#but god I’ve worked very hard to figure out how to manage the hyperfixation doing the sad thing makes me sad feelings

[coffee-at-annies]

Thanks for your insights, truly appreciate it!! Me too i've only been watching more of the highlights and some full games, but i read a lot of hockey stuff to understand the game even more. the general mood may be down in pensland now and it could be easy to feel that way when it seems that almost every other team besides 2 or 3 is squeaking out wins early in the year while we're doing every no no in a hockey game possible. when you look at the standings it looks like 24 teams have winning records now in the first 10 games vs the pens' 4-5-2 record but honestly half of them will likely not keep up with their current pace. It was infuriating to see read those beat writers from teams with winning records (cough Isles cough) laughing at our struggles and write us off early in the season. it's easy to mock us now but what if at some point in the season the situations are reversed inevitably? I always say to myself, hockey can be a cruel mistress. you can be on top of the league 10 games in then go on to have a historic losing season. the pens can have a bottom 10 record after 10 games but with a few tweaks and a little more puck luck, we will also enjoy the same success the other teams are having to start the season.

besides it's difficult to determine which teams are for real and which teams are just riding lady luck to begin the season. there'll be injuries and cold streaks and poor goaltending and puck luck that will hit every team throughout the season. it's just unfortunate that the pens can't catch a break and are facing a lot of adversity early on. but if we spent the whole time wishing we were as good as this team based off a very small sample size, that's dangerous thinking. plus will we really be better off if we faced little adversity throughout the season? don't think so. i do agree with the general opinion that the league standings are more taken seriously by the 41-game mark.

that's my thoughts for now. i don't think sid and geno will let this slide any further. and in all honesty, i think this is one of the stretches that will make us look back and be glad it happened sooner rather than when it is too late for a turnaround. let all those writers get smug about their early success now - marathon not a sprint. it will be interesting to see how their team responds the second adversity hits them and when their unsustainable winning ways catch up to them. what will they say if their team gets hit by a lengthy losing streak later in the year? the season is early to make sound assumptions about every team and things can change in a snap

People forget (and rightly so it was a long time ago at this point) that we slumped hard all the way into December before turning things around and winning the cup in 2016. Heck last year we looked terrible after the trade deadline and then looked amazing the first couple games of the playoffs. It’s a long season you never know when someone will make a change and the team will get their shit together.

As for reporters being smug, I’m very much a don’t like don’t read fellow in addition to being an unrepentant homer. I only want to read nice things about my team doing good and bad things about my enemies doing badly. We’re in a slump so I simply do not see my athletic subscription because it will only make me upset and sad about things I can’t control. Also I’ve lost a lot of trust for Yohe and Rossi after Geno’s free agency fiasco. They are not going to give me the content I want so I simply have forgotten how to read.

I never read other teams articles/beat reporters unless it’s a player puff piece because they are never going to say nice things about us. It’s literally their job to be critical and smug. Nobody likes to admit that Sidney Crosby is still really good at hockey, that’s why it’s the coldest hot take in the league, but everyone wants to write is he washed up reaction pieces because they cause outrage and get clicks. If they ever say a nice word it will be begrudgingly and at most a backhand compliment. They are also unrepentant homers claiming they don’t have biases because they’re reporters. It’s annoying but that’s the facts.

The only league-wide content I consume is Steve Dangle’s highlights stuff because I appreciate him being an unrepentant leafs fan who also likes good hockey. He’s soft on some teams and harder on others when it comes to what makes the highlights but at least he’s up front with it all. I’ve taken a hiatus from watching that too cause I don’t like when we show up getting scored on or making mistakes. It feels bad and so I simply do not.

This may sound like I’m sticking my head in the sand but all of this stuff is optional and it’s just going to make me upset if I consume it. One of the hardest parts I’ve found is learning to disconnect and not take losses personally. I want the hyperfixation to produce the good chemicals and none of the bad stuff and surely the more I consume the more good chemicals I will get? Except that’s not really the case during slumps it becomes a downward spiral chasing the light at the end of the tunnel and the easiest way to not do that is limit my intake and find joy in other things. I skipped last nights game for those reasons and had a lovely time watching taskmaster with my partner. Hockey is a marathon. It’s important to take breaks and pace yourself. There’s a lot of content. Picking and choosing what to consume (up to and including skipping games) is important.

[blitzturtles]

Title: Can't Fix Everything

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable (Future Fic)

Pairing(s): JotaHan

Summary: Jotaro frowns when he rings the doorbell and no one answers. It’s not as though he’s unexpected. He and Rohan had discussed this beforehand, but he knows that it’s entirely possible that Rohan got too caught up in his work. That he’s got his eyes glued to the pages with such a hyperfixation that he hadn’t even heard the doorbell going off.

Notes: When I went to write the ‘Flail Chest’ piece, I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted it to be with Jotaro or Josuke, so here’s the Jotaro version (if it can be called that. Same injury, very different story.) Ngl, kind of frustrated with the end, but I've been sitting on this for a few weeks now.

[Copy and pasted from the Josuke version: Unimportant bit of trivia: the first rib fixation for adolescent flail chest wasn’t actually done until ~2006, but this is fic, so fuck it.

Flail chest: When a section of the chest wall becomes detached due to the ribs being broken in two or more places. The treatment for this can be a wait and see method (with pain management and physical therapy), but there’s also rib fixation, which is a surgical procedure that can help dramatically reduce short and long-term complications.

The rib injury is canon; the extent of it in this fic, not so much.]

-

Jotaro frowns when he rings the doorbell and no one answers. It’s not as though he’s unexpected. He and Rohan had discussed this beforehand, but he knows that it’s entirely possible that Rohan got too caught up in his work. That he’s got his eyes glued to the pages with such a hyperfixation that he hadn’t even heard the doorbell going off. At least, that’s what Jotaro tells himself. How he tries to rationalize the lack of response.

Unfortunately, too many years on this earth-- facing some of the worst creatures to have ever disgraced her surface-- means that Jotaro has a good idea when he’s being pointlessly paranoid and when his ‘gut feeling’ is something to be taken seriously, and he’s feeling the latter right about now.

Star breaks the door’s lock with a particularly nasty twist of the knob. It’s nothing Jotaro can’t fix with a quick trip to the hardware store later, but that doesn’t matter right now.

“Rohan?” He calls into the seemingly empty house. The majority of the lights are off, and there’s no movement. No sound, and it’s far too early for Rohan to consider bed, which means he’s either closed in his studio or gone.

Jotaro makes a beeline for the familiar door that leads to Rohan’s sanctuary. It’s possible Rohan went out on a whim. Impulse control isn’t exactly his strong suit, especially when it might be something related to his manga, but it’s smarter to check the one place Rohan haunts most in life before bothering with anywhere else.

The door is unlocked, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though it doesn’t stop Jotaro’s heart from hammering away in his chest. There’s a flash of red across his vision, like a filter of blood, but he shakes it off in favor of taking in the room. He can’t let his past trauma affect him now.

Or maybe he can, because there Rohan is. On the floor, huddled partway beneath his desk. There’s a low whine that accompanies the screwed up features, and it’s all Jotaro needs to know that Rohan is in pain. A significant amount of it.

“Fuck,” Jotaro grinds out. He makes his way to Rohan quickly. Star Platinum itches to freeze time. A natural reaction to walking into an obviously bad situation with little information to work with, but Jotaro won’t waste the opportunity. They might only have one shot to work with, and he can’t waste it before he even knows what he’s walked into.

Carefully, he crouches in front of Rohan, His eyes don’t quite fixate on the mangaka. Instead, he’s too busy taking in their surroundings, searching for a threat.

Rohan startles and yelps. “What the fuck?” He grinds out after the initial shock washes over both of them.

“I could ask you the same thing. What happened?” Jotaro demands. His gaze shifts to Rohan. It’s a raking thing. Slow and deliberate as he searches for any sign of injury. There’s no blood that he can see. No limbs twisted horrifically out of place, and no holes punched where they don’t belong. Jotaro doesn’t allow himself to relax. There’s obviously something wrong; he just hasn’t figured it out yet.

“Ribs,” Rohan breathes out after a moment of hesitation. The mere effort of talking leaves him struggling for air.

Jotaro’s frown deepens, and he tunes out the rest of the world to focus on Rohan.

“Let me see.”

“No.”

“Rohan.”

“Go away.”

“Kishibe,” Jotaro grinds out. He doesn’t have time to put up with Rohan being a toddler when he could have a punctured lung.

“Fine,” Rohan concedes, though doesn’t move.

Jotaro sighs and carefully maneuvers Rohan onto his side. He uses Star’s hands as a cushion between Rohan’s body and the floor. A gentle effort to avoid making the situation worse, and, for once, Jotaro is incredibly thankful for Rohan’s penchant for crop tops. It’s a convenience-- rather than a nuisance and a distraction-- in a time like this.

Slowly, Jotaro pushes the fabric out of the way, and he sucks in a sharp breath out of sympathy the moment he gets an eyeful of the bruising that’s blossomed across Rohan’s side.

“That Stand got you right in that old wound of your’s, huh?” Jotaro asks. He barely resists the urge to reach out and touch the scars hidden underneath the black and blue mess. He’s known about their existence for a while, though Rohan rarely lets him lay eyes on them for more than a few seconds at a time.

There’s three scars in total, and each one runs the length of a rib, starting at Rohan’s sternum and wrapping around midway to his spine. A childhood injury from a freak accident that still causes unnecessary pain.

(”Why not just let Josuke heal you?” Jotaro remembers asking the first time he caught a glimpse of the scars.

“Josuke can’t fix everything,” Rohan had answered, short and irritable.)

Jotaro wonders if Rohan would allow Josuke to help now. If only to take the edge off, but Jotaro will worry about calling his nephew later. For now, he’s more concerned with getting Rohan off the floor and checked over properly. Jotaro hadn’t seen Rohan take a hit, which means that he has no idea how hard it had been or what kind of damage they might be dealing with. There could be internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, or god knows what else. The bruising is extensive enough, and Rohan’s breathing is ragged. Too shallow and a touch uneven.

“What gave you that idea?” Rohan snarls at him, breaking Jotaro out of his thoughts. He forgot how ill-tempered the mangaka is when he’s hurting.

“Good grief,” Jotaro mutters, though he takes it as a positive sign that Rohan’s got enough fight in him to make this as difficult as possible.

As carefully as possible, he scoops Rohan up into his arms. It isn’t easy, given the location of the wound, but he only makes Rohan whimper rather than scream. That has to count for something.

The path to the bedroom is blessedly short, considering the size of Rohan’s house. Jotaro gently deposits the mangaka on his oversized bed and heads for the en suite bathroom to retrieve the bottle of prescription painkillers that he knows Rohan underutilizes whenever possible (Rohan doesn’t like what they do to his head, and Jotaro can’t say that he blames him). It takes some rummaging, but he manages to find the pills and a cup to pour some water into.

“Here,” Jotaro says once he returns to the bedroom. To his surprise, Rohan takes both the cup and the proffered pills without complaint. He swallows the painkillers dry and chases them down with the water before falling back against the pillows with a quiet groan.

Jotaro takes that as his permission to resume his earlier inspection. Once again, he rolls the edge of the crop top up and tries not to grimace at the sight that greets him. It’s definitely no better than before, not that he had expected it to be. There’s more bruising than not on the scarred side, and some of it has branched across, spreading to the other side. Despite how horrific it looks, Rohan’s breathing is mostly even. It’s obvious that he’s in pain and holding back, but the lung seems to be inflating properly, which is… something. Far from great, but definitely better than the alternative.

Slowly, Jotaro palpates the area. All while ignoring the squirming and gasped breaths that he gets from Rohan. At some point, Rohan has enough, and he tries to swat Jotaro away, but he pulls back before Rohan can reach him.

“I don’t think you’re bleeding internally,” Jotaro announces with a barely level tone. Relief edges his words despite his attempt to keep his tone even. He tries not to think of what could have happened if Rohan had been left alone, bleeding internally, and without any way to call for help. Jotaro chastises himself for not noticing the hit or its aftermath. How could he have missed something so obvious? He can’t imagine that Rohan had been able to fully hide it.

“Fantastic,” Rohan grits out with a roll of his eyes. The way he relaxes into the mattress gives him away, though. He’d been scared.

“I’m going to go get some ice for that. Do you need anything else?”

“No,” Rohan says too quickly. His fingers twitch, but he doesn’t speak up again. Jotaro takes that as his sign to go ahead, and he wanders downstairs and toward the kitchen.

The pantries are unsurprisingly bare, though Jotaro manages to find a baggie to put a decent amount of ice into. He grabs the hand towel off the counter to wrap the makeshift pack in and heads back upstairs, where he finds Rohan exactly where he left him. He hasn’t moved so much as an inch. It’s one more sign of the agony he must be in.

“Do you want me to call Josuke?” Jotaro asks, already knowing the answer. He passes Rohan the ice pack, figuring it will be better if Rohan places it himself. The cold is already going to make him tense up, and he doesn’t need the added pain.

“No.”

“He doesn’t have to see.”

“No.”

Jotaro gives a half shrug, “If you insist.”

“I do,” Rohan sniffs, snooty and irritated until he places the wrapped ice against his skin. He hisses and jolts away from it, but it only takes a moment before he relaxes and presses the pack that much closer. “Stop being a mother and lie down. ‘m not going anywhere anytime soon.” It’s not meant to be a reassurance, but Jotaro takes it that way anyways.

“I could call the Foundation.”

“Don’t you dare,” Rohan shoots back like Jotaro’s words had been a threat. They hadn’t. It’s an offer to have a specialist come to Rohan rather than to force Rohan to the hospital, but it doesn’t surprise Jotaro that he took it to be something else entirely.

“You’re wheezing,” Jotaro points out with the same frown he’s been wearing since he found Rohan on the floor.

“I’m fine. Get in this bed or get out.”

Jotaro can’t help thinking the words might hold more weight if Rohan weren’t practically wheezing them, but he decides to let the subject drop for now. There’s no apparent sign of an emergency. Yet. He’s not sure he can relax enough to get comfortable, but he does toe off his shoes. He rolls onto his side after another moment of contemplation. At least this position allows for him to keep an eye on Rohan without jostling him too much.

Rohan rolls his eyes, but he settles against the mattress with a half-shrug. A ‘suit yourself’ sort of gesture that’s far milder than the rest of his responses have been. His eyes slide shut and he keeps his hand firmly pressed to the ice he’s still holding to his side. His hold is still too tight, and his posture is too stiff. Jotaro wishes he could do more, but he knows how chronic pain goes. There’s really nothing more either of them can do now other than sit and wait for the medication to kick in. Rohan won’t see Josuke, and he’d probably bite Jotaro if the older man tried to take him to the hospital. Waiting is their only option, and time moves at an impossibly slow pace.

Nearly thirty minutes go by in complete silence. Rohan keeps his eyes stubbornly screwed shut, and Jotaro watches him unashamedly. The moment he thinks Rohan is getting worse, he’s dragging both of them to the nearest hospital, repercussions be damned.

Likewise, he keeps having to remind himself to take a breath. Rohan is alive and-- well, mostly-- breathing, granted it looks strained and painful, but it’s better than the alternative. Better than the rattle that Jotaro’s heard too many times before, and there’s no needless gasping. Only the occasional, low whine that manages to slip its way past Rohan’s thin-pressed lips.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Rohan’s body begins to relax. His limbs go slack against the mattress, and his core sinks downwards. He’s no longer holding stiff as a board, and the difference is nearly palpable. Jotaro can see the moment exhaustion takes its hold over pain, and Rohan begins to slip under the blanket that is sleep.

Jotaro takes the risk of removing Rohan’s headband then. His fingers card through the mess of hair left behind. Rohan leans into the touch like it’s the best thing he’s felt in awhile, and it probably is, given what his body’s just gone through. Jotaro won’t deny him that bit of relief, so he continues to pet through Rohan’s hair until there are soft snores escaping the mangaka. Even then, he doesn’t stop. The last thing he wants is to accidentally wake Rohan up.

Eventually being curled on his side and having nowhere to go takes its toll. Jotaro’s eyelids grow heavier the longer he stays put, and he doesn’t bother to fight the sleep that settles in his limbs first and comes for his mind second.

[violetwolfraven]

40 for sprace?

We’re playing love interests in a play and long story short I think I might actually be falling for you.

Ooh! Fun! Also lmao my blog is kinda turning into a Newsies blog. At least for now. Until I get obsessed with something else. Don’t worry, though, guys. That ain’t gonna happen for a while the way I’m currently going. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost followers because of my current hyperfixation but somehow I don’t give a single fuck

Hope you don’t mind some background newsbians. Also that I don’t actually have a Cinderella script, so I’m not using any actual lines from it.

...

Race had to appreciate how chill Miss Medda was, because he didn’t think just any theatre club advisor would let the kids change the genders of a bunch of characters just so they could make it all gay.

Oh, well. Theatre was gay culture. There wasn’t a straight person in their club, and they might as well reflect that.

Basically, they were doing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, and with Bill and Darcy as their rewriters, they’d changed Prince Topher to Princess Tina (which was no easy feat, given that he had about a million middle names they had to find feminine versions of) and put Katherine in the role, as the only girl who could hit the lower notes.

Sarah played Cinderella, Albert played one of the stepsisters, Charlotte (which were now brothers) and Race played the other, Gabrielle. Or, Charles and Gabriel, now, with the two of them.

Jack was Marie, the Fairy Godmother, Smalls and Romeo tumbled as the fox and raccoon, and Davey hung back as the student director.

And Spot Conlon was playing Jean-Michael, the revolutionary, and Race’s love interest.

That totally wasn’t a problem because Spot totally wasn’t Race’s type and singing a duet with Sarah about him and Katherine totally didn’t hold any truth at all.

Yeah... Race had a deal with her that as long as she didn’t tell anyone about him having the hots for Spot, he wouldn’t tell anyone how whipped Sarah was for Katherine in real life.

Unfortunately, that deal was definitely not going to work to Race’s favor, now that he’d accidentally let slip about it.

To. Katherine.

While Sarah was within hearing range.

Fortunately, everyone else was on break while Race (being dance captain) helped Saz and Kath out with some hard waltz choreography, but still...

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“Hey, Spot?” Sarah called.

“Saz!” Race yelped, “Saz! Sarah! I’m sorry, okay? You don’t have to do this! I have so much to live for!”

Sarah rolled her eyes, as if that would make her be blushing less as she refused to look at Katherine, “Spot Satan Conlon, where are you?”

“My middle name ain’t ‘Satan,’ Sarah!” Spot yelled from the catwalk.

Oh yeah. Spot was primarily friends with the crew kids. Hotshot, Bart, Bluebird... those kids. The ones who would straight up murder you if you touched something you weren’t supposed to on the sets.

“Well, until you tell me your real one, I got nothing else to use!” Sarah yelled back, “Can you come down here?”

“Physically? Yeah! Will I? No!”

With a mischievous glance back at Race, Sarah ran for the stairs up to the catwalk.

“No, no, no—“ Race gave up on trying to stop her. This was kind of fair, after all, actually.

Katherine gave him a mildly afraid look, “So... what was that about?”

“We had a deal that long as I don’t tell anyone ‘bout her likin’ you, she don’t tell anyone ‘bout me likin’ Spot.”

Kath laughed suddenly and loudly, mostly just sounding nervous, weirdly.

“What?” Race asked.

“Nothing,” Katherine said quickly. Too quickly for her to actually have nothing to say.

“Kath.”

“Race,” Katherine sighed, “Look, you’ll find out soon enough. With any luck, within the next few minutes.”

“What?”

Spot came down from the catwalk suddenly and Race lost his train of thought. Sarah wasn’t far behind him with a shit-eating grin.

Spot pointed at Race, then at the door out of the theatre, “Higgins. You and me. Hallway. Now.”

Race was already following, but he couldn’t help but shoot a kind of terrified glance back at the girls.

“We’ll send a search party if you don’t come back within ten minutes!” Sarah called.

“Oh, you and me are having a talk, too,” Katherine said pointedly.

Race laughed at the look on Sarah’s face, but his inner monologue was definitely still 90% swear words right now.

Spot was waiting for him out in the empty hallway. Most of their friends were out in the lobby, but they still wouldn’t be overheard if they used their inside voices.

“So,” Race said awkwardly, “I don’t know what specifically Sarah told ya, but—“

“Shut up, Race.”

Race shut up.

“We ain’t practiced one part of that scene toward the act of act 2.”

“What scene?”

“You know the one.”

Race did know the one. It was the scene where Spot and Race were supposed to kiss, but Davey had said that nobody had to kiss until hell week if they didn’t want to.

Davey, being Sarah’s twin brother and Race’s close friend, knew about both of their crushes, so he was probably just trying to give them time to make a move, but Race hadn’t been planning on making one. He’d figured it was just a stage kiss. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“Spot, are you sure we shouldn’t talk about this or—“

Spot just got into character and recited his line.

God, that was still weird. How Spot was absolutely nothing like Jean-Michael, and yet he still managed to sell the character completely accurately.

He said the line right before their kiss.

It would not be hard for Race to refuse, to stay out of character and say no. That was probably the point; that Race could get out of this situation easily, but if he wanted to stay in it, Spot didn’t have to talk about his feelings. At least, not yet.

It was a situation they both felt comfortable in, oddly enough. They were both in their element.

Race took a deep breath and said Gabriel’s next line.

Spot still hesitated, leaning in close, but hovering a couple inches away.

Race closed the distance between them, leaning in for the quick kiss the scene called for.

When he pulled away, the other boy’s face was unreadable.

“Spot..?” Race whispered.

Spot grabbed him by the back of his neck, pulling him down to kiss him deeper this time.

Race was... surprised, but he managed to kiss back, bringing his hands up to Spot’s shoulders.

“It’s about damn time.”

They jumped apart just in time to see Davey standing in the doorway to the lobby with a shit-eating grin.

“Oh shit,” Race groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna tell Jack or anything. You might want to, though. Anyways I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” Spot warned, “Katherine and Sarah are probably makin’ out in there.”

“Seriously?” Davey and Race yelled at the same time.

Spot shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, “Kath and I had a deal that I wouldn’t tell ‘bout her crush if she didn’t tell ‘bout mine.”

“Are you kidding me?” Race asked, “That’s what I had with Saz!”

After a couple seconds of processing this, Davey chuckled.

“Well, at least the chemistry onstage will be real.”

The chemistry was very real. And Kath and Sarah were totally making out on the stage of the empty theatre.

[notyonatto]

The Magic “Kiss”

HELLO, GUYS

It is me, Brooke, back from the depths with another fanfic. I know I let my old fic die, but don’t worry, this is a sfw one-shot that I got carried away with (sorry) about my current hyperfixation, you got it, Inuyasha. I’ve been focusing on writing a novel, so I haven’t given much attention to fanfics, but I saw this prompt that @nony314 started and just had to write this out.

It takes place after the end of the Inuyasha series, so if you haven’t watched or read it but are ever planning it, be warned. There spoilers. It’s also InuKag. I also didn’t check for grammar or spelling mistakes so if something sounds wrong, it probably is.  I’m rusty from writing fanfics. ENJOY! 

Word count: 3277 (Sorry!)

It was another summer day picking herbs with old Kaede. Kagome had been training under her as a miko for several months upon returning to the feudal era, and she was starting to finally get the hang of things. A lot of the time, Kaede could take a step back and let Kagome do her own thing while collecting herbs with her. The only real reason she was even still there was in case Kagome had a question or lingering doubt and to double check what Kagome had picked. Kaede was gently proud of this time-traveling girl, and Kagome just as silently proud of herself for her improvements as well.

Despite her progress, there were still moments she doubted herself. She held a leaf that split into many long, sharp points and grumbled in contemplation. It looked like mugwort. It matched what she had learned mugwort leaves were supposed to look like, but… what if it wasn’t? She didn’t want to ask Kaede because she really wanted to be able to figure this out on her own, but after two minutes of back and forth, she turned to the elderly lady a few feet behind her and opened her mouth to ask her to put her fretting to rest. Just as she did that, there was rustling from nearby that stole her attention. It sounded as though someone was coming their way. No, it sounded as if someone was running their way.

“Kaede sama!” Rin panted, bursting into view. “Oh, Kagome sama!”

The wrinkled woman stopped what she was doing and turned to the small girl. Well, she wasn’t really small anymore.

“What’s the matter, Rin? You look distressed,” Kaede replied.

“Kaede sama, it’s terrible! Someone fell into the river and began to drown! They said Kagome sama knew how to get into the water to get her out!”

“What’s that!? Kagome-”

Kaede spun to Kagome in a panic. She was one of the only people who knew how to “swim.” She had begun teaching some of the younglings, but if someone was truly drowning, they were far too young and weak to do anything. However, Kagome was already running toward Rin and asking her to lead the way. The two maidens were off before Kaede could get another thought in, let alone join them. She got up to follow as fast as her aged body would allow.

Kagome had been running with Rin for only a minute when there was more rustling coming their way, except this time it came from the treetops.

“Kagome!!” It was her husband of one month, Inuyasha.

“Inuyasha!” She exclaimed.

Inuyasha landed before her and quickly turned her back to her. Kagome knew exactly what to do. After she had climbed onto her back, she called back to Rin.

“Go find Kaede sama!”

“Okay!” Rin called back before turning to go back.

Kagome was focused on tying her hair while trying to stay securely on Inuyasha’s back without falling off. They were almost at the river’s edge, and Kagome didn’t want to waste any time when they reached it. Inuyasha had remained silent the entire time, focused on getting back to the river as fast as he could. The two fled out of the treeline and made it to the clearing by the river. There was a gathering of panicked people, but it looked like they may have managed to get the victim out with long poles. The instant Inuyasha let Kagome down she sprinted to the heart of the commotion.

“Kagome sama!” a fretful middle-aged man shouted at her approach.

A second man chirped in. “We managed to get him out of the water, but he swallowed too much water! He isn’t breathing!”

“Hurry! Move him to flat ground!” Kagome commanded.

She knew what she had to do, but she did not know how long the young man had been unconscious. He was slightly younger than her with sopping black hair sticking to his face. Kagome had seen him around the village before, but they had never directly interacted aside from passing greetings. She rolled up her miko robes and dropped to her knees beside him after he had been moved to firm, flat ground. Inuyasha ran up close behind her, and a small fox friend hopped onto his shoulder out of nowhere to get a better look.

Kagome placed the palm of her right hand firmly in the center of his chest before laying her second hand overtop and linking her fingers together. Hovering her shoulders directly above and without bending her elbows, she began pumping down on the young man’s chest. She counted. 1, 2, 3, 4… Sounds of confusion and wonder trickled out from the crowd around her, and she could sense them leaning in and staring harder to try to understand what she was doing. 10, 11, 12, 13… She didn’t have any time to pay attention to them, though. 18, 19, 20, 21…. She had to focus on this man.

27, 28, 29, 30! Sweat had started beading on her face and rolling down her temples. She had trained to do CPR back in her era, but she had never done it before. Every instructor had told her that it required a lot of stamina, but she didn’t realize just how much! But there wasn’t time to think about that. She couldn’t get tired yet! His airway needed to be opened, and he needed to start recirculating oxygen ASAP. Kagome tilted the man’s wet chin back and let his mouth gape open slightly.

The stares became more intense as she did this. For just a flash, she worried about Inuyasha during this next part, but the thought was so quick that she forgot she had thought it almost as immediately as it had appeared. She pinched the man’s nose with one hand and supported his head with the other while taking in a nervous breath; this had better work.

Shocked gasps erupted from the crowd, and Kagome was pretty sure she could hear Miroku go, “Ohhhhhh,” in pleasant surprise. She was also pretty sure she heard Sango hit him. Murmurs of confusion and doubt The miko-in-training watched as the man’s chest rose then she slightly sat herself up.

“K-Kagome, what the hell-”

“OSUWARI!”

Thud.

Kagome watched his chest cavity slowly fall, and when it had gone all the way back down, she took another breath, leaned forward, and put her lips to his again. She watched his chest rise once more and straightened herself fully up while watching it fall again. Her clothes were now sticking to her in sweat, but she interlocked her fingers as she had done earlier and pumped the heel of her right hand into his chest thirty more times. By the end of it, she was panting and exhausted, but she wasn’t done until this man was breathing again, damn it!

Pinching his nose and securing his head in place, she met her mouth with his a third time and blew air into him. She had barely lifted her head away from him when he began sputtering up water and coughing deeply. It had worked! Kagome watched him struggle for air and turned to the crowd behind her.

“Help me tip him over!”

Several people came forward in awe and helped tip the man to his side while Kagome led his face downward, allowing water and foamy spit to stream out of his mouth. He coughed more and forced more water out, and the sweaty, tired woman slowly rubbed his back until he had gotten most of it out and was gasping for air on his own. Between coughs and gasps, the young man groaned and kept his eyes squeezed shut.

“He’s okay,” Kagome hoarsely declared.

She was already exhausted, but now that the adrenaline and terror were leaving her body, she was shaking and having a hard time catching her own breath. A villager swooped in beside her to take her place watching the man and rubbing his back after noticing how tired the miko had become. Kagome nodded a thanks and scooted over before leaning back and taking deep breaths. The crowd erupted in cheer and sounds of wonder and amazement.

“Our priestess truly is sacred!” one voice called.

“The gods have blessed us!” another shouted.

Kagome sensed a particular sour aura behind her and turned to see a very agitated half-demon squatting behind her with twitching ears and balled fists. If Kagome wasn’t so tired, she may have grinned.

“Oy! What the hell was that about!?” Inuyasha demanded.

Shippo ran over to stand defensively between the husband and wife, and Inuyasha raised a fist in a threat to the fox demon for barging into their soon-to-be argument.

“Leave Kagome alone! She just saved him!” the tiny fox demon barked.

“She’ll have to save you too if you don’t shaddup!” Inuyasha barked back.

Sweetly and with a smile, to Shippo, Kagome said, “Shippo, it’s fine. Thank you.”

Fiercely and with a sharp glare, to Inuyasha,  Kagome exasperated, “Really!? What’s your problem, Inuyasha!?”

Inuyasha sharply inhaled, slightly taken aback.

“My problem!? What’s YOUR problem!? Making out with random village men right in front of me!”

Kagome’s face reddened as much as it could under her already red, damp skin.

“I did not!”

“Everyone just saw you do it!”

“Kagome sama,” a serene and bubbly voice approached, “I knew you were a sacred priestess, but I had no idea that your kisses were magical. No wonder Inuyasha claims you so.”

“Don’t say such things!” Sango chirped at Miroku.

Each parent held a hand of one of their daughters, and their young son was tied to Sango’s back. The daughters giggled at watching their father get scolded by Sango once again. The demon’s slayer reproachful expression softened when she turned to her priestess friend.

“How did you do that though? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Y-you guys!” There was flustered betrayal in the half-demon’s voice. “Don’t encourage this!!”

Kagome turned to her two friends, blatantly ignoring Inuyasha (to which he gaped at with more flustered betrayal) and looked up at them. It may have been more polite to stand up and speak to their faces, but she was still coming down from all of the commotion. She wasn’t confident she had the energy to stand up yet.

“It’s a technique from my home called CPR,” Kagome smiled sheepishly. “The point is to pump the chest and to help keep the pumping. That’s all it is, really…”

Inuyasha lunged forward and grabbed her shoulder and tugged her toward him. He was angrier than before now that not only had Kagome kissed a man in front of him but his friends had betrayed them. He’d show her! He’d show all of them! His tense, twitching face was centimeters in front of her, and the scent of her sweat was nearly all he could smell in that moment. Kagome stifled a small chuckle because she noticed some mud on his face from when she had used the o-word on him.

In a worringly low voice, Inuyasha said, “If that’s the case, then why did you kiss him?”

“Jeeze!” Kagome tugged her shoulder out of his grasp. “I already told you! I did not kiss him!”

“Yes, you did!”

“No, I did not!”

“YES, YOU DID!”

“ENOUGH ALREADY! I did NOT kiss him! It’s a part of CPR called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and-”

“Keh! I don’t know what this resusi-whatever is, but mouth-to-mouth is a kiss! And you did it three times!”

Inuyasha whipped his head to the young man who had finally begun breathing somewhat normally. He was being tended to by a few of the villagers, but Inuyasha paid them no attention. A growl with growing intensity came from him as he stood up with twitching fists ready to fight and take back his woman he was losing to this wet rat of a human. Wait a minute? Losing her to this guy? No way! As if! Now he was even angrier.

Kagome turned her head to follow his movement.

“Inuyasha!” she scolded.

“WHAT!?” he shouted back but louder.

“OSUWARI!”

Thud.

The priested glared at her husband with his face in the mud then turned back to her friends and smiled sweetly as if nothing had just happened. Miroku and Sango laughed nervously; Kagome could be scarier than most demons they had run into sometimes. The couple’s daughters laughed hysterically at the comical sight of it all and pulled free of their parents to go play with the helpless puppy on the ground.

“Anyway, it’s a thing called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The point of it is to blow air into the person’s mouth to help get them breathing again,” Kagome explained.

“Oh, that’s actually very useful!” Sango explained. “Your world is so smart. The inventions there are so amazing.”

Kagome smiled. She didn’t have time to respond before a random villager was kneeling before her.

“Priestess!” He shouted while bowing deeply. “I have suffered from a very bad pain in my chest for weeks! Please, I beg that you kiss me too!”

Kagome’s face drained of color and went blank.

“Heh?” was the only sound she could make.

The man bowed his head deeper until it was almost touching the ground.

“Please! I would be honored!”

The poor girl’s brain was in the process of rebooting still when yet another villager followed suit of the first one and bowed as deep as him as well. This one was an elderly man, surely older than old Kaede. Speaking of Kaede, she and Rin had just shown up moments before, missing the “miracle” her trainee had performed.

“Please, kiss me too! I do not have much time left to my life! I need your kiss!”

Sango gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, and Miroku chuckled. They both watched her and left her helpless. Just as Kaede popped her head over by them to see what the commotion was, another young man pushed past her in a hurry.

“Me too!” he panted.

“You guys…” the desired priestess finally got out.

Inuyasha fought to regain his senses and get back up on his feet, pushing the twins off of him. Shippo saw this and shrieked before running behind Miroku to hide. The rest of the crowd looked upon her reverently and several conversations about her started or were being continued.

“Not only is she beautiful, but she also has a magical kiss too! Maaan, I wish I was her!”

“I want a kiss too! I’ve always wanted to kiss our beautiful priestess!”

“Praise the gods! They have sent us a true angel!”

Something grabbed the shoulder of Kagome’s priestess robes and pulled her up to her feet. She looked over to her growling and furious husband, and her brain finally finished rebooting. Realizing the situation she was in and the way everyone was looking at her made her face hotter than the sun. When Inuyasha pushed her behind him, she didn’t fight him. Sango and Miroku collected their daughters and made it a point to back away from the crowd as soon as they could, and Shippo was right on their tails. Kaede shook her head and tsked then made her way to the poor young man that everyone had forgotten about. He was still coughing and soaking wet.

“Everyone get away from Kagome!” Inuyasha shouted at the crowd. “There’s only one person Kagome kisses, and that’s me, got it?!”

“That’s not true!” one of the villagers protested. “She just kissed that young man over there!”

“Why you…”

“Who are you to keep all of her magical kisses to yourself!?” another shouted.

Every part of Inuyasha was hot with anger and tense. How dare these people! After all he and Kagome had done for the village!

“I-I’m her husband, you bastards!”

He was so focused on the crowd he was facing that he didn’t notice another man come running behind him toward Kagome. He dropped to the ground in a deep bow like the other men.

“Please grant me a kiss, o beautiful priestess!”

Inuyasha turned on his heel faster than ever before and punched the top of the man’s head, giving him a decent sized bump. He pushed Kagome behind him again to protect her from this new threat and growled. The first man who asked for a kiss tugged on Kagome’s pant leg, frightening her, and causing her to squeal. She wanted the earth to eat her whole. This was so embarrassing! She was too embarrassed to ever leave her hut again!

“Kagome!!” Inuyasha screamed.

Another head got smacked. And another. And another. And another until all the heads directly around the couple had been given a bruise or two.

“Inuyasha!” Kagome begged.

She wasn’t begging him to stop punching the people around her. She didn’t like that he was doing it, but she was too mortified to care. More than anything she wanted to be as far away from everyone as she could. If her face got any hotter it may just go up in flames. A hand from the crowd reached for her as she stood there.

“Kagome!” Inuyasha shouted before grabbing her waist and jumping to the outskirt of the crowd.

Everyone gasped at this and followed them with their eyes. Sango, who was watching from the side with her children, her husband, and Shippo, sighed and closed her eyes. Those her stupid, silly friends. Shippo shook his head and tsked with crossed arms. Miroku chuckled while his two daughters guffawed and reenacted Inuyasha hitting people.

When the crowd turned to see where their beloved priestess had gone. Inuyasha immediately sprinted away and fled by hopping through the treetops while clutching his wife as tightly as he could.

When they were far enough away from the crowd to guarantee they weren’t being followed, Inuyasha stopped and put Kagome down. He folded his arms and looked away from her with a “keh!” This made her pout.

“Inuyasha…”

He didn’t respond.

“Inuyasha, I didn’t kiss him!” She was continuing their prior argument. “If you had just listened, what I did was-”

“I know, alright?!” He barked.

“Huh?”

Inuyasha still had his arms cross and head turned when he began to mumble.

“You said that… you blow air or sum’in… to make them breathe or whatever…”

Kagome felt a weight leave her chest and any remaining nerves melt. Good. He knew. He was still in a sour mood, though, but she knew exactly how to calm him down. Smiling sweetly, she walked in front of him and looked at his turned face that turned pink. He made nervous sounds and kept his face away even though he kept stealing glances at her. That damned smile always made him feel like such a softie.

Despite his crossed arms, Kagome reached for both of his hands and held them until his arms relaxed and unfolded. She held them again after he had let them drop lazily to his sides. He had wanted to resist that, but he wasn’t able to. There would definitely be no swaying in making him turn his face toward her. He wasn’t that big of a pushover.  

“You know,” Kagome warmly reassured, “you’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to kiss.”

Inuyasha was quiet for a while before an embarrassed, “I know that…”

Kagome released a breathy giggle.

“Then remember it.”

She stood on her tippy-toes and kissed his cheek, bringing forth a lot more heat and color to it. The half-demon’s wife smiled and fought to keep down another giggle. She didn’t want to embarrass him more.

“Let’s go home,” he grumbled.

“Please.”

[stimtoybox]

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to start a stim/fidget toy review blog? I think it will give me a good outlet to talk about them instead of bothering my friends every time I get a new stimmy thing. I just don't know where to start. :(

I am flattered, anon, that you think we can offer advice on this point!

To be honest, I don’t think it’s that much different from starting any creative project, and these are all things folks should consider if they’re doing anything new. So ask yourself these questions, as they’ll guide you, I think, towards what you do next and how you do it.

I apologise for writing … well, an essay on blogging. It’s probably a great deal more than what you’ve asked for, but I’ve learnt a great deal in running this blog, and it all came flooding out on the page.

The main points, I think, I’ll summarise here before going into everything under the cut:

Know what it is you want to do and why you want to do it. It’s very hard to keep going with anything if you’re not sure why you’re doing it.

Hold close to your heart everything you think you can bring to your blog and reviews, because cherishing your own uniqueness keeps you going.

Practice self-care in determining what is possible for you and how much time you can devote to a blog. Look after yourself first. Your followers will wait even longer for responses if you have a mental breakdown.

Blog only if it makes you happy, because blogging is a lot of work!

Regular and consistent updates do result in regular followers and interactions, but the expectation that one updates regularly and consistently is based on ableist assumptions of ability, so you are allowed to be inconsistent.

Practice gratitude for the people who interact with you.

Don’t feel you ever have to take hate or abuse: you are allowed to use the block button.

Do not ever feel as though you need to know everything about your subject before blogging, because your followers like being able to help you.

If you’re comfortable sharing your blog with us, anon, when you have it ready to go, I’d love to see it. No such thing as too much stimmy information or too many stim blogs; we’re all part of a much greater (and fabulous) community working together to help and share information and discussion about a special interest/hyperfixation/passion. That’s a fabulously awesome thing, and I love all the connections with others - something I’m generally terrible at - I’ve made through this blog.

So, if you’re comfortable, come join us in our little network of stimmers, because we want you to be part of it!

What is it you want to do? What is it you don’t want to do?

Do you just want to post your own reviews? Do you want to post/reblog links to cool toys you’ve found? Do you just want to post/reblog photos of toy collections without reviews or listing information? Do you want to do a mix of toys and online stimming videos/GIFs/ASMR? Tutorials? For example, I don’t enjoy videos or GIFs, so I knew this blog would be about toys, and as I like making things, tutorials just happened naturally. Have a think about the kind of content you want to include and focus on that.

You can always widen your focus afterwards, but having a focus in the beginning helps give you direction, and direction is important.

(Additionally, as your blow grows, your followers might push your blog in all sorts of different directions!)

Why is it you want to do it?

Just wanting somewhere to put your thoughts is a good and valid reason! In the case of this blog, I wanted that, but I also wanted to discuss stim toys with a greater international focus. I know it seems odd now, but when I started this blog few stim toy bloggers were listing currencies, discussing shipping costs or providing image descriptions. There were few listings that weren’t focused on US webstores and absolutely nothing about Australian resources. I saw a gap in what was being covered by others, based on my own needs as a stimmer, and jumped right in.

Knowing why you want to do something helps tailor your approach: it gives you that little bit of uniqueness that separates your blog from other blogs. It erases that doubt that surfaces when you wonder why you’re doing this when everyone else is doing this already. There will be something you’re doing that the rest of us aren’t, and if you find that and hold onto it, it’s a lot easier to keep going.

What makes you happy?

What do you enjoy doing? Writing? Photography? Talking about little details? Making GIFs? Collecting listings of cool items you’ve seen online?

Find out what it is you think you’ll enjoy most and focus, at least in the beginning, on that. Happiness is incredibly motivating.

What lies within your ability?

Anon, take it from someone who repeatedly and reliably fails at this point: figure out what it is you can’t do in the matter of a stim blog and push it aside. You do not have to do everything on your blog. If there is something you genuinely cannot do, don’t do it. This is especially important for disabled bloggers, as we generally have limitations in what we can do and how much. Don’t be like me, trying to do everything because it’s good to do without any awareness of how much Trying To Do Everything is breaking me.

There’s a line between Things That Are Good To Do and Things I Can Actually Do, and you’ll be saner and happier (as someone who is regularly driving myself up the wall with my habit of overestimating my ability to function) if you stay on the “actually possible” side of the line.

Things to look at here include physical ability and time for working on this blog, both of which are super important to evaluate. Always underestimate your ability to do things - you’d rather have extra time and spoons than not enough of it!

I’ll acknowledge that regular, consistent updates are probably the biggest thing when it comes to growing a following, but for disabled people this is a very hard thing to do, and all the “how to blog” advice posts never mention this. The goal of consistency is deeply ableist. If you can do this, great. If you can’t? Don’t bother about it. Updating sporadically is better than being burnt out and not updating at all for six months because you’ve set yourself a punishing schedule your life and body won’t allow you to manage.

How are you going to do it?

You know what you want to say and why; the next step is how. How are you going to format your blog? Possible questions to consider include:

Do you want to write short or long reviews?

Do you want to include photos, videos, GIFs?

Do you want to casually talk about your purchases or aim to be a resource?

Do you want to tag everything as an archive? (This is so the thing where I have bitten off more than I can chew, ye gods.)

Do you want to make your content as accessible as you can?

Do you want to accept asks and user submissions?

Do you want to have a moderated/shared blog?

Do you want to be an informative resource versus just talking casually about your stim experiences?

Do you want your blog to be an informative resource versus a blend of stim posts and your own personal content?

Do you want to cultivate connections with other stim bloggers?

This step is thinking about the minutia of how you’re going to do whatever it is you want to do. In my case, it was deciding that this blog is a resource blog, that I’d focus on tags and archiving, that I want to put a lot of detail in my reviews and that I’d be as accessible as is possible for me.

By the way, while personal review blogs and broader resource blogs are different, one isn’t necessarily better than the other. General stim toy blogs that just post and reblog collection photos get a great following because people just want to enjoy the pretty and get to know the collator. They’re also much easier to run in terms of workload, especially for folks on mobile.

How are you going to approach the community?

This is where you think about who your audience is, who you wish to be following you and how you’re going to approach your interactions with others. Tumblr is a curious space in the sense that various flavours of activism often end up in spaces that aren’t really about activism, and that can be a tricky thing to deal with. I’m not always sure that I deal with it well, but I think at the end of the day that if you try to be true to who you are, that’s a good thing, even if others disagree with your approach.

(It’s okay if people do disagree. The number of stim blogs that exist means there’s a space for most of us.)

Things to consider include:

Who don’t you wish to follow? It is absolutely within your right as a blogger to dictate whom it is you wish to follow and interact with you, or what behaviours will result in blocking. My opinion is that it’s good to be polite about expressing it, though, especially if you’re asking blogs that feature behaviour that doesn’t cause harm to vulnerable populations to not follow you/not engage. You’re allowed to put your comfort first, but politeness is good.

Is your blog for a wider community or a section of it? Are you for anyone who stims, for disabled people who stim, ND people who stim or a targeted group like anxious stimmers or autistic stimmers?

How exclusive are you in your community building? Some blogs are completely inclusive, some blogs are largely inclusive, some are very exclusive. Stim blogs often end up being little communities of their own, so it pays to take some time to think about the kind of space you want to build.

Are you bringing other politics or modes of activism to this blog? It often pays to put this somewhere if you are or aren’t. I know that I’ve felt very uncomfortable when I’ve followed a blog only to discover a week later that the owner/mods are exclusionists. By the way, it is absolutely okay to not reveal your beliefs on any of these issues if you keep it entirely off the blog. It is also okay to be open about who you are and what you believe but not make the blog primarily about those beliefs. It is also okay to make the blog all about those beliefs.

How will you approach drama? For example, I have a block policy for hate messages: I block and never discuss the content on this blog, because I feel this is not the place to discuss people who feel the need to tell me how much they hate me for differing activism/identity approaches. I’ve got better things to do than to waste my spoons on that. Other bloggers respond to those messages and discuss them.

How will you keep your followers safe? You can do the AO3 approach of choosing not to tag - as long as you mention this on your blog description, this is entirely valid. You can tag. You can advise that there are certain things you can’t advise for and tag for the rest. You can say that this isn’t a space for discussing politics, activism or problematic content. You can say that you do discuss it. I’ve realised that I need to go back and make my approach to discussion content - that while we won’t discuss abuse or ableism or other awful things that happen to ND people in explicit detail, we won’t pretend they don’t exist or happen to us - more clear. (It’s part of the evolution from stim toy review blog to stim toy and ND blog, and I’m still playing catch-up in a lot of ways.)

I admit that my philosophy in general is to be as inclusive as possible whilst still centering stimming on ND and disabled people, and I personally will never have enough blogs to follow that do this. I am all for community building that is as accepting and non-judgemental as is possible. But this is not the only way to blog, and in the end, you do you, anon. There’s space in the world for people to have differing opinions, and the benefit of a blog is that one can make a community that suits one’s needs and philosophy.

I’ll also note that autistics and issues relating to autism (Autism $peaks, for example) have more of a presence in stim spaces, but if you are not autistic, you absolutely do not have to make your blog about autism. I believe there’s a real need for more allistic stimmers to make blogs that focus on the stimming needs of ADHD and/or anxious stimmers without autism discussions creeping in.

What do you need to do?

This step is for considering all the things you need to do to make the blog go from an idea to a thing.

Please note that this is often more professional in focus than many bloggers consider: I’m a writer, and so it’s habit for me to try and make even my non-writing blogs of a semi-professional standard.

If this feels way too much, pick and choose (remember: you don’t have to do everything).

The name of your blog. Do you have a name? Is it still available? Go and grab it now if so, even if you don’t make your blog for days, weeks or months. I sat on @stimtoybox​ for about three months before I finally made the blog.

The layout of your blog. There’s a lot of custom Tumblr designs out there, but, to be brutally honest, most of them are not user-friendly in terms of accessible and easy-to-read design. Pick a clean theme that’s easy to modify, as that will give non-Tumblr users access to your content. I know everyone thinks we only access blogs via dashboard these days, but if you get big enough, some of your anons may not be registered Tumblr users, and giving them access to your blog via an easy-to-read webpage layout matters a lot.

The avatar/icon and headers of your blog. Many layouts let you custom design these, and this helps give you a little individuality (especially on your webpage layout). You can get lots of royalty-free graphics on sites like Pixabay with no attribution required (although it’s a decent thing to put said attribution on a page). Additionally, your own photos of stim toys work great for this. Having icons and headers that are unique to you is well worth the time it takes to create them.

Bio and blog description. You don’t want an essay for this, but a little information about what you’re doing and why is great.

HTML. If you can add a few HTML links to said blog description, including links to everything people can’t access on mobile (about page, BYF page, submissions info) you’ve made your blog that much easier to use. I am more than happy to write a tutorial on the code I use here on Tumblr if anyone wants it.

Links to your other internet presences. Don’t be ashamed about doing this. You’re providing content, which is a lot of work, so it’s absolutely fair to use it as a way to direct people towards your other work (personal blog, art, writing, whatever).

Before You Follow and Submission information. If you’re allowing asks and submissions, tell people want you want - make a page for this information. (Unfortunately, you’re still going to get people who don’t read before submitting - I’ve had a few submissions that are just GIF images with no informative content, for example, even though we’re a resource blog.) It really does help, though. Likewise with the BYF, if you have folks you’d rather not follow for whatever reason.

Lastly,

You don’t have to know everything about your subject matter. If you don’t know and can’t find it out, admit it. Ask people for their input, because folks genuinely like helping each other out. They like participating; they like offering up information. The majority of your followers are going to be pretty awesome people, and they’re going to want to help, if they can. We have this massive passion in common, and we’re all here, following each other, helping each other, because we like learning and sharing.

In my opinion, there’s also a lot to be gained by being thankful and expressing gratitude to followers’ interactions. (It maybe sounds manipulative put that way, but expressing everything as a social rule makes it sound manipulative, to be honest, and for me everything is a social rule, something I’ve learnt the hard way, not a natural understanding.) Thank you is a pretty powerful word; being grateful is a pretty powerful thing. If there is anything I’ve learnt from this blog, it is that being and expressing gratitude has brought me an awful lot of good will, patience and acceptance, even when I’m absent, screwing up, making mistakes, in too much pain to be helpful or tolerant, being far too emotional or just being too overwhelmed by a blog and inbox that’s gotten bigger than I can often manage.

Be grateful for those who interact with you. You don’t have to accept hate (that gets the block button) but being grateful helps so much.

Good luck, anon. I’m pretty sure this is many more words than what you’re after, and I hope it isn’t too overwhelming for you. We’re all very much looking forward to your unique reviews and insights on stim toys!

- Mod K.A.

[lokeanrampant]

So.  I apparently have a trigger.  It’s an ugly one and it hits hard and it returned me to a very unhealthy place.  Long post and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified ahead.

And thank you, anon, for your words.  I hope you’re right.

I have recently been diagnosed with a few things and have medications which are helping, but this particular medication is having an amazing and GOOD effect on me.  I am awake and aware, I don’t need to do three things at once to focus on something, I actually can focus, so much good stuff.  But yes, it has an effect on my appetite.  I have fantastic willpower and I generally really, really hate anything that fucks with my appetite cause that will generally lead to me not eating enough.  So that’s what I’m dealing with here.  I probably wasn’t eating enough, but I felt good and I was basically grazing, so I figured, okay, we’re still okay.

Only...the doc who prescribed pull that trigger fucking hard.

So the medication works for ADHD and though I have a sensory processing disorder, she can’t quite say I have ADHD.  But she can put in her notes that she is prescribing it for “binge eating,” not because I have it, but because she thinks the med will help.  And it has.  I felt better than I had in years.  So I’m on this for about a month and doing great.  My therapist was THRILLED with my progress and we were going to really work hard on my BDD.  

Then I had the follow-up appt.  Where the doc kept harping on how well the med worked for my binge eating and controlling cravings and overeating.  Like over and over and over.

Let me tell you a lil something about me.

I’m a stress-starver.  It comes from my teens where I was constantly told that, being overweight and trying to lose weight, I ate too much, that I ate like a pig, eat less.  This is from DOCTORS, mind you.  Yes, doctors told me this.  Constantly.

So I did that.  I ate less.  Still couldn’t lose weight.  Same deal - “you eat too much.”  So I ate less.

I was down to one meal a day:  a sandwich.  Two pieces of bread, some mayo, some chicken.

Guess what?  Yep, “you eat too much.”

So I STOPPED eating.  Food was the enemy.  My body needed fuel, but I didn't want it and the docs assumed I ate and never stopped and kept telling me to eat less and less and less.  Obviously, I was still eating too much, right?  So hey, okay, I’ll eat less.  Just enough to keep me standing...and sometimes, not even then.  Super healthy, yo.  Bodies don’t like to lose weight in Starvation Mode.  But I was too fat for that and I ate too much, right?  So I essentially stopped eating.

That's not binging.  It's not binge/purge.  It's punishment for being fat and ugly and self-harm by restricting food because I wasn't worthy of it and it was ultimately bad for me.  If I had been a skinny bit, they probably would’ve diagnosed me with anorexia, but I just never presented with that low body weight or being underweight.  Nope.  Not me.  There is now an atypical anorexia that doesn’t present the classic way, but who are not underweight after significant weight loss.  And even then, I haven’t had significant weight loss in years.  

So there we are - eating disorder NOS, atypical presentation that doesn’t match anorexia, bulimia, binging.  It’s a much bigger diagnosis catch-all than you might realize.

It took me a long time to have a healthier relationship with food, and it's still not great, but it's okay.  Ask anyone in my life and they will tell you the same, that I don't overeat.  Even when I pms and actually crave a junk food?  I don't binge and I normally find a healthier alternative anyway (because junk food doesn't make me feel great).  

There is no secret or hidden eating.  There can definitely be guilt and self-loathing for eating, especially if it's not low-carb, but it’s rare...or at least, it was.  My food intake is not out of control.  I almost never overeat (it doesn't feel good!).  The only time I eat when I am not hungry is normally because I couldn't eat when I was hungry and then proceed to feel ill because my blood sugar has dropped.  Then I have to eat.  But it's not binging.  It's not healthy, and it doesn't fit the major eating disorders, but it's still not binging.

Do I have major body image issues?  Fuck yes.  I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder.  I have horrible self-image and will be sent into a major tailspin if I see photos or, gods, video.  I will stop being able to look in a mirror.  I have covered mirrors for days before.  I will have trouble showering unless I do it with my eyes closed so I don’t have to see the hideousness of me and even then, I still have to touch it to clean it.  I’m very self-critical and hate this body in which I feel trapped.  But I still do things.  I’m still working.  I do theater.  I garden.  I DO THINGS.  I also have an intense fear of gaining weight to be even larger than I am.  Even if I know that I am not the heaviest person in the room, and I can know that, logically, even with sizes or measurements, I will still feel larger, heavier, uglier.  I will feel like the largest, heaviest, ugliest person there even if I know someone is twice or more my size.  My friend at work is probably a good 100+lbs heavier than I am and I just think she’s gorgeous.  Her weight doesn’t matter.  She’s attractive inside and out.  But me?  No.  I”m fat because fat was taught to me as an ugly word.  So I am fat, because it’s ugly.  Other people aren’t fat because they aren’t ugly.  

So what happens when you tell someone, who has already told you all this history about being told you’re fat because you eat too much and that you need to eat less....so YOU DID and that’s also why you stopped going to doctors because you were eating barely enough to stay standing and they still said that, so they obviously didn’t know a fucking thing, and that yet again, I apparently have NO. FUCKING. CLUE. WHAT FOOD I PUT IN MY MOUTH.  

What happens when you tell someone like that that they are binging and eating too much?

Answer:  I stop fucking eating.  

I’m right back to being 18yo and crying because I’m hungry because food is the fucking enemy.  Because apparently, even what I eat, which is definitely light for American portion sizes, but actually really fucking healthy portion sizes, is still too much.  

Even though my sis has been concerned because the medication is altering my appetite to the point where I really don’t eat more than 4oz at a meal, if that...which I did when I was having extreme gallbladder pain at one point.  

Even though she, several friends, and a friend/coworker know how I eat, what I eat, that I don’t overeat, that I can make a sub-in-a-tub style salad into multiple, low-carb, healthy wraps and have lunch for two or three days.  

That I don’t eat or even LIKE much sugar (why the FUCK is everything so gods damned SWEET?  Holy fuck.).  I vastly prefer savory (spice is nice).

I don’t tend to eat breads or potatoes because they make me feel bad (bloaty, ewww...so probably a gluten intolerance?  I don’t know, but I know I don’t feel well when I eat them, so hey, idea!  DON’T EAT WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BAD.  Crazy AF, I know, right?).

People who know me envy the self-control and willpower that I have regarding food.  They don’t realize it came out of such self-loathing and self-harm mechanisms.  I’ve made it healthier.  I’ve gotten better with food and in a lot of ways, that was because it didn’t really matter what I ate after a point, my weight maintained.  It wasn’t the food...or it wasn’t just the food.  

There’s a fuckton more at work regarding metabolism and hormones and shit that just fuck up a body.  And one medication stopped the bad thoughts from auto-play 24/7 and helped reduce stress to the point I was like, fuck, is this what I am supposed to feel like?  And then this new one, that helps me feel awake, aware, and focused reduced that anxiety even MORE and it’s like another layer of fog is lifted?  To realize how much CONSTANT STRESS AND ANXIETY I had that was literally non-stop fight-or-flight mode?  Gods, no wonder I couldn’t lose weight.  My body was always prepped for disaster and wanted to keep every fucking thing.  I finally felt that I could maybe make a difference and not only feel healthier, but maybe actually get healthier, be in better shape, lose weight.

But to be told that I’m still a binge eater, when I fit only the “feel guilt or shame over eating” NOW, because you brought all that shit back by telling me that I still overeat and that’s why I’m fat and hey, this med is really controlling your binging?

Dinner last night was eight...yes, 8, cashews.  It took me from 9:30 to about 2:30pm today to eat a Sargento’s snack pack (cheese, cashews, raisins in this one).  I had a electrolyte water (36oz or so) and am working on my second bottle (fairly normal).  I went out with friends tonight and managed to slow sip a beer over about two hours as someone was buying and really wanted to buy us a drink, so hey, I got some calories in the beer.  Couldn’t eat though.  The thought of eating today was met with instant recoil.  Food becomes the enemy once again.   It becomes a hyperfixation because it's too much, too much, it's bad for you, stop eating, yes even 4oz is too much, you don't need that much.  And no, I don’t weigh myself or count calories/fat/etc for the same reason - it became a hyperfixation and an emotional minefield where any little (and frequently normal) fluctuation sends me into a very bad place.  If I need to do something like that, measurements are easier for me.  

And that’s not a place I want to be.  I worked SO HARD to not be there.  I KNOW the way I eat is healthy.  I know the portion sizes are good.  I know how to read labels (questionable reliability, but it’s what we’ve got).  I can make good food at home.  I can choose fairly healthy if I’m out and about.  I had made my peace with food and while we would never be great friends, we at least weren’t enemies any more.  

I am trying.  I am.  I, oddly, have some support around me.  A friend really helped tonight, but it’s a serious work-in-progress.  I managed to eat about 8-10 shrimp around midnight but I couldn’t do that with someone watching.  It’s back to the high school cafeteria where it literally didn’t matter what you ate, if you were fat, you weren’t supposed to eat at all.  It’s feeling guilty to be seen eating because you actually have the nerve to have a body that requires sustenance and they will judge you any bite you consume.  The doctor created guilt around food I hadn’t had for YEARS.  Admittedly, I still don’t like work lunch/break rooms, but I just don’t care to socialize with some people and I can keep my phone charged at my desk.  Win-win.  And I don’t generally have a problem eating at restaurants or with friends.  

My friend tonight told me that i am NOT that person I was.  And I’m not.  I have changed so much since then.  And since I know what the doctor said is false, it’s rather like someone yelling at me because they hate my hair for being blonde when it’s black.  It makes no sense and what they said isn’t real; it shouldn’t mean anything.  But it’s a whammy and when you already have a predisposition to fall into self-hate and self-harm, it’s a nasty, ugly whammy that lingers.  It’s an old, well-worn pattern of badness that is only comfortable because you lived it for so long, you know how it works.  

I’m upset.  I’m angry.  I’m furious.  I’m hurt.  

And I don’t know how long it will take to climb out of this.