “However humans do not have the best vision out of all aliens species. While the acuity of a human and a Drev are similar, Drev can detect Ultraviolet wavelengths where humans can only see the visible spectrum.” He looked at some of the Vrul, “Take solace in the knowledge that you can see thermal where humans cannot. They have relatively poor night vision, but better than that of you or I and far better than the Drev who traded the use of multiple cones to very frew light sensing rods.”

He looked up from his lecturing, “Are there any questions so far.”

Every had in the room shot into the air.

He paused to look at them faces lit by the glowing bluish light of the hologram behind him and sighed, he supposed this is what he was here for.

“Let’s star in the back then, shall we.”

One of the hands went down.

“Sir, is it true that humans are capable of surviving cortical tissue damage.”

Krill snorted, a sound he probably shouldnt have been able to make since he didn’t have a nose but one he had learned how to make because it expressed a very important emotion when interacting with humans. The entire class looked at him funny.

He sighed, “Yes, The first surgery I preformed on a human involved removing an eight inch steel rod from an eye socket which had gone into cortical tissue. To this day that human… well hes been doing fine, a bit of a dumbass sometimes, but I think that was a part of his personality before brain damage.”

They stared at him confused until Krill realised that dumbass probably wasn’t in their vocabulary. It probably translated to silent butt or idiot butt which didn’t have the same kind of ring to it.

Krill waved a hand, “In certain cases humans have been known to survive with only one hemisphere of their brain.”

A chorus of disbelief, “It is true, in certain cases where electrical abnormalities n the brain cause convulsions, surgeons intentionally remove half the brain to increase quality of life. There are a couple of downsides to this of course, like the inability to play musical instruments, but most humans still live a productive and fulfilling life after the procedure.”

More hands shot up again.

He turned and chose one at Random.

“Can humans smell fear”

Krill frowned, “No humans can’t smell fear. Whoever told you that was smoking something.”The class stared blankly at him until he picked another hand.

“Are you worried that the humans will ever…. Turn on you?”

Krill raised his hands into the air in exasperation, “They are SENTIENT beings not wild animals  Humans have strict social rules like you or anyone else. It would be illegal for them to hurt me , and I doubt they would let it happen at all. Humans aren’t feral. In fact my partner aboard the ship is Doctor Katie Quinn, and she is just as experienced in the field of medicine as I am. SHe can match me in almost any medical procedure and she only has two cortical hemispheres, and less than half the amount of hands.”

He frowned at the room, “I have no idea where ou all got these ideas from. Humans are thinking creatures not animals. The reason they survived on their planet is not because they are the strongest predator, but because they are the smartest, just like you or I. the only difference between us is that the Human planet is so hostile, they have been forced to keep some of their more instinctive tendencies.”

More hands raised.

“Have you seen one of these larger earth animals, sir?”

“Yes on plenty of occasions.” He flipped his diagram back to that of a dog, “This animal here is called a dog, the ancestral  evolution of the wolf, which is just a much larger version of this animal here. These animals are higher on the food chain that humans and have the ability to easily outrun, attack and rip the throat out of a human.” He paused as the class pulled back, “Which is why humans often use them in security, protection and law enforcement, because no human wants to fight one of these creatures.” He smiled a bit grimly, “Also humans just love to keep them as pets.”

There was an uproar around the room.

How could anyone want to keep something that could rip their face off as a pet.

Krill raised a hand to quiet down the room, “I know, I know, it all sounds very strange, but you must understand, humans and dogs are both descended from highly social pack groups. At one point a human took wolf cubs and began raising them and breeding them for desirable traits. As wolves are pack animals they slowly would have begun to see humans as members of their own pack family. In this humans molded a creature into being one of their greatest allies. Dogs rely on humans and humans rely on dogs for many jobs. Humans love dogs and dogs love humans. In fact, humans have bred this animal so extensively that dogs are one of the only creatures on their own planet capable of reading human facial expressions.”

He pulled up an image from his personal files, one where Adam sat on the floor, and the dog Waffles sat next to him. He made a face as her long, pink tongue ran up the side of his cheek.

The class gasped.

“She could easily use this opportunity to kill him.” krill said, “But she never would.” He turned to another image of himself standing next to the dog, a hand resting on her back.

More gasping.

Krill was somewhat amused. “Humans, as I said are social in the extreme, and this fact is going to be our best ally when meeting them. Anyone and anything can become part of a human pack. In fact, this instinct in humans is so strong that inanimate objects can easily be accepted into a human’s pack. They routinely name plants and attribute personalities to them. I once conducted an experiment where I placed fake eyes.” Googly eyes to be exact, “On a waste receptacle, and the humans named him Mr. Rubbish and began throwing away their items exclusively in that specific receptacle as ‘Offerings’ to Mr Rubbish….. That is not a joke, that actually happened.” He appraised them with a stern look, “Befriending humans is the most important thing you can do, and probably one of the easiest things as well. If you find yourself incapable of making friends with a human, its probably time to look at yourself personally because you must be horrible.” he pointed to himself, “I will openly admit that my personality isn’t exactly the easiest to be around, and yet I still managed it on accident.”

His lecture continued for some minutes, covering more anatomy, bone structures and some interesting facts about their internal organs.

However he was forced to stop as little lights began blinking overhead, and he went to dismiss the class, “Next week we will be discussing the effects of adrenaline on humans as a special treat to those who decide to return after this first lecture. And for your assignment, I want you to find one news article that perpetuates a myth about humans and write a short essay debunking it. Since this is the first week I am going lenient on assignments but by the end of the term I do expect full essays at publishable quality.”

Everyone in the class stood, and he found himself suddenly swarmed by a mass of figures.

It seemed as if he was going to be here for a while.

Little did Krill know that his lecture series was becoming so popular that the administration was going to have to upgrade his lecture hall two more times in the concurrent weeks.

Everyone wanted to know about humans.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #190 & 191

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re providing you a horror double feature- Mecha-Eli chan and Mecha-Eli chan Mk. II! Since they’re nearly identical (in NA) all you have to change between one and the other is how you roleplay. But hey, you technically get an extra build this week, go you!

Both of these servants are 100% Armorer Artificers for some fancy techno-gadgets built into their metal bodies.

Check out their builds breakdown below the cut, or their characters sheet over here!

Next up: She’s got so many pigs around her you’d think she opened a doughnut shop!

Race and Background

Shockingly, the robots... are robots. Specifically, Warforged, which gives them +2 Constitution and +1 Intelligence. They also get Constructed Resilience, which makes you a better ruler since you don’t need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, or get sick, you get advantage and resistance to poison saves and damage. Elisabeth might get sick from eating all that candy, but you won’t even be tempted.

Instead of sleeping, you take a Sentry’s Rest, spending 6 hours in a still state- you can still see, but you can’t move without breaking the rest.

Integrated Protection gives you your first armored casing, adding +1 to your AC. You can also don armor by fusing it to your body over an hour, letting you wear heavy armor without having to take off your tutu.

Finally, you get a Specialized Design, giving you proficiency with Performance and one set of tools. If you want to get your Elisabeth on, I’d suggest Bagpipes, so you can clear the room just as fast as she can.

Being a robot makes your background a bit complicated, but you were made to rule Castle Csejte Pyramid Himeji so we’ll call you a Noble, which gives you proficiency with History and Persuasion. If you’re playing Mk. II, swap the latter over to Intimidation, boom, roleplay changes done.

Ability Scores

Your highest score should be Intelligence, you have a supercomputer for a brain, it’s not a huge stretch. Constitution comes next, aside from Babbage you’re the only servant made out of iron. So far. Your Strength should also be pretty good, while you do shoot people, you also hit them, and you have one of the most damaging NPs in the game when ignoring type advantage. Your Charisma isn’t bad per se, but your delivery does get a little stiff from time to time. Your Wisdom isn’t that great, neither of you really “get” people. Yes, humans might take offense at being forced to stay in their homes their entire natural lives. That means we’re dropping Dexterity. Your head literally falls off on a regular basis, that’s an accident that would kill most people. Also, you’re not exactly running around in leather, so it’s not like you’d need it.

Class Levels

Starting off as an Artificer gives you proficiency with Constitution and Intelligence saves, as well as two skills. Arcana is the closest thing to robotics in the forgotten realm, and Investigation will help you make a sweep of the battlefield with your robot eyes. Your first machines are made using your Magical Tinkering, adding minor effects to tiny objects. It’s not exactly the wish spell, but you can get creative with it. Speaking of Spells, you can cast and prepare those now using your Intelligence. All you have to do is be smart. Grab the cantrip Mage Hand for a non-combat use for your rocket arm, and Sword Burst so you can try spinning to damage nearby enemies with your tail. I hear it’s a neat trick. You can also cast first level spells, like Feather Fall and Jump (it’s almost flying), as well as Catapult for a prototype rocket arm. Also, if you can spare the slots, grab Detect Magic for robo scanning.

For more substantive mechanics, you’ll have to Infuse Items over a long rest, creating two items from a choice of four blueprints, both of which will go up in number as you level up. Right now, I’d suggest grabbing Goggles of Night and Sending Stones for recon missions, an Enhanced Arcane Focus for better bullets later, and an Armor of Magical Strength for a suit of armor that can either add your intelligence modifier to strength checks and saves or prevent you from getting knocked prone. Doing either spends one of six charges, which partially get refilled at dawn.

Moving to the Armorer subclass dumps you into a proper heavy armor setup, but you can make it even more impressive by turning it into Arcane Armor. This lets you ignore the strength requirements for heavy armor (which you can wear now), and you can use the armor as a spellcasting focus. There’s also stuff about the armor being a part of you, but that’s already true thanks to being a warforged. As the guardian of Hungary you get the Guardian Model, which gives you cool Thunder Gauntlets that use your Intelligence to attack instead of your strength. Creatures that you punch this way have disadvantage against other creatures for a round. It can also produce a Defensive Field as a bonus action, giving you your level in temporary HP, up to Proficiency times per long rest. Finally, you get some free armorer spells to go along with your new outfit. Magic Missiles do a good job of standing in for bullets, and Thunderwave gives you a finale for your Breast Zero Erzsébet.

Your first Ability Score Improvement is going towards making your regular attacks even more powerful with the Crusher feat, rounding up your Strength and making your fists able to shove a creature they hit once per turn, moving a large or smaller creature 5′ away. Your critical hits also give all other attacks against that creature advantage. (Catapult is a save, so I don’t think they work together, but that’s a DM thing, I guess.)

Fifth level armorers get an Extra Attack per action, so you can make enemies taste both of your hands each turn. You also get second level spells, like Mirror Image to put together some cheap factory-made knockoffs to take damage for you and Shatter for more sound-based pain. You can also prepare spells like Levitate for your first taste of flight, Enlarge/Reduce to make yourself the giant mecha you were born to be, See Invisibility for more robo-scanners, and Pyrotechnics for some movie magic.

Sixth level artificers get Tool Expertise, doubling their proficiency with all proficient tools. Now you’ll be really good at clearing out a bar with your bagpipes. You also get two more Infusions, with one more up at a time. Some Resistant Armor will make you deaf to your own music with resistance to thunder damage, or you can customize it to block out plenty of other types, like acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder. Makes a great gift for the totem barbarians in your party! You also get a Spell-Refueling Ring, because pretty soon you’ll be flying, and the worst thing you can do while flying is run out of spell slots. As an action, you’ll recover a 3rd level or lower spell slot once per day.

At seventh level, your Flashes of Genius make your smarts even smarter, letting you add your intelligence modifier as a reaction to nearby checks or saves Intelligence Modifier times per long rest. You were literally built to do everything for your subjects, it only makes sense that you’d be good at it.

Use this ASI to bump up your Intelligence for stronger spells, stronger punches, and more flashes of genius. You take a little bit to get warmed up, but that’s true of most computers.

Ninth level armorers can make Armor Modifications, turning your armor into four items for the purpose of infusion, and you can infuse an extra 2 items specifically if they’re part of your armor. That’ll be really cool next level, but what’s really cool right now is your third level spells, including the freebies Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt. I would’ve preferred fireball, but we’ll take what we can get for big guns. You can also prepare spells like Fly to fly under your own power instead of awkwardly levitating like a balloon, Haste to overclock your computer, and Intellect Fortress to lord your superior brain over the fleshlings, giving you resistance to psychic damage, and advantage on intelligence, wisdom, and charisma saves.

When you hit tenth level you become a Magic Item Adept, partially because you’re a magic item. This means you get an extra attunement slot, and crafting common or uncommon items is a lot cheaper and faster. You also learn the Fire Bolt cantrip for more options from your guns. On top of all that, you get two more infusion blueprints, and can have one more made at a time. I’d pick up some Winged Boots for concentration free flight up to 4 hours a day, and a Helm of Awareness to give a creature advantage on initiative rolls and immunity to being surprised. You don’t really wear a helmet, but you give one to Guda during the valentines events, so now you can do that in game.

At eleventh level, you can make Spell-Storing Items at the end of a long rest, shoving a 1st or 2nd level artificer spell into a weapon or focus. A creature can cast that spell from the item up to twice your Intelligence modifier times, and it is as powerful as if you cat it yourself. You can only have one spell stored this way at a time.

I really wanted to multiclass into sorcerer this build, but to be honest the final level of artificer is too good to really pass up. So instead, use this ASI to become a Metamagic Adept, gaining two sorcery points and two ways to spend them. Most of your spells are really just part of your body, so a Subtle spell will make that more obvious by making the casting less obvious. You won’t need somatic or verbal components. Alternatively, you can use a Careful spell to turn your giant blasty spells into something slightly more controlled, automatically letting one creature make their save against the spell. You use a lot of firepower for a single-target NP.

Thirteenth level artificers get fourth level spells. Fire Shield and Greater Invisibility aren’t in character, but they are useful, and using useful things is in character. You can also cast spells like Stoneskin, which is an understatement if anything, Summon Construct or Fabricate to build extra Elis, and Arcane Eye for your very own security drone. I also recommend grabbing the glyph of warding from level 3 so you can fully stock your castle with summoned versions of yourself to attack intruders.

Fourteenth level artificers are Magic Item Savants, letting you ignore all restrictions for magic item use, and you can attune to five items at a time. You also get the Prestidigitation cantrip for easy 3d printing, and two more infusions, plus one more built at a time. Grab the Belt of Hill Giant Strength for a whopping 21 strength, and an Arcane Propulsion Arm for a proper rocket punch. That last one does come with a pretty hefty price though- you will have to chop an arm off to put this one on. (Your armor will replace the arm if you have to make space for another infusion though, so it’s not all bad.) Annoyingly, this arm also deals force damage for some fucking reason, so you can’t use crusher on this either. I’d let you just punch people normally though.

Fifteenth level armorers get their final goody, giving them Perfected Armor. Now your guardian model lets you spend a reaction to pull a huge or smaller creature closer to you at the end of its turn if it fails a strength save, and if it’s pulled into melee range you can wollop it as part of the reaction. You can do this Proficiency times per long rest. We’ll consider this a giant hand giving them a nudge in your direction.

Another ASI, use this one for more Intelligence. Now you have the strongest and most flashes, as well as super strong spells and force punches.

At seventeenth level you get fifth level spells, like the freebies Passwall and Wall of Force. Technically it’s invisible, but a giant hand cupping around you to block damage is totally possible. Speaking of giant hands, Bigby’s Hand lets you make a giant mecha hand that actually acts like a hand for once. Yes, we are fitting Mecha Eli’s bit from Las Vegas in here. You can also use Creation to make an exact copy of your body, and Animate Objects to bring it to life. It’s not as powerful as the original, but that’s what you get with factory-made goods.

Eighteenth level artificers are Magic Item Masters, letting you attune to six items at once. You also get another two blueprints with another one built at the same time, so unless you’re powerbuilding grab another Arcane Propulsion Arm for two rocket fists, and a Ring of Protection for a bonus to your AC and saves.

Use your last ASI to become Tough, for 38 extra HP right away and another two when you level up again. You are literally made of steel. Come on.

Your capstone level grants you a Soul of Artifice, which is pretty busted. You get a bonus to all saves equal to the number of magic items you’re attuned to, and if you would drop to 0 HP you can end one of your infusions instead, sticking around at 1 HP. We weren’t able to make your mass-production work out that well, but if you have to die 9 times to actually go down, I’d count that as extra copies.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

You’re hard as hell to kill. With your lowest save being a +6 and the ability to add 5 to any save you don’t like the look of, magic will just slide right off you. Plus, with an AC of 20, just over 200 HP, and temporary HP from the guardian model, you have a lot of health to chew through from martial classes as well.

And that’s assuming they can even hit you! Flight is awesome, giving you plenty of mobility to avoid most combatants entirely and rain down fists and hellfire from a safe distance.

This build is highly customizable, with tons of tricks and gadgets to swap out as the situation calls for them.

Cons:

You’re super reliant on magical items to protect you, so if you get caught up in an anti-magic field it won’t be fun. Like, most artificers will have an awkward fight, but you won’t have arms.

While you have a lot of infusion options, you can’t have all of them up at once. That means you’ll have to make hard decisions constantly, and basically predict the future each long rest.

Two of the feats we took aren’t really that great, and probably should have gone towards better stats. Crusher only works on your regular punches, which are outclassed by your magic weapons, and you only get two weak uses of Metamagic per day.

[cringe-central]

Love Languages

The Lost Boys: Seperate

Giving vs. Recieving

A/N: Im so sorry this took so long to complete. I just started a new job so things may take longer, but ill still be writing. The next fic will most likely be poly with you and the boys getting together. 

David

Giving: Gifts

David enjoys giving gifts that remind you of who you belong to. He's not good with emotions so giving momentos, to David, is a good way of showing his love.

David gives gifts to show you that even if he isn't around, he's thinking about you. He also uses gifts as an excuse to take care of you. He views himself as your protector and wants you to know that he can and will provide for you. 

If he sees you looking at something for just a little too long, he will totally pay for it, legally, with money. He definitely won’t steal it if that's what you're thinking. But whether it's gained via dubious means or not, it's yours. David is basically a criminally inclined sugar daddy. 

If you make an off comment about being hungry? You're getting food. You tell him he doesn't have to get something for you? That's too bad, it's not even a question to David, you're getting taken care of. 

David just wants to provide and protect, just let the boy take care of you the only way he knows how.

Receiving: Physical affection

David is very touch starved under all that angst, pride, and daddy issues. Although he wont admit it, he needs to be given affection, badly. 

Before he met you it never bothered him, he had the boys and he didn't need more than that. But when you came into his life, and you held his face in your hands? He realized how much he missed being held by another.

He's never thought highly of humanity, but your warmth pressed against him and feeling the steady rise and fall of your chest under his hand hits him in his cold, undead heart.

In public, PDA is kept at a minimum with David so he can keep up his rough and tough persona. He acts annoyed when you get clingy, but it's painfully obvious that he actually adores it. If you want to force him to hold your hand he'll complain about it, but he wouldn't dare move away from you.

In private however, all bets are off. Chairs aren't allowed, you're either on his lap or laying on top of him. Worry about his legs falling asleep? Don’t, he's already dead, they physically can't fall asleep. You aren't going anywhere sweetheart. If you're standing? He's wrapping his arms around your stomach.

If for some reason he moves his hands away while cuddling and you bring his hands back, He swears he can almost feels his heart start beating again. He finds you adorable when you're like this. It makes David smile when he sees your look of mock offense when he takes his arms away from you.

Cuddle this man. He may try to act all tough and intimidating, but he just wants to be held.

Dwayne

Giving: Acts of Service

Dwayne likes making your life easier, he's not a big talker but he knows that actions often speak louder than words.

He's a vampire, so the biggest stress factor the boys have is being found out and staked, but other than that he and the boys live a carefree life. He knows being a human is often very difficult. Picking up on your stressors and helping make your life easier is how he shows affection best. 

Often if you're really busy, Dwayne will pick up food for you and make you take a break before helping you finish what you were doing. If you feel unwell in the slightest he’ll be there in a second to take care of you. Dwayne is also very tall, and will always get things down from above without even needing to be asked, it's basically a reflex at this point. 

 It's not uncommon for Dwayne to finish those last edits of an essay you were writing. He'd do more than that but he knows you'd be upset with him if he did. If you worry about taking advantage of him, Dwayne assures you that isn't the case. Taking that weight off of your shoulders makes him feel not only wanted, but needed.

Dwayne needs to know he's taking care of you, he's never been one to show love through words but you never go a day without feeling it.

Receiving: Quality Time

Ever since you and Dwayne became a couple, you've been the first thought in his head every morning, wanting to get feedings done sooner so he could spend time with you.

Dwayne has a lot of free time on his hands and during the time he spends with you, every possible ounce of attention you could give him was given. He adored those long conversations where you went on and on about whatever your current hyperfixation was. Even if you felt as if you annoyed him by simply rambling about a topic, he found those moments intimate and special.

Museum and Bookstore dates were very common between the two of you. Debates and deep conversations were a favorite of his, you both respected each other and your opinions. 

For museums, he would watch you stare at the exhibits in wonder while he told you of what history he remembered in certain pieces. Though he wasn't too old by vampiric standards, you would ask him all sorts of questions about the eras he's lived in. He's very quiet, but it's on these dates where you can get him going.

Bookstore dates are quieter, there was one a little ways away from the hotel that stayed open later into the night. Once a week, you and Dwayne would try to get there as soon as possible and stay there until they kicked you out. You would buy (definitely not steal) books and walk back to the beach or, if it was particularly cold, back to the cave. You two would then read them and discuss the book until the next bookstore date.

Paul

Giving: Physical Touch 

Paul loves giving affection, he takes offense to any moment spent without his S/O in his arms. He knows his reputation, and keeping you close shows that you're not to be fucked with. Many girls may try to get his attention, but they will never be the ones on Paul's hip and you take that as a badge of pride.

Paul enjoys the summer, his cool body is perfect for giving a lot of cuddles during that time. The colder months are heavily disliked by both you and him because of you body needing to stay warm, but Paul gives the best hugs, to the point where you begin to crave his touch.

Paul's worst fear is you feeling ignored or unloved; if you two have been physically distant he will immediately rectify it as soon as he can. This boy will never let his S/O go un-snuggled. Every time you're upset you are swept into Paul’s lap with your head tucked under his chin.

When you're at the boardwalk, your hand is always in his or his arm is around your shoulders. If you two are sitting down then you'll be in his lap. The boys may tease him about it but he doesn't mind, he's proud to show you off. 

Paul is a himbo at the end of the day, he's not good with words and has said the wrong thing before, but through his actions you are shown how truly loved and valued you are to him.

Receiving: Words of Affirmation

Paul is a very literal person, he enjoys when you tell him what's on your mind, and he adores listening to you talk. Listening to you talk is the highlight of his night.

Even though Paul shows love through physicality, he needs to be told the words I love you. The first time you told him those three simple words he became pretty emotional. He couldn't remember the last time someone genuinely told him he was loved, and here you were confirming your mutual affections for each other. He's so soft for you man. 

You always tell him how much he is admired and adored as you hold his face in your hands, and Paul melts every single time. He finds a lot more pride in his clothing and hair after you rave about how amazing he looks.

He values what you say above everyone else's opinion, and if you like the new thing he did with his eyeliner you notice he does it significantly more. Paul is the definition of jokester, but when you tell him what he said made you laugh he takes it to heart. 

Paul loves being a vampire, but sometimes he needs you to say you aren't afraid of him. That despite what he is, you still feel safe around him. Even the toughest of people feel insecure sometimes and you're willing to do whatever he needs to feel okay again.

Marko

Giving: Physical affection

There's a reason him and Paul are best friends, sometimes a bro needs a hug. And though his motto was always ‘bros before hoes’ something was missing. There was a level of affection he longed to give, but never could. 

When he met you and he was finally able to give those romantic affections, he went overboard. Always holding you and touching you in some way, you weren't let out of his grasp for weeks. Any time you needed to leave the cave to go home, Marko would whine and beg you to stay with him for a little while longer. Any time he could convince you to stay the night, he would be ecstatic. 

Marko is very happy to know that someone loves him for him, and he is determined to show that in every single moment of your relationship. If you had a distant boyfriend before? Destroy those expectations, because you got the clingiest vampire in the lost boys. 

He loves to scent mark on you, a giant vampire thing, it's like a drug to this angel faced sweetheart. Having his scent melding with yours as you two roam the boardwalk drives the boy insane. Marko is very possessive, and he can't help but nuzzle into your neck or wrap his arms around your torso so that everyone knows you're taken. 

Much like his best friend, Marko is also a himbo. He needs you close to him and if you aren't he becomes whiny. The next time you see him, you won't be leaving his grasp any time soon.

Receiving: Gift giving

Marko is an artistic being and he appreciates gifts that have effort put into them. Things that are bought are nice, but if you spent hours making something? He doesn't care what it is, he will love it.

If you made him a bracelet, he'd wear it every day. If you paint, you'd notice pieces of art taped onto the wall, growing with every piece you make him. If you bake? What you make him is gone in a day. His favorite gifts however are the patches you make him, sewing them on and admiring the intricate detail put into each one. 

Everything you make him or give him is valued, keeping anything and everything tangible in a wooden box that Marko painted himself. He protects that box with his life, keeping it in the most protected place in the cave.

If you write him letters he stores them in the box and he reads them by the fire pits when he can't sleep, which helps him get some shuteye. He treasures every little thing you give him, but to Marko, you are the true gift. Each of those momentos being a simple reminder of the wonderful being who made them.

[xenoblademisadventures]

I’ve been thinking about how Xenoblade 2′s character writing and why it doesn’t work. It's not uncommon in animes, especially ones with large casts, to make characters with a handful of really loud and obvious character traits and then have one extra character trait that the viewer can only learn about by spending extra time with them. For the sake of convenience, I'm going to call these "surface traits" and "hidden traits." To use Nia as an example, her surface traits would be that she's a snarky and sarcastic cat girl who is slow to warm up to the party while her hidden trait would be her fear of persecution over powers that she didn't ask for. Every major character in Xenoblade 2 does this.

This type of character writing has a lot of advantages, disadvantages, and requirements to make work effectively. The big advantage of writing characters like this is that they're easy for the audience to follow. This also usually results in characters who are easily identifiable among a large cast because you can list 3 or less surface level character traits and you'll know who's being talked about. When talking about Xenoblade 2, I could talk about a "super powerful hot-head," "talks like a butler," "flirts constantly and is uncool," and you can probably guess which character I'm talking about. This can also be really good for characters that the player isn't supposed to spend a lot of time with but the writers still want to leave an impression. The Rare Blades are good examples of the type of character where writing them like this is a good idea, especially since it's not guarantee that the player will do their sidequests or h2hs after getting access to them. This style of character writing also doesn't prevent writers from making interesting or complex characters. Pyra and Mythra are actually really good examples of characters that fit this style of character writing but are still super complex. When a story has a lot of these types of characters, they become interesting by having those attributes intersect with and synergize with as many other elements in the work they're a part of as possible. 

The reason why Pyra and Mythra are able to be extremely complicated characters that still follow this model of character writing is because the traits that the writers decided to give Pyra and Mythra feed into both the other character, the individual character, the plot, and the gameplay, but also it's possible to trace how the traits of other characters interact with them. Addam is a reluctant hero, normally that's seen as a noble trait in fiction. But in Xenoblade 2, Blades are emotionally reliant on their drivers to such a massive extent that it can shape both how a Blade views themself and how they view the world as a whole. So, Addam being scared of Mythra's power, having only resonated with her out of the necessity to defeat Malos, and often referring to "the Aegis" as "Malos, the guy who sinks continents for fun" all feeds into Mythra seeing herself as something that is dangerous and can only cause harm. This also feeds into the gameplay. Pyra and Mythra are presented as glass canons who deal nice crit. However, building Mythra towards being a dodge tank or giving her a crit heal build can make her really powerful defensively. Pyra's a lot weaker than Mythra because her attack doesn't reach the same levels as Mythra's and she doesn't have a lot of utility outside of dealing damage. This synergizes really nicely with their character arc because, for Pyra, it shows that Mythra really did see herself as only a weapon when she created Pyra, so Pyra, alongside being a lot weaker, is also a lot more limited to that role. While Mythra, while powerful offensively, becomes broken when used defensively. Which mechanically synergizes with her learning that she isn't an evil ball of destruction. They also have the potential to synergize nicely with the majority of the party. Rex doesn't know about the Aegis war gets to know Pyra as Pyra rather than as the Aegis. Azurda was there for the Aegis war and really should have something to say about Mythra blowing up Torna. Nia's character arc also involves her sealing away her powers because of a fear of being judged for them, Dromarch is an emotional support to Nia, Tora is responsible for creating a blade that can rival Mythra in power and Poppi is that Blade (considering how Pyra and Mythra feels about their own power, this could go somewhere), Morag and Brighid both rub the Aegis war in Pyra's and Mythra's face (Morag initially opposes Rex because she believes the Aegis is too dangerous to be left unsupervised and she's scared of the Aegis's power, which is a parallel that could be drawn to Addam's own attitude towards the Aegis, while Brighid was not only there for the Aegis war, she was extremely judgy and one of the people responsible for Mythra turning into Pyra), and Zeke and Pandoria don't really have any immediately obvious connections, which can be nice if Pyra's and Mythra's relationship with every other character is so closely related to the heavy topic that is her hidden trait. Of course, Xenoblade 2 doesn't do anything with most of these potential synergies, so they don't exist in the context of Xenoblade 2. But they are very useable and potentially very powerful in the context of fanfiction, which is why I made that comment. Mythra's already one of the most complex characters in the game and the writers only really did anything with her potential synergies with Pyra, Addam, and maybe Rex (which could have been further explored). In turn, Pyra and Addam are more interesting characters than they would have been had Mythra not been written to be a part of the story. If Xenoblade 2 had taken more advantage of the potential synergies between different members of the cast, the character writing would be a lot better than it is in the game.

A common issue with writing characters like this is that they can easily feel one-dimensional or tropey. These types of characters work best if you imagine any individual character as a puzzle piece rather than a whole thing to be viewed in isolation. Going back to the example of Pyra and Mythra, if you were to write Pyra without having Mythra or any of the stuff going on there, she becomes a boringly written character that only really plays into the sexist ideals of what makes a good housewife, with her surface traits being that she's demure, sexually innocent, and good at cooking. So by not making those connections and synergies when writing these characters, they become weak characters. The issue becomes worse when the characters synergize badly with other elements of the work they're a part of. This is an area where Xenoblade 2's big issue of its pieces not fitting well together comes to bite the character writing in the ass.

For example, one of the reasons Rex suffers as a character is because the writers tried to make him a weak child character who barely scrapes by most of his encounters, but this does not work well with Xenoblade 2's cathartic combat system. Xenoblade 2's combat system does a lot to make the player feel awesome. It has the flashiest attacks in the series so far, it has some narrator going "excellent" "awesome" "amazing," and it emphasizes the player juggling a lot of simple to execute ideas at once, which makes it extremely satisfying when the player successfully juggles those things and makes big numbers that go brr. This makes Xenoblade 2's combat really unique and fun (easily my favorite moment-to-moment combat in the series). But in relationship to how Rex is written, it's really bad. Gameplay is as much a part of the story of a video game as the writing is, so if the gameplay says "the party is an unstoppable, epic, flashy, and cool and this is a power fantasy where the party can handle anything (that doesn't instantly kill them)" while the story says "the party barely survives the majority of their encounters and the protagonist is way in over his head," then there's going to be a disconnect and players are likely either going to react by believing Rex is terrible protagonist who constantly loses or they'll lean towards believing that the gameplay isn't canon. Neither of these are good results.

The character designs are another aspect of the game that screws over the character writing. For these types of characters, they need to be accompanied by character designs where you can know at a glance what they're all about. This can mean having over the top character designs, but that isn't always the case. If you want some examples, the Fire Emblem series is generally very good at conveying information about its characters through its designs without needing over the top designs. Full Metal Alchemist manages to convey a lot of information about it's characters through their designs even with the majority of them wearing the exact same uniforms. Xenoblade 2 utterly fails at this goal when making its character designs. Pyra's the worst example of this, so I'll use her design to get at what I mean. She's a shy, modest, carries a lot of guilt with her, and is shown multiple times to either be ignorant or disapproving of horniness (mostly shown in H2H's involving Tora). Those are all pretty surface level traits about her, which her character design should convey the most loudly. Alongside that, it's also important that her design connects her to Mythra in some way since their relationship is extremely important to both of their arcs. Because Xenoblade 2 has a mechanical focus on dividing ether in different elements, it's a good idea for Pyra's character design to say "I'm a fire type" in some way. It may also be good to have the design imply that Pyra is a weapon and that she is sealed because that's also relevant to her character arc. Because the Aegis and the Monado are supposed to be connected (but that connection is a massive spoiler), Pyra's design should also have something subtly tying her to Malos and the Monado. Out of those things listed, Pyra's design does convey a connection to Mythra and it does say that she's a fire type. It either doesn't do or does an extremely poor job at conveying everything else. If Pyra is supposed to be demure, why is her design so flashy? If Pyra is going to have multiple lines of dialogue where she explicitly says that she doesn't like horny clothes, why is her design so heavily sexualized? Her flashy design works really well with the flashy gameplay and the sexualized design works well as a waifu collection gacha game, but that comes at the massive expense of the character. The character design and combat animations imply that Pyra is supposed to be cool and sexy, but the character writing says that she is not remotely close to that. If the purpose was to make the character design intentional contradict the character, then a point should be made about that rather than leaving it to the viewer to piece together whatever explanation sounds the smartest to them.

Another way that Xenoblade 2′s characters falter is that their hidden traits often don’t come into play outside of the moment when they’re established. Making anything like that just results in something where there’s a lot going on but it isn’t very interesting. Tora is the worst offender for this, he’s a super-genius, has a strong admiration for Rex because he’s a driver, is overweight, and has a maid fetish. This could easily lead into him having an arc where he has to learn to see Poppi as a real Blade or as a person (and it could synergize nicely with some of the later plot twists about all Blades being artificial lifeforms). It could put an interesting spin on the maid fetish aspect of his character because Poppi is on the receiving end of that most of the time. It could also work nicely with Mythra’s character arc because she has experience being seen for what she is rather than who. It could lead into Poppi having a character arc. Tora could also easily have an arc about learning to believe in himself. Which could work nicely with Rex’s development, or even Pyra or Mythra’s arcs. Instead, Tora gets all of his development in Chapter 4 (which really wasn’t a good time for it because there was a lot that needed to get unpacked with Mythra’s introduction and that gets sidelined a lot quicker than it should have been). And it focuses a lot on how Bana kidnapped his father and forced him to make a bunch of Artificial Blades and also finished Lila. There’s a lot of extra information added about Tora, but the game never draws a connection between Tora’s existing character traits and the new information, nor does it do anything to link those traits. So, a lot of people will see either Tora as a character as “the creepy Nopon with a maid fetish” or “the super-genius who wants to be a real driver.” The deeper stuff about him missing his dad and wanting to honor their memory by finishing a multi-generation long project barely has anything to do with any of his actions outside of this one arc. Alongside that, this hidden trait doesn’t synergize with his surface traits. It’s not that these character traits can’t reasonably coexist, but they also don’t feed into each other very well. And connections absolutely can be made between these traits, but the game opts not to make them.

Azurda is a character who suffers from the game not exploring its characters as much as it should. He is old and he likes to tease Rex but genuinely cares about him. Those are his surface level traits. His hidden traits are that he knows a lot more about the backstory than he lets on and withholds a lot of critical information from the characters because he doesn’t trust Rex to respond rationally with that information. There’s a lot that can be done with that, but the game does nothing. Azurda never expresses any opinion about Rex being Pyra’s driver despite having seen for himself how badly Addam’s partnership with Mythra went. Even if his opinion is that he’s chill with it, that’s something he should have been asked to elaborate on (probably by Pyra?). Instead, he doesn’t serve much of a purpose to anything. Brighid, Poppi, Morag, Dromarch, and Pandoria also suffer from a lack of being properly explored by the writing.

Another issue that Xenoblade 2 has with its character writing is that it turns some of the most important aspects of its characters into late-game plot twists. The advantage of plot twists is that they’re exciting, can carry huge implications for earlier parts of the story that the player can notice upon revisiting it, and can change the trajectory of the story in interesting ways. The problem is that these character plot twists tend to also be at the end of their arcs. The audience doesn’t know about Nia being a Flesh Eater or that she struggles with fear of rejection because of how people have reacted to her being a Flesh Eater until that conflict has already been resolved. We don’t learn about Pyra and Mythra being suicidal until a minute before it’s resolved. That’s a problem because all of the potentially interesting character stuff happens off-screen, which means the player doesn’t get to see it (unless they read fanfictions that specifically address these topics). I already talked about Pyra and Mythra, so I’m going to talk about Nia. Up until a bit before the Flesh Eater reveal, she largely plays straight-man to everyone else’s bullshit and makes a few funny snarky comments. Her role in the party comedically works really well. She is comedic gold and plays especially nicely off of Zeke. However, when it comes to her non-comedic writing, she struggles to be interesting. The first potentially interesting thing we learn about her is that she was allies with Torna (but didn’t know that they kill people? or did she just not think they’d murder a random innocent kid?) The game doesn’t use Nia’s former allegiance to Torna to progress her character, especially in the early game. Nia has been on the run from Indol for years and caused her so much fear that it prevented her from saving Vandham, that should have been a huge deal in the moment, that Nia could have saved him but didn’t. But because Nia being a Flesh Eater isn’t revealed to the audience until much later, the best we get is being able to see her hesitating and clutching her chest and that becoming significant on rewatch. Putting this plot twist so late also means that Nia doesn’t react to Mor Ardain capturing her, Cole openly revealing himself to be a flesh eater, Fan’s powers (in Chp. 4), or her having to exist in Indol nearly as much as she should have. It also makes her join Azurda in the ranks of having known critical plot information but chose not to share it party. The flesh eater reveal happens at an awkward time. Players will either realize early in Chapter 6 or in Chapter 7, depending on whether they caught on during the Niall revive scene. Either the plot twist comes out of nowhere and proceeds to not get addressed or receive any context until midway through Chapter 7 or it comes at a time when the viewer should be concerned about Pyra and Mythra and draws a bunch of attention away from that. Either way, Nia being a flesh eater only manifests in the story as an OP power-up after the reveal. This comes at the expense of certain scenes. For example, Nia soloing Malos visually looks really cool, but because the writing never puts any time on Nia’s relationship with Torna or how that impacted her views of herself as a Flesh Eater, there isn’t any emotional pay-off to this encounter. Her revealing herself as a flesh eater also falls into the same category. The scene is mostly known for “I love you and all you guys!” If the game revealed to the audience that Nia was a flesh eater and spent most of her life having to hide that fact or else be forced to go on the run or get taken advantage of for it, then her character development wouldn’t have to be all cramped into Chapter 7 and her two major scenes there could start to have some emotional payoff. Revealing her status as a flesh eater to the audience early on would also allow for Nia’s arc to compliment Pyra’s and Mythra’s. It could even allow Dromarch to have moments (since a lot of his character is based around him being a support for Nia). Unfortunately, the most interesting aspect of Nia’s character doesn’t get explored, doesn’t show up until really late in the game (late considering that she’s the second party member), and it gets crammed into a spot where the story should have been focusing on Rex and his ability to function without Pyra and Mythra’s help. 

Overall, the character writing in Xenoblade 2 is rather weak because while the characters do function well as comedic units, they try and fail to do anything deeper than that. Either the characters needed to have their deeper or more complicated features way more fleshed out (and also synergize better with other aspects of the game, such as the character designs and combat) or Xenoblade 2 should have backed off from its heavier themes and stuck to being a comedy. 

[eclecticvalor]

7 Things I experience as a DID System. Mental Health Awareness Month.

In light of May being America’s mental health awareness month, I wanted to talk about something that has consumed my entire life for the past year and a half: Treatment and healing from a disorder that is stigmatised into the ground by poor representation and misunderstandings both socially and in the medical field. Those who are close to me know first hand how my symptoms and experiences have shaped the way I interact with the world since starting treatment, but aside from my closest friends and family, and the people I live with, I don’t normally talk about the fact that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and what that means to me. 

Hi. My name is Atlas, some people call me Cadyn, and I am the primary host of 26 fragmented parts of my consciousness. I am not dangerous, none of my parts or alters are dangerous, and no, it is not like “Split”. 

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a trauma based dissociative disorder listed in both the DSM IV and V,  and is recognized as an uncommon disorder characterized by two or more distinct personality states existing within the same consciousness. These personality states come to be when natural childhood development is disrupted by severe, continued, or repetitive, trauma, the child has a natural inclination towards heavy dissociation, and a lack of adult or parental support to develop the means to cope with the things happening to them.

Unfortunately popular mental health media has seen an uptake in people viewing DID as a quirky “trait”, the ability to have functional imaginary friends living in your head... but in reality DID is a lot darker, a lot scarier, and isn’t something I’d wish upon my worst enemy. Because of this media spike I wanted to share 7 things that living with Dissociative identity disorder means to me

1. Amnesia

Living with DID means that I miss out on a lot of my life. A primary symptom of DID is amnesia. I have no solid memories before the age of 13, and the memories I do have are often skewed, incorrect, or completely false as my brain fought for a way to fill in gaps and cope with the loss of memory. I forget a lot, and not just things like forgetting where I left my wallet and keys, or forgetting the day - those do happen, but I also mean forgetting big things, important life experiences and things I wish with all my being that I could remember like my highschool graduation and my wedding reception. 

I often forget important day to day things that make it difficult to maintain life as an adult, like doctors appointments, work schedules, meetings, and important daily tasks. I’ll forget that I’ve eaten at all that day and risk going days without eating, or overeating due to having no recollection of the last time I’d eaten. I forget birthdays (especially my own), anniversaries, and important holidays. 

To an outsider, who has no idea what’s happening inside my head, this can come across as though I’m thoughtless or unreliable. That I am cold for forgetting an important date, or simply that I just don’t care when this very much is not the case. 

2. Alienation

Oftentimes DID comes with a sense of alienation from people who you’re supposed to know. For me a really clear example of this is when I previously mentioned my childhood memories being skewed - I have a clear memory of a conversation I was having with some blood relatives a few years back in which I mentioned that one family member I had happy childhood memories of, and remembered playing together as kids, but with another family member they were practically a stranger to me. I had, and still have, no memories of ever spending time with them growing up, no memories of having any kind of relationship with them at all. My understanding of our relationship was that it was “forced” because we were family and our parents expected us to exist in the same space as we grew up, but that we never talked. But I was informed by a separate member of the family that I was very wrong, and this “stranger” was actually someone I had been close to growing up. This is a common experience with DID patients, and also a very frustrating one. It creates feelings of “You know me but I don’t know you”, and it’s extremely difficult to trust your own judgement of the people you know, because you often can’t tell if your judgement is skewed by your memories or lack thereof. 

3. PTSD and Flashbacks

A diagnosis of C-PTSD (Or complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is required for a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. This means that while the individual symptoms of DID can be frustrating, scary and sometimes depressing, the most difficult aspect of DID, and the most important to focus on in treatment is the PTSD symptoms. 

PTSD symptoms in DID can be extremely powerful due to the additional dissociative aspect. This can mean that for a lot of DID patients, flashbacks can produce full blown body sensations, hallucinations and terrifying delusions. This is One thing that I find incredibly difficult to talk about, but I also believe is extremely important to understand. It can be embarrassing, shameful and while I only speak for myself in saying this, can cause a lot of guilt and grief. There have been times where I have been experiencing powerful flashbacks and did not recognize my own husband, resulting in lash outs and fear towards him being delusioned into thinking that he was out to hurt me, or had harmful intent for just existing in the same space as I was. 

For me, a single wiff of a familiar smell, hearing a sound, a certain color, an idea, a name, a passing thought or comment can throw my previously stable mental state into one of pure panic, hyperventilation, hallucination, delusion, fight-flight-freeze and reactionary responses. Through treatment I’ve developed adaptive and healthy coping skills and management responses but trauma responses can be so quick, and so unexpected that I don’t always have time to process my coping skills before my body and mind respond in negative ways. 

4. Decision making and skewed Behavior

Because living with DID, means living with a shared or fragmented consciousness, this often means that while I may not remember, my life is still being lived during my time of memory loss. Alters or parts will take control and operate my body, reacting to things, interacting with people, completing tasks and functioning. But oftentimes parts who take control are very different from myself, and make choices and decisions that I wouldn’t normally make, and sometimes decisions I wouldn’t *ever* make. An example of this is the fact that technically I am a conservative voter, despite myself as an individual having leftist or NDP views, or decisions to leave or apply for jobs and work positions that I have no interest in, or that I don’t even have the qualifications or physique to do, or leaving ones that I personally loved and excelled at. This also reflects a lot in everyday life in more subtle things, decisions like what food to eat, things to buy, activities to do shift between parts while they’re in control. 

To outsiders this can look a lot like impulsivity, lack of self-control, or lack of a sense of identity. This is a huge reason why a lot of DID patients are often misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Disorder because the behaviour between alters can be so drastically different that it can look a *lot* like manic or depressive states. 

5. Denial and Dismissing Trauma

A very common experience among DID patients is denial and being dismissive or disregarding the things that happened to them. I often find myself in a state of questioning whether my symptoms, my disorder, and even my trauma were ever real to begin with. In therapy I find myself saying “It’s not that big of a deal” or “It wasn’t that big of a deal” more times than I’m actually saying anything productive. A huge part of this is why I wanted to make this list, because the media, and a lot of medical circles deny that DID exists or believe it’s impossibly rare and those, while both false, can cause intense feelings of “Maybe I’m just doing this for attention”. DID is a very real, very difficult disorder to diagnose, to treat, and to live with disorder, and while it is uncommon, statistics show that approximately 1-2% of western population is diagnosed, and up to a suspected 7% are living with the disorder undiagnosed because of these misconceptions. It is not common, and it’s not something that everyone is going to have, but it is a very possible response to very real trauma and is a valid diagnosis to give to those meeting the criteria. 

6. Hidden Symptoms

DID is often referred to as a “covert” presenting disorder. What this means is that most commonly outsiders, friends, family, employers and even the patient themselves can have a nearly impossible time recognizing the symptoms, and it often goes unnoticed until an event destabilizes the function of the person’s life. This can lead to a lot of backlash or denial coming from peers and family close to the person. This leads to the patient hearing a lot of:  “I’ve never noticed personality changes”, “You don’t act like you have it”, “You couldn’t possibly have that”, “No, I would have noticed”, “You have to be mistaken”, “There’s no way, it would have been obvious”. And so, so much more. The reality of DID is that it’s *not* noticeable. It’s a safety response that the brain created to protect the psyche from the intense damages that come with long term trauma experiences, so it’s often designed to hide itself from abusers or perceived threats as a way to compartmentalize trauma memories and maintain the ability to survive through stress and unstable situations. Not being able to “notice” is kind of the point in most cases.

 7. Wandering and Dissociative Episodes

Living with untreated or unmanaged DID can potentially be dangerous due to episodes of dissociation, “wandering” experiences (where the patient will wander away from home, family, or life in a confusion, attempt to return to a perceived life never lived, or in a state of belief that their current life is unsafe). For me this took a head last year, and was actually an event that led to the solidification that this disorder was the explanation to my experiences. According to nurses and my husband, I had wandered into the emergency room of a hospital in the middle of the night, with no idea who or where I was, with no idea how to return home, or even where home was. I was wearing a t-shirt, and it had been raining, and my body was so cold they needed to retake my vitals nearly 6 times because they were unable to get an appropriate reading. After discovering my identity, my husband was called to take me home. Working with a therapist helped to develop a safety plan during events like this to prevent harm from coming to my body, or from ending up in newly traumatic environments, but I was lucky. These situations can lead to re-traumatization, victimization, it can lead to kidnapping, assault, it can lead to being injured or harmed by environmental factors and so much more and it is so incredibly important that DID patients work with their therapist to develop solid safety plans proactively to make sure that the patient doesn’t experience any worst case scenarios during episodes like this. 

Conclusion

My experiences are individual to me, and to my psyche. Not everyone will experience the disorder the same way, because not everyone experiences or responds to trauma the same way. I am so lucky, and extremely privileged to be able to access consistent care and treatment, that I found a professional who trusts me, and is focused on stabilizing and supporting. Too many people living with this disorder have no access to supportive mental health care because of the misconceptions that parts of the medical field hold regarding the legitimacy or frequency that the disorder develops, and too many peers and circles of people outcast or disregard the very real, very difficult experiences because they don’t understand the disorder, or believe it doesn’t exist, or believe it looks like split. If you, or someone you know is struggling with Dissociative symptoms, or dissociative identity disorder do not be afraid to reach out to a professional for support, and educate yourself on the reality of the disorder. 

[thecornwall]

Cornwall’s Random Card of the Day #62: Ferropede

Isn’t that just a nice, simple portmanteu name? It’s like a pokemon name.

Ferropede is an uncommon from Fifth Dawn. I think by Fifth Dawn they’d realised that Mirrodin block was OP and had to desperately try to clamp(geddit?) down the power level. Ferropede might not be strong but it IS quite interesting, removing counters is a thing that is not quite generically useful enough to be on a common but it IS quite often useful, and can be used to break some cards wide open. Worst case there were plenty of charge counters to munch on. Fifth Dawn was purposely made to have an eye for Combo players, giving the feeling of combining a bunch of different cogs to create a powerful machine.

Being unblockable also makes it a great equipment target which with equipment being just introduced that block, and there being some really OP equipment in the environment, was certainly a consideration.

[knitting-with-norbert]

Normalising Anxiety Stuff

So this is basically the short cut of my full blog post about this, but anxiety is shit in general but what’s even more shit is some things that come alongside it that people just don’t talk about? Because I know that there were some parts of my anxiety that I didn’t realise were normal for people going through the same things as me - and so I wanted to try to write about some of the stuff that went on with me that I’ve since learnt are normal, in case there are other people who are going through what I went through

(Also I put a load of photos of my dog because she’s cute and makes dealing with this shit a whole lot easier)

1. Sensory Overload

So this is a big one and I genuinely think that I could talk about it forever, but I’ll try to keep it short. I hadn’t actually realised until very recently that sensory overload was a real thing.

All those times I was sent spiralling into a panic attack because everything was too loud around me? Or when I would have to literally cover my ears and start humming to try to calm myself down because I was finding some background noise too loud? Or how, year after year at my dad’s birthday party I would end the night sobbing on the ground because the fireworks were just too fucking loud?

Yep, sensory overload.

And there I was thinking that there was no real cause, that I was just being dramatic or perhaps I was just a little jumpier than most people. But no, it’s a very real thing that doesn’t get talked about enough, and I wish that I had known that it had a name and that other people were going through the same thing because I think that then I would have known how to better deal with it when all my senses were too overwhelming

You’re not strange for getting overwhelmed in situations that are too loud or by textures that you don’t like or anything like that – it’s not just you that it happens to. And so please reach out to someone who you know does understand it and don’t be afraid of asking them if they can help you figure out healthy ways of managing those times where you are feeling that overwhelmed

And if you don’t know who to ask, then I’m here. Be it on my instagram, twitter or Tumblr (where I do have anonymous asks open) if you feel like you want to talk to me about it please don’t hesitate to. I will repeat again that I’m not at all a medical professional, but I do have a solid past 19 or so years coping with my own sensory overload bullshit so I can try to help you to figure out what works for you

It sucks to feel alone going through any mental health shit, but in particular this always makes me feel so, so lonely and if I can help anyone going through it to feel even just a smidge less isolated then that’s a win in my books

2. Adrenaline Crashing After Social Situations

This is such a big one for me, but I think that a lot of my friends who I’ve spoken about it with all already knew that this was a thing and I was just being dumb about it. But I wanted to put it down anyway in case there are people who don’t realise that this is pretty normal

When you go out into a social situation or even just somewhere out of your comfort zone like leaving your house and going to a public space or I know I get it when I go into a shop, even if I use self service I still get a huge adrenaline rush just from being outside basically. 

Because to your anxious brain’s mind you have just returned to somewhere safe (your home or school or friend’s house for example) from an environment that it deemed as being ‘unsafe’, hence why it activated your fight or flight. So naturally upon returning to a place that you feel comfortable in and it starts to regulate your hormone levels again it’s going to leave you drained and sometimes the comedown from that can send you spiralling into a panic attack

Again: it sucks. But it’s a normal thing, please don’t think that you’re overreacting or exaggerating or whatever because of it. A lot of people with anxiety have this happen to them

3. Post-Event Rumination

It’s essentially just being completely and utterly self critical over everything that you did, even if you weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary

For example, if I ran into my neighbour and had a quick conversation with her, literally just exchanging no more than just “hi, how are you?”‘s, that run-in would be playing on repeat in my head for at least the next day and I’d be sure that I must have said something wrong or she knows something that I don’t or anything like that.

For me, if the adrenaline crash wasn’t enough to send me spiralling into a panic attack, post event rumination pretty much always is. But I found a weird amount of comfort in being told that, actually, it’s a thing that a lot of people deal with! A lot of people do it and I’m not strange for being one of them. So that was nice for me to hear at the time, especially to find out that it’s real enough that it had a name, and so I thought that there was someone else out there who might need to hear it too

4. Crashing/Spacing Out

This one is so, so common for me, but no matter how often it happens I always just feel so fucking rude, like, it can literally be the most interesting conversation in the entire world and I just…. won’t be able to concentrate? For the life of me?

As it turns out, though, that’s apparently completely normal for people with anxiety, especially in regards to the social side of it. It’s something that I actually did research in myself rather than trying to talk to one of my friends about it. And that’s because I didn’t know how to admit to being constantly spacing out in conversations with them (as in, more than they would notice) without it straight up just sounding really rude.

But it only took me a pretty quick Google search to tell me that it was actually not at all uncommon. A lot of the time, it just comes from being completely drained by conversations or sometimes (going back to the sensory overload thing) the environment just making it too hard for me to fully concentrate because of fucking birds or something

So yeah, next time that you catch yourself spacing out in a conversation please don’t feel bad about yourself because of it. Of course, it’s incredibly inconvienient and will probably always make you feel a little rude, but it’s got a cause and it is normal and usually it’s totally out of your control, too. Most people will understand it if it does happen so please, please don’t beat yourselves up about it

5. Romanticisation of Mental Health

I guess that this isn’t really, like, normalising something any more than it’s just me having a bit of a rant about how mental health is seen a lot of the time from the outside thanks to it being completely misrepresented in the media

I just know that the very first time that I saw a panic attack on a TV show was during one of the earliest episodes of Teen Wold (which I still haven’t finished by the way – anyone who’s reading this and has seen it, should I watch the rest?) and I remember Stiles getting kissed by Lydia as a way to bring him back from a panic attack.

I genuinely cannot stress enough how averse to that I am now, knowing what I do about how I and my friends deal with my/their panic attacks and anxiety – that is my worst nightmare!

My aim in making this post was to try to bring some people going through these things some comfort by being able to understand that what they are going through is completely valid and that there are ways to cope with it no matter how lost and alone you feel trying to navigate it

So please add on your own things that you wished you knew about anxiety earlier, what you wish you had known was normal or even things that you think not enough people are aware about – comment it or DM me or whatever, I just want to be able to raise awareness of these kinds of stuff

Anyway, figured I’d fill the post with photos of my dog looking sweet as fuck because she is the loveliest dog in the world (send me dog photos boys)

Thank you for reading, I hope that you’re well and if you wanna check out the full post I wrote it’s on my blog - there’s a link in my bio to it!

I hope that you’re well,

Freddie 🐸

[friendlyfrat-boy]

To Learn, To Grow, To Love

pairings: Usopp x Sanji (whatever that is called)

summary:

On Sabaody Archipelago, the nine were separated, sent to nine different locations to train, to grow stronger for the New World.

Usopp was sent to the Boyn islands, but he didn't know that. When he came there, he didn't know anything, and he was alone. No teacher, no friendly face, no one to save him and accompany him. No one to keep him from sinking into hollow isolation. He spent two years there, on an island where everything tried to kill him and all he could do was hide and try to survive. When all is said and done, he's hardly the apex predator there. No, unlike Luffy, raw strength did not save him here. But he did survive. And he does escape.

A mistake in his flying gear, aka a very large ant, left him stranded in the middle of the Grand Line. Luckily, he is found by Sanji on the revolutionary ship, and he is rescued. But he isn't alright, and Sanji notices this. Usopp needs to learn to heal, and perhaps, if things go just right, to love.

Chapter One

Two Years Apart,

One Moment Together

"What the fuck is that," Sanji muttered to himself, hand raised up to shield his eyes from the harsh rays of the sun as he peered out to sea.

He'd finally found refuge from the dozens of drag queens out for his dignity atop the mast of the ship. Why the hell had they insisted on coming along for his final journey to Sabaody Archipelago? Couldn't they give him some time to breathe out after these two horrible years?

Worst of all, they just wouldn't let him be in one place, not even on this damned ship. Sure, it was a rather large ship, fit for a whole gaggle of revolutionaries, but there just wasn't enough space to run away from all these drag queens for extended periods of time. The only place he could remotely consider safe was his private quarters, but that was only at night.

Regardless, he'd found some sort of solitude, perched up high on the main mast. Down below, he could see the dots that were his tormentors searching high and low for him. Some held dresses in their hands, others make-up. The pokers of the devils, he thought.

But he wasn't looking down there right now. No, for a while now, his attention had been focused on a little dot on the horizon. It was almost white and orange, but he could only barely tell that from the immense distance. For a while, he'd just thought it was the ship of some other crew or something. The sea was wide, and meeting other ships, as uncommon as it was, wasn't entirely rare. But something about that shape made Sanji reconsider that idea.

As time went on, soon enough, the dot became more visible, more defined in shape and colour. It seemed mostly white, with blots of orange and grey. But that's not the interesting part. No, the dot was, if Sanji still had his eyes still attached, an ant. Not in size, no, not in general shape, either. Just a straight up ant. If Sanji had been three years younger, still working at the Baratie in the mild East Blue, he would have doubted his eyes and/or sanity. Now… he really wouldn't be too surprised to see a giant ant out at sea.

Taking a drag of his cigarette (they'd thankfully let him restock every now and then) he continued observing the ant, as it was. Observation number one: it was big. Damn big. Big enough for a dozen people to ride on. Observation number two: it was dead. Dead as dust. Not one of the limbs was moving (one even seemed to be missing), the head was bobbing up and down lifelessly, and a pair of wings floated aimlessly at its sides. But the third observation, the one that made Sanji consider doing more than just observing the damn thing, was that something about it seemed to be alive.

It was still quite far away, so he could barely see it, but from his younger days, when spotting a ship was essential to life, he could make out a striking detail. Somebody was riding the ant. Well, less so riding, and more so just paddling along, using it more as a piece of driftwood than anything alive. The reason the person riding it stood out to Sanji was not how they continued paddling furiously despite barely getting anywhere, but more so their clothing.

Actually, the damn guy was barely dressed, his upper body mostly exposed, but what he was dressed in was all green. Hat? Green. Big, poofy pants? Green. The giant bag behind him, large enough to fit enough meat to satiate Luffy for five minutes? Very green. Damn green. All and all, the guy was a clear contrast to the dead ant itself.

But the final detail, the one that made Sanji willingly jump off the mast to greet the dozens of tormentors below, was his nose. Long and rounded at the tip. Not Kaku's, not anybody else's on the four damn seas…Usopp's.

The chances should have been next to impossible, the probability close to zero, but… There was no mistaking that nose. Ant aside, he wasn't about to let Usopp drift them on by. Promise to meet at Sabaody Archipelago be damned, Usopp clearly needed his help.

"Shitty Ivan!" Sanji called out, making his entrance on deck by planting his foot in the face of a surprised okama. With the skill and grace of someone who was clearly used to dealing with desperate unkillable machines of feminine beauty, he kicked the tormentor away before he had the time to try and make a grab for his ankles. A dozen other tormentors on deck turned to him with hungry eyes, sparing no sympathy for their "fallen" comrade. Sanji bit down on his cigarette and prepared himself for a long chase. He'd learnt long ago that there was no use trying to defeat all of them. One would always be replaced by two. His best bet had always been to run.

"What is it, Sanji-Kun?" Ivan asked, popping his slender, beautiful face out from the nook of some door Sanji hadn't noticed. Damn, he hated it when that shitty revolutionary used his powers to give him a female body. It was the only way Sanji had been able to see the female form for these past two years (outside of the imagination), but that didn't mean he liked it. If anything, it was more infuriating than his normal (albeit still terrifying) form. Kicking a pursuing tormentor in the face, Sanji turned to answer the admittedly sexy man. No words he'd ever want to hear himself utter, but it was true in this case.

"Turn the ship starboard, there's someone we need to rescue," Sanji said flatly, jerking a thumb at the still distant form of the ant. Ivankov trailed along his finger to gaze out at sea, where the ant was quite clearly visible. Humming, the man-in-the-body-of-a-hot-sexy-woman squinted at it, unknowingly copying Sanji by shading his eyes with his hand.

"Oh my! Inazuma, dear," the man mentioned emerged from behind Ivankov, thankfully as a man and not as a woman, "will you turn the ship starboard? Sanji-Kun, our newest member, would like to make a new friend." Inazuma nodded blankly and walked across the deck to do just that. Sanji followed his back with his gaze for a moment, before apprehensively jumping into the air to avoid being body-slammed by six okama at once.

As Sanji courageously jumped through the air, dodging missile-like drag queens left and right, the ship swerved harsly, the wood groaning just slightly as it was forced in a whole new direction. A few minutes passed, and soon enough, the ant was close enough to make out some actual details. Firstly, the man sitting on it was definitely Usopp. Tan skin, eager locks of hair going wherever they wanted to, circular eyes, and finally, long nose… Sanji was glad his assessment had been so spot-on.

However, what Usopp was doing made Sanji do a second take. He was paddling alright, but he was doing it with an oddly huge paddle. The paddle was black in tint, but where Usopp held it and where the end of it connected to the water, it was green, probably wrapped in leaves. But even more unnerving, Usopp simply hadn't noticed them. And they were close, too. In fact, they were just about to dangle down a ladder for him to hop onto.

But… he just didn't see them at all. Heavy, black bags hung from his eerily overfocused eye. Sanji could only see one visible eye, but it seemed dry, too intent on whatever he was looking for to even notice them. That wasn't all, either. No, his whole body had a strange tremble to it. His muscles, lean and toned under tanned plant-stained skin, were clearly exhausted. Sanji was no doctor, but as a proficient fighter, he knew what an overused muscle looked like. Bulging unnaturally and twitching with every movement - that was how Usopp's muscles looked like.

Furthermore, the actual movements that the muscles were executing almost seemed painful in how robotic they were. Paddle up, paddle to the front, paddle down, paddle back. Repeat on the other side. He… he'd been doing this for a while, hadn't he? Too long, if his muscles were anything to go by. Fixation. That's what it was. Usopp, as he was now, was the very image of unhealthy, self-destructive fixation.

"Oi, Usopp!" Sanji called out from the deck, where the okamas had thankfully let him do this without being interrupted. Usopp didn't even twitch at being called out to. Not a movement, only yet another paddle back. "Usopp! Listen to me, you shitty long-nose!"

Nothing.

That was enough. Sanji had been awaiting his meeting with Nami-swan and Robin-chwan for two years! And also everybody else. Meeting one of them early was a good thing! Seeing someone not in a dress, a man being a man... it made his heart flutter in a very strange way, and being met with exactly jack-diddly-squat in return did nothing to quell his frustrations. If anything, it only intensified them.

"RISE AND SHINE, SHITTY LONG-NOSE," Sanji roared, lunging from his place on deck to plant a sole in his friend's face. Even two years back, an attack by Sanji upon Usopp would send the latter man flying, but Sanji would at least have had the common sense to hold back. Now, however, he hadn't had a need to hold back for two years. Kicking an okama rarely sent them flying, and if it did, they usually came back with a vengeance and passion that reminded him of a starved Luffy. Or a sober Zoro. Both thoughts were equally terrifying.

This lack of restraint caused his empty-eyed friend to go flying at speeds nearing that of a subsonic missile. If Sanji had seen his friend's face as he flew, he would have noticed the sole-shaped burn-mark seared into the side of his face.

Sanji came to a stop on the ant itself, which was surprisingly buoyant. Usopp, thankfully, didn't fly too far, skidding to a stop only a couple dozen metres away. Silently, the man rose to the surface, his single, wide, terrified eye having regained some form of life as they scanned the horizon for whatever hurt him. And, in that scan, he caught a glance of Sanji, who was looking right back at him.

At seeing the smoking imprint on Usopp's face, Sanji couldn't help but feel a bit guilty. He hadn't meant to kick that hard, but… Nevertheless, seeing as how Usopp was looking right at him, he had to do something.

"Heyyy! Usopp, it's me! Sorry for hitting you!" he called out, smiling wryly as he waved to his blank-faced friend. The man in question did not respond. He didn't even smile. Just bobbed up and down, hazy eyes going from focused to glossed over, arms growing weak…

"Oh no you fucking don't," Sanji muttered to himself. Flexing his legs, he threw himself into the water, arms raised above him to form an arrow. He'd seen enough people drown to know what it looked like. He'd just never expected it to be Usopp. With his training, Sanji had become a very able runner/kicker/swimmer. If Usopp had been an airborne missile before, Sanji was now a torpedo, shooting through the water with little resistance.

There he was. Sanji's hunch had been correct to a tee - Usopp had bobbed right on under the surface and was currently just sort of sinking, not an uncommon sight for a devil fruit user, but odd to see in Usopp. If Sanji had been able to curse underwater, he would have. For now, he settled for an annoyed twitch of his characteristic eyebrow.

Another second passed, and Sanji was close enough to grab Usopp, which he did. One arm under his legs, the other on his back, he raised his friend to the surface in a carry he would usually reserve for the daintiest of ladies. Once his own head raised above the surface, carefully manoeuvring his friend so his head was above as well, he took a deep breath. He noticed quicker than he'd liked that his cigarette was soggy as all hell. Usopp seemed pretty out of it though, so at least he'd have no problem getting him aboard the ship.

Swimming back to the ship with Usopp in tow was easier than he'd originally thought. The only thing he hadn't braced himself for was Usopp himself. His muscles felt like coiled iron springs, permanently locked up in tension. The only thing accentuating this feeling was how every three seconds or so, a muscle would twitch harshly, in turn making another muscle twitch which would do the same thing to another, leading to a full-body shiver that almost made Sanji drop him the first time it happened.

"Stupid shitty long-nose falling off the ant…" Sanji grumbled to himself as he successfully climbed back on top of the ant, heaving up Usopp as well. He might as well grab Usopp's things while he was here. The only thing Usopp didn't have on his person seemed to be the obnoxiously large green bag, which seemed to be made of leaves or something. He kicked it aboard the ship, but gently, unlike how hed kicked Usopp. And that was it-, no, hold on, there was one more thing.

A strange, shiny black thing that almost seemed to have the shape of a hammer, right next to a hole in the ant that it had probably caused. The hammer, as it probably was, was sharp on one end and blunt on the other, the handle seemingly covered with blunt barbs on one end. Sanji picked it up in one hand, balancing Usopp in the other. It was heavy and clearly hard. It almost seemed to be from the chitin of some large insect, but that would be…

A glance at the elephant-sized ant he was standing on made Sanji feel like an idiot. Anyhow, the hole in the ant which the hammer had caused exposed flesh and some sort of yellowish goop. A quick step to the left prevented some of the goop from staining his spotless black shoes. Was he just imagining things, or was some of the flesh beneath the carapace scooped out…?

Let's ignore that. With the hammer in hand, Sanji jumped onto deck, successfully sticking the landing. The okama stared at him.

"If you dare attack me or Usopp, I will personally kick you overboard," Sanji growled, which kept them at bay. Happy with his newfound privacy, Sanji carefully let Usopp down to lie on the deck. He would have grabbed him a chair or something, but that could wait. Sanji hunched down next to his friend and did what usually worked after an event like this: pressed down on his stomach.

"Cough, splt, guhh-," Usopp spluttered, water escaping his air canals and wherever else it had been and splashing onto the deck. Propping himself up with one arm, Usopp heaved his upper body to the side to cough up more water. It felt strange that this was the first thing Sanji had heard from him. He hadn't said hello, he hadn't screamed when he was kicked, he hadn't begged to be saved… it felt wrong.

With the water expelled from his body, Usopp finally took the time to take notice of his surroundings. His exhausted, dim eye scanned the okama who had formed a ring quite a ways away, his attention eventually falling on the form of Sanji, who stood right in front of him. Sanji, bereft of smoking, decided to chew on his wet cigarette, mostly to hide his own anxiety over how… unlike himself Usopp was being. That big round eye of his stared at him, haze slowly, gradually replaced by dawning recognition.

But nothing more. This would be where Sanji would expect Usopp to say something like "ohmygodSanjiIwassoscaredthanksforsavingme" or just "Sanji! I missed you!" or even just a "the great Usopp-Sama did not need your help!" not… not this. His face was as blank as cardboard. The only part of his body that expressed anything, anything at all, was his eye. Bright and moist and disbelieving.

And then, he rose up. Slowly, stumbling, trembling and weak. No wonder, with how tense and overused his muscles were. Sanji followed his movements, rising as he did, until the two finally stood face-to-face. Usopp weak and taut, Sanji strong and stoic. Usopp as blank-faced and non-saying as Sanji had ever seen him, Sanji wearing his emotions and anxiety on his sleeve.

But it was Usopp who acted first. Sanji barely registered that first step, how Usopp practically jumped at him, arms flinging themselves around him, locked themselves around his body, his face buried into Sanji's still wet shoulder. His grip was iron, that much was for sure. Iron, and desperate. Sanji, in his surprise, could barely register how his shoulder got just a little wetter. How Usopp's trembling and uncertain fingers dug just a little bit more into his back.

Sanji could do nothing but return it. Absently, he noticed how Usopp had to stand on his tiptoes, just to reach to press his face into the nape of his neck. Two arms on his back, he held Usopp only barely. He didn't need to clutch him close, Usopp was doing all that by himself. He smelled of freshly cut grass and copper.

The second Sanji had that thought, all of Usopp's strength left him, and he fainted where he stood, falling back only to be caught in Sanji's arms once more. Sighing, Sanji manoeuvred Usopp into a princess-carry for the second time that day and headed for where he knew the infirmary was. He'd been chased around this ship dozens of times, and in this situation, he was happy, since it meant he could find his way easier.

The okama parted before him, creating a path to where they knew he was headed. Some of them shot Sanji unsavoury, knowing glances he didn't much like. He could even see a few of them eyeing up Usopp like he was a mannequin, but a sharp glare from Sanji shut them up. Some had the gall to squeal "Sanji-chan is so scary~", but Sanji didn't have the time or care to put the fear of God in them. Instead, he focused on the task of hand.

The man really was out like a light.

Soon enough, Sanji had found himself in the infirmary, where a slightly less buff man than the others was dressed as a nurse, with fishnet stockings and everything else that Sanji would never see in the same way. He decided to ignore the doctor, gingerly placing Usopp down on one of the many beds in the infirmary.

He hadn't noticed it much before, but Usopp was dressed very oddly.

His skin was as tan as it had always been, but it seemed less clear, more ashen than before. His upper body was mostly bare, and what Sanji could see was somewhat worrying. Green blotches from crushed plants and dried patches of what must have been blood aside, his chest and arms were covered in innumerable scars, most of them not having healed well at all. He could almost tell that one of the larger ones, crossing his right shoulder, had at some point been crudely stitched together. This did not mean that the wound had healed well. If anything, it almost seemed like the injury had just gotten infected by this. How Usopp had survived this at all could only be a mystery.

This aside, it seemed Usopp had switched his usual overalls for a pair of green, poofy trousers, kept in place by a pair of black leather straps spanning over his shoulders and down his back. Either these straps were made by Usopp himself, which wouldn't be too surprising, or he'd repurposed his old overalls to create them. Either way, the leather straps connected to something beneath the frilly poof of leaves that were at the top of the pants. This wasn't the only piece of clothing on Usopp that utilized these black straps.

Equally prominent was the large, spiked shoulder brace, also made by the chitin of some enlarged bug. It was connected to Usopp at three parts, one around the neck, one around the arm, and one running straight over his chest. This black chitin material could also be found as armour on Usopp's dark green pants, where they were haphazardly placed just about anywhere they could be fitted. He also seemed to have a large, more spiked piece of chitin adorning his left arm, probably to be used for defence or something, perhaps close-quarter combat?

Apart from this, he was pretty well-covered by leaves.

There was a big one on his head, a smaller one covering his left eye for some reason (Sanji really hoped their shitty sharpshooter hadn't lost an eye since that'd fuck up his vision for sure), a pair of leaves covered his ears for some damn reason, a bunch of long, bandage-like leaves covered his right arm (as well as the oar-thing he was still clutching onto), and leaves also seemed to be what made up the sheath of a machete that Sanji had only just now noticed on Usopp's hip.

Other interesting features would be the gloves and boots he wore, and what Sanji could only assume was his knapsack. The knapsack in question was almost the oddest feature of all. Calling it a sack was a bit presumptuous, and Sanji could only assume it was one because of its placement on Usopp's body. In short, it was a skull. A massive, sharp-toothed upside-down skull. Two pieces of chitin covered its eyes, and if Sanji peeked inside the hole under the teeth, he found it filled with things he had no idea what to make of.

Usopp himself was also quite different. His muscles seemed to have started relaxing now that he was passed out, but even when relaxed, it was clear his muscle-to-fat ratio was almost 1:0. It was a wiry, well-toned build, very similar to Sanji's own, clearly strong enough to do some damage in any situation. Sanji could feel a blush rising to his cheeks, but he didn't know why. Maybe it was seeing a normal, non-dress wearing man in so long. Still…

His hair was much longer. If it hadn't been tied down with an odd, orange-looking rope, it would surely have created an afro with a diameter of at least a metre. As it was, it reached down to his hips. Sanji really wanted to touch it, but touching people's hair while they slept was very rude, as tempting as it was. Somehow, he'd also grown a petite goatee, but in his face, it was hardly noticeable. No, what Sanji noticed instead, was exactly how sunken in Usopp's eyes were. Had they been open, they would have looked like a pair of eyes staring out from two black holes.

All and all, Sanji could only assume Usopp had been in a jungle for two years. A jungle with giant ants. Considering the chitin armour, giant insects, in general, wouldn't be too far-fetched. Sanji whipped out a new cigarette from the pack inside of his jacket, only to realize after snapping at it with a lighter for a few times that it was too soaked to use. He huffed angrily and crushed it in his hand, anger tugging at his eyebrow, making it twist up like a knotted muscle.

Why… why was he so angry? Usopp had survived, right? And if his own experiences were anything to go by, if Usopp's body was anything he could trust… he should be stronger now, right? So why did that gaze haunt him? Why did Usopp seem so broken? And why did that make Sanji so angry?

Kuma had done it for a reason. Ivan had said so, said they had to get stronger to survive, and Sanji had agreed. Like a fool, he'd told himself his Nakama would do well.

But Usopp wasn't well.

Usopp was scarred.

Could Sanji honestly say the scars on his body were any worse than those on Usopp's?

He almost fished out another cigarette, just on reflex. He glanced down at Usopp's unconscious body, and back at the okama doctor.

"If he wakes up, you tell me. And if he so much has a pink bow on him when I return, I'm flambéing you to hell," Sanji ordered, not waiting for a response to leave the infirmary. He couldn't stand to look at him if all it did was make him angry. Nonetheless, he did have something he had to do. Usopp's stuff. God only knew what was in that giant green bag, but whatever it was, he was sure Usopp wouldn't want it stolen by a bunch of curious drag queens.

Well on deck, he found the bag left alone, only a few okama still lingering around. One actually attempted to lunge at him, but a well-placed kick sent them flying into the Crow's nest, where they could think over what they'd just tried to do. With that done, he grabbed the bag. It was damn heavy.

If he didn't fear for its safety, he might have placed it in the infirmary with its owner, but the okama had no sense of privacy, so he hid it in his own quarters instead.

Sure, the okama usually didn't mind breaking into his house (a few unfortunate mornings where he woke up in a dress ensured that Sanji always slept with one eye open), but Ivan had told him that this trip would be different only in that aspect, and Sanji had for once actually felt grateful to that shitty queen of drag queens. His quarters really wasn't anything special, just a bed, nightstand, cupboard, and that was pretty much it. If he wanted to train making food, he'd have to use the common kitchen. At some point during the journey, all the okama had agreed that letting Sanji make food was better for everybody since he usually shared the food with them, and God was it good.

So, with Usopp's stuff secured in his room, drenched suit changed for a new, clean one, soaked pack of cigarettes switched for a fresh pair, Sanji went upstairs to the kitchen to get working on a soup or something for Usopp.

Something told him Usopp could use some good food.

[murphypaw]

so okay some PotH Clans basics, definitely not all the traits and customs but just some ones I wanted to talk about! if you wanna ask anything you can send an ask you don't have to reblog this infodump 😂

CreekClan

Uses mud and smashed berries for ceremonial purposes.

Some cats will just paint themselves for an extra bit of luck.

They use shells, stones, and mud more for their religious practices than herbs.

They do fish, but rely more on voles and frogs for food. Fish are more of a treat.

Superstitious cats believe that they have webbed toes.

They believe that prey are cats who were evil in their cat life and therefore atoning in this life by feeding the Clans.

They are very superstitious about overeating, believing it is the bad souls infecting you in life. so they never hunt more than can feed the Clan, leftover food is unacceptable.

CreekClan cats believe black and chocolate tabbies were particularly good cats in their last life.

They believe in spirits and souls, spirits being more akin to ghosts and monsters while souls are the essence of a cat that is reincarnated. a cat who isn't reincarnated becomes a spirit. [GladeClan shares this belief, but they learned it from CreekClan during Oakbelly's time. it's considered laughable by HillClan, RavineClan, and ThicketClan, while MarshClan thinks they no longer exist].

CreekClan cats are often gifted storytellers and very social, it's odd to meet a CreekClan cat who you can't joke around with. ThicketClan has a very tense relationship with them in comparison to other Clans.

GladeClan

Pacifists, believes killing a cat even in self defense rots away at your soul.

Scavengers, hunting is not wrong but is more of a last resort.

Extremely religious and superstitious, they have intensive atonement rituals and more medicine cats than most Clans.

They nearly were wiped out during a war and were rebuilt with mostly loners by a warrior named Oakbelly.

Oakbelly and her medicine cat, Fawnfur, made the rules about pacifism and scavenging.

Fawnfur also began a tradition of burying cats near important plants to fertilize them.

There is a large oak tree at the head of the camp that is said to be Oakbelly's spirit, as she gave up her reincarnation cycle in order to continue watching over her clanmates.

Cats will pray by the oak tree, eat and bury their bones, even just tell her spirit about their day. she is still included as part of the Clan. No cat will name a kit Oakkit because Oakbelly is still considered to be with them.

Medicine cats are always consulted by leaders and often cats will go to a medicine cat before their leader with issues they are having.

GladeClan cats use herb bundles as part of rituals and have a morning and evening prayer session, though it's not uncommon to see them gathering for prayers between patrols.

HillClan

Second most religious Clan.

Has two "shifts" of warriors, day and night, depending on pelt color. They have less tree coverage so their darker colored cats hunt/patrol at night to avoid them overheating.

Two set meal times, called Morning Meal and Evening Meal. Morning Meal is before dawn and Evening Meal is before dusk. This allows cats to social more with the other shift.

Cats on border patrols are allowed to catch and eat one meal while on patrol, cats on hunting patrols are allowed to eat one meal between patrols.

Deputies are considered leader apprentices and are treated no different than other warriors. they aren't necessarily "head warrior" like most other Clans they are just a warrior with exemption from certain duties due to their training.

They rarely use special suffixes, it's uncommon to see a lot of cats who don't have -pelt, -fur, -stripe, or -spots as a suffix. typically no more than five in the Clan as they believe you have to be truly exceptional to earn those names.

They have less medicine cats than most Clans, with the exception of RavineClan, due to it being considered a sacred role. They believe the other Clans have devalued the role by adding more medicine cats to their ranks.

HillClan cats are superstitious about in-Clan matin, so they have lifemates (romantic partners for life) and if they want kits they seek loners or rogues to be sires. most other Clans simply require the leader's approval for in-Clan mating but HillClan nearly forbids it.

they enforce the elders' role more strictly than other Clans, having a history of serious outbreaks of kit madness (mothers becoming so stressed they eat their kittens) every time a leader is lax on this rule. the mothers are never blamed, the leader is blamed for not enforcing the law that elders raise and prepare kits for their apprenticeship.

they believe Sunbelly (the sun god) watches over day warriors and day warriors will often pray to him for good fortune. alternatively Moonclaw (the moon goddess) is believed to watch over the night shift warriors. cats will pray to the opposite deity at the end of their shift to give the opposite shift good fortune.

MarshClan

Legitimate battle cats, they train even as warriors with each other to keep their fighting skills sharp.

Cats will duel to settle disputes, though killing is not permitted.

they don't use the -claw or -fang suffix, believing every cat should excel in combat, so other skills are always more noteworthy.

they take their dead to the edge of their territory, near the mountains, for the buzzards and other scavengers to eat. they return to collect the bones and add them to the wall/piles surrounding the camp.

they don't believe in waste, they crack open prey bones in order to eat the marrow and use the prey bones to line their borders and important places (like their training areas).

they fight for sport in the training areas, mediated by the medicine cats. they bless the matches and even let kits come to watch. cats volunteer and medicine cats choose combatants.

cats with no scars are considered shameful after they've earned their warrior names because it means they've only had "easy" fights. they've never been truly challenged and it's considered cowardly to not seek an opponent of equal skill.

MarshClan cats use mud for camouflage rather than ceremony.

most rituals are done with bones and fur and feathers (skin or scales in the case of frogs and lizards). medicine cats stockpile bits of prey for such things and many cats will use prey bits to outline their nests for good luck.

cats have to recite a battle prayer and win a fight against their mentor and one peer in order to earn their warrior name. typically they get a lasting scar from this.

RavineClan

Honestly the least religious Clan, it's common for them to be atheists or agnostics. they typically only have a medicine cat and apprentice.

They try to keep to themselves and are the most welcoming to outsiders. many exiled cats (Clan or rogue) will seek refuge among them.

They typically have very dark fur and dull-colored eyes, finding Clans like CreekClan (who have the widest variety of colors) to be impractical.

Rather than having a warriors den and such, cats dig dens to live with their families around a clearing that is considered the "camp."

When the warriors go for patrols, their kits are in the care of an elder (typically the kit's grandparent).

Typically cats will hunt for their family and any elders who do not have a family to hunt for them.

During the day the elders bring the kits to the actual camp clearing to teach them history and give them space to play.

They are very strict on family members training apprentices and very harsh on nepotism. Leaders aren't allowed to choose family members for deputy.

They don't really practice the silent vigil, instead having the new named warrior(s) simply patrol the border over night without the silence requirement. they then hunt at dawn and bring the prey to their leader as proof that they are capable.

They are very secretive about their lax rules, thinking the other more zealous Clans would run them out of the forest. Apprentices aren't allowed to go to Gatherings because of this.

ThicketClan

These cats have little to no sense of humor and don't value social skills, many have eternally hoarse voices from lack of use.

They're very large physically compared to other Clans. Despite this, they're scarily quiet and slow moving.

ThicketClan cats are excessively paranoid and mistrust just about everycat they meet, especially those outside their Clan. they are raised to fear and expect the worst of others.

They train for at least an hour every morning regardless of rank in fighting skills, unlike MarshClan it's not for pride and custom it is simply for fear and preparation.

They believe that SkyClan doesn't watch over them as the other Clans due to the dense overgrowth in their territory, so they work extra hard to pray and sacrifice animals and perform rituals so that SkyClan will not forget them or show them less favor the other Clans.

Discipline and self-control are major virtues in the Clan.

They will travel in groups all the way to the city ruins to mate and will not leave each other alone with the rogue toms. typically a few Clan toms are on the trip to keep a count and watch out for any kind of aggression.

They do not allow outsiders to join their Clan, for any reason.

They move camps every spring, during autumn cats begin preparing the new camp and they begin tearing down the old camp towards the end of winter.

Rather than exiling cats, they execute them. There are no exceptions to this rule.

[everglow-synth-archive]

About: Another Polycus Tale

Neural uplinks and the like aren’t an uncommon sight in Polycus, as they are often helpful to people like soldiers and hitmen, and even just to the everyday folk who need some assistance with their day to day lives. However, what happens if these neural uplinks get viruses while connected directly to your brain?

It’s not like the question hasn’t ever been asked, what happens to the user of a neural uplink when they’ve been infected with a virus? Well, of course it all depends on the virus - some may just lock up your uplink, some may cause it to slow down to a crawl, and some can do nasty things like causing the chips to heat up, causing brain damage at best, or death at worst. It’s made worse if the virus in question is of a magical nature in some way.

As a result, these neural uplinks are required to be thoroughly tested before release, complete with the best antivirus measures on the affordable market, or in the case of military-grade technology, the unaffordable. But what put all these regulations on uplinks into place? Is it common sense, or an original incident?

...That is the question, isn’t it? 

The story goes that one of the very first neural uplinks was developed quite a few years ago, made as a test for a college program. The result was a headset that would read your mind, but not be directly connected into your brain. It was a decent proof of concept at least, and there was a low-level AI program made to sort of keep the systems in check, focused on the task at hand rather than reading random thoughts from the user. Military production was started not long after on more advanced versions of the headset that were meant to link directly into one’s mind. This increases processing speeds and allows for more direct control, but the early prototypes of such a device still required an AI to pilot them, one that they had used for their weapons in particular. This was also a success... at first.

At the same time, the military force was trying to create a virus that would be able to disable an AI completely. Not delete it, but shut it down in such a manner that it would essentially be locked at its core, allowing them to effectively shut down opposing AI and steal the information without any risk of it retaliating. 

Problems arose however when a scheduling conflict caused the two drastically opposing projects to come in near enough contact to one another. Both in an unfinished state, the codes met, conflicted, and seemingly fizzled out. The test subject for the neural uplink was considered functionally braindead for at least three hours. 

At the end of those three hours, there happened to be movement. Slow at first, but soon enough the body was moving again, though it seemed... lifeless. The man himself was dead, but the AI, now corrupted by the virus, had full control over the man’s biological systems through the neural uplink. With a sense of self-preservation brought on by the original programming of the AI, rumors say that not only did the AI manage to escape the military facility, it managed to kill most of the people who stood in its way.

Nobody really knows if the story has any truth to it or not, or if it is whatever happened to the AI, or even the man it was piloting. Regardless though, it’s a widely understood tale, and has naturally driven many people away from the market. That hasn’t stopped manufacturers from popping up though, all claiming to have the best antivirus to protect the user.

Nobody wants another run-in with The Bloodied Malware again, after all.

[vulnera-sanentura]

Next in the Cat Series: Hyperthyroidism!

One of my favorite cat diseases, because unlike other chronic health issues, it’s not only easy to diagnose, but curable too! (phew, not all of them are just supportive care)

Who gets it? The typical hyperthyroid cat is older (mean age of 13 years), with females being predisposed and with no breed predilection beyond “mixed breed.” It can be diagnosed in cats from 4 to 22 years old, though it’s very uncommon to see it in cats younger than 8 years.

What’s it look like? These cats are usually thin or losing weight, despite a ravenous appetite (polyphagic). They can also be PU/PD (polyuric/polyphagic, ei, they drink and pee waaay more than is normal). They can become more active, literally putting the hyper in hyperthyroid, or more aggressive than they used to be. Other signs that aren’t very specific to hyperthyroidism are vomiting and diarrhea.

So what is it? Hyperthyroidism is a condition where a tumor in the thyroid gland, located in the neck on each side of the trachea, causes excess production of thyroid hormones, especially notable is T4. Thyroid hormone is responsible for a variety of metabolic functions, and this increase in metabolism is what causes many of the presenting signs: hyperactivity, weight loss despite appetite, aggression.

How do you diagnose it? The most definitive diagnosis of hyperthyroidism is through checking blood concentrations of T4. It’s increased? Congrats, you’ve diagnosed hyperthyroidism! Though a lot of feline specialty practices have it always on the normal blood chemistry, it may be an add-on at other general practices, and that’s when it may get a bit trickier to diagnose originally.

The history should help clue you in a lot, but on physical exam you’ll also potentially see:

Thin/decreased weight from last visit

Dehydration

A palpable “thyroid slip” - the thyroid gets large enough you can feel it when you run your fingers along the side of the trachea. Not all hyperthyroid cats have it, and it can be hard to get used to finding the slip

Poor hair coat

Cardiac abnormalities: tachycardia (>220 bpm), murmur, arrhythmias, a gallop rhythm

Hypertension, which can cause ocular or neurologic issues

Besides increased T4 on bloodwork, you may also see an increased ALT and/or ALP, sometimes insanely high while all the other liver enzyme values are normal. A fifth will also have azotemia (increased BUN), either due to dehydration or concurrent renal disease.

And since they’re older cats, there may be other chronic illnesses like CKD, diabetes, or GI disease.

You said this one’s not just treatable, but curable?? Yes! The treatment of choice is radioactive iodine therapy. Iodine is taken up by the thyroids to create thyroid hormone, so once the radioactive iodine is injected it’s selectively picked up by the thyroid. And since the tumor cells are working overtime, the radioactive iodine (I-131) is picked up by the tumor cells, killing them, and leaving the currently-dormant normal thyroid cells intact.

Pros:

It works rapidly (improvement within 2 weeks, back to full normal in 3 months)

Very effective, with an over 90% cure rate

No pills in angry old cats

Permanent, one time correction

Cons:

Expensive, usually costing over $1000 (~1400)

Requires special facilities, so it’s not available everywhere

Using radioactive materials, so requires containment of your cat at the hospital from anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks, and usually the shorter time periods require special at home distancing from your cat

May need retreatment if it’s a thyroid carcinoma (2% of cases), so more $$$

What if I can’t afford that? Any other options? Yep, there’s methimazole, which come in a pill form or a transdermal cream. It works by blocking thyroid hormone synthesis, so while it doesn’t cure hyperthyroidism, it will lower T4 levels and mitigate clinical signs.

Pros:

Not as expensive up front, though can cost more over the course of the disease

No hospitalization

Available anywhere cats are seen

Cons:

Pilling angry cats sucks, some don’t like the cream either

Twice daily, nonpermanent medication

Manages, doesn’t treat the disease. The thyroid tumor can grow, requiring more medication, or transform into a carcinoma instead of a benign tumor

Side effects! - GI upset, neutropenia/thrombocytopenia, GI upset (pill), and the worst: facial excoriation, where the cats’ faces are so itchy they scratch off their skin. Reversible with discontinuation.

There’s also surgical removal of the thyroids, which has fallen out of favor, and Hill’s Y/D hyperthyroidism food, which is iodine restricted and not highly recommended by endocrinologists.

I’ve heard hyperthyroid treatment causes renal disease, is that true? No, but it often unmasks kidney disease. These two diseases, hyperthyroidism and CKD, have a very common demographic in older cats. Hyperthyroidism can increase the filtration rate of the kidneys, which makes the bloodwork levels, BUN and creatinine, that we use to diagnose CKD, decrease. Once the hyperthyroidism is cured, the filtration rate decreases, and those values jump up.

If the kidneys already look bad before treatment, the vet may want to do a “methimazole trial” before committing to radioiodine. This will allow the T4 to drop and uncover the true extent of renal disease, and since methimazole isn’t permanent it can be discontinued if the renal disease is too bad.

Most feline specialists still recommend treating the hyperthyroidism even if there is severe underlying kidney disease, but this can help us prepare for what to expect after radioiodine.

What’s the prognosis, almost-doc? Well, it depends. These cats are already fairly old, so part of the shorter lifespan can be due to other concurrent old age changes/diseases. If properly managed, the median survival time is 2-4 years, though if cured with iodine at 10 years old they could truly live into their 20s. I heard of a cat treated with radioiodine in their 20s and is now in their 30s!