#congrats on not only dismissing trauma Just Like That

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[fureliselost]

voltron rewatch s1 e9

-the weird allura and alfor scene

- that shit was just weird, ok

- did we ever get the name of allura's mom

- sendak crystal ugh

- "knock knock, who's there? the avenging fury of voltron, son!" that was a good joke

- keith, why are you trying to shut lance down

- klance shots

- shiro's little sigh at lance and keith bickering lol

- lance accepting to help coran clean, also, him quickly catching on that shiro was unresponsive and distracted in literally 1 minute

- ah, yes, the attack of the goo

- ok, but lance's questioning of why the pods didn't have a self-cleaning function makes sense tho. they have very advanced technology and it would make sense for them to make that part easier

- lance literally gets locked into a cryopod and then into an airlock, they were giving the boy trauma from day one

- keef training yay

- so smooth fighting

- shiro u look obsessive

- the worst part is that lance was, in a way, right about the castle being haunted and coran brushed him off while dismissing the fact that he'd just been frozen

- my poor lancey lance

- allura that's creepy to have the hologram of your dead father appear in your room, where he's not supposed to appear. get a grip, girl

- poor lance, that's some among us shit right there

- omg, lance, you already jumped in front of a bomb to save coran, don't go into the airlock!

- no no no, not my baby boy

- they turned off the gravity thing lol

- pidge and hunk had it easy

- i mean, really. Pidge and Hunk were attacked by goo and got the gravity thing turned off. Keith and Lance were literally at life risk: lance got frozen in the cryopod and would've stayed there if Coran hadn't double checked it and then he got stuck in the airlock and almost shot into space, and Keith was almost killed by the simulation robot

- also, the fact that keith and lance help each other is... yes

- allura having a merry little time with her dead father

- allura tf, are you-- did you hit your head?

- lance literally difused his own discussion to keep the team focused on the castle going nuts, why is this boy dismissed so much

- he ejected sendak into space and the bitch kept coming back

- allura wtf why are you believing it

- hmmmm watchu saaaaaaaay hmm that you only meant weeeeell

next ep

ep 10

- is lance wrong tho? that he could fire his bayard in any direction and it *would* hit a place that's been conquered by zarkon. He ain't!

- shiro done doing stragizing

- oh yes the quintescense (how do i spell) airport

- go allura

- shiro, ur a sassy buddy

- go hunk, my beloved

- lance why did you ask allura if she could turn into a balloon?

- shiro is so fucking done

- klance screenshots ayy

- lance was right that keith shouldn't have gone off rogue exploring

- like, ok, hunk was totally lying to mess with lance when he said allura talked about him, but they coulda totally used that to favor allurance in the later seasons

- "i think we're in trouble" "You think?"

- congrats keef, you got found, like lance said would happen

- wow, shiro, got trouble because allura has less training than even the rest of the paladins? nobody coulda predicted that, oh wait

- allura's fit

[onechicagorpf]

Not A Stranger - Part 3

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader (Chicago Med intern)

Waking up in bed next to a random naked guy after a drunken night out usually sucks, but eh, whatever. you’ll never see him again, right? Well except this time, random naked guy turns out to be your ED attending’s little brother, so maybe you’re a little bit screwed…

Read Part 1 here Read Part 2 here Read Part 4 here

Warnings: SMUT. A little bit of R-rated smut! Swearing, the usual cuss words. Some angst/PTSD, although it’s not overtly discussed. Dubious medical content (discussion of amputation & blood), some of which has been shamelessly lifted from a season 3 episode of Code Black!

A/N: So there’s definitely going to be a Part 4, lol! I’ll try and have it out by this time next week. Send me asks/messages/leave a note if you liked this and want to see more - it really makes me feel so much less insecure about my writing ahaha! Also do send me short prompts or requests that I can fill as blurbs (i.e. nothing that’s going to be a several chapter story - I will request those later on!) - preferably for Jay but I can do Will as well! Female!Halstead sibling is also okay :) Anyway enough talking, enjoy!

PS: I make mention of bearded Jay in this chapter; this gif is totally the version of him I had in my head for this chapter!

"Walter Holden. 16 years old, victim of an auto accident, came in with a dislocated right leg."

There's droplets of rain on the other side of the windows. It blurs the view - all of a sudden, the buildings you can usually see from the 13th floor of the hospital are just fuzzy, beige blocks.

"Preliminary exam showed no other major trauma, and his vital signs were strong. His leg just had to be reset."

A shudder goes down your spine - was the hospital's conference room always this cold? Well, you don't know - you've never been in here before.

"Dr Halstead advised 10 mil of morphine, but the patient refused pain medication, and the leg was reset. It was at this point that Dr Halstead handed the patient off to Dr Y/L/N, requesting her to evaluate his leg for blood flow."

There's been a strange tapping noise for the last 5 minutes, but only now do you realise it's your fingers against the oval, wooden table.

"Dr Y/L/N? Dr Y/L/N!" You snap out of your reverie and look up. Dr Lanik's glaring at you. You apologise. He takes his seat, next to Mrs Goodwin and Will, both of whom send you a soft smile that doesn't quite reach their eyes. They're trying to be reassuring, but it doesn't matter - you're ready to drown yourself.

Clearing your throat, you speak. "I was instructed to evaluate his right leg for blood flow. I did so by checking his pulses, uh, dorsalis pedis and posterior tibialis." You pause, as some of the other occupants in the conference room - all members of the board or lawyers, all wearing pristine suits and a cold, calculating expression - turned to look at each other.

You clear your throat again. "It was a uh, a textbook exam."

"I'm sorry, in which textbook does it say to check for an arterial injury by just palpating a pulse?" Dr Lanik cuts in sharp.  Will closes his eyes, as you struggle to breath normally.

"90% of all patients - "

"I can't hear you, Dr Y/L/N." Dr Lanik's voice booms across the room, and Will's had it.

"This is ridiculous, there's no need to be intimidating her like this - she's a first year resident and - "

"And she was satisfied with a pulse check to evaluate blood flow? Do I need to remind everyone here that the acceptable course of action in this scenario is to order a doppler or an ABI? That boy's leg was sitting for ages without proper blood flow, and eventually the best we could do for him was amputate it."

Will shakes his head vehemently. "Pathology's looked over the leg - they determined that the severity of the accident combined with the amount of time it took CFD to extricate Holden from the car meant that his leg wasn't viable before he even stepped into the ED." Will turns to you, his eyes piercing as he spoke directly to you.

"There was nothing you could've done that would've changed the outcome. Nothing."

You take a deep breath. You don't nod.

"Alright, we've heard everything we need to hear." The head of the legal department says, after a few moments of discussion with the board members. "Given the findings from Pathology, we will not be terminating Dr Y/L/N's employment here at Chicago Med. However, we recommend that her OR privileges be revoked, and that she is attached to an attending for a duration of 2 months, by which point hopefully she will learn that not every case is a textbook case." She stares directly at you. "Dismissed." Chairs scrape against the floor as everyone makes their leave.

Will places his hand on your shoulder, and you realise you haven't moved even after everyone's left.

His voice is soft. "We all make mistakes. And - "

"I could've been the reason he lost his leg. If he'd come in with ample time to save the leg, and I just - and I just didn't realise it, I could've been the reason a kid had to lose a leg." There's tears in your eyes as you turn to look at Will, who just sighs.

"Yeah. But that's not what happened."

"I got lucky." You shrug, tears freely streaming down your face now. "I just got lucky."

Will doesn't say anything. He just hugs you.

***

It's not the kind of thing you just get over, you realise, because it's been 5 days since it happened but you can't get it out of your head. You've been barely getting any sleep; often you jerk awake in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning, after which it's next to impossible to fall asleep again. It's also affecting your work more than just making you tired - you keep second-guessing your medical judgements, deferring to Will or Natalie or Ethan for anything and everything. None of them bite at you for it, because they know what's going on and they know what you're going through, but some part of you wishes they would. Wishes that they'd just grab you by the shoulders and shake you, and say "Be a damn doctor."

Dr Charles met with you for lunch earlier today, and you lamented your troubles. The kind and thoughtful psychiatrist patiently listened, before giving you some wisdom you needed to hear. Amongst which was "find a distraction".

"You mean focus on something else?" You asked, chasing a watermelon cube at the bottom of your fruit cup.

"Yeah, but it's a little bit of a dangerous tactic. See, you don't want to distract yourself from dealing with the pain and the guilt you feel, because emotions don't tend to go away when you suppress them like that. But if you're having trouble processing it, it can be helpful to take your mind off of it for a while, wait til some time has passed and it's not so...intense. And maybe then it'll be easier to tackle and get over, y'know?" Dr Charles advised and you nodded, taking it in.

You think about what exactly you could do to distract yourself as you finish your shift and make your way towards your car in the parking lot.

Maybe I should take up painting?

The thought of yourself - little miss notoriously bad at anything artsy - trying to paint has you chuckling softly. You're about to give up on this whole distract yourself thing when, as if on cue, your phone buzzes with a text message. You get into your car, turn on the heating, and pull out your phone.

J.H. 11:32PM

So...guess who's back :)

You can't help the smile on your face. Jay's been undercover for the past week - it actually got started the next morning after the night you went over for "hockey". He'd gotten a text early in the morning asking him to come in, and so the two of you had actually barely spoken since...the festivities of that night.

You 11:33PM

Congrats, detective :)

J.H. 11:33PM

Wanna come over and help me celebrate?

Huh. Well maybe Dr Charles wasn't off-target with the whole "distract yourself" thing - although you're positive having meaningless sex is probably not one of the healthy methods of distraction that he was envisioning.

But quickly, you realise it doesn't matter - ever since what happened, you haven't been sleeping well at night. It's been close to 6 days and you're wrecked, so maybe some good, tires-you-out-completely sex is exactly what you need?

You 11:34PM

Be there in 15

 J.H. 11:34PM

Can't wait :)

 Your lips curve into a smile as you pull out of the parking lot and down into the main road.

***

"I've been waiting to do this...for so long..." Jay murmurs in your ear before pressing kisses down the side of your neck, his hands roaming all over your body. You tilt your head to the side, exposing the expanse of your neck to him.

“It’s only been…a couple ‘a days…” You reply softly, and you feel Jay’s huffs of soft laughter into your neck. You turn to look at him, pulling away. “What?”

There’s a teasing smile on his face. “Most women take it as a compliment if a guy says he hasn’t stopped thinking about her.”

You shake you head, putting on a teasing look, “Uh-uh, that’s not what you said, you said you’ve been wanting to do this – ”

“It was implied – ”

“It wasn’t implied and even if it was – ”

“It was implied and even if it wasn’t, that’s still a compliment.” Jay says pointedly, a huge grin on his face. You narrow your eyes at him, trying to hide the growing smile on your face. He chuckles, seeing right through you.

You smack his arm. “You keep laughing at me in bed and I’m gonna get mad.” This gets Jay full-on laughing, and your jaw drops in pretend-outrage. “You fucking – ”

“No, no, no c’mere – ” Jay pacifies you, leaning over you, arms on either side of you as he starts to kiss your face, your jaw, the corner of your mouth. But there’s still the slightest smile pulling up the corners of his lips, and when he presses them to your lips, you can’t help but laugh into the kiss. Jay reaches up and holds your face, the kiss becoming soft, loving, drawn-out, and some feeling deep in your core tells you you’re just…somewhere else right now. You don’t know how to describe it, other than that everything in this moment feels perfect, feels right.

A shiver goes down your spine, and maybe it’s because Jay’s shifted, and is now sucking a spot on the base of your neck, hard and strong and deep, and his hands are skimming downwards, unbuttoning your soft cotton top before unzipping your jeans. And maybe it’s because you don’t know what the fuck you are doing here, with him, with all of this. You think about how wrong this is, how bad this is, how his brother’s your boss and this was just supposed to be one drunken hookup and then it became two (except you weren’t even drunk that time) and now it’s about to become three –

“Y/N?” Jay calls softly, and you look at him – his hands resting gently over the hem of your panties, his face hovering over the space between your legs, and the look of…almost reverence in his shining green eyes.

You stop thinking.

Your hands reach downward, sliding your panties off and Jay eagerly helps, getting them off completely. Just like last time, Jay draws out the foreplay – kissing, licking, and nipping at the skin of your inner thighs, making the heat in your core build. Running your fingers through his dark hair, you yank it a little to get him to get going, and he pinches your hip – a quick slap of the wrist. Laughing, you repeat the action, pulling on his hair, and he groans.

“You’re real impatient, you know?”

“Jayyyyyyyy,” You whine, pouting down at him. He’s got this look of a predator – a confident, cocky smile on his face. Jay dips his head down, his mouth making contact with your cunt.

“There we go,” You murmur, gasping as you feel his hot breath on your most sensitive regions. Jay’s hands grip tight into your supple skin, holding your thighs open for him as his tongue circles your opening. Your back arcs as you moan, the sensation of his tongue on you setting off what feels like fireworks in your head. Jay’s mouth presses into you, hard and deep, his tongue licking and lapping at your now sopping wet cunt.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck – ” You whisper, eyelids fluttering shut as Jay softly flicks his tongue over your clit. He repeats the motion, going up and down, teasing your clit and your hip jerks upwards sharply in response. Settling your ass back down against his soft sheets, you catch your breath and mutter a soft apology – “Shit, sorry,” – and Jay taps your thigh, a silent “don’t worry about it”, as he’s nosed his way back between your legs immediately.

Jay laps at your folds and you try to keep your head about you, try to not lose your mind, but it just feels so good. He sucks your clit into his mouth gently and your eyes roll into the back of your head. “Oh my god, ohhh my god – fuck!” You whimper, as he keeps sucking your clit, pausing to flick his tongue over it. Your fingers clutch the sheets around you hard enough to rip holes in them. The loud moans out of your mouth are bordering on screams. The feeling in your core, the heat, starts rising like a wave reaching a shore –

“I’m gonna – I’m gonna – I’m gonna – ah, ah, ahhhh – fuck! Fuck, fuck – Jay! Jay!” You scream, your vision whiting out completely as you arch off the bed, riding out the waves of pleasure wrecking your body. You hands fly downwards to grab Jay’s head as you jerk away from his still-working mouth, your oversensitive clit causing tears to pool in your eyes. Pulling him up, you whisper his name over and over again, like he’s the only gospel you know. Jay shifts up, laying down next to you and pulling you close, your bodies fitting into each other like a perfect pair of puzzle pieces. You look at him through your teary eyes and all you see are his green irises staring right back at you with a measure of something dark and lustful in them. You hold his face in your hands, running a thumb over the rough stubble of his cheeks, his jaw, where a soft beard has started to grow. His lips are glossy and wet, from you, and you see now there’s a soft pink line going across his nose that you trace with your hands, frowning.

“I’m okay,” Jay says in a soothing voice.

“What happened?” You ask, concerned, the frown between your eyebrows deepening as you look up at him.

A soft smile. “Kinda got into a fight. Guy tried to punch me, I dodged it, but his fingernail scratched me. It’s fine.” Jay replies quickly, and his face is so close to yours that you’re breathing the same air. You don’t say anything, but you must still be frowning because Jay speaks again. “It’s literally just a scratch.” You hum softly in response, running your hands down his front, unbuttoning his shirt, scanning the expanse of his chest and abdomen with your fingertips and your eyes.

Jay lifts your chin and you turn back to him. “What?”

“Are you checking me for other injuries?” He asks, chuckling. You look back down, pausing for a moment. “Maybe…it’s not like you’d tell me if you got hurt, right?” Jay just laughs, and there’s your answer. You ignore the burgeoning feelings in your heart of some kind of dejection.

Your fingers run over a sliver of raised skin, on his lower right flank. It’s a thin, pale pink scar that runs about 3 inches. You work in an ED – you know exactly what this is.

“You were stabbed?” You ask, stunned. “When?”

Jay sighs, grabbing your fingers in his hand and holding them closed. “Army stuff. Not a big deal.” He pushes your fingers away to your own body, and then reaches for the blanket and pulls it up over the two of you, like as if the conversation’s over.

“You don’t want to talk about the Army,” you point out, as Jay lays on his back, some distance between the two of you. He sighs again, looking upwards at the ceiling. “Is that a question or a statement?”

You know you shouldn’t push, but you do anyway.

“You should talk to someone about it  – ”

“I talk to people about it. I have.” Jay’s voice is tight. He’s still not looking at you.

“You can talk to me about it...” You say, and you’re terrified. Because what you’re really asking is “Do you think I’m close enough, do you care about me enough to let me in?”.

Jay turns to you, a soft smile on his face. “It’s fine. I’ve got other people for that.”

Hiding the immense desolation that’s weighing like an anchor on your chest from showing, you just send a shallow smile his way. 

He’s got other people for that. He’s got other people for sharing his feelings, his pain, his suffering, his life. He doesn’t want you for that, I mean, why would he share all of that with you? You’re just a warm body – some random girl he’s having sex with. Nothing more.

You pull the blankets tighter around you, turning away from Jay. Trying your best to quell the wave of sadness flooding what feels like every single part of you, you drift asleep. 

***

“Dr Y/N?”

You turn, and there’s Walter Holden on a bed in the ED.

“Walter?” You walk to his side, stunned. He’s crying – tears spilling out of his soft baby blue eyes, his youthful face scrunched up in pain and anguish.

“Why did you do this to me? Why?!” He yells, his voice cracking. You shake your head. “Walter, Walter I’m so sorry – I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to – ” You choke on your words, and as you look down the bed you realise that Walter’s amputated leg is bleeding at the stump.

“Oh god, oh my god – ” You get up, shocked as the blood starts gushing. Walter screams.

“Help me! Dr Y/N – help me! Help me!”

You hear your heart hammering in your ears, your head is spinning, you stand up and you feel faint.

Will rushes into the room. He starts holding as much gauze as he can to Walter’s leg. Nurses and doctors flood the room, and they begin moving Walter out. You’re standing, back pressed to the treatment room wall, aghast. 

Will turns to you, his face red with rage. “What are you even doing?! Fucking hell, Y/N – you can’t do anything right?!”

There’s a painful lump in your throat, and you can’t breathe. Something grabs your hand and you snap your head. It’s Walter, and as they wheel his bed out, he looks at you with so much fury and torment in his eyes.

“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO BE A DOCTOR!”

“No, no, no, I’m so sorry Walter, I’m so sorry – I’m so sorry – this can’t be happening, no, no no no – ” Tears stream down your face and you start shaking. Your knees buckle, and you fall to the ground, sobs wracking your body. Somewhere in the distance, you hear your name being called, but you can’t answer, you can’t do this anymore, you can’t – you just can’t…

“Y/N! Y/N!”

You jolt, your eyes flying open. Jay’s over you, his eyebrows drawn together, his eyes wide, concerned, his hands holding your shoulders where you realise he’s been shaking you – shaking you because – because –

Fuck.

It was a fucking nightmare. Again.

You let out a cry of pain, bringing your hands up to cover your face. “Breathe, just breathe.” Jay says softly, rubbing your arms up and down.

After about a minute, when you don’t feel so shaken anymore, you wipe your eyes and slowly sit up. Jay shifts with you, sitting right next to you. You can’t look him in the eyes.

“I’m – I’m sorry I woke you,” you whisper to your palms, resting atop your folded legs.

“Don’t – don’t worry about that. Y/N, what happened? It sounded pretty bad…” Jay says and you shake your head.

“I’m fine, it’s fine – ” Your hands run through your hair roughly. You need to go. You need to go – you need to leave – you can’t be here –you can’t be here with him –

“Hey. Hey,” Jay repeats, when you don’t answer. He reaches across and his warm hard gently grabs your face, trying to get you to look at him but you just push his hand away. You get up, grabbing your underwear and jeans from the ground and start getting dressed.

“Y/N!” Jay gets off the bed, and comes to you. You sidestep him, or at least you try to, but he’s much taller than you and his shoulders are broad; he stands in your way and grabs your arms softly.

“Y/N, look at me – ”

“Why?” 

You give him what he wants. You look up at him, you stare him directly in his eyes, shaking in anger and fear and what feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders. 

“Hmm? Why? This isn’t – you don’t care – what does it matter –” You yell at him, your mind frazzled as you fall apart in his arms.

The frown on Jay’s face gets deeper, and he shakes his head, leaning close. “Hey, talk to me. C’mon, you can talk to me – ”

“Why the fuck would I talk to you? You’re just some guy I’m sleeping with!” You spit harshly, shaking his hands off and stepping back. Jay’s mouth falls open, and his shoulders sag. His face contorts into something awful - dismay, defeat, hurt.

For a moment, you want to run back into his arms – apologise, say you didn’t mean it, say you’re just scared – but you don’t. You move around him, grabbing your shirt. You put it on and make your way out of his bedroom, and out of his apartment.

You don’t know why you said what you did. Actually, scratch that, you know exactly why you said that. In fact, you know exactly why you’re what you’re doing.

Every relationship you’ve ever had up to this point’s fucked you over. Every single one. You’ve been cheated on, you’ve been lied to, you’ve been told you were just some piece of ass, not an actual girlfriend. And now?

Now you’re scared shitless of what this thing between the two of you is. You’re scared shitless that you’re making a mistake by screwing around with your boss’s brother and you’re –

Well.

You’re scared shitless you’re falling for him.

So, you do what you do best. Dump out of this, push the self-destruct button. Get him to push you away so you don’t have to go through the pain of falling for the guy you can’t have. The one that you know’s going to screw you over, because he’s going to realise he only really sees you as a hookup – that he doesn’t love you.

You try to hold back the tears, because you’re driving home and the last thing you need right now is a car accident. There’s a buzzing sound from your phone and you perk up. As much as you want to tell yourself to not get your hopes high, you can’t help yourself, and you speed down the road to the red light so you can push the brakes and wait. Your fingers wrap around your phone and you immediately check the screen. 

The smile on your face falls – it’s just a stupid notification from Instagram. You toss your phone back onto the passenger seat, hard enough that it bounces off and hits the ground. Tears once again threaten to fill your eyes, and there’s a painful lump in your throat. You swipe at your cheeks, where a single tear has made its escape, and turn to look at the screen next to your steering wheel – it shows the time as 3:45AM. Leaning back against your car seat, a deep sigh exits your lungs.

You realise there’s no way you’re going to sleep again today, what with the whole Jay thing on top of the Walter Holden nightmare that’s been haunting you for the last 6 days now.

The lights turn green.

Swearing under your breath, you throw your car into a U-turn and drive to Med instead.

[pjisskullourful]

For some reason I feel really safe with you???? Even tho we don't talk??? so yeah I'm coming here to rant for a bit even tho its not really the vibe of your blog so I'm sorry for that. Ok so I'm bi and proud now including to my family, and I have a girlfiend of almost 2 years that was my best friend for about 4 years before that, my family knows and loves her. Well... my mom is sort of a dick and decided that she hates my gf now that I came out and also to just discredit my relationship and my sexuality saying that I dont know what I'm feeling and all that and like... I know its none of her business, this reaction is actually a lot better than what I expected from her and I know she is just a dick in general (my quarantine realization was finally understanding that no I'm not dramatic, I just have a emotionally abusive mom) but damn it fucking hurts bc I love this girl so much,she has saved me from myself so many times, she can make me smile even through my darkest times and my mom gets all mad just at me TEXTING her. For some reason I was chill with her glossing over my sexuality bc well, I already expected that and worse from her homophobic ass, but her being dismissive and disrespectful of the only long term relationship I've ever had just bursts so fucking much????? I don't know why I'm bothering you with this I just needed to put my feelings out somewhere and for some reason I felt comfortable doing it here.

hey you are not bothering me! i am very much offended & outraged on your behalf. i hope that you feel empowered in the realisation that you are not being dramatic in response to your situation. all of your feelings are so fucking valid & i want you to know that, 100%. having an emotionally abusive parent is really shitty but it does not have to define you or rule over your life- 1 day those chains will break & it will become someting you can put in your rearview mirror, its part of your past but it doesnt have to be your future.

i am very happy that you have a gf you can lean on in times like this. almost 2 years is such a significant amount of time (congrats to both of you!!!). its clearly not a phase- this relationship is a beautiful living & breathing creation all on its own & the best part is- you & your gf do not need any outside sources to validate/cultivate it for you, it is yours & yours alone, you dont have to ask for anyone elses permission, there are only 2 people in your relationship & so long as youre on the same page, everything else should work itself out.

having someone that can be there for you & save you from yourself is literally the most valuable thing in this whole entire world. having someone that cares enough to be there in the darkness, it is literally the most significant & beautiful thing & my heart just overflows to know that you have that.

stay centred with your gf, stay fixed on the relationship that does nourish you.

its really shitty that as queer people we literally anticipate homophobia as a default-- but theres a silver lining & that is that we all get each other! the gay experience is unfortunately a whole lot of trauma, but on the same side of that coin, its fortunate cos we can look at each other & just know: hey yeah you've seen someof the same shit as me, im safe with you

pls know that your relationship is nothing to be glossed over or dismissed or diminished in any shape or form. what you have with your gf is beautiful, you 2 have found in oneanother the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow & the rainbow is gay & its bright & its beautiful & guess what- the pot of gold is even more beautiful & you deserve it!

i guess my only advice is that gay is defined within each person & you dont need your mother to approve of your own definition of your gayness, it can exist indepedent. it will get easier. the 1st time i came out to my mum she laughed, the 2nd time i did (both times as bi) she said ‘you might find you’re 1 of those people who likes 1 or the other’ & being invalidated like that (clearly in no way comparable to your current bullshit state) itkinda screwed with my head. but i live independently now & i have people who understand my position & respect my journey & never question my identifiers. so just know that there are people out there who will not only accept you for your bisexuality but they’ll fucking love you for it & they will never question it or make you feel lesser than for it. there is a community here & you never have to feel alone

[nomadicauthor287]

Noir Murder Chapter 4

TW: PTSD

There was no daylight the next day, only rain. The proper setting for the mission that awaited them. Rex and Jesse reported into the station at first light to check-in for their shift. After their check-in and morning debrief they made their way to the Bad Batch’s building. When they arrived the morning debrief began.

“Tech, give us ideas on what we’re looking for”, Hunter groans. “Kix, Echo, and I examined the bodies further and found that the person who did this was skilled”, Tech reports.”We’re looking for someone with surgical skill or someone good with their hands”, Echo explains. “All the cuts were clean and done post mortem”, Kix says, “They didn’t hesitate”. “So we’re looking for a doctor”, Wrecker asks. “Most likely or someone with medical experience”, Kix informed. “Or a butcher”, Echo says, “they have similar skills except they don’t sew them back together”.

A shiver travels down the spines of the cops from Echo’s comment. They were not used to grisly murders like this in civilian life in Coruscant City. Although murders happen it was tame compared to the case at hand.

“What was the true cause of death?”Crosshairs asks. “Blunt force trauma to the head”, Kix informs. “I did a background check on all of the suspects and none of them have any medical background”, Echo informs. “But we found that a few were cooks”, Tech chimes, “meaning that a couple of them could have done it”.

“Shall we place our bets now?”, Kix asks. To that, the cop duo raises their brow as Tech flipped the chalkboard. The board was full of the names of suspects and motives in two columns. Tech was writing down the bets of Wrecker, Echo, and Kix. Wrecker placed a bet on the boyfriend with a motive of jealousy for 85 credits. Kix placed his bet on the Father with a motive of his daughter not earning enough money for 50 credits. Echo placed his bet on the director with a motive, a rebuffed affection for 35 credits. Eventually, Tech wrote his own bet on the board next to the author of the scripts/story for all the pictures the victim, Sonja Gardner, was in.

“So you all just bet on who the murderer is during a case”, Jesse asks exasperated. They all nod eagerly. “As I said, you Regs wouldn’t understand our ways”, Crosshairs quips. “Fine, then I place a bet on the manager with a motive of embezzlement for 55 credits”, Jesse bets. Rex just sighs and facepalms.

“Let's start interviewing suspects”, Rex orders. “You heard the sergeant, partner up and interview suspects,” Hunter orders. “Wait, we have an uneven number of people”, Jesse says, “shouldn’t you go with someone since the killer can follow any of us?” “I’m going to interview “The Fang” and Barlow alone”, Hunter said. The Bad Batch gave Rex and Jesse a look as Hunter suited up. “It’s best to let him deal with them alone”, Tech said, “they have a history”. Hunter’s hand hovered over his hat with a distinct look in his eye. There was a nostalgic glint in his eye with a slight smile as he thumbed the pocket watch in hand. “You have your assignments, get going”, Hunter orders gruffly as he suited up.

With the orders given they saluted and got ready for their individual assignments. Kix packed up his gear and left his bill as he walked out of the building. Rex was with Jesse, Echo with Tech, and Crosshairs with Wrecker. Each went their separate ways to interview 2 suspects.

Rex and Jesse went to interview the last director and reporter Sonja worked with. Jimmie West was one of the few people to leave the party first. They tracked him down to his office overlooking the studio in the backlot of the filming studio. “Is Mr. West in today?”, Jesse asks the secretary. The woman takes a long drag of her death stick and gets up from her seat. “Mr. West, some cops are here to see you”, she drones. The duo look at each other and walk into the room. Upon entering the room they see the director smoking cigars while reading scripts. “Gentlemen, you have 10 minutes”, he informs them. “Mr. West we’re with the Coruscanti Police department”, Rex introduced. “Yes”, the director dismisses, “and?” “I’m sure you heard about the murder of your star actress”, Jesse starts. “Of course I have. With her dead her pictures are playing like crazy but once the craze dies down I’ll need to replace her”, he exclaims in frustration. Jesse was starting to lose his temper. “Sir we just need to know what you were doing at the scene of the crime”, Rex sighs trying to steer the conversation back to the investigation. “I was at the party celebrating our latest picture together. Real nice broads were there with nice assets if you catch my drift”, he chuckles. Jesse snaps and slams his fists on the desk. “THOSE ARE PEOPLE YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT”, he yells in anger, “LIVING BREATHING PEOPLE THAT HAVE LIVES AND ARE NOT OBJECTS. PEOPLE CANNOT BE EASILY REPLACED!”. Rex has to hold him back and calm him down while the director straightens himself out after that scare. “Sir, we just want to know why you were there at Ms. Gardner’s home”, Rex asks. “Like I was saying we were celebrating her latest picture”, he explains with an exhausted tone, “The Empress of the Underworld”. “Was the Mob satisfied with her performance”, Jesse asks. Jimmie looked at him and took a deep breath. “The mob sent an ‘ambassador’ to train her for her performance”, he recounts, “he kept a close eye on her when he took her to ‘functions’”. “What kind of functions”, Rex questions while writing the director’s words so far. “Mob functions, what do you think? A soup kitchen?!? Sonja was the type of gal who wanted authenticity in her performances. She reached out to the mob and they sent Fang to guide her.” “So this Fang guy was real close to her?”Jesse asks. “Thick as thieves”, Jimmie responds as he puts the cigar back in his mouth. “What time did you leave the night of the incident?”, Rex asks. “Around about 11 in the evening”, Jimmie responds. “Thank you for your time Mr. West”, Jesse thanks, “apologies for giving you a scare earlier”. “It’s fine but if you’d like, take my card if you want. You two would be great actors in my next picture!” he smiles. The duo took their leave after his statement and went back to the diner to wait for the others.

Elsewhere Wrecker and Crosshair were sitting in a tense silence in the presence of Lloyd Gardner and Don Powell. Lloyd was Sonja’s father and Don Powell was her agent. They took her death seriously because they both loved her. In the wake of her death they looked to each other for comfort.

Crosshair took charge and decided to break the silence while Wrecker was helping himself to tiny sandwiches. “I see you both fought in the war”, Crosshair says pointing at the medals on the wall. “Yeah, I was, I mean we were in the army together”, Lloyd answers quietly. “We were too”, Crosshair replies. “Sniper, I take it?”Don asks. “What gave it away?” Crosshair chuckles. “Posture”, Don says “straight and tall as if you’re looking for a great shot”. “Sounds like you speak from experience”, Crosshair snips. “Call it experience”, Don says coolly, offering them a cigarette. “So where were you when his daughter was murdered?” Crosshair asks. “We were in the lounge celebrating,” Don answers. “No we weren't,” Lloyd said all too quickly. Don gives him a warning look. “Why are you lying?” Wrecker asks with his mouth full. “Donnie, I don’t wanna lie anymore. I wasn’t there and my daughter is dead!” Lloyd yells. Before Don could protest Lloyd told the two where they were. “That night I was with Don and we were in the library.”, Lloyd says, “I’m a homosexual”. “I knew I had a classy chassis but this is new” Crosshair says cockily. Don wraps an arm around Lloyd. “He’s my husband,” Don growls. “Congrats on your marriage!” Wrecker cheers. “You’re not disgusted by us”, Don asks with a shocked expression. “Why would we be disgusted? It’s your life, do what you want” Crosshair says as he gets up from his seat. “No, we got your statement and that’s all we need. We just want to bring justice to your daughter’s death” Wrecker says “I mean who are we to judge on your love life”. The two took their leave to allow the couple to grieve over the death of their daughter.

Tech and Echo were back at the scene of the crime to interview the maid, Luisa Fernan. “I told you time and time again Señor, I was in the kitchen cleaning. Ask Señor Gardner or Señor West. I was cleaning the kitchen towards the end of the party and then left. Señor Medina was the last one to leave.” Luisa explains while putting the laundry on the clothesline. “Mr. Medina as in Willard Media, the screenwriter?”Tech asks. Sí Señor’ she responds. “What was he doing here so late?”Echo asks. “No sé señor”, Luisa responds with a snippy tone. If one didn’t know any better they would think she and Crosshair were related. “Gracias señora. Estaremos en camino ahora. Que tenga un lindo día”, Tech acknowledges. “Looks like Willard Medina is our prime suspect now”, Echo says as they walked back to their car until the car exploded. Echo tackles Tech and tells him to radio for air support to bomb the enemy. The explosion brought him back to his time in the war. Tech was trying his best to pull him out of his shell shock. “ECHO YOU’RE HOME! YOU’RE HOME!”, Tech yells trying to hold him down. It takes Echo a few minutes to realize that he was home and not in that horrid lab. “We need to call Hunter and the others”, Tech says. “We’ll call them later. Right now we need to get Willard Medina’s statement. I’m changing my bet to Willard, Oz.” Echo growls. Tech knew there was no stopping him so he nods and gets up to wave down a taxi.

Hunter stuck to the shadows of an alleyway following Victor Barlow. Victor knew someone was following him and took his time carrying the shipment into the building. “Been a while Hunter”, he says putting the box down. “Perceptive as ever Victor”, Hunter says. “Well your ears get pretty sharp when things go bump in the night Hunter” he jests “you of all people should know that”. “Still the spy as ever Vic”, Hunter chuckles until his tone turns sorrowful. “I’m sorry about Sonja. From what I gathered she was a real nice gal”. “She was and I was gonna ask her to marry me. How stupid of me to be working the night she died”, he whispers. Hunter puts a hand on his back and hands him his canteen full of water. “You should take some time off Vic” Hunter suggests. “No, I can’t Seth. If I do I don’t know what I’d do with myself” Victor weeps. “I’m gonna put you up with Stella, she’ll take care of you until this whole thing is over” Hunter says. “Just catch the bastard who did this to her” Victor growls. “I will”

Back at the diner Rex, Jesse, Wrecker, and Crosshair were called back to the mansion because of the explosion. “What the hell happened?” Rex demands. “Car bomb from the looks of it”, one of the Regs informs him. “Where’s Tech and Echo?” Jesse asks. “They took a taxi to the studio to interview the screenwriter,” Cody says, walking up to the others. “Tech call and give a heads up?” Wrecker asks while taking out his flask. “Yes, he said to head back to the office and write your information on paper and leave it on his desk”, Cody informs. “You got things from here?” Rex asks. “Sure do”, Cody nods.

Once Tech and Echo arrived at the studio they were immediately stopped by security. Neither of them had badges so they were told to leave the premises because the guards thought they were the paparazzi. So they snuck in through the back near the warehouses. “This is a delicate operation”, Tech whispers, trying to pick the lock on the door. That was until Echo kicked the door down. “You’re taking too long”, Echo huffs as he walks into the studio. They track down Willard Medina’s office.

They knock on the door and a quiet voice says for them to come in. When they walked in they saw a timid man typing away on his typewriter. “M-may I help you gentlemen”, Willard asks timidly. “We’re just investigating the murder of Sonja Gardner, sir”, Tech informs them. Echo looked around the room and noticed bottles of painkillers and a cane at Willard’s side. “Something happen to your leg” Echo asks. “It was just one of those days where y-you forget and slip on a banana peel”, he chuckles lightly. Echo nods like he understood but he didn’t. Tech on the other hand was noting down every detail in the room. There were many photos of Sonja and him at the premiere with the red carpets. “So why did you leave the party late on the night of the murder” Echo questions. “I left late because Sonja and I were discussing what to do for our next picture. Usually, we discuss what she wants to do since I write off of her ideas.” Willard explains. “So when did you end up leaving?” Echo asks sharply. “I said we were having a brainstorming session,” Willard pipes. “Luisa said she left before you did and it was strange you left so late according to her” Tech informs. “We lost track of time as you do when you’re having fun” he says nervously. “How close were you to her?” Tech interrogates. “Very close” he recounts “we were thick as thieves”. Tech gives Echo a look signalling it was time to leave. “Thank you for your statement Mr. Medina”, Echo thanks as he makes his ways back to the door. Tech takes one last look around the room before nodding goodbye. Once out of earshot and in private back to the main road Tech said that Willard was lying. “All of those pictures say that they weren’t ‘thick as thieves'. Sonja had little to no pictures of him in her home yet he has a lot of pictures of her in his office”. “You have a point but why would he kill her?” Echo thought aloud while he waved down a taxi. “Let’s list the possibilities,” Tech says as they get into a taxi.

When all of them were back at the office they all compared their findings until the phone rang. It was Stella and she needed help. At that point, they all needed help.

@soundwavetherav @eyecandyeoz @kratosfan6632466 @itsjml

[skye-maxwell]

Mostly You

Persona 4 | Souyo | Third year, pre-relationship | Rated F for Fluff

Happy birthday, @livefreeordie13! You are my friend, and I like you a lot! \o/

For prompt #6: “I think about you all the time.”

---

It was Yosuke’s turn to call him today, so Souji sat on the floor of his bedroom, patiently folding paper cranes while he waited. 

They had spoken to each other on the phone nearly every day since Souji had left Inaba, and Souji was grateful that Yosuke always seemed eager to hear from him. Even if it was just a quick call after school on his way to Junes, or while he was drifting off to sleep after a long day—Yosuke made time for Souji, and that meant the world to him.

The ringtone Souji had specifically assigned to Yosuke started playing, and Souji smiled, like he always did. It was a song Yosuke had shared with him to cheer him up when things had been at their worst, and now Souji knew every word and every note of the track. 

“Hey, Yosuke,” Souji greeted warmly, putting his phone on speaker and setting it on his desk so he could keep folding. 

“Hey, Partner!” Yosuke said happily, and Souji smiled again. He would never get tired of that enthusiasm. “What are you up to?” 

“Cranes.”

“Haha, again? Are you trying to set a world record for ‘most paper cranes folded’ or something?” 

“No, but now that you say that, it sounds pretty good. I think that’ll be my goal now.” 

Instead of dismissing the joke like Souji expected him to, Yosuke said, “Well, if anyone can do it, it’s you. I believe in you, Partner!” 

“Thank you,” Souji said dumbly, becoming flustered for a moment before he could think of a better reply. “If I do break the record, you’ll be the first one I invite to the party.”

“The party?” 

“Yeah, to celebrate my success.” 

“Oh man, a party thrown by you? I can see it now. It’s gonna be a total rager,” Yosuke laughed.   

“Of course. It’ll be the most enraged of ragers.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” 

“Honestly, it would probably just end up being you and me sitting in a room drinking something like, not even alcoholic, and we would try to clink our glasses together and probably spill lemonade everywhere—”

“When did it turn into lemonade?”

“—and then you’d be all ‘Congrats, Partner,’ and yeah, that would probably be it.” 

Souji expected Yosuke to laugh at the image he had created, or to call it lame and throw out ideas for an actual rager… 

“I mean, as long as I’m there with you, I’m down for whatever.” 

Souji dropped his paper crane. 

Why? Souji mentally asked Yosuke, picking his crane back up off the floor. Why must you say such cute things?

Not about to say anything remotely like that out loud, Souji asked, “So what are you doing right now?”

Not seeming to notice the abrupt change of subject, Yosuke answered, “I’m doing homework! Kind of.” 

“Are you just doodling in the margins?” 

“Not just the margins, Partner—the whole paper! Because, you know, there’s no notes on the page…” 

Souji sighed. “Do I need to hang up so you can get your homework done?”

“No! No no no! Please don’t hang up! I’ll actually do it later, I promise!”

“Calm down, I’m not actually gonna hang up on you.” 

“Okay, good.”

“That does remind me, though… Lately I’ve been daydreaming in class a lot. Sometimes I’ll just completely space out, and by the time I space back in, I realize I haven’t been paying attention for an entire lecture.” 

“For real? Did my bad habits rub off on you?”

“Why do you sound like that? What are you doing now?”

“Finished drawing. Balancing a pencil on my nose. Crap! I dropped it. Anyways, you’re supposed to be the good student between the two of us, man! We can’t both be slacking off!” 

“Sorry, Yosuke.”

Before Souji could say anything else, Yosuke suddenly asked, “What do you think about?” 

“Hm?”

“When you’re daydreaming all that time—what are you thinking about?”

“Well… I think about last year a lot, and how I wish I was still there with everyone, and I think about recipes I want to make, and movies I want to see, and what I want to do after high school, and… you. Mostly you, actually,” Souji accidentally admitted. 

“Me? What about me?” 

Now that Souji had let the cat peek its head out of the bag, he wasn’t entirely sure he would be able to keep the rest of it in the bag for much longer. 

“I think about all the crazy and terrible and amazing times we had together last year, and how I wish was still there with you. I think about recipes I want to make for you to try, and the faces you’ll make when you’re eating them. I think about movies I want to see, whether or not you would like them, the discussions we would have after we watched them together… I think about how badly I want to do whatever it takes to have more of you in my life after I finish this stupid third year… Yeah, all the time. I think about you all the time.”

“Partner, that’s… um, unexpected. I’m sure someone like you has better things to think about than me.”

Souji shook his head. “No. I don’t. Not more important than you, no.” 

“You’re exaggerating, right? To make me feel good?” 

“I’m not. Does it make you feel good?”

“Well, yeah, sure it does. Being on someone’s mind makes me feel special, y’know? Especially your mind.”

“You seem surprised, Yosuke. You really don’t have any idea how important you are to me, do you?” 

“I guess not? I don't know, it’s just… hard to believe. Do you know why I always make sure we talk to each other like this? I mean, obviously I don’t want you to be lonely, and I want to make sure you’re doing okay, but also like, I just don’t want you to forget me.”

Souji scoffed, immediately covering his mouth afterwards because he definitely hadn’t meant to do that, even if what Yosuke had said was completely ludicrous. 

Forget you? With the amount of running around you do in my mind, how on earth could I possibly forget you? 

Souji quickly tried to find a way to convey that sentiment to Yosuke in a less creepy way. 

“The only way I could ever forget you is if I had a major head injury, like blunt force trauma, and I forgot everything… or, if I, you know, died.” 

“Partner! Don’t say shit like that!” 

“My problem isn’t forgetting you; my problem is remembering you too much. Seriously, it’s constant. But actually, yeah, no, I don’t want to think of you any less, not really…”

“Heh, is this what it feels like to be flattered? You’re really something else, Partner. Oh hey, I’ve gotta go; my mom’s calling me for dinner.”

“Okay,” Souji sighed, feeling like he had sort of just poured his heart out (in a subtle yet super vulnerable and embarrassing way?), and yet the conversation had not come anywhere close to a satisfying resolution. “Tell her I said hi.” 

“Will do! She’ll be thrilled, haha. She’s actually trying out one of the recipes you left her, so I’ll let you know how it goes. Don’t worry though; it’s definitely not gonna be as good as when you make it.” 

Souji rediscovered his smile, happy that Yosuke would be thinking about him after he hung up—comparing his mother’s cooking against Souji’s own while he ate, remembering the times Souji had made the dish for him, coming up with an evaluation to share with Souji after the meal was done… 

“Your loyalty is appreciated.” 

“All right, Partner, thanks for talking to me.”

“Yosuke? I’m sorry if anything I said was too weird.” 

“All you ever say is weird stuff, man. I’m used to it.” 

“Pfft, okay, bye.” 

“Talk to you later!” 

Yosuke hung up, and Souji finished off the crane he was working on, setting the red paper bird on his desk in a row with several other red cranes. He took a photo and sent it off to Yosuke with the caption: “It’s like your shirt.” 

Satisfied with that, Souji stood up so he could go make his own dinner, but a text from Yosuke stopped him in his tracks. 

Instead of a reply about his picture, he opened up an unexpected picture from Yosuke. 

It was of his notebook, the one he had been doodling in at the beginning of their conversation. 

The first thing that caught his eye was a big-headed (chibi?) doodle of himself (the distinct bowl cut was a dead giveaway) in the middle of the page, holding his sword and wearing his TV World glasses. He also appeared to be on fire? Or maybe that was a representation of Persona power? 

Whatever it was, it was adorable.

Souji’s gaze flitted across the full page, his breaths growing more shallow as he took it all in: Izanagi and Jiraiya doing cool(?) action poses next to each other, a bento box that looked very much like the ones Souji used to prepare for Yosuke every day, a half-melted snowman wearing Souji’s grey scarf and Nanako’s Loveline hat, a Mega Beef Bowl from Aiya’s and stick figure versions of all their friends drowning in it… 

It took Souji a minute to realize it, but every single doodle across the page was somehow related to himself, and the memories he and Yosuke shared together. 

In the bottom corner of the page, one doodle was squeezed in that must have been the last one Yosuke drew. It was the two of them standing side-by-side in front of a house (but it didn’t look like any house that Souji recognized?) with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They were wearing big happy faces, and one of Yosuke’s arms was in the air, as if he was waving. 

The circular sun with squiggly rays coming out of it was in the sky above them, smiling and wearing sunglasses, ironically. There was a thing in front of the house that Souji didn’t recognize at first until he saw the bike next to it; it was a half-pipe. 

Then Souji squinted at another part of the doodle and zoomed in on the image, not quite believing his eyes.

In the front window of the house, there was a cat peeking through, big and fluffy just like Souji liked. 

Was that supposed to be… their house? 

“No way,” Souji whispered to himself.

Then he scrolled down to the caption and completely lost his breath. 

“I think of you too.” 

And with that, Souji’s fate was sealed—he was going to be thinking about Yosuke—his Partner who he was in love with (who thought about him too!)—nonstop for the rest of his life. 

[helihi]

The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty: RWBY Vol 7 Ep 4

Thank you for renewing your Punch Jacques Club Membership, I cannot confirm or deny that you’ll accomplish your goal this season, but we’re family.

Overall rating of the chapter: 7.5/10 

*Spoilers Ahead*

The Good

To start off this chapter, we learn more about the true dynamics of the Ace Ops and, more importantly, about Atlas Academy. At Beacon, teams are chosen by interactions and collaborative efforts during a recorded test. Ozpin chose teams based on trust, leadership skills, and bonds. In Atlas, teams are chosen based on effectiveness. The students are not viewed as people or individuals, they are viewed as numbers.

In the previous episodes, there were a couple of things that didn’t quite sit well with me: Harriet’s original comment to Ruby regarding her Semblance felt more mean than playful, and the fact that Marrow was everyone’s punching bag. At first, you might think that this is just playful banter between friends, like Yang and Ruby referring to Jaune as Vomit Boy from time to time, however, that’s not true. Since Harriet declares that they are not friends, you may realize that they are not “picking on Marrow”, they are actively bullying him. There’s no complements thrown his way, there are no mutual laughter or apologies, it’s just drag after drag after drag.

I have the slight feeling that Marrow might consider them his friends, and that’s why he’s letting the comments slide. We should also consider that he is the only Faunus in the team, and although I believe their comments don’t come from a source of casual racism, but rather at pointing out the fact that he’s the most childish of them all, we should pin that for now.

I get Harriet, there’s a difference between co-workers and friends. Though some times you may befriend your co-workers, playful banter and after office outings don’t translate to friendship. I say this as someone who has worked for a big company. There were coworkers I genuinely befriended, and other who I was friendly after office hours, but never hung out with outside work parties or outings.

That being said, I find it hard that you wouldn’t bond with those whose life you’ve saved before, the same who’ve saved yours. Interestingly, when Yang inquires about this and gets dismissed by Harriet, you can see the way Blake reacts in the background. Have we bonded over trauma? Is that all that this is?

Let me be clear: people can bond over trauma, but at the same time, going through a lot of things with a person can show you sides of them you never noticed before, you see them in a different light. That being said, Team RWBY’s enemies haven’t been random people: Cinder killed Pyrrha, their friend; Emerald was someone they trusted; Mercury framed Yang in front of Remnant; Adam was Blake’s abusive ex and his goal to destroy Blake and Yang was personal. During the arcs these characters have gone through, they have grown as people as they faced death, obviously they are going to bond.

This may have been pure coincidence, but it’s interesting that an anti-bee section of the FNDM posed the idea that Yang and Blake’s relationship is based on mutual trauma. This claim is ridiculous because both of them cared about each other before the Fall of Beacon. The traumatic event made their relationship take a turn, and realize some things that they didn’t notice before or made things clearer for them. (On a side note, Asami realized she had feelings for Korra when she thought the avatar was going to die at the end of book 3). Sometimes certain situations change your perspective about things and people.

I want to note that Nora’s comedic relief landed perfectly, and Jaune’s sass was on point. Once again James is presented as someone trouble seeking the best outcome through the wrong means. That being said, Tyrian and Watts plan seem to be to overthrow him and generate chaos through political manipulation, and as someone who comes from a country with high levels of corruptions and suspicious murders, this is true real. Also, don’t think James is a good poor guy trying to be his best. He’s actively choosing one portion of the kingdom over the other and dooming certain populations.

Next stop is Jacques “Scumbag” Schnee making his first appearance in the volume. TBH it was about time. Given how the opening frames him, he had to show up soon. Just like I expected the moment he started bickering with Ironwood, he turned around and will now help Watts. At first, Jacques might have had power over Ironwood, but now he doesn’t, at least until he get his seat at “The Council”, which I’m expecting him to win.

As someone with an abusive parent, Jacques’s mannerisms make sense. The shift from his violent approach to a more manipulative one are common abusive tactics of an abusive person when in public or when their victim stands up to them. My parent used to be more physically abusive when I was a child, but when I grew taller and stronger, they switched to a psychological one since I could defend myself. In this case, Jacques was super close to striking Weiss again, but stopped the moment one of her true dads stepped in (Ironwood).

Jacques using Willow to guilt trip Weiss was dirty and awful, and once again adds on to my theory that she might be the Winter maiden. Thankfully, like Ruby promised, Team RBY is right beside her.

Blake is ready to kill him, and Yang is processing how awful the man is. Ruby is utterly confused at his attitude. Following this, we find that Winter was siting for him to leave before showing up. She looks around to confirm that he’s no longer there, and Weiss points out “Winter, it’s nice for you to finally show up”. Just like I've talked about before, while Weiss got out of the abusive environment and found a real family (Team RWBY), Winter escaped Jacques by joining the military. James Ironwood is only missing one Schnee child to adopt, and we’ll get to that soon enough.

All our kids are now huntsmen! Congrats! Just like they say, the licenses feel hollow after all they’ve been through, and TBH I agree. It also shows progress for the characters, specially Yang who had the most superficial goal out of the 4 Team RWBY members. Regardless of that, it’s nice to see the goof around, take pics, and eat cake. Something I thought it was adorable is how Winter interacts with Penny: she’s so caring and nice. I love them.

We got a really good moment between Ruby and Qrow, and some background on Summer. The DC comics have helped us understand Summer a little bit ore, but this confirms that she was a brat (hell ye). Apparently, her last mission was a “Summer mission”. I really need those Team STRQ flashbacks. I bet Raven know more than we think.

I also think it’s important that Qrow pointed out how Ruby is not Oz since she doesn’t keep the secret to herself. I think certain conditions should be met to be open about Salems existence, especially considering current circumstances.

Jaune offering to protect little children is the most Jaune thing ever, never change boy.

Lastly, Watts finds an ally: the douchbag who married into the Schnee name. That small interaction with Whitley and Jacques might be a small sign of foreshadowing him having a reception arc. His father doesn’t trust him to invite his heir into the meeting, and he treats his son rudely. Whitley looks genuinely dejected.

Watts faked his death, that might be an indication why Ironwood doesn’t have a clear suspect yet. Now, he’s part of the Asshole Mustache club.

Anyways, next episode it looks like we’re going to meet Robyn. The sheep faunus and the tattooed guy next to her might have been part of her team.

The Bad

Those quick animations for cheap comedic effect have started getting kinda annoying. I wish they didn’t overuse them ass much.

The Dirty

Where’s Klein.

--

Final Rating: 7.5/10. Good, but not above expectations.

A.N.: Alost 18 mins, keeping up with the consistent episode length, congrats!

[fortissimohands-archive]

When you’re a teacher, refusing to help bullied kids is child neglect, often involves gaslighting/victim blaming, and is traumatising for the kid

Bullying is a traumatising situation. If a child is in your care, and you know that they’re going through something traumatising, you have a duty to attempt to help them.

If a child reports bullying and you brush them off, accuse them of lying, or suggest that they change their behaviour/appearance/whatever the bully is targeting them for instead of attempting to deal with the situation, that tells the child that they deserve the bullying. It also makes it more difficult for them to trust adults, especially teachers, in the future.

When I was in year 7, I was being bullied by a girl in my class. The bullying was both verbal and physical. I told my year advisor, because in my school it was generally accepted and taught that she was the person you should tell. I told her on several occasions, in fact, because none of these attempts seriously stopped the problem. It was years ago so I might be forgetting some incidents, and they’re probably not in chronological order, but these were her responses:

-At first she organised meetings to get us to sort out our differences, completely ignoring me when I tried to explain to her that I was ignoring the bully as much as I could and it wasn’t a two-way issue

-When she finally realised it was actually bullying, she changed our “groups”. “Groups” at my school were a thing where the year 7 & 8 kids had the sit with the same four people in every class to “help us make friends” which is a stupid system but whatevs. Anyway, she changed it so that she wasn’t obligated to sit with me anymore, but still could if she chose to. In doing so, the year advisor put me in a position where if the bully sat with me, I couldn’t move because I had to sit with my group.

-She told me to tell the classroom teachers repeatedly, despite my protests that (1) the classroom teachers weren’t taking it much more seriously than she was, and (2) they might be able to stop it for a few minutes or even the rest of the lesson, but they didn’t have the power to do anything long-term.

-Related to the above point, she initially refused to believe me when I said she was bullying me in class time because “you’re supposed to be in class in class time”. Like, newsflash, the classroom doesn’t stop her from bullying me.

-At least once she said she would talk to the bully. I was overjoyed, especially when the bully was called out of class, but ... nothing happened. Presumably either she denied the entire bullying (and the year advisor believed her, which is just dickish), or she pretended she had genuine intentions to stop and got off with a warning. This was purely a verbal lecture, no suspensions, no detentions,  likely not even threats of future punishments. No other action was taken until I fought back months later, at which point we were both suspended, but I don’t want to talk about that.

-At one point I broke down crying because it had been continuing for months and she hadn’t stopped it, at which point she forced me to talk to the counselor to work out ways to deal with my emotions. She made no attempts to get me to see the counselor about it again, so it’s clear that she wasn’t trying to look after my mental health. She just wanted to make it seem that the problem was “girl blames year advisor for her own inability to cope with emotions” and not “year advisor refuses to help bullied child”

-And, the thing that really takes the cake: She told me to get a thicker skin. I came in, to politely ask her if she could maybe do something about the bullying problem she had been fully aware of for several months because it had now gotten physical, and she told me to get a thicker skin.

The way she brushed me off hurt me as badly as the bullying itself. I felt ignored and dismissed by the people who were supposed to be responsible for my safety. I felt like I deserved the bullying. 

Now I’m at a different school, with different teachers. My year advisor is literally the best teacher in the world, I trust her enough that I volunteer to help her demonstrate things in class, and I feel like I could talk to her if I had a problem.

I’m being bullied again, in a totally different situation -- it’s several people in my year group instead of one person, it’s mostly social/verbal instead of physical, and despite justifiably feeling attacked and uncomfortable in class, I don’t feel scared for my physical safety. This has been continuing for slightly over a week, and I haven’t made any attempt whatsoever to tell a teacher.

It’s not that I’m scared to tell people, because I’ve told my mother and several of my school friends, many of which are in positions of power (the school’s equivelant to prefects/the SRC). The problem is that SRC kids/prefects don’t actually have that much power, and none of them are able to help me without getting a teacher involved.

And the thing is, I trust my year advisor. I genuinely feel like, if I told her about this, she would do everything in her power to help me. But I’m finding it incredibly difficult to talk to her, and part of the reason is that I have that fear left over from what happened in year 7.

Also something to keep in mind is that bullies WILL bully you more if you “snitch” on them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell an adult, because if the adults are competent and moral people then they will do what they can to stop it. But if you’re in a situation like I was in where the adults do nothing, then you will experience all the added stigma/consequences of being a “snitch” without actually having the problem solved.

Combine that with having a fear of teachers due to past trauma, as well as social anxiety and autism that make any interactions difficult, and I’m left feeling like telling a teacher will take a huge amount of emotional effort, make my current situation worse, and not actually help in the long run.

(BTW, I’m not asking for advice for my current situation. I’m not trying to make you feel like you should help me, I just included my story so people would understand how this impacts kids)

Refusing to help a bullied child is traumatising in and of itself, and is traumatising even without the added consequence of the child being forced to stay in the traumatising bullying situation. 

As teachers, you have both a moral and legal duty to protect these kids. Allowing kids to be traumatised in your care is neglect. Telling traumatised kids that they “need to grow a thicker skin” or making them think it’s not a big deal is gaslighting and victim blaming. Teachers that do this should be fired.

And before teachers try to argue that “well I can’t read minds” and “the kids need to tell me if somethings going on”: Well, first of all, they don’t. If you don’t know, then that’s not your fault. But if you can see a problem in your classroom, you should make an effort to ask the kid who seems to be the victim if it’s bullying (you should ask because it may just be part of a game they’re playing, but don’t ask the possible bullies, because they’ll obviously lie to protect themselves). Refusing to take action until kids tell you themselves (which can be extremely difficult if they have social anxiety, and they’re more likely to have social anxiety if they’re bullied, or if they’re autistic, which makes them more likely to be targeted by bullies) is holding their needs hostage.

But if you’re genuinely not aware of the problems -- either because you rarely/never have the kids in your actual classroom, or they’re careeful to only do it when your back is turned -- then congrats! This post isn’t about you. This post is about teachers who outright refuse to help bullying victims in ways that are almost always child neglect and often have elements of gaslighting or victim blaming. 

[doctorguilty]

osdd talk playing therapist with myself in public because I dont know who else to talk to but i my blog makes me feel like im talking to someone jdshskdgfdh

the more research I do about DID the more sense everything fucking makes like I’m angry, like usual, at all the mental health practices I’ve been to throughout my life that completely dismissed all the REALLY important details of the experiences I would describe and be like, I diagnose you like Depression (tm), at best I got c-ptsd from the best therapist I sadly couldnt see very long due to moving, and I also got bpd though every time I see a new therapist they think their job is to debunk my bpd???? cause I don’t fit the stereotypes or whatever so like Good Luck myself for EVER getting a professional to help me with this, I don’t care, I’m not even fucking bothering like going out of my way for it 

I’m am pretty confident I fall under secondary structural dissociation (overlapping like, textbook with my bpd and c-pstd, and I’m not sure about the OSDD/DID part perfectly though I’m leaning to OSDD-1? I think that would like, cover the most of me? hm i’m not sure 

anyway I understand what’s going on here I FINALLY understand, what I have going on is two (at least two? I can distinguish two right now) ANP’s, aka host personalities, aka parts that manage every day life like work, socializing, etc and I’ll shift between them frequently, like multiple times a day probably most days. which explains super fucking well why I’m ...incredibly detached from my trauma most of the time but can be so hypersensitive to triggers, cause evidently ANP’s don’t integrate trauma and that’s what the EP’s are for and this was a thing with me omg, I was going to EMDR therapy before I had to move in attempts to process trauma??? I didn’t get very far and even the little I did the results were like, super funky, I think thats cause my shit didn’t end at c-ptsd that was just the beginning aughhhh 

SO I GET IT OK i get it.... this is why for no explicable reason I would start disliking my name or my outward identity STILL even without it being a gender dysphoria thing because Seth is only one ANP, and there’s another one, (like ig still making the assumption there’s only two but thats currently how its looking), and I’ve been thinking about it like, what to call that, well, I guess, that’s me like kfjldsg me typing at this moment I’ve been just like??? so confused but hey Lore this is why a bit ago I made that post saying I wanted to go by Guilty more online. like seth is still fine that’s my name irl too it doesn’t bother me being called that but there was still something dysphoric about it?? 

so I know it might be cheesy to like pick names out of my online handle stuff but ;; it’s stuff I’m used to being called and I like it and it’s been with me for years now....... but I think guilty is a perf name to like, refer to the whole system or just like anyone present, I think... for myself I really like Doc, I was making that a nickname but i mean, i dont know if i’d want a whole new name you know like? Doc sounds pretty good and a lot of mutuals were already calling me that!! 

I think the split between ANP’s is probably like, close to 50/50, like it defs depends on situations and stuff like work and social situations, who I’m talking to online? 

and then I have those emotional parts, like glitter, and more I havent namedropped yet, I was calling those alters but I think I like it better calling them EP’s, I think ANP and EP speaks more to me than host and alters and such 

omg but!! yea! wow! like I was saying last night? I think? the more I come to understand the infinitely better I feel, like esp with the EP’s every time I’ve made mental/emotional headway on that everyone involved felt better so it’s like fuck it, I’ll do all the psychological work myself (slaps my own ass) 

i think ultimately I might round this all up in a page on my blog or something,I was iffy to do a sys page but i’m like... wistful I guess like idk where else i could express this stuff ,I cant in everyday life, but i want to! idk I’ll think more abt that later though for now I’ll tag all my stuff so i dont lose it for reference

idk who in their right mind woulda read all this but if you did congrats and like?? if you want to ask any questions you’re welcome to 

[takaraphoenix]

I need a break from modern TV shows.

Over the past month, one month, I’ve seen four massively bad season and/or show finales and I’m just... tired of this shit.

It’s not even just... It’s not even just “urgh, this is stupid to me I’d have liked something different better”.

It’s a continuous theme of forced, unenjoyable “twists” that “invert expectations” to a degree that is simply cringeworthy and not fun.

It’s a continuous disregard of characters’ mental health, putting them all through the wringer and torturing them with no regard for the actual effects those things would have on people.

It’s a continuous forced aesthetic to be dark and gritty and brutal simply for brutality’s sake, not for actual purposes, not to tell a story, only to be edgy.

And I’m tired. I’m really very tired of it.

I’ve always loved watching TV. It’s always been, well yes, escapism. A colorful, amazing world that sucks you in, pretending the world is a better place than it actually is. And that’s always been the kind of TV shows I tried watching.

And even when I deliberately signed up for a show with a darker aesthetic, there was always this - hope. A sense of hope, of optimism.

In Game of Thrones, that was Dany for me, the one who wanted liberation for everyone, wanted peace, but then her character got assassinated by the writers so they can pat themselves on the back for the awesome twist they pulled there. I’m not an idiot, I never expected a colorful happily ever after for all the characters, but this? This...? No, this was not “foreshadowed”, or a brilliant twist, it was stupid and cheap and frustrating.

In Shadowhunters, I don’t even know what I was expecting, but not for them to fuck over the actual main character of the show and taking everything from her, with no regard to actually thinking through how that works and then committing mass character assassination by having them just... not care. And to completely dismiss Jace, his trauma and mental health, to a degree that was really a slap in the face.

In The Magicians, even when depression stood front and center with Quentin, I knew I could rely on the team holding together, but in a mass character assassination, they not only killed him off but also did everyone else dirty by having them accept it and abandon him, leaving it on such a deeply unsatisfying and depressing note.

And Riverdale pulled so many twists and nonsense plotlines that my head is still spinning and it just... completely spiraled out of control, from the murder mystery it once was that still used to be fun, into that dark, gritty, brutal pile of murders. And, to stay on theme, no one gives a damn about the trauma the characters have suffered and the clear mental health issues they have.

Watching TV is supposed to be fun. At least to me. I don’t know, others might watch for violence and pain, but to me it was always my happy place to go to.

And nothing I’ve seen recently was actually “happy”. It was even worse than just “sad”, because sad endings exist too. No, it was... jarring.

Especially with the repeated themes of disregarding characters’ mental health and the help they’d need. Disregarding character developments for the sake of being dramatic. Dismissing character dynamics to the point that congrats, you managed to write your own character OoC.

I don’t know why current day TV writers think this is cool or in or whatever the fuck they think, but I genuinely need a break from this, for my own mental health’s sake at this point, because this isn’t just not making me happy because I don’t like it, it’s seriously starting to weight down on my mental state with how hard it rides certain Not Good Tropes that convey horrible messages.

So, whatever other shows finish a season or finished a season recently that I haven’t watched yet, kindly fuck off for now. I’ll be rewatching something that is consistent, that is fun, that is filled with hope, that makes its characters suffer trauma and then actually reasonably deals with that trauma.

I’ll be rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[littlemulattokitten]

I’m ill wifey so I’d like to request murder buddies digging graves with baes please 🙃😏

Shameless is what you are

Tom never planned on having an accomplice. It added a variable to his secret pastime that could get him caught, but he also hadn’t expected to meet another serial killer in his lifetime, especially not because they happened to go after the same target on the same night.

She’d been in the news. She’d distracted the media from him and he laid low, just to see what they’d make of her.

They still thought she was a man, of course. He wanted to know how she wasn’t leaving accidental clues behind. He wanted to know what the few clues, calling cards really, that she did leave behind meant.

The game and the chase was why he worked in forensics by day and hunted down the people who got in his way by night.

Not every night, of course. He had a life. Sort of.

Work was his life. He’d built his reputation. He was one of the best in the field and his position within the HPD gave him just enough authority over the forensics department to keep his extracurricular activities from being traced back to him. He just couldn’t understand how his new…neighbor, for lack of a better term, was so painstakingly tidy with the crime scenes she left behind.

Well, tidy wasn’t exactly the word.

Her style was so methodical that it left a heaviness in the spaces she’d left her victims in. Like there was silent poetry hanging in the air, waiting for someone smart enough to pick up on the words that weren’t being said. It was art. It was ever changing. Her modus operandi wasn’t as fixed as his. She adapted to suit her targets. It was artistic and clever and maddening.

If he wasn’t killing, he was catching fools unworthy of the fear left in their wake. Husbands who flew off the handle, murdered their entire families, and tried to hide the bodies. Nurses and Doctors trying to be angels of death. Serial drunk drivers who always managed to get someone killed, while somehow getting off the hook in court as well. The pitiful copycat killers and those arrogant enough to try and start their serial killing careers in his territory.

The problem with his neighbor is that she came out of nowhere.

In her first five months, the committed six murders. Each different than the last. Every drop of blood splatter was intentional. Every bit of dirt under fingernails of the dead behind on purpose. No fingerprints. No footprints. No partials. No hairs. Nothing left behind.

The only clue, the only hint he’d found that gave him any indication of what and who she was before their run in at the estate of one Gilderoy Lockhart that fated autumn evening, wasn’t really a clue at all. It was just a piece of circumstantial evidence. Something no one at the department gave a second thought.

She’d struggled when maneuvering one of her victims. Marcus Flint. He’d been a football player, but a larger one. Defense and goalie. And his exercise regimen had been impressive, to say the least. But his autopsy had revealed both pre- and post-mortem bruising along his back and arms that lined up with him being dragged onto the table he’d been found on top of. In pieces. The bruises on his arms had stumped the entire forensics team. They were massive, rounded, and in places hands would’ve been if he’d been dragged, but any hope of getting a shape or size of said hands was eliminated. They hadn’t been able to figure out how the trauma had been delivered either. Something dense, yes, and easy to bring down on someone’s biceps with enough force to paint their arms dark purple and maroon.

He’d been the only one to wonder if there was more to those bruises than just covering up traces of the killer. Tom had wondered why the bruising was so severe. If he had done the same thing, he’d have only made his handprint impossible to see. But these bruises took up most of Flint’s biceps. There was no telling how big or small the hands that had dragged him onto the table were.

It made his brain itch. Why would a male be particularly worried about a general hand size being discernible? He wouldn’t. But who would?

Someone trying to hide their sex, he’d thought.

He’d been right, too, and damn proud of himself for it. But the station had dismissed his theory. They didn’t think a woman capable of such clinically precise murders. And to be fair, neither had he until Marcus Flint ended up on her radar.

During the sixth month of their mystery killer’s case, his world was shifted once again. Not only was his hunting playground invaded by another, equally clever artist, but there was a new addition to the station as well. Captain Dumbledore had sought help outside of their jurisdiction. That help would become the bane of Tom’s existence.

For a while, at least.

Serial Psychology and Forensics Specialist (and Detective) Hermione Granger was brought to his attention a week before she stepped foot in his station. Lieutenant McGonagall had called everyone together, even pulling Tom and his forensics lackeys out of their lab and research spaces to alert them of their new “likely temporary” member of the team.

“Detective Granger was held in high regard while she worked for Scotland Yard down in London,” McGonagall told them, sending severe looks around the room. “We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with this incredible young woman, who climbed the ranks faster than any investigator before her, and earned herself the ability to do…frankly, whatever the hell she pleases wherever the hell she goes.”

Tom snorted at that, casting a glance towards Abraxas, who shot him a slightly wide-eyed look in return.

“Five quid says she’s an uppity toad of a woman,” he whispered.

Tom shrugged, accepting the bet. What was five quid anyway? And if she wasn’t hard on the eyes, it’d be a pleasant surprise. Competence rarely came in pretty packages, in Tom’s experience.

He refocused on McGonagall as she continued speaking. “Detective Granger is technically on an…unofficial leave of absence from Scotland Yard - or at least that’s what Albus wants me to tell you.”

A few chuckled went through the room, and Minerva gave them all a bland smile before turning serious again. “The truth is that the last three cases she solved nearly cost Detective Granger her life, which was still in danger is she’d stayed in London. My hope is that she finds a new home here in Hogsmeade. We could certainly use someone of her caliber.”

When McGonagall’s eyes turned sharply to Tom, he raised his eyebrows, awaiting whatever she had to say.

“I certainly hope having two savants in forensics won’t cause any problems…” she said slowly. Tom smirked. “Detective Granger will not work under our established chain of command. She will report to me and me alone.” A brow quirked as she continued to stare at Tom. “So play nice.”

“She fit?” Investigator Black asked from the other side of the room. Potter smothered a chuckle as Minerva turned to glare at them both.

“She’s out of your league…” Minerva said, her tone dripping with false sweetness. Black rolled his eyes as a series of Ooohs and chuckles at his expense swept through the room.

“Detective Granger solved three-decade-old cold cases in her first year with Scotland Yard alone, but if that doesn’t impress you, by all means, Google her. Her track record is quite impressive,” Minerva continued. “She joins us Monday morning. Embarrass me and you’ll be reviewing security footage tapes and doing paperwork with the interns for a month.”

With her final threat delivered, the meeting disbanded, and Tom happily went back to the research tables in the lab after making sure the research groups outside the lab didn’t need him. There was a whiteboard on the back wall with possible names for his neighbor, but most of them were pathetic. He just couldn’t come up with anything that would alert his potential playmate to the respect he held for her.

It didn’t help that everyone else still thought she was male, either.

At least he’d been able to make sure his name was of his choosing. Lord Voldemort. He’d left the V carved into his first few victim’s skin. When the department tried to name him Valentine, he’d left his name painted in blood on the ceiling above one of his victims. And he managed to talk them into calling him by his name in an attempt to “soothe his ego”. They’d believed him. They’d tried to offer their serieal killer a token of their respect, hoping he’d get sloppy and get caught.

It was a game he loved to play.

A game that took a vicious turn the night before Detective Granger was due to join their ranks. Another body had been found, but this time, she’d done something new. It was still her work, of that he was certain, even if his colleagues contested the idea. It was too different, they said. It must be a copycat, they implied.

“The cause of death varies from victim to victim,” he said, distracted as he carefully strolled through the crime scene. She’d left a mess this time, which wasn’t usually her MO either, but she’d done it before. The small hotel room was bathed in blood. The carpet soaked crimson and maroon. The color of the bedding indiscernible. The walls splattered.

“Why switch from sculpting and poetry to painting?” he murmured to himself. The flicks and spots dotting the walls lined up with the deep gashes on the victim’s torso. And she’d left him in a hell of a state.

“Cormac McLaggen,” Black called into the room. “Went missing Friday night. I recognize him though. He went to Hogwarts.”

Tom hummed to himself. McLaggen didn’t look much like Hogwarts Alumni naked and sliced up on a hotel room bed with his lackluster package out for God and the world to see.

“This one was personal,” he said, still thinking out loud. Only Malfoy seemed to pay him any attention, which wasn’t unusual. Abraxas made a decent soundboard. “To some degree at least. Left exposed. The only way it could’ve been more so was if…” Tom trailed off as he noted something on McLaggens wrists. The blood was so thick and clotted where he dipped into the sheets that Tom had nearly missed it. A snort left him and he glanced down and found a similar situation at the man’s ankles. “Never mind. There’s still rope on his left wrist, and I’m going to guess those abrasions on his ankles are from handcuffs.”

“Kinky,” Abraxas said.

“Humiliating…” Tom scoffed. “He didn’t get off before he died, I don’t need labs to tell you that. Go ahead and leave a note for Lovegood so she checks his bits in the autopsy, though. I want to know if I’m right.”

Black snorted from the doorway. It amused Tom that he had no interest in entering the room properly, but he supposed this amount of bloodshed wasn’t a typical day in the field for the detective. “That’d be fun to read in the autopsy report. The victim died with a decidedly severe case of blueballs.” He shook his head. “Poor sod.”

Tom gave the room a quick once over. Despite the…painting she’d left them, he could taste poetry in the air. “We’re overlooking something…” he said slowly. The walls were bothering him. The splatters were almost all curved, diagonal swiped that started down -he moved his right hand to his hip- and arced upwards -he extended his arm up and out in the opposite direction, miming the swipes he saw. Some went against the grain of the others. Sloppy, small half-circles. He squinted.

“Has anyone taken pictures from the doorway with the room empty?” he asked, noting the few forensic photographers, and technicians, who perked up at the sound of his voice. “Without anything obstructing the walls?”

When his question was met with silence and shrugged, he shot his team a glare. “Out. All of you. I want wide view, panorama, and close up shots of each wall. Then the normal detailing of the blood formations.”

A rustling crunch of plastic covered shoes and hazard suits grated on his ears as they filed out to let the photographers work in peace for a few moments. The plastic tarp in the hallway, laid down to protect the carpet, was stamped with bloody blotches. It reminded him of using sponge cut outs to paint stupid pictures in primary school.

Theron Nott was the first of the photographers to approach him, his face drawn and slightly pale. “I dunno how you saw it, Riddle,” he said, “but I think I figured out what you were seeing.”

Tom replaced his gloves before taking the camera from Theron and tapping through the photos he’d taken. He zoomed in on the panorama and sucked in a breath when his hunch appeared to be accurate. Then a wide grin spread across his face.

“She’s mocking us,” he said. His delight made Abraxas, Black, and Nott share a worried glance. “I told you morons she was female.”

Triumph burning in his eyes, Tom turned the digital face of the camera to the side so they could all see it.

There, written in spiky, flung slashes of blood on hideous olive painted drywall, were the words: I AM YOUR LADY.

Long after evidence had been documented and labs had been sent off, when Tom had returned home to his flat for the evening, with the promise of Detective Granger’s appearance on the horizon, Tom felt his cock stir at the memory of reading those words.

Now how could he welcome his new playmate to the neighborhood?

Tags: @ibuzoo , @disillusionist9 , @meowmerson , @ash-castle , @kyoki777, @katsitting, @sangnoire, @fundamental-blue, @serpentinred, @nerysdax, and I know I’ve forgotten people...I’m sorry ily all

[planetsam]

Love your jancy fics! Another prompt if you can squeeze it in: Jon is worried that Nancy only has feelings for him “when the world is about to end.” She realizes he feels that way and convinces him that she really cares for him/loves him and they have a real connection, even when things are “normal.”

She hears back from Brown last.

Nancy calls Jonathan over and spreads out all the envelopes on her bed. Jonathan was accepted early decision to NYU, just like she knew he would be. She orders them in location, then in preference, then in the ones she likes the most versus the ones she was told to apply to. She’s doing them in color when Jonathan comes in.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi, I need a rational decision maker,” she explains dragging him over.

“I can go get one,” he offers and she rolls her eyes.

“You’ve known where you wanted to go since you were a kid,” she says, “I need that. I don’t even know what I want to major it,” she adds shaking her head, “anyway I got rid of the schools my parents made me apply to and this is what’s left—Jonathan!”

He picks up the discarded envelopes.

“Do you like any of them?” He asks and she shakes her head before grabbing one of the envelopes and dropping it on the bed, “okay, so, these are everywhere,” he says.

“I know,” she replies, “I like the east coast,” she says, shifting a few of the envelopes around.

“But UCLA—“

“Is good, I know,” she sighs, “you see my problem?”

“No,” he tells her honestly, “I think this is great. You’ve got a lot of options,” she nods, “you just have to pick.”

She sighs and falls face first onto the envelopes instead.

“I don’t know how you knew which one you wanted,” she groans into her flowered bedspread.

The bed dips as Jonathan sits, she can practically hear his smile and rolls onto her back so she can see him. Upside down and from this far below, he looks even taller than he usually does. He picks up one of them and opens it, reading the letter. She sighs and closes her eyes, folding her hands.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, “I guess when I know I want something I just do.”

“Lucky,” she mumbles.

“Okay, what folder are you lying on?” He asks.

“Harvard,” she says.

“Go to Harvard.”

“Jonathan I’m not letting my ass decide what college I go to!” She objects, “which one are you on?” He shifts, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says weakly, “you, uh, shouldn’t let my ass decide either.”

She gets to her knees and picks up the purple folder. She didn’t apply early decision but she did apply. It is an option. It’s Jonathan’s dream to go to NYU, it always has been. Nancy feels like an interloper, even though she knows it’s stupid. NYU is a huge school in a big city, they could conceivably not see each other for four years. She also knows that some part of her is screaming at even the possibility she’s about to go to school in any part because of her boyfriend. She knows how that looks. Jonathan’s gone a shade paler and is looking at the folder like he wants to set it on fire.

“Columbia waitlisted me,” she says.

“They’re idiots,” he answers instantly before his brow furrows, “but—do you even like New York?” She nods, “you shouldn’t go there just because of us.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she says emphatically, “we’d figure out the distance thing—“ she stops at the look on his face, “we wouldn’t?” She presses, “Jonathan?”

“Look we got together because of that shared trauma shit, but that’s not going to be our whole lives,” he says meeting her gaze, “we wouldn’t be together otherwise.”

“Excuse me?” She demands, feeling like she’s having an out of body experience, “what are you talking about?” He looks down and Nancy would commend him for being that smart if her head didn’t feel like it was about to explode, “you think if Barb was still alive and none of this had happened we wouldn’t be together?”

“I—I don’t know!” He erupts and she jumps off the bed, “I’m—it’s not like I’m boyfriend material here, Nancy. Half the town thinks I’m your stalker,” she makes a noise of disgust, “I took pictures of you in your underwear!”

“And Steve spray painted a billboard calling me a slut,” she shoots back.

“Yeah, so, none of this should be a factor in your decision,” he says, “come on, you know that.”

“I did!” She cries, wondering why this feels so devastating.

“So nothing changed,” Jonathan says, his voice desperate, “tons of couples go to different schools, they break up all the time. They go back to being friends. We’ve barely been dating a year, it’s not—“

“Don’t finish that sentence,” she says. He looks down, “do you really think that us breaking up wouldn’t be a big deal?”

“No,” he says instantly, “I’m saying it happens.”

“To other couples,” she dismisses, “who aren’t us.”

“We went through shit but—“

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” She says throwing up her hands, “what we went through was horrible. I didn’t want to go through it and I didn’t want you to go through it either, okay? It wasn’t the foundation of our relationship,” Jonathan looks down again, “tell me you don’t think that,” Nancy gasps.

“It bonded us. You wouldn’t have talked to me otherwise—“

“I have been trying to talk to you since fourth grade!” Nancy yells. Jonathan’s brow creases in a way Nancy would find adorable if she didn’t want to kill him, “I lied about not having a pencil and all you had was a pen,” she reminds him, remembering the crushing disappointment when he had dismissed her, “I used to stay in the car when mom dropped Mike off but you were never home.”

He looks floored by the revelation and she wants to hate him for that. She wants to hate him for seeing her so clearly in almost every way, but not seeing that she wants to be with him. She shakes her head, looking at all of the envelopes that are spread out there again. All the options she has and there’s a painful irony in the fact that the one thing she really, really wants at the moment is sitting there, stunned at the idea that she would willingly want to be with him. Even after they’ve been dating.

“I don’t—“ he stops, “you were dating Steve.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me,” she says, “so I tried dating someone else. Steve’s a good guy,” she continues, “I tried really hard to love him the same way.”

Steve is a really good guy. Jonathan is too. She’s the problem one here. It’s like she can see the movie billboard again. All the right moves indeed. She gets even more worked up when Jonathan gets up. If she was a good person, she thinks, she’d let him leave. Let him puzzle over everything and let him see things on his terms. Of course she tried that before and Nancy might be any number of things, but she’s not insane enough to do that again.

“I love you,” she says.

His entire body goes stiff and she wants to yell at the fact that he might not believe her.

“I love you,” she repeats, “I don’t want to break up with you, no matter where we go to school. That didn’t even occur to me.”

“Really?” He says and the disbelief in his voice breaks her heart.

“Yes,” she says, “why is that so hard to believe?”

He shakes his head wordlessly. She knows that he’s got low self worth, but how deep it goes is a constant and heart breaking surprise. Even now she can practically hear him berating himself for this. She doesn’t know how it’s possible for one person to be so many things at once. She doesn’t overthink it as she walks over to him and wraps her arms around him, even though he stiffens and that hurts.

“I love you,” she repeats, swearing she’ll repeat it until he believes her, “I liked you for a while before that. The only thing that’s changed is that I don’t want to be your friend, I want to be more than that.”

His head dips and presses to her shoulder like it did that night when they pulled the demon out of Will—another thing she doesn’t count as being a benefit for their relationship. When his arms come around her she nudges against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for thinking—I’m sorry,” he stumbles out.

“Can you just tell me next time you feel that?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah I can do that.”

“Do you want me to go to school in New York?” She asks after a moment, knowing it’s unfair, “just—“

“Yes,” he cuts in, “but—“ she stops him this time by pressing her finger to his lips.

“That was yes or no,” she says.

“Yes,” he repeats.

He seems to believe her. If nothing else, he’s more open with being around her at school. Less concerned about what people think about her or them. He’s already professed he doesn’t care what they think about him, but Nancy’s never really believed that. A few days after their conversation she grabs the phone and calls him.

“I got into Columbia!” She cries.

“Congratulations,” he says sincerely.

“I’m going to Columbia,” she says firmly, “I already accepted.”

There’s a beat of silence that lets her wind the phone chord around her waist several times and nearly yank it off the wall before Jonathan clears his throat.

“What are the dorms like there?”

“I don’t know?” She says, “what are they like at NYU?”

“Okay,” he says, “expensive. I’m—planning on living off campus,” he continues, “my cousin has an apartment building off Central Park. I could ask him to look if there’s a two bedroom?”

“Or a one,” she says, “if you don’t snore.”

“Do you?” Jonathan challenges and she wants to dance.

“Would it matter if I did?” She shoots back and he laughs.

“No, I guess not,” he says. “Congrats again on Columbia,” he adds, “and I’m really happy you’re coming to New York.”

“Me too,” she agrees softly, “and that we’ll be living in sin,” she adds, just to get him to laugh again.

“That too,” he says, “hey, uh,” she can practically see him winding the phone chord around himself, “I love you too. I didn’t say it back but—“

“I know,” she says.

“Good.”

They say goodbye shortly afterwards and later, when she’s ready for bed, she’s only mildly surprised to see Jonathan at her window. She lets him in. He’s humming with nervous energy and a part of her wonders if he’s possessed or if there’s a test she’s supposed to do to check. Especially when he shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out a pencil.

“I—I started carrying extras after that day when you asked,” he says, “just in case you ever asked again.”

Nancy can’t quite contain the sound that she makes at the revelation.

“Even when I was—“

“Especially then,” he says.

“So if I need extras?” She asks, stepping closer to him.

“I’m your guy.”

[awed-frog]

How do you approach writing a character in your fics if there isn't much background to them? I'm currently writing a fic about Eileen Leahy (and possibly Lillian O'Grady) and I really want to do her justice. I love Blues run the Game and since you're going to include her I was hoping you could help me with this :) thank you!

Hi! Wow, thanks for the compliments and congrats on writing a fic - we definitely need more Eileen stuff in our lives!

So, that’s a tricky question, but I think that, in a way, writing a character with less background is not that different from writing a character we know a lot about; the main danger, in my opinion, is the tempation to work out a lot of headcanons about that character and then dump them on the reader because we know our audience will be less familiar with, say, Eileen than they are with Dean and we want to fix that at once. Instead, I think it’s better to write your story as if your reader knew just as many things about her as they do about other characters - that’s how you include her: not by pointing out she’s different (ie, by adding unnecessary information about her), but by pretending she’s the same.

And the thing is, we do know enough, as fanfiction writers, to present a convincing Eileen to our readers. We know her parents were killed and she grew up with a tough lady hunter, and we know she’s casual enough about telling this story she must have known the truth for a long time (possibly she knew all along), and that she’s hungry enough for revenge that Lilian must have been at least a bit John-like in her approach to hunting. We know Eileen, like Sam and Dean, was looking for that one specific banshee, had been looking for it for years, but she still decided to hunt other things in the meantime, putting herself in danger for other people. 

(That tells us a lot of the kind of person she is and how she was raised.)

We know she doesn’t have a lot of close friends (or, in any case, no one she mentions to Sam and no one she can ask for help when the BMoL starts hunting her down), but that she’s also good with people, and comfortable about fitting in anywhere. To me, that suggests someone who moved around as a kid, but probably less than the Winchesters, and also someone who had a home to come back to after school, and not a car or a motel. The fact she’s unapologetic and unconcerned about her disability (not that she should be, but you see what I mean) suggests she got to know other people in the deaf community growing up, that she perhaps attended a school with other deaf kids, and was surrounded by people for whom her deafness was not a problem. We know she took care of Lilian when Lilian got sick, but also that there was some distance between them - that Lilian was not so much a mother as she was a caretaker and a teacher - and that’s unusual for a fictional woman, isn’t it, to not bond with an infant, to welcome a newborn into your life and still hunt, and teach the child how to hunt, thereby putting her in danger? I’m thinking Lilian may have been a bit like Mary - someone who felt trapped by what society expected of her, someone who had a lot of love to give but didn’t necessarily know how to do it properly. Despite this, we know she made a good enough job with Eileen that this orphan girl grew up both conscious of how little she mattered in the eyes of others and with enough self-confidence to use it to her advantage (I loved how her behind-the-scenes, I’ll get hired as a cleaning lady hunting methods were contrasted by Sam and Dean’s usual I’m tall and handsome, talk to me behaviour). We know she’s comfortable with herself and her sexuality - she was definitely flirting and dressing up for Sam, and she had no problem joining Mildred in a raunchy discussion about the Winchesters’ hot bodies, but also accepting hugs and physical reassurance when she needed it - this, again, points to a somewhat regular childhood and youth with good role models and possibly a string of nice boyfriends. 

(Considering how at ease Eileen is around men, it’s possible Lilian had a long-term partner, someone Eileen got to know as a sort of father figure but also someone who died early enough in her life that she didn’t think of mentioning him to the Winchesters - or if she did, well, we didn’t hear it.)

At the same time, as level-headed and balanced as she is, I think Eileen, like most people, can be pushed if that’s what your story needs. She was surely subjected to all kinds of rude, dismissive behaviour over the years, both as a hunter lady and as a deaf person, and she’s bound to have resented Lilian over something or other - we know that adopted kids usually go through a You should have left me where I was phase, for instance (I wonder if she ever went back to Ireland, and what she found there). Furthermore, caring for a sick relative and watching them die - whoa - talk about trauma and confronting your own mortality. And, even after she’s finally killed the banshee she’d been looking for for decades, Eileen keeps hunting - keeps moving around - it’s possible, likely, even, she had the problems all women over thirty start to develop - former schoolmates on Facebook getting married and having babies definitely being one of them, if you’re looking for ways to make her uncomfortable with her life and her choices, because a 37-year-old woman travelling by herself, getting odd jobs, perhaps weeks at a time, in small towns plagued by mysterious deaths - I think people would relate to her much differently than they do to Sam and Dean, and there would be some flirting involved - not the Here’s my number, hot stuff kind, but the I’ve got a job, let’s settle down kind, and maybe it’d be harder and harder to turn those offers down, because, you know, why risk your life for strangers day after day when you can marry Park Ranger Tom and finally put your belongings in a closet instead of a duffel bag?

So, you know - we’ve got a lot about her even before we get to the whole Sam thing, but, again - don’t feel like you have to explain to your readers who Eileen is. You could stop and draw up a character sheet for her if it makes you feel better, but what I do is to just decide how I need my characters to feel in a given scene and go from there. Like, you need Eileen to feel unsettled? I think it’s a good bet to place her in a hospital - because a) hospitals are scary and b) Lillian’s bound to have been in and out of hospitals for a couple of years at least - and then go from there. And if you feel like you don’t know her enough, don’t write everything from her POV - get inside Sam’s head instead, and watch events from there. I know it’s scarier to write characters we don’t know all that much about (I feel the same way), but personally what annoys me the most as a reader is the other thing - the information dump - so my advice would be, decide what’s going to happen and why Eileen needs to be a part of it, and then - just write. Don’t think too hard about who she is and everything we don’t know about her. In fact, in a way having only a couple of episodes of canon is a gift, because it means you can introduce stuff you want to talk about for some reason and be convincing about it (Eileen drinking someone under the table, Eileen meeting Jo Harvelle at some gun convention fifteen years ago, Eileen defending Dean’s love for hentai to Sam, because, Come on, he’s not hurting anyone and it’s kind of hot, anyway? - the possibilities are endless). 

Really - deep breaths and have fun. Eileen is a wonderful character, and I’m sure you’ll do great things with her.

[selfharm-recoverylife]

For Self Injury Awareness Day pt. 2

PART 2 of 2 FEEL FREE AND PLEASE DO SHARE THIS POST. EVEN IF YOU DON'T READ THE ENTIRE THING PLEASE PLEASE SHARE. I want to start off by saying that today is SIAD. Self Injury Awareness Day. So, I am writing a really long post that I hope, if you are my friend, family member, or complete stranger, that you will take the time to read and comprehend. (If you want to know my story, go to my page. You can read it there.) I'm also writing this bc I want people to discuss it. SELF HARM IS NOT AND CANNOT CONTINUE TO BE A TABOO SUBJECT. I could go on for awhile on why it's not taboo, but I'll sum it up with this: treating self harm as a taboo subject that should just be hidden away and not discussed can be debilitating to those who deal with it, and if the subject material makes you uncomfortable, that means you're human, but you shouldn't stop discussing it, and you shouldn't treat it like it's poison, or dismiss it like it's nothing. Awareness of this is important, and it MUST be discussed. Over the years, I've heard many people say many different things about people who self harm. I've heard people say that they are attention seekers, freaks, that they are suicidal, that it's a form of teenage rebellion, or something teenagers just do. That we could stop if we wanted, and that we must have some form of traumatic past to self harm. That's only a few of the things I want to touch on in this post. First off, I would like to define what self harm is. Self harm: the act of doing harm to oneself. You'd think that it's self explanatory, but please note, i did not use the word 'cut' in my definition. Many people think that self harm is just about cutting. That that's the only form. It isn't. Self harm can be anything, from cutting, to hair pulling hitting yourself, burning yourself, or many others. I'm making sure to mention this bc many people only look for scars on a self harmer's person, when in reality there are many marks that can be from self harm. The most common name I have heard people call SI people is attention seekers. First, that is the stupidest name in the world to call someone who self harms. People who self harm, GO to extreme lengths to hide what they have done. Long clothes in hot weather, makeup over bruises, scars, burns, or by pulling away so no one has to see it. If they choose to tell you that they are self harming, they aren't attention seeking. They have made the extraordinarily brave decision to trust you. And on that note, if someone tells you they are self harming, it is not your place to be the judge of whether they are or aren't. Regardless of how bad the wounds are, or how long it's been going on, if someone says they are harming, YOU TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. You do not get to tell them that they aren't, or that it's just a teenage thing (which is bs bc many adults self harm too), or anything that makes them feel invalid. There is already a problem of people feeling like their problems aren't bad enough to get them help. DO NOT be one of the reasons someone thinks that. Next, the other most common thing I have heard people say is that people who self harm are suicidal. NOT. TRUE. Some people who self harm might be suicidal, and some might self harm and suicide never crosses their mind. Suicide and self harm ARE NOT linked. Self harm is a coping mechanism, and suicide is the end result, many times, to a mental illness. Sometimes self harming can lead to an accidental death, especially if you cut or burn where a large vein is, like on the inside of your arm. Oh, and just bc a person self harms, doesn't mean, in any way that they had a traumatic past, or are dealing with a mental illness. It could be bc of those reasons, but sometimes it's simply due to stress. I touched on this earlier, but self harm isn't only a teenage thing. True, many people start self harming in their teenage years bc those years are insanely stressful, but it can definitely start later and can easily carry over into a person's adult years. Another thing that I've had some people I know who self harm tell me is that people think that they can stop if they wanted too. Some can. Some can go many days without cutting. Some cut every day. Some cut sporadically. Some cut one time, some cut many. For some, it can become an addiction. To the feeling, the pain, the blood, the stress relief, or when you touch the cuts after the occur and feel the mark left behind. No self harm story is the same for everyone, and each person's is valid, and must be taken as seriously as the next, with no judgement, and same amount of care and treatment. There are also some severe consequences that can come from self harm. Sometimes nerve damage can be caused, sometimes accidental death can occur by cutting or burning by a vein. Many times it's psychological consequences, like trigger words or events, places or people that trigger memories or a severe need to cut or harm yourself to stop remembering other pain. Finally, I'd like to answer a question that I get asked often: Why do people self harm? People self harm for many, many reasons, but I can try and give you some of the ones I know here: self hatred, depression, stress, trauma, abuse, PTSD, anxiety, eating disorders, and various other mental illnesses. Sometimes it's a combination of many, sometimes its one, and sometimes it's none of them, and it's a completely different reason that I didn't say. Finally, how to help. Understand that a person who self harms, especially someone who hasn't told anyone about it, many times is going to deny that they're doing it, and probably continue to hid it better or self harm somewhere else. In this case, keep an eye on them, and if you suspect they are still doing it (they likely are), talk to an adult, or a counselor, or someone you know for a fact can get them help. If they say they will stop or that's it's not that bad, trust your instincts, and still tell someone or get them help. Yes, they might become angry. Unfortunately that is a price you must pay and that they must pay on the road to getting help. It just is. Most people will forgive, and even if they don't, take comfort in knowing that whether they realize it or not, you did help them. If you don't take the above path, although it is the best thing to do, then try and talk to the person. Try and get them to trust you so that they will reach out to you when they feel the urge to harm. Talk to them. Distract them. Tell them you love them, care about them, that they are enough, valid, and that who they are is much more than the cuts or burns or whatever harm they do. Hell, google alternatives for harming and then make sure they do them instead of harming themselves. Some good ones I've found were to draw where you'd usually cut, with a marker or with food coloring, or distract yourself by watching a movie or show, or go and sit with another person or people or get someone to come and sit with them, since many times people don't cut in front of others, or to throw away or get rid of the item they'd cut with, or go beat the crap out of a pillow or a boxing bag, or run, or do anything but sit there and thing about harming. The urge to cut will pass for many of us by then, and we will make it another day without cutting. As a final note, and if you've made it this far on so long of a post, congrats, and please, please, please share this post. Hell, even if you skimmed this, or just skipped to the bottom, please share this. You don't know who is dealing with this, and you never know who it'll help.

[outsidehospital]

Barenaked Cardiology: Episode 8; Step 3=???

MORNING class, I fucked up my dentist apointment so now i have to wait untill my regularly scheduled naptime to go, so here I am in all my over worked and under slept glory, trying to entertain myself, So lets talk about step 3 on our 12 lead interperitation flow chart, QRS problems. 

So, as you know it now, the width of the QRS is how we determine if a rhythm originates in, or above the ventricles. Unfortunately’ I’m about to take all of the simplicity out of that statement. you see in order to call a rhythm ventricular unless its slow and wide as shit (see below) we have to rule out a bunch of other shit. 

(calling this ventricular is a pretty safe bet)

the first of these you talk about in 12 leads are the bundle branch blocks. these can either be a symptom of new damage, age changes, or completely benign in order to really tell you need to compare to an old EKG and since thats practically a miracle if you aren’t the patients cardiologist, we typically cant do that, but since its something on our elimination list, lets take a look. find your nearest EKG and flip to Lead V1, Lets talk about the bundle branch blocks. 

Bundle branch blocks (BBB) can be Left or Right. There are a few criteria for BBBs the QRS must be greater than .12 if I catch you fuckers calling something a BBB with a QRS less than 3 little boxes so help me. DO NOT DO THIS. since we have now determined the QRS is widened. lets look at what it is doing. Is it a V shape pointing only downward? 

CONGRATS its a Left BBB. 

are there TWO R waves? (the second is known as R’)

This is a Right BBB. (NOTE 2 Rs in RRIGHT) 

there are changes in V6 you can look at but I’ve found just looking at V1 to be sufficient since I’m not a fucking cardiologist and Ive got better shit to do and this probably isn’t going to kill someone. 

if your QRS is wider than .19 however THIS IS BAD. you probably have hyperkalemia or some other conduction problem on top of the BBB. also, DO NOT forget to look at the T waves, use all the leads. 

ER doc was quick to dismiss this as a LBBB, however the T waves are tall in V1-3  and there is an upward deflection at the beginning of the QRS in V1 which doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but personally triggers me to be suspicious. this patient was acutely ill and hyperkalemic.   

The other bit of bad news is aberrancy. this is when the pathway of conduction through the ventricles is abnormal and the QRS is wider, and mostly comes into play when we’re trying to differentiate an SVT from a VT. 

If its monomorphic but IRREGULAR its probably AFib with RVR with Aberrancy. if there is no progression of the QRS in the precordial leads (they are all positive or all negative) then its probably VT, same with a far right axis (two thumbs down) theres more, but but sometimes its just going to have to be trial and error to correct and if they’re sick enough just zap em. 

Moving on to Pathologic q waves. a Pathologic q wave can be one of the following. Greater than 1mm/1 small box wide, greater than 2mm/boxes deep, more than 25% the depth of the QRS or any q wave apearing in V1-3 (notice how even in the EKG above the first deflection in V1-3 is positive) I’m not going to go into it too much more because either its an OLD MI or there’s probably something else cluing you in and if it wont kill you I probably don’t care that much. look here if you do though.

If the QRS alters in height (do not confuse with baseline wander) this is electrical alternans and can be a sign of pericardial effusion, especially ominous In trauma or with a rapid onset of symptoms. 

if a widened QRS exits in the presence of abnormally (think outside the space normally allotted for a single lead) tall QRS, this can signify ventricular hypertrophy. again look at V1. mostly down? LVH, Mostly Up(or even equal)? RVH. tall QRS can be a normal variant in kids, and young, thin, athletic types. the QRS may also not be widened much, if any. 

SPECIAL ABNORMALITIES: I’m still working on some of these personally. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and come back to these after you have mastered the basics. 

1. not new but important: the Delta wave in WPW. WPW is a common cause of sudden cardiac death in teens and young adults who have usually never had an EKG before, it is also a common cause of SVT in this same population. The Delta wave is a gentle sluring of the PR segment into the R wave. rather than a sharp point. this represents the alternative pathway in WPW that causes all the problems. 

2. Brugada Syndrome: Brugada syndrome has 3 different pattern types, is especially common in asian males, and is a potential cause of sudden cardiac death. 

of the three “types” of Brugada patern, only type 1 is potentially diagnostic IF correlated to clinical criteria. and you MUST have >2mm STE in >1 lead (v1-3) followed by a negative T wave. (V1 and V2 in the image above)  type 2 and 3 are currently nondiagnostic. Clinical criteria include HX VF/VT, known brugada patern in a family member, history of sudden cardiac death in the family, syncope or noctournal agonal respirations.  Diagnosis warrants ICD placement. REMEMBER this is NOT an EKG exclusive diagnosis, it can “suggest” Brugada, clinical correlation can confirm, but you can not call this ekg alone “Brugada Syndrome”

3. QRS widening with overdose of a calcium channel blocking medication, typically a tricyclic antidepressant, or an antiarrythmic. calcium channel blocking ALSO affects the central nervous system. Seizures and Ventricular dysrhythmia are the most serious presentations. 

EKG changes come in the form of widening QRS, sinus tachycardia, and Right Axis deviation and possibly a RBBB. 

like so. 

Thats all I have for you in this episode but we’re finally starting to make sense of some shit, how does that feel. 

Get on with it. 

[psninjection]

part 1 of the apocalypse that was tonight

me today: feeling a little down and venting to my italian squad about my cinnabar/shinsha player who ghosted me for three months and more before i caught on it, how hurt i am that she didnt feel the need to communicate with me about wanting to not rp anymore and that im still upsetti over it. doesnt insult her and tries to be understanding and even blame myself at some point bc maybe i did something that pushed her away? one of my friends: sam she has literally always been this way since 2016. i think that she just used you for ideas fuel plus she isnt very nice and kinda snobby too. you didnt lose anything me: :(

part 2 but without the convo that lasted like. 15 minutes at worst

idk who snitched the whole chat (might be that weirdly non talkative friend) but out of the blue my shinsha player contacted me like a fury over twt. rough transcription

her: oh my GOD you're such a fucking child. i dropped you because youre immature and require a FUCKTON of attentions to feel like youre liked THIS IS WHY I BROKE OUR RP AGREEMENT!!!!!!!! AND INSTEAD OF COMING TO ME ABT IT YOU WENT AND INSULTED ME WOW SAM YOURE SO FUCKING MATURE. congrats! me: i tried to communicate with you for THREE MONTHS dude. i kept sending you at least a message or two every week when i noticed that you werent up for chatting because i was worried about you and wanted to let you know that i was thinking about you. you didnt responded to a single one of my messages while you were online chatting with other people extensively on twt, so before you try to say that you were ''burned out'' on ''social interactions'' consider this: i dont believe you. im ok with not talking for three months if you give me a proper reason for you to not do so and help me work around my raging paranoia that whatever i do in any way is wrong and distances people. you just had to literally type less than three words to me, but instead you literally talked to everyone else around you because i'm only good for roleplaying and ONLY when you got the moooooosseeee for shinsha. otherwise, you completely ignore ALL of my other ideas until you feel like responding. and hey, you dont have an obligation to do that, but the fact that you had no problem leaving me behind but the second you got snitched that i was insulting you (i wasnt, but go off) you sprung to contact me immediately. you ghosted me because i was not interesting to you anymore. you no longer had a purpose or interest in me. you didnt have to cut me off completely but did it anyway for ??????????? reasons, instead of addressing the hypotetical elephant in the room and discussing with me if you had a problem, your pratical solution was to just dismiss me. you know i have trauma over this shit, but you did it because youre fundamentally a selfish person and you dont consider anyone a friend. you use people for your purpose and then leave them behind, but the second they try to express how hurt they are over what you did to them you spring into action to silence and intimidate them instead of apologizing and growing. you are a shit person. now fuck off her: [blocks me and proceeds to shittalk me on her private twt for the rest of the night]

so i had, as you may have read, a fun time!