#drawing is worth my time anymore which hurts a lot

[pipcoded]

gayass

[perlelune]

no body, no crime | Coriolanus Snow | iii.

Your childhood friend returns from his exile in district 12, but he's not the sweet, quiet boy you once knew anymore.

Warnings: NON-CON, Plinth!Reader, Gaslighting, Drugging, Murder, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Loss of Virginity, Somnophilia

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

After a few weeks, you’re forced to acknowledge you were wrong about Coriolanus.

His mere presence assuages your hurt, and none of his actions bear a hint of impropriety.

He’s simply being a friend, comforting you and supporting you in a time of need.

His visits grow more frequent. 

You’re amazed he even finds time between the University and his apprenticeship with Dr. Gaul. Still, Coryo never misses tea time with you, sometimes even bringing books and sweets. You’re thankful for the time he spends doting on you, even if you hate keeping him from his studies. You know how eager to succeed he’s always been. 

But you can’t deny you missed the feeling of having a brother, of having this person who cares for you, looks out for you and protects you unconditionally. 

And while you’re aware Coriolanus isn’t your actual brother, having him besides you helps alleviate the weight of grief and loneliness. Being with him makes you feel closer to Janus. You’re also solaced by the knowledge it’s what your departed brother would have wanted.

There is one person however who isn’t too keen on the rekindled bond between you and Coriolanus Snow.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with him,” William notes, tracing the lines in your palm.

You’re both lying on the couch in the sunroom, your back against William’s chest, fingers interlaced with his. Sunlight spills from the stained glass in the ceiling, painting your fiancé’s brown curls in bronze hues. 

This is a moment of tranquility you’ve longed for, a sliver of calm amidst the storm and chaos wedding planning has turned out to be. You reckoned it’d be easier than it has been. Instead, it seems nothing ever goes right. Between incidents with the cake, your wedding dress somehow being lost by the store, and the venue perpetually being booked…you’ve grown disheartened and exhausted by the entire process.

It’s almost like some higher force is trying to prevent you marrying William. It’s ludicrous, of course. But the ceaseless string of bad luck is beginning to drain your hope that your wedding will happen before the year ends. 

You and William even had to push back the date. There was no choice as hurdles kept emerging.

So you bask in your fiancé’s presence, soaking his warmth and familiar smell, reminding yourself why you’re going through so much trouble. Marrying William is worth it.

“Yeah. He’s my friend,” you state casually. 

“Your friend. Baby…” There’s a brief pause during which William appears deep in thought. When he speaks again, it’s with a softer tone. “At the risk of sounding jealous, the way he’s looking at you…are you sure that he knows that?”

His words make you sit up straight. 

“William,” you admonish, taken aback by his preposterous insinuation. 

Coriolanus’ a gentleman. He hasn’t made any moves towards you and he wouldn’t. Sejanus trusted him and you trust him too.

Scratching the back of his neck, he sighs.

“I’m just saying. We’re getting married soon, and everything’s been so…tumultuous. I just want to make sure that you won’t…”

You search his forest gaze. Shock fills you at the doubts you find lurking there.

“That I won’t what?” You give a light punch to his chest. “Get cold feet? William, are you mad?”

His shoulders slump. “I know your parents wish I was from a great house like him.”

William looks away and you put your hands on his face, drawing his focus back to you.

“It doesn’t matter what my parents think. I love you.”

He smiles, that beautiful sunny smile that blows a warm breeze through your chest every time.

He grabs your hands and kisses them.

“I love you too, sweet girl.”

“William, you’re good and kind and caring. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.” You hold his eyes. “He’s just a friend, I promise you. You…You’re my future.”

William studies you, love and devotion illuminating his features. His lips then collide with yours. He nudges you down on the plush beige upholstery, humming low in his throat.

When his hands find their way below your skirt, you push against his chest.

He immediately stops.

Your hot, rapid exhales mingle as you steady your breath. 

“You know I’d rather we wait for our wedding night,” you mutter apologetically. It’s not the first time things got hot and heavy between you and William and you slowed them down. You know how frustrating it has to be for him and you commend his patience. “ I know it’s old-fashioned but I…”

He quiets you with a tender kiss on the forehead.

“No, it’s okay,” he says, holding hands with you. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I got carried away.” Pink dusts his cheeks as he adds, “You just smell so good and you’re so beautiful.”

A smile breaks across your face. “You’re not too bad yourself, pretty boy.”

He tilts his head and laughs. 

“How am I supposed to keep my hands to myself when you talk to me like that?” He bites his lip, his lids dipping to half-mast. “Can I at least get another kiss?” he whispers suavely.

“Hm, we’ll see about that…” you mumble, closing your own eyes.

“Apologies, hope I’m not  interrupting anything?”

Coriolanus’ sharp inflection shatters the spell, making you leap away from William.

Heat nestles in your cheeks as you rise to your feet, hastily smoothing the wrinkles in your dress. Your fiancé clears his throat and runs a hand through his tousled locks.

“No, we’re…William was leaving,” you stammer, struggling to meet Coriolanus’ stark blue gaze.

William’s brows squeeze together at that. But you shoot him a glare that pulls a deep sigh from him. He nods and pulls you to him one more time. 

He kisses you but you note it lasts much longer than usual, his fingers curling around your waist possessively.

Embarrassment flares inside you that this is happening right in front of your friend.

When he releases you, you’re breathless.

“Coriolanus,” William greets stiffly as he brushes past the blond.

“William,”Coriolanus replies, his tone somehow icier.

Once your fiancé has left, a weary exhale floats from your mouth.

“I don’t understand why you two can’t just get along. You both matter to me.”

Coriolanus smirks. “Oh, princess. You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?” you inquire, blinking up at him curiously.

His tight-lipped smile expands as he gauges you. 

“Nothing.”

You scrunch your nose, displeased by his answer. He’s always so cryptic. A chuckle peels from his lips at your sour expression. His knuckles sweep over your cheek.

“There should never be a frown on such a pretty face.” He digs inside his satchel before retrieving a slim, leather-bound book. He places it in your hands as you gape at him, puzzled.

“Here, I brought you this. This will cheer you up.”

You examine the book. Surprise mingles with elation when you notice the words on the cover. The engraved letters spell out a familiar title. It’s one of your favorite books from when you were younger. It bewilders you that he even remembers. As if no time has passed.

“Oh my god! How did you…” An excited squeal leaves you. Then your voice lulls to a whisper. “It’s a first edition, Coryo.”

“It was printed and bound before the war,” he explains. “It wasn’t easy to dig up.”

Your brows rise. “An antique. You shouldn’t have.” You cradle the book against your chest. “You’re too good to me.”

His mouth quirks lopsidedly.

“Anything for you, princess.”

You both sit down for tea, cakes and macaroons. Time flies as you chat about everything and nothing with your friend. As always, you do most of the talking as he dutifully listens, only interjecting to ask you to elaborate on a particular point. 

No matter what you jabber on about, his interest never appears to wane.

You eventually land on the matter of your wedding planning. You share all the troubles you and William have had and Coriolanus hums in response.

“I’m very sorry to hear that.” He sips from his cup of Earl Grey. “How…unfortunate.” 

He then pauses, seeming to ponder something. “I have a proposition.”

Your brow arches in question.

“Clemmie is throwing a party tonight. Let me take you, get your mind off of all this.”

Your lips part. Clemensia? A party? None of it sounds enticing to you.

“I’m not sure…” you trail off, your eyes finding the floor.

“What better way to cheer you up than a party, princess?” Coriolanus’ voice mellows as he adds, “You can’t stay cooped up here forever.”

Words falter on your tongue as your eyes swell with unshed tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, concern oozing from his gentle tone.

You shake your head.

“You’re crying,” he insists, reaching over the table to lift your chin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says sternly. “Talk to me.”

His unwavering  inflection nudges you to admit, “I’m just scared.”

“What are you scared of, princess?”

You suck in a shaky breath.

“Every part of this house, every nook and cranny carries a memory I have with Janus.” You glance about the sunroom. Here alone you can count so many hiding spots from games you and your brother played when you were kids. “It’s easy, keeping him close here. It’s just that…”

“You’re scared to move on,” Coriolanus finishes for you. His thumb glides over your cheek, collecting a tear you didn’t realize had spilled over. “But you have to.”

“Sejanus wouldn’t want you to wilt away in this house like one of your roses.”

You mull over his words. You suppose he’s right but you’re still not convinced. Parties like the kind Clemensia is fond of hosting aren’t exactly your scene. 

A lame excuse flows from your lips.

“I don’t even know what to wear.”

“Then I’ll choose for you,” he replies without hesitation.

“What?”

“Let’s go to your room.”

Before you can protest, he seizes your hand and drags you upstairs.

“Wait, Coryo…”

He ignores you, making his way to your room with brisk strides you can barely maintain pace with. Once he’s there, he rummages through your closet. You let him do it, half-skeptical, half-jaded. Most of these garments weren’t picked by you anyway, but by your mother based on whatever fashion trend raged in the Capitol at the time. And those trends change every other season. You since long gave up on trying to keep abreast of them.

“Hm, this one is perfect,” he announces, drawing a red number from the closet.

You gape at the dress he chose. It’s a slip satin dress the color of blood. The waist is cinched with a thin belt and the lace sleeves, adorned with embroidered flowers, flow elegantly.

It’s beautiful, radiating a timeless elegance…but the neckline is low, displaying more cleavage than you’re used to. 

Your cheeks warm. “Are you sure?”

“Just trust me. Try it.”

Your eyes bulge but you relent, something about his tone curbing your impulse to argue. “Okay,” you quaver.

Trying not to squirm beneath his intense stare, you grab the dress from him and slip behind the wooden divider screen.

Chewing on your lip, you peek above the folding screen.

“Maybe you could…get out while I change?” you suggest while fumbling with the lace strings of your day dress.

Coriolanus casually sits on your bed, his crimson coat pooling around him. He leans back and spreads his large hands over your bed sheets. A small smile dances along his pink lips.

“I won’t look, I promise. Don’t you trust me, princess?”

“I do but…”

“But what?” he challenges, cocking his head in question.

Stumped, you come up short of a decent answer. “Nothing,” you mumble.

You shed your clothes quickly to try on the red dress. The whole time, you can feel the weight of Coriolanus’ unnerving scrutiny on the other side of the wooden screen.

He gives you a sluggish onceover when you step out from behind the screen. Your skin prickles as you shake.

“Hm nice, twirl for me.”

His blue eyes sparkle when you do as he says. He gets to his feet. He slowly strolls towards you.

Once he’s in front of you, he also arranges a few wisps of your hair in a way that he likes.

“Gorgeous,” he lauds when he’s done. 

He tilts your chin up, his gaze corralling yours.

“See? All you have to do is to trust me, princess.” His deep voice dips to dulcet tones. “Just trust me and, I promise you, everything will work out exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

“You came,” Coriolanus points out, that signature smirk of his adorning his lips.

“I promised I would,” you defend.

He snorts. “I’m glad. Saves me the trouble of having to drag you here myself, princess.”

Nervous laughter peals from your lips at his strange joke and the intent way his eyes rest on you. For a while, he doesn’t say anything, drinking in the sight of you in the crimson dress. The very same one he picked himself.

He then loops your arm around his, bending near your ear to whisper,

“Let's re-introduce you to everyone.”

You look around yourself, curious as you’ve never been to Clemensia’s house. The atmosphere is more intimate than you expected. The only source of dim light in the Dovecote’s sumptuous living room emanates from candelabras scattered all about, the wobbly candlelight casting twisting shadows over the damask walls. The crackle of the logs burning in the gigantic fireplace mingles with the soft piano tune filling the living room. 

“Coriolanus, did you bring a ghost to my party?” Clemensia jests when she sees you. Her expression then turns serious as she studies you. To your utter surprise, she wraps her arms around you and hugs you. You freeze, too stunned to return the gesture. The two of you were never close, the opposite in fact. It all stemmed from the way she and her friends ostracized you and your brother in school. Maybe it’s all water under the bridge now that you’re older. “Oh, you poor thing,” she laments. “I’m here for whatever you need, okay?”

You nod stiffly. “O-Okay.”

Coriolanus hardly conceals his amusement at the interaction, mirth swaying in his cobalt orbs. 

He and Clemensia keep introducing you to people. Some you recognize; some you don’t. 

It makes you realize how much you missed. 

After a while, faces blend into each other. You end up nodding and smiling to most of the small talk, your attention span dwindling by the minute.

Eventually, you decide to retreat to the bar to take a break. The barkeep nudges a drink your way and you thank him quietly. You swirl it in your hand, your thoughts drifting. Maybe this is what a return to normalcy must feel like. Slightly strange and overwhelming.

You gasp as Coriolanus appears at your side. “Are you alright, princess? Too much?”

Your startled reaction draws a chuckle from him.

A slow exhale drops from your chest. 

“A little,” you confess. “But…I’m glad you took me. A change of scenery is nice.”

It occurs to you that you haven’t had time to wallow in your sadness, too caught in conversation with other people. However frivolous the topics, it did keep your mind off of things. No thoughts of dead brothers have crossed your mind tonight.

It might not be much but it’s a start, you suppose.

Coriolanus’ brow curves teasingly. “See? This is why you should trust me.”

“Don’t push it, Snow. You’re on thin ice.”

A laugh bursts from his chest but, as he peers down at your drink, all humor vanishes from his face. He swipes it from you and sniffs it. 

“Hm, what’s wrong?”

A frown puckers his forehead. 

“Who served you this drink?” he rumbles.

You shrug. “I don’t know. It was just…brought to me.”

“There’s something in it.”

“What?” Ice spills in your veins. “Oh my god.”

Your mind whirls as you peek at your surroundings, paranoia creeping in. You wonder who could have done this and why. Just to mess with you? Or maybe even worse…

Your gut sinks. Thank god Coryo put a stop to whatever awful thing could have happened to you.

He puts his hand on your arm reassuringly. “I’ll bring you a clean one.”

“T-Thanks,” you stutter. “Just nothing with alcohol in it, please.”

“Of course.”

He returns with a brand new drink in a jiffy. 

“Thanks for looking out for me,” you beam before taking a sip. You were starting to get a little parched.

“Always, princess.” He grins at you while you take another sip.

A wave of queasiness suddenly hits you. 

The room starts to spin around you, blurring into crooked shapes and colors. You try to stand but your knees buckle instantly.

If it weren’t for Coriolanus swiftly catching you you’d be a heap on the floor.

“Coryo…I’m not feeling so good,” you slur, struggling to speak. Cotton seems to fill your mouth, the mere act of forming words demanding great effort.

“It’s okay, lean on me,” he says, slipping his arm around your waist.

“Head…heavy.”

“You’re alright. Just hold on to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good girl.”

In a daze, you stagger along as he escorts you through a series of hallways and up a flight of stairs. You grow so weak that you slump against him. With ease, Coriolanus hoists you in his arms, carrying you bridal style the rest of the way.

You fall onto something heavenly soft that sinks under your weight. Like fluffy clouds. 

Your thoughts collapse, muddy and haphazard as you blink up at the ceiling. An antique chandelier hangs from it.

“You just need a little bit of rest.”

Coriolanus’s voice is warped, disembodied almost.

“Rest…” you echo.

But as soon as your eyes begin to close, the feeling of your dress hiking upwards tugs you back to consciousness. 

Befuddled, you look down. You’re welcomed by the sight of Coriolanus wedged between your parted legs, hands clasped around your thighs. His waistcoat and white blouse are gone, exposing his pale, broad chest. 

“Coryo, what is happening-”

His soft lips cover yours, stifling your protests. His tall frame pins yours to the bed. He purrs against your lips, framing your jaw when you feebly pivot your head to the side. 

When his lips free yours, your mouth still tingles with the forcefulness of his bruising kiss. 

He returns to the space between your thighs. 

You lie back, your bones like jelly, as you feel the delicate material of your panties sliding down your legs. 

Your brows twitch. “Coryo…”

His blue eyes glow strangely in the darkness. A chill slithers through your core. 

“Shh, don’t worry about it, princess, just sleep.”

You want to move. You feel you have to. But you can’t. 

“I…”

The syllable dies in a sharp gasp as Coriolanus’ cool tongue drags down your slit. Long fingers spreading you open, he traces wet circles around your bundle of nerves. He rasps against your center and the vibrations rock through your core. Your breath hitches. Your chest tightens. Heat builds in your stomach as he makes you dangle off the cliff of pleasure. He soon adds a finger and you cry out.

Coriolanus pumps in and out of you, gauging your expression as he grazes a particular spot that has your toes flexing. You writhe over the sheets, eyes blindly rising to the ceiling. 

You clench around his finger, your cunt clinging to him reflexively.

He sinks a second digit inside you and you whine, back arching at the abrupt stretch.

Short, chaotic breaths rush through your lungs as he works you open. His slow, meticulous drags have your chest rising and falling rapidly. 

Your legs quake as the coils in your belly grow unbearably tight and hot.

He stops as you’re on the cusp of your undoing. Your boneless frame sags onto the sheets.

He leans back and you hear the rustle of his pants coming undone. You get a faint sense of wrong trying to pierce through the haziness, but you can’t grasp at it.

Still, your fingers stretch towards the edge of the bed, your body rolling to the side. The meek attempt is interrupted as Coriolanus yanks you back onto the sheets, snatching your wrists and pinning them above your head. His frame drapes over yours. The scent of roses coats your senses.

“We’re not done, princess,” he murmurs, his warm breath caressing your face.

A painful pressure starts prodding your entrance. He grunts, hovering above you as he pushes past your tight ring of muscles. 

You feel as if you’ll tear as more of him buries inside you. Every second is agony, your core burning at the blunt intrusion.

A sigh of pleasure floats from his mouth when he reaches the hilt of you. He stays there a while, seeming to bask in the feeling of you around him. 

When he starts to move, your eyes flutter open. He sets a steady pace right away, thrusting inside you as if his life depended on it. Wordless screams rip from your throat. He releases your wrists, his long fingers latching onto your waist instead. 

Each of his slow, deep thrusts sparks warm tingles through your body.

Sweat collects between his brows as he grunts in pleasure.

“I knew you’d feel just perfect around me,” he rasps, delighted. 

His cadence quickens, his hand digging bruising grooves over your hip. Choked moans spill from your throat. His other hand crawls beneath the thin satin of your dress, fondling your breast and flicking your pebbled nipple. His hands feel everywhere at once and that sense of wrong rolls over you again.

“Ever since I saw you in this dress, I’ve been dying to fuck you in it,” he confesses, lust bleeding in his fevered tone. 

The mattress squeaks as he relentlessly rams into you.

A uniquely sharp thrust has your slick walls tighten around him. His cock stirs, a throaty moan pouring from his chest.

The repeated friction against your soft spots has you seeing stars.

A feral glint bounces in his blue eyes as he admires your panting form, lost in the throes of pleasure. Strangled shouts escape you as another wave of pleasure crashes over your frame.

His pace slows, sloppier than before as his cock twitches between your walls. His eyes roll back as he sighs, tension draining from his muscular frame. Hot ropes spill inside you, overflowing until you feel the warmth dripping along your thighs.

Your mouth wobbles, silent tears streaming down your face.

Coriolanus cradles your face, kissing away each of your tears with tender brushes of his lips.

“Shh, don’t cry,’ he mumbles. “It’s okay, princess. I’ve got you.” His cock stiffens inside you once more. He lifts you and snaps his hips viciously into yours, drawing a broken whimper as he bottoms out. A lopsided smile blooms on his lips when he begins to move inside you. Helplessly, you lie back as he takes you again.

“I’ve got you, and I’m not letting you go.”

[lazypapers]

do you have any HCs about how Arthur reacted to John being distant to Abigail when Jack was born? /how Arthur reacted when John showed up after a year

Oh definitely, my HC is similar to Roger Clark (the actor for Arthur). I think Arthur resented John for being distant and leaving her and his baby for a year. I imagine a couple years before Jack was born that's when he lost Isaac and that tragedy never left him and deeply effected him. He hated John for running away and taking things for granted from the very thing Arthur always sought and wanted. So when John returns, Arthur is just livid and their relationship is broken.

Arthur seemed like a character who wanted to be loved and belong in a family. He tried that with Mary, but I felt like Mary toyed with his feelings in the most wishy washy way (I get it. Like what future would you have with an outlaw). Obviously Eliza was a rebound from him breaking up with Mary. And that one night stand led to the conception of Isaac. He still chose to stay with Dutch's gang cause that was his family and he wasn't gonna stay with a girl he barely knew and didn't love. He probably tried to bring her along but she most likely didn't want to. I have this headcanon that their relationship was getting better and had potential to work. Arthur would have wanted to stay with them more often as his son got older with each visit. I would say maybe his son was like 4-5 years old the last time he saw him (since it's hinted in the game he taught a little boy fishing during the Jack fishing mission). However, this is when Dutch would manipulate Arthur severely.

He likely pressured Arthur to choose his loyalty to him and the gang over Arthur's son and Eliza. Think about it. When Hosea left to make a life with Bessie, Dutch got really messed up about it. Which explains his disgruntlement with John's loyalty and Abigail. For a bit he lost his family unit and control. He wasn't going to lose Arthur through the same thing. So he starts tightening that leash around Arthur through his low self-esteem and self-worth. He didn't want to lose his best dog. Definitely a red flag, that a lot of the gang members felt obligated that they owed Dutch just because he saved their asses (weird savior complex going on there 😬🙄).

As for why, he didn't seem all that bothered that John left. Maybe he kind of learned from his mistake with Arthur. Under his manipulation, Arthur completely broke when Isaac died (I feel like Arthur never fully recovered from that and Dutch noticed that he wasn't the "same" anymore). So not wanting to break his 2nd Golden Boy he loosened the leash. I'm pretty sure Dutch cared deeply about Arthur and John, and he isn't this evil selfish guy the way I'm describing him. That would be later in RDR1 😆, Dutch is complete bonkers in 1911. He is just incredibly flawed and super weird and a messed up way of showing he cares in 1899 prior.

Anyways I want to draw a storyline focused on the year John left and returned in the Golden Hour. Since the Golden Hour comics are basically about the close bond and eventual collapse of the gang. It would be fun to explore that part of the era of the gang. But once my wrist stops hurting and I have more time. All I can do is talk about it instead of drawing it.

[tigergirltail]

TIGER HRT CHAPTER 5 - MONTH 4 - COMMUNITY

FIRST - PREV - NEXT

It took another month after my check-in, after starting the correct dosage, for my transformation to stabilize and stop hurting all the time. My bones have settled down, my tail is getting long enough to get in the way which is honestly more exciting than annoying, and I've even got little bitty claws pushing out of my fingers! The mechanisms for retracting and extending them haven't grown yet, though, so I just… am sharp now.

It's actually become kind of a bloody inconvenience, and I use the term 'bloody' very literally. The first few times I went to go scratch an itch, I'd end up drawing blood, and having to go clean myself up and put on a bandage. I thought about clipping my claws, but I have no idea if that's going to stunt their development or have consequences when I can finally retract them, and it's not something that seems worth bothering Dr. Erian about. The biggest problem is that sometimes I'll move my arms in my sleep, and there's no way of telling what'll be in the way. I've already had to conduct emergency repairs on three plushies, and my bedsheets are kind of a write-off.

I was a little afraid of the pain subsiding, if I'm being honest, because it means going back to work, which means existing in a public space with my half-human half-something-else face. It's still cold enough that I can wear a scarf and toque over the more off-putting features, but that won't last much longer and it's not something I can do indoors. I'm just going to have to face the truth…

I don't pass as human anymore.

My first day working in-person again, my supervisor walks into my office with the intention of welcoming me back, but what actually happens is he stands in the doorway dumbfounded before asking, "Now what in the world happened to your face??"

For all the time I had, I never actually managed to think of a clever lie, so I just tell him it's a side effect of some new meds I'm taking. Technically not a lie, if you ignore the word 'side'. Fortunately, he doesn't ask what's wrong with me. I'm not looking forward to having to tell someone who doesn't get it that Being Human counts as Something Wrong.

Work has been alright, though, if a bit dull. My coworkers mostly leave me to my own devices to get things done.

It's doing anything else that becomes an issue.

I get lots of stares in the grocery store or the mall. I'm not sure whether it's the inhuman face that does it, or the fact that I nearly always wear t-shirts and my fur is now growing up to my wrists. I think it's growing faster now that it's run up against peak arm hair territory. Either way, I basically don't dare set foot outside without my partner in tow. Nobody's tried anything yet, but I see them shying away from me, and just the other day a little kid called me a 'monster'. It's… still eating at me.

I never could take being the centre of attention.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. I don't know whether the tactile senses of my hands have changed or it's something psychological, but that thing cats do where they knead something with their claws? "Making biscuits" I've heard it called?

It feels soooo niiiice.

Last weekend I went to take an afternoon nap, and ended up spending a solid half hour just squishing my blahaj with my hands (or would that be 'paws' now?) All the stress from the previous week just… melted away. It was like an ASMR video for my sense of touch.

Is it bad that I'm really enjoying being a little more cat-brained?

I've also become RAVENOUSLY hungry. As in, "destroy an entire rotisserie chicken in one sitting" hungry. The meat cravings have kicked in, HARD, and I've basically lost my appetite for bread and pasta. You really don't realize how much human food is grain-based until you stop wanting to eat it…

All the big changes hitting at once are getting hard to withstand sometimes. There are nights when I go to bed absolutely euphoric about how it's finally happening, I'm finally embodying everything I'm supposed to be! But there are also nights when I cry myself to sleep because oh gods, what was I thinking, why am I doing this to myself, I look and feel like a godsdamned circus freak, and it really doesn't help to remember that white tigers are pretty much universally victims of inbreeding and abuse.

In a moment of weakness, I catch myself eyeing the remaining contents of the HRT bottle. I ran some numbers a little while back and figured out that at the recommended dose, this bottle is an entire 18-month treatment, give or take. Well, 12 months now, I guess, since I was accidentally taking a triple dose for the first three months. The fact that it's a diluted Fifteen Minute formula means that if I just brace myself and chug the entire rest of the bottle, that would finish out the treatment in one go, wouldn't it? It… probably wouldn't even hurt as much as doing Fifteen-Minute from the start, right?

My partner walks in on me holding it and staring at it, and asks what I'm doing, so I explain my thought process. They just silently put one hand on mine and use the other to gently remove the bottle from my grasp.

"But I -", I begin to protest.

"No."

"I keep getting stared at and -"

"No."

"That one little girl called me a monster!"

"No."

I start crying, and I can't help raising my voice. "If I just finish it all NOW then maybe -"

"NO."

They set the bottle down and pull me into a tight hug, pinning my upper arms to my sides. "I love you very much, and I don't want to see you hurt yourself. You went into this knowing it was gonna suck for a while, and right now it sucks, but it's not worth risking your life over."

I don't have a counter-argument. I just lower my face onto their shoulder and sob. "I just… I don't want to keep doing this alone anymore! I need… I need help! Support, guidance, SOMETHING!!" I cling to them, digging my fingers, my claws, into their back. "I don't want to be the only one…"

"You aren't.", they reassure me quietly. "Didn't you tell me yourself that there's a bunch of people doing this? We even saw a whole crowd of them at that seafood place."

"Y-yeah, but I don't know anybody local!"

"Then find them online. It's better than nothing, isn't it?"

"It's… It's just not the same…"

They pat me on the back. "Just… try. For me."

They let me cry into their shoulder for another several minutes before I let them go.

Back at my computer, I sit down and start searching for a humanity removal therapy support group. A Discord server, a Facebook group, a Tumblr sideblog, ANYTHING. Gods help me, I'm even looking to TWITTER for help. Even as a human I was a solitary creature, and tigers are about as solitary a creature as they come, so it takes a lot of effort to bring myself to reach out. I end up doing it right before I go to bed, just firing off a few quick messages to some figures in the community, then forcing myself not to look at social media the rest of the night. For all my growth, I'm still a bit terrified of being noticed.

By the time I wake up, some of them have gotten back to me. I… wasn't expecting it to be so fast.

It turns out there's a private group chat where a bunch of them hang out on the regular to talk about what they're going through. They sound open to the idea of bringing me in, but want to get to know me a little better first. I don't blame them for wanting to keep to themselves. I get to talking with one of them, a lamia-to-be, and through our conversations I get the distinct impression that, well, I'm not alone in feeling alone. Somehow I manage to convince her I'm worth knowing and having around, and she sends me an invite to the group chat server.

Time to face the mortifying ordeal of being known.

I go through all the typical new-to-the-server motions. I read the rules page - it's the usual "don't be a dick" type stuff, with some bonus content applicable to our unique situation, like not stereotyping based on species, and a reminder to not present your own experiences with humanity removal as universal fact. Then into the welcome channel to type up a quick introduction:

"Hey all, I'm Alexis, transfem (she/her), 38, 4 months white tiger HRT. Interests include gaming, tabletop RPGs, costuming, and witchcraft. Looking forward to getting to know everyone!"

A few people react with heart emojis and tiger emojis. Discord only has the standard orange tiger as an emoji, but, you know, close enough. One person reacts with a witch emoji, and it gives me a laugh.

There's a channel for serious questions about the transformation process, so I decide to hop in and fire off a quick one:

"Not that I mind this, but why am I so hungry for meat now? It hit around the 3 month mark and now I can eat an entire roast chicken in one go"

Over the course of the next hour or so, a few people weigh in. The consensus is that my body is entering a 'bulking up' phase, and needs a ton of protein to generate muscle. Just out of curiosity I go to do an online search to confirm something, and yeah, tigers are a lot more proportionally muscular than humans are. Someone else suggests taking calcium supplements to help with bone growth, unless I'm prepared to drink a LOT of milk. I am in fact prepared for that, but it couldn't hurt to drop by the pharmacy.

It also turns out that the server isn't just for people who have started their HRT, but for aspiring humanity-removers as well. There's even a channel specifically for advice navigating the whole process, including how to convince your medical provider that you're for real and you won't immediately regret it when the itching/soreness/bleeding kicks in.

One of the regular posters is a teenage girl with a corvid avatar who asks a lot of questions about what it's like to become nonhuman. Surprisingly, she's not trans like most of us are, but she is queer. It sounds like she's not in a stable situation, though - she asks at one point if anyone can think of a way to get the meds without her parents noticing.

The problem is, even if that's a possibility, someone would notice when she starts sprouting black feathers and a beak.

---

(guest cameo from @ariathelamia!)

[maxwellatoms]

Would you trust ANY Korean studio for hand-drawn animation today? I ask because, when The Powerpuff Girls came back in 2016, I noticed how slow and stiff the Korean animation was. Since then, most Burbank cartoons animated in Korea, namely Cartoon Network shows, have been like that — mostly on 2s & with less inbetweening. Look at any Digital eMation episode of Victor and Valentino or Samurai Jack Season 5; do they animate as loosely and smoothly as Digital eMation episodes of Billy & Mandy do?

Sure I would. It would all depend on the studio and the circumstances. There are good studios and bad studios, and either of those will treat your show differently based on their perception of how valuable it is to their client. In the early 2000s Rough Draft was a top-notch studio. One of the reasons I switched over to eMation from Rough Draft was that I felt like Rough Draft was putting all of its resources into making Samurai Jack look beautiful, and we were still calling retakes on three year old issues. I knew we weren't a priority to Rough Draft, and I knew that stemmed from Cartoon Network's negotiations with them, so my griping was only going to get us so far. It seemed to me that I needed a studio that was smaller and scrappier like we were. We were putting in a lot of work on our end to make cool stuff and it wasn't ending up on the screen, so we needed people who were just as hungry on the back-end, and eMation stepped up.

There's also the fact, though, that animation itself has changed a lot in the last fifteen years. Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack's animation always seemed to have an air of "motion comics" to it. And frankly, that's part of what I love about it. It was all a throwback to the old UPA cartoons, which were built on strong, clear poses and made for the cost equivalent of a turkey dinner. Likewise, CN storyboard artists usually had around four weeks to write and draw their boards on paper, so there just wasn't time to take the effort to do anything too complex. It was all about snapping between those 300-ish storyboard drawings and momentarily savoring them for their humor and design mastery. Now we have tons of digital tools that make the basics of animation a lot more accessible to everyone, and have changed the entire studio pipeline. Things just won't look like they used to because nobody makes them that way anymore.

When I've had to choose an overseas animation studio, the network's production arm usually gives me one or three choices and tells me that's all there is. Deals have already been made. (Sometimes they make you pick two to save on costs, which (IMO) usually results in two studios that are less functional than any one of them would have been.) The studios usually have reels, so that gives you a basic idea of what they can do. You can (hopefully) find some other show creators who have worked with the studios and get an honest review. It's an important enough decision that it's worth whatever research you can put into it. Even over good bones, an ill-fitting skin can ruin the mood.

The most important thing to remember, I think, is that it's your job and your crew's job to make animating the show as easy as possible. Really, it's everyone's job to make the next person in line's job as simple as they can. Ideally, there shouldn't be a lot of questions because the materials you sent down the chain are clear.

So... yeah. I'd still trust Korean studios as much as I'd trust any overseas or domestic animation studio. You get out of them what you put into them by feeding them money and your own labor. It's quite possible that the shows you mentioned didn't do enough of either.

I imagine the overseas studios are hurting right now, so who knows what that landscape is even going to look like in a few years.

As with every step of the process making a TV show, you just sort of have to weigh your options and find the path.

Hmm. That got long.

[lucy90712]

Can you do something like comforting Jude after losing the league

WC: 2.0k

It's been an up and down season but it has all come down to the last game. For Dortmund to win the title they really need to win this game as otherwise it's out of their hands. I believe in the team but I must admit I'm quite nervous for the game as it's a lot of pressure and Bayern always seem to pull out results when they need them. As much as I'm nervous I've been trying to keep those feelings suppressed and seem calm on the outside as I know Jude is way more nervous than I am and I want to try and keep him as calm as possible. All day he's been pacing around the house completely in his own world which I understand but I wish he would just sit down and talk to me so I can maybe help calm him down. 

Jude so desperately wants the team to win the title as it would mean so much to the club and he would love to win with them before moving on to another team. Knowing that he's injured and can't play I don't think is helping as he's just going to have to watch everything from the bench hoping the team can do it without him. It's the worst possible time for Jude to be out and I know he's beating himself up over it as he's been playing while not fully fit and that's put him out at a vital point of the season. Jude has been so important for the team this year but they can do it without him and they will have to. 

He left before me to get to the stadium early with the team like always but I too left early as I couldn't bare to sit around at home anymore and I wanted to see Jude before the game kicked off. When I arrived I made it in easily as the security know who I am so they let me in no problem and I headed towards the locker room while texting Jude to get him to come out. He was waiting for me outside by the time I made it up the corridor and when he saw me he put his arms out which I ran into to give him the hug he clearly wanted. Jude has never held me so tightly which told me all I needed to know about how he was feeling without even asking. I let him hold onto me for as long as he wanted before pulling away and giving him some last words of encouragement and some kisses that I hoped would make him feel at least a little bit better.

The game had not long started when news came that Bayern had scored and were already 1-0 up meaning the team had to win if they wanted to keep first place. It only got worse a few minutes later when the team conceded a goal but luckily the fans still seemed hopeful and kept cheering which motivated the team. Things got worse with dortmund conceding another goal before half time but afterwards things got slightly better with them getting one back. While all of this was going on I was watching Jude sat on the bench biting his nails which I've only seen him do before his first game at the World Cup so I knew he was incredibly nervous. I sat with my fingers crossed so tightly it was hurting but I didn't care it would be worth it if they won. Soon everyone's prayers were answered when it was announced that it was now a draw in the Bayern game. The fans went crazy and the belief that this could be the year was felt by everyone but you could tell there was still nerves in the air as anything could happen.

As the clock ticked on the excitement was only building in the stadium that was until everyone spirit was crushed. Bayern and Musiala got a last minute goal putting them back ahead and giving them the title. The fans tried to keep believing but it was clear that despite a miracle there was no way they were going to win the title this year. The atmosphere changed so quickly from excitement to pure despair that yet again the team were second best. Just before the end of the game a consolation prize in the form of an equaliser came but it wasn't enough although they were on the same points Bayerns goal difference was better giving them the title. It was hard to believe it until the final whistle came but then it really sunk in as I watched all the players drop to the floor. 

I was mostly in shock until I saw Jude sit down on the pitch with tears in his eyes seeing him so upset just broke me and I couldn’t stop tears leaving my own eyes. It was so hard to watch Jude so upset but I knew that he needed me so I wiped the tears from my eyes and did my best to stay strong. As soon as I was allowed I ran onto the pitch and straight to Jude to sit down on the pitch next to him. I took hold of his hand to let him know I was there and because I didn't want to smother him if he just wanted to sit and be alone. He clearly wanted some comfort as he rested his head on my shoulder so I held him while he cried into my neck. After a while I got him to look up and wiped the tears from his face but they were quickly replaced my new ones. 

"I'm sorry I know how much you wanted it but you did all you could you have worked so hard all season" I said 

"But we could've done better just one more win at some point this season would have been enough even a draw" he said 

"If it were that easy you guys would have got those results in the first place it just wasn't meant to be but that doesn't take away from everything you have achieved this season" I said 

"You're right it just hurts that we lost it so late on" he admitted 

"Don't think of it that way think about how you pushed until the very last seconds" I said trying to cheer him up

He simply nodded his head and got up from the ground to go and talk with his teammates and thank the fans. He pulled me up with him and we walked around together still hand in hand like we have been since I sat down with him. Of course there were lots of cameras around which I was very aware of as I tried to stop them filming Jude as much as I could. As we walked around Jude noticed one camera that was coming towards us and he put his hand over the lens and pushed the camera away a bit. I mouthed an apology as we continued walking because I didn't want for people to hate on Jude for doing that but I didn't really mean it as they shouldn’t have been trying to film him in this moment. It was clear that it was hard for him to try and thank the fans but he still did it as the team would be nowhere without the fans and he really does appreciate them. 

The entire team stayed out on the pitch for quite a while but eventually they headed inside to shower and change and I went back to the car to wait for Jude. While waiting I got my phone set up with a playlist of his favourite songs as that sometimes helps cheer him up although I don't think it will work in this situation it's worth trying. I also ordered some of his favourite food as I don't want to cook and I thought he would enjoy it especially now he doesn't have to be quite so strict with his diet. Just as I ordered the food the door of the car opened and Jude put his bag in the back before getting into the passenger seat. He looked so defeated but he still gave me a smile and a kiss on my cheek. 

When we made it home Jude went upstairs to change into comfier clothes and I collected the food so it was ready for us to eat as soon as he came back down. We ate and then I laid down on the sofa and encouraged Jude to lay on top of me which he did straight away and cuddled as close as he could to me. I played with his hair with one hand as while he held the other twisting my rings which he always likes to do with his favourite being the promise ring he gave to me on our anniversary as it has an engraving on the bottom of the band. He hummed as I continued to scratch his head and he even had a real smile on his face which made me happy as I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get him to smile for a few days. 

As he was smiling I wanted to take advantage of it so I stopped playing with his hair and started tickling him which had him laughing and trying to get away from me in seconds. He hates being tickled but it always makes him laugh in a way that just fills me with so much joy. I was planning to tickle him for a bit and then stop when he seemed like he'd had enough but all of a sudden he flipped the both of us over and started tickling me instead. I'm extremely ticklish so every second was torture but Jude was happy so I let him torture me for a while. It felt like an eternity but eventually he stopped tickling me and left me resting on his chest where he instead started assaulting my face with kisses. Seeing Jude happy again was such a relief I remember after the World Cup he was feeling down for weeks and I didn’t want that to happen again as it was a tough time for both of us. 

At some point we both settled down and there was silence again as this time I laid on Jude’s chest as he brushed through my hair with his hands. It was quite obvious that the longer we were in silence the more Jude’s mind was able to drift and the smile he had started to slowly fade. I had to do something but I felt like I had exhausted all the options I had thought of and all I had left was trying to talk to him but I don’t know if that’s going to work. 

“You know I’m so proud of you” I said 

“Thanks babe” he muttered 

“I’m serious I couldn’t be prouder to be able to call you my boyfriend you are just so amazing” I said 

“And I’m incredibly lucky to be able to call you my girlfriend I don’t know what I’d do without your support and your pretty face is a bonus” he teased

“Well I enjoy looking at your pretty face too” I said 

We teased each other for a while longer before we both started to get tired so I suggested we go to bed. He carried me up the stairs and we got into bed together where any normal night we cuddle slightly but not too much as Jude gets too hot when we cuddle. Tonight however he pulled me to his chest and wrapped his arms around me tightly. After the emotional rollercoaster of the last few hours I was exhausted but I stayed awake long enough to know that Jude was sound asleep and when he was I gave him one last kiss before settling down to get some sleep myself.

[ur-friendly-nbhd-cardassian]

For the ask game:

Tav/Halsin and number 33 (forcefully).

Might be a bit mean with the king of consent but I'm curious how you would do it.

If it's too difficult, you can pick any other you like :)

Have fun!

Thank you bestie <3

Hmmm.... *rubs chin* I can't see Halsin being forceful, unless it's like, in the heat of the moment when he's totally blitzed out of his brain with lust... but no one says it must be Halsin >.>

"—all this stupid CRAP, I never thought I'd hate a place more than I hate the Hells, but here I am, in the stupid Shadowlands and it SUCKS—"

Tav stomps the ground like an angry toddler, trying to shake the off the itch crawling up her legs from stepping into some shadow-cursed equivalent of tall grass.

"Tav, please, we shouldn't make so much noise. Shadows will find us."

Halsin watches her struggle with a sort of helpless compassion, unable to assist, but feeling her pain.

Somehow, it just makes it worse.

"Ohh, you'd just love that, wouldn't you, having me behave like a good girl and help you fix all this shit with a smile on my face," she seethes. "Well, I'm not you, Halsin. I have limits to how much of my comfort and feelings I'm able to ignore and push down before they blow up in my face!"

"Tav..."

Halsin sighs and tilts his head, broad shoulders drooping. It seems like her words hurt him, but she's past caring.

"No," she hisses. "I've had enough. I can't watch that selfless face of yours anymore. It's killing me, okay?"

"I'm sorry," Halsin snaps, tone finally coloring with anger. Tav didn't think she would live to see the day, but hearing that roughness in his voice feels satisfying. "You're right. I did sacrifice a lot to get here. Some might say I sacrificed almost everything. And it's still not enough. No guarantee that it was worth it. Do you understand how that feels, Tav? If not, why are you here?"

"Oh, you know, Halsin, you're so wise and based and zen—but sometimes you're being plain dumb!" Tav raises her arms to the black sky as if invoking ancient gods to witness her anguish. "Do you really not know why I do this?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?" Halsin sighs. Beside some mocking ringing in his words, his temper seems to be cooling again.

Tav stares at him, half fuming, half desperate. Does he really not see? She thought she was so obvious it hurt.

But no. Not to this man. A man who never assumes things about others because he's so damn respectful all the time.

It enrages her. And fuels her desire at the same time. She's almost sure he feels the same draw, the same irresistible pull. His eyes often travel across her body. His sight seeks her out across the campfire. She keeps catching his wistful glances every time she looks his way. But he doesn't act.

Alright. Okay. Then maybe it's time to act for him.

Tav stumps off the last of the poisonous bits of dried grass and takes a deep breath. She will only get one chance. And Hells know which way this goes... It might be the end of her every hope. But at least it will free up her chest for some other feelings than hopeless pining.

Halsin isn't looking at her: in his annoyance he's studying the surrounding area, as if the very sight of her was upsetting at the moment. He doesn't see it coming.

In the next second Tav's arms wrap around his neck as she resolutely pulls him low and close. She can only see the surprise on his face for a tiny moment before she presses her lips to his. She doesn't hold back. Knowing she's violating Halsin's own admirable code of consent, the urge to be persuasive is strong.

She can feel him resist, his lips locked tight, arms rigid—but he doesn't pull away, he doesn't push her. He's probably in shock, Tav thinks. If she lets go now, there will be no second kiss.

So she puts everything into it. Opens her mouth and glides the tip of her tongue across his lips. Her hands tangle in his hair and massage his scalp. Her torso presses to his chest, her breasts flush with his.

"Tav," he manages to breathe out a weak protest, but that just means his mouth is open, too. She doesn't hesitate to claim it—and he lets her.

His arms slowly snake around her body and pull her closer. She can hear little moans resonate in his throat. His body, hot on the coldest of days, seems to nearly burn now.

It takes every ounce of self-control for her to let go of him, but she manages. They're both breathless. Halsin's face is a mix of wild emotions—she's sure she recognizes regret among them.

"I'm sorry," she exhales, wiping her mouth. "I just needed you to know what you're doing to me."

He covers his face with a broad palm.

"I... I had no idea, Tav. I didn't mean to make you suffer. But the Shadow Curse—"

"I know," she sighs, but her irritation is only mild now. "I know. I respect your wishes, Halsin, I just... It's been a long few weeks and I've spent most of them thinking about you."

His arms drops and he's looking at her like a lost puppy.

"Me too," he whispers.

Tav smiles half-heartedly. "Good to know. That should keep me going until the Curse is lifted. Then... I hope we can pick up where we left off...?"

He chuckles and even in the dim, sickly light she can see the blush spreading across his weathered cheeks.

"That's a promise."

Okay, this was WILD xD I thank you very much for the prompt again, because I had fun coming up with this. Naturally it turned out muuuuch longer than I planned, but that's me, lol.

Hope you like it ;)

[problemswithbooks]

It all feels like a retcon starting from the first look at toga’s backstory because it doesn’t sync up when you put all her actions together. I thought maybe hori was trying to say toga’s quirk became unfortunately linked to arousal after years of suppressing it and it being triggered by her feeling of admiration for her crushes. But yeah that would have been too mature to tackle for my hero though I could maybe see it with chainsaw man. So I don’t know get what’s going on right now except toga’s mentally ill because of her parents and society and he keeps trying to make last minute parallels between toga and touya.

I think the issue is that Hori never spent as much time or effort on Toga as he did with Shigaraki and Touya. Even now her backstory is rather limited in comparison. We got full chapters worth to explore what happened to Touya and Tenko but Toga's is a couple pages or panels here or there with everything being rather vague.

Hori likes using her for sexy pictures and drawing suggestive stuff with Ochako, but she ultimately isn't given as much thought as her male counter parts. Which given the already bad implications of her character has only made her even worse.

Take this latest chapter. We get this page for Quirk counseling.

It's just 2 panels that are honestly really vague. It also comes after her drinking blood from a bird her parents think she killed. Toga says it fell on the ground but that doesn't mean she didn't kill it (baby birds are often on the ground until they fully can fly, or it could have been injured), so that's not helpful either. On top of that it makes sense her parents would find the behavior bad regardless because it either means she killed an animal or picked up an already dead one and proceeded to eat it. Neither of those are great and both are harmful to her.

We just don't really get a good look at how the Quirk counseling worked. They say that they'll make her 'normal' but that doesn't mean they abused her. They could have just explained why it was wrong for her drink blood, like the health issues it could cause. On top of that Hori drops the 'it happens all the time in our current society' line, but we have never seen anyone else like Toga. Not even Stain was ever hinted at being like Toga despite their similar blood based powers.

This is like if we reduced the Touya chapters to a black screen with Enji commenting that he can't train him anymore and we didn't get to see how much Touya struggled with what he perceived as rejection, or how Enji completely ignored him afterwards. Or if we cut Shigaraki's father's abuse to just him yelling at him in black panels before he accidentally killed his family.

Then we get this. This honestly makes Toga look worse, not better in my opinion. We see that she drank blood from someone before she snapped at school. She says they got hurt so she kissed it better, but if you look at her, she is covered in quite a bit of blood. Maybe her friend did get hurt but they were either really badly hurt and bleeding a lot and Toga did not help them and instead started licking them, or she might have even made their injuries worse to get the blood she wants.

If Hori cared more about her character he would have been shown what happened here. Or in the very least put less blood if any on Toga, which would show she didn't hurt this person or ignore helping them with a serious injury because she can't think of anything but blood.

As it is we have no idea if her friend got really badly injured and Toga ignored helping to just feast on them, or if her friend told her to stop, or if she made the person's injures worse. Yes, her parents are wrong for saying Toga's not human, but if she's attacking injured friends that's a huge problem.

One of the biggest issues with Toga is that she is both portrayed as so obsessed and desperate for blood she can't comprehend why anyone might not like her shoving a straw in their neck, but at the same time she was and is at times able to be perfectly fine. She can't understand why Ochako or Izuku, in desperate situations caused in part by her might not be happy with her, but can also turn around and comfort Twice and understand that he feels responsible for the death of a team mate.

It's impossible for me to feel bad for her because when I read her chapters I just see a drawing of an offensive stereotype that does what ever the author wants them to do. Toga just doesn't feel like a person at all. She's nothing but the sexy shell of a teenage girl that Hori doesn't seem all that invested in past her being cute and giving him an excuse to have two girls being all touchy and hot.

[flowergirlmiwa]

i know you follow me for hot tips for your Game Boy Color game Pokemon Trading Card Game, so i'm gonna let you in on this game breaking deck that destroys everything! come on in and take a look (invites you into the radical '90s Van)

alright dudettes and lesbians, here's the tip. when you beat the game (secret postgame strats! for when you wont need them anymore! i told you this was hot) you are given the four legendary cards. three of them are basically useless (the articuno is basically just worse zapdos making it second best), but...

the Zapdos is incredibly powerful!!

make a deck with only ONE pokemon, this zapdos. put in twelve or so lightning energy and fill the rest with all the trainer cards you got that are worth something! if you want to, you can try to put in mysterious fossils or clefairy dolls along with scoop ups, but i usually just put in a whole host of healing and draw power

so why does this deck do really well against a lot of the duelists in this game?

zapdos has one attack, which does 70 damage to a random pokemon on the field besides itself. if you dont have any pokemon benched, it will do 70 damage to one of your opponent's pokemon every turn, and this is extremely high damage to be doing every single turn in this game, that's enough to OHKO the majority of pokemon and WILL two hit kill every single pokemon in the game

Zapdos has a resistance to fighting which is pretty nice and absolutely NO WEAKNESS

UNLIKE CURRENT TCG you can mulligan a hundred times with no drawback! a single-pokemon strat like this is unfeasible today but in this game there's absolutely nothing stopping you from retrying until you draw your Zapdos

Zapdos has 100 HP, giving you the time to get set up even if your opening hand is bad. it does need three energies to attack but the bulk helps make it easy to get there

spam stuff like Super Energy Removals and Super Potions with your excess lightning energies!

what does this deck struggle against? not a whole lot in this game honestly. the biggest threats are still probably not going to be able to kill Zapdos before it gets three energies and some of the biggest threats (like hitmonchan) are countered by Zapdos. if your opponent draws really well and uses disruptions and you brick it could be rough, but i honestly think you basically autowin 90% of duels with this deck without even thinking

the only hard counter is mr. mime. a lot of stuff is hard countered by mr. mime because it can only be hit by attacks that do 10 or 20 damage. when you face a deck with this, hope your thunders don't hit it and that they put other pokemon on the bench (the CPU doesn't know to consciously ONLY have out mr mime, which would be unbeatable against my deck)

plus you can go beat the grand masters again to get a second copy, which makes the mr. fuji/scoop up strats even more powerful, though you'll have to be very careful only to bench a zapdos when you're promoting it to active! never have anything on your bench unless you're about to use it as that 70 damage hurts

alright lesbians, hope that helps you collecting all the cards! this is the ultimate deck for grinding!

[madebysamael]

It's breakdown time again.

My mental health hasn't been great for a while. Tbh, it started tanking after I worked as a vendor selling my handmade jewelry at pride shows in June.

Which went great!! I had best-selling shows and people were really excited about my art. It was awesome.

And then I had to go back to work.

I work full-time, at a desk job in a corporate office. The company is in an industry often used to represent soulless antagonists in movies. My job itself is a specialized position that requires a lot of mental labor. Finding time and energy to create is a challenge, even in the times where things are balanced.

And lately it's been really tough, because the work that needs doing is what I, a person who suspects myself to be on the autism spectrum somewhere, find hellish: I have to navigate bureaucracy and act as a diplomat. I have to coordinate projects between different people and act as a liaison. Most of my job isn't doing anymore, it's figuring out who I need to reach out to, and when, and how do I phrase this so I don't offend anyone? It's inefficient, circular, and often requires me to dance with office politics.

I'm. So. Exhausted.

So, after dragging myself away from the laptop where I've been sending emails and updating spreadsheets all week, I was so excited, because last weekend, I got to escape to my favorite fantasy world: Good Omens. To a life in color, to an eternity ever after.

You all know what happens.

It opened the floodgates. I started losing focus at work, couldn't remember where we were at on projects, who I was waiting on, who I needed to contact - hell, I couldn't even remember to bring my lunch.

I was thinking about GO, but not about the story itself. Instead, it was about how, best-case scenario, it will be 2+ years before they get their happy ending. About how leaving them in limbo for so long fucking hurts.

About how 2-3 years is a long time. Long enough for Neil, David or Michael to have an accident, an illness. About how it would never be the same if they had to recast, or if someone else wrote. Imagine GO without Michael's microexpressions, without David's face reading like an open book even with glasses on. Without Neil's love for the world he shared with Terry pouring out into every single frame of it.

2-3 years is a long time. Long enough for me to get in a car accident, to develop cancer. I already had a cancer scare in 2022; luckily, I was fine. One of my best friends got lymphoma around my age. She, luckily, is also fine now.

But one of my other best friends, who had a heart attack, just a few years older than me... He's in a wooden box in his wife's living room.

And his 10-year wedding anniversary was on July 27, 2023. The day GOS2 was released.

So here I am. A week later, trying to keep it together and failing, thinking it's just a fucking TV show, it shouldn't matter so much...

But it's never just one thing. Every pain carries the weight of all the pain that came before it. I'm carrying the weight of Karl's death, of Steph's cancer, of the family members I've lost that would take too long to list here, several before even David's age.

And I'm struggling to even draw now. Or make jewelry, or sew. The creative pursuits, the things that are supposed to make the rote office job worth it, the things it supports... I feel no joy for them. Even simple things like screenshot studies are excruciating, taking far too long. My problem-solving skills are completely drained at work, and that makes drawing so much harder.

I see so many others creating beautiful things from the pain and getting well-deserved recognition for it. But the ideas aren't coming for me, and even if they were, where would I find the energy?

I don't know how to dig myself out of this spiral. It's so very tiring, and so very, very lonely.

[looosey]

Lessons from my first relationship: For what it is worth, I forgive you

In my previous post, I had written a lot about how having no boundaries affected me. This post is a follow up to that one: about how I finally drew my boundaries for the first time and how that led to me learning how to really forgive somebody.

One: I'm sorry

"I'm sorry... but also, I don't even know what I'm sorry about anymore."

What is a meaningful apology? I think it's really hard but helpful, if your partner is willing to listen, to be clear about what it is that hurt your feelings. It's a lot of work that you have to do, which you wish your partner would do on your behalf, but doing this work, I discovered some uncomfortable truths about my relationship, as well as some truths about myself...

Initially, I had been secure in my relationship because his initial infatuation with me was strong. However, as we spent more time in the school year, and I could pioneer less fun, exciting experiences for us, he started finding those experiences with his friends who were also working. And that became the source of his fun, and what he looked forward to. Whenever he put me aside, and sought out more and more fun with his friends, without thinking of me, I got more and more sad, and I literally couldn't figure out/verbalize why. I wanted someone who wanted to see me as often as I wanted to see him. The baseline of my life was life at school, such that he was the highlight of my week. The baseline of his life was life with me, such that seeing his friends was the highlight of his week. This is true even recently as he spends lavish weekends with his friends and comes back to reality and me to get back "on top of things."

How do you explain to him thus what it is that he did wrong? I was just hurt, and I couldn't tell him his behavior was morally unjust. Instead, I listed the instances that made me felt... discarded.

An apology was what I needed, I assumed at first. But there is no real apology if he does not understand what he did wrong and why it was wrong. If he says sorry but you think he goes to his friends to seek validation that he was right, that's not a sorry. I took the first sorry I got and tried to run with it, especially because people around me told me to forgive him and just move on. Be loving again. However, I literally lived in fear, because I knew he would take any opportunity to have fun without me, with his friends and a whole lotta girls, whether or not I was doing anything that day. And sure enough, again and again he showed to me that he wasn't really thinking about me and my feelings when he was just having fun.

I did not trust the first apology. I knew he felt bad, and hurt that the relationship was hurting, but I didn't think he took this seriously enough such that his behavior would change. Or that he would do the work of learning/generalizing what he thought was the handful of mistakes to a more general scenario and changing his lifestyle.

Two: These are my boundaries

A recent epiphany. Our first date in August was really cute, but he had hedged a lot, saying he wanted to go slowly. This continued for a couple days, and the day of his surgery? Crazy that he came out to see me that day. We went for a boba in the rain and he told me he was going to see me exclusively but that he still wanted things to go super slowly. I'm not sure what that meant, but I agreed and made a mental note to temper my impatient and intense affection. But as he walked me back to wilg, he asked me for a kiss. Which was so interesting to me, because he had just said a whole lotta "lets take it slow." It was so unexpected so I just gave him a hug, telling him: "this is taking it slow." He found that groundbreaking. I just found it curious back then.

But now I find it kind of trifling. Why do you warn me to back down with my affection, and then ask for what you want in the moment?

What I did back there, I realize, was draw my boundaries correctly. It's an act of self-respect. If this person doesn't want to give fully, it is on YOU to save your energy for when it will be appreciated fully.

It was only recently, this month, that I felt like I regained power in my relationship again, before he left for New York, by explicitly drawing boundaries. And maybe it sounds terrible or crude but it went like this: if you do _____, it's over. There were three of them.

If you go out with other girls or friends on a day that is special to us, it's over.

If you continue to go out drinking with friends and girls every weekend like you do now, it's over.

If you do any of the above and not tell me, especially, it's over.

It's literally sounds threatening, which is why it was so scary to say before, but for me they are protection. They are protection for me to remain in a relationship that I want to be in. Such that I relieve the mental load of what if he does this? Then how do I respond? How do I end things? Now, he knows it'll end when he acts. Thus, he is responsible for the consequences.

I hate telling people what to do. I don't believe in trying to change people. Which is why, I had hesitated again and again to tell him how to feel or act. However, I realize that when people say you can't change people, it isn't a message to not try, it's a message to act within your sphere of control, and then leave when you need to protect yourself.

Three: I forgive you

Drawing my boundaries gave me back my control. It felt like breaking through the surface of a rough ocean to take a deep breath of air again. It gave me back the confidence that he would act in a way within this relationship that would cause me less suffering or I would never have to suffer because of him anymore. And because of that, I could afford to think on his behalf a little. He was just a man, and had the empathy of a man, the foresight of a man, the friends of a man, the adrenaline addiction of a man. That he was a man who wanted to have fun like a young adult, and his girlfriend, a student, felt left behind.

"Forgiveness is an act of generosity. It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings of outrage or anger. By forgiving we clear a path on the way to love. It is a gesture of respect. True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions of another." - bell hooks, All About Love

A partner can be an extension of you in the world but they are not you. I know what loving behavior looks like coming from myself and the girls around me, as I am a woman surrounded by other loving women. I expect that behavior, that relentless warmth and attention and softness, to come from the man who is supposed to love me the most, and obviously I'm hurt and disappointed when the gap is great. Not to say he does not put in effort. He used to at least put in consistent effort to see me every day. And cook for me on the weekends. But it's the one off events when he acts in a way that I would never to him even on a normal day, but on a day that I'm the worst: I'm sick and alone. When he says something so hurtful to double down on his point when I'm obviously already hurt and not trying to win an argument.

My mom said that he is not taking me seriously, treats me as a friend "with long hair," and generally does not seem to want a deep relationship with me. LOL. Perhaps that is the case. But perhaps this is just what he understands a deep, loving relationship to be like. And perhaps if he dated a girl who had grown up with brothers, and I dated a guy who had grown up with sisters, neither of us would see any of these problems. But because we are dating each other, maybe these are inevitable problems that come from having grown up the way we did.

Four: And now

I'm a little cautious. I try to live my life fully such that small actions from him do not sway me as much. My life has become much more meaningful and exciting again because I go to career events and connect with different researchers and put more effort into my classes. My mom thinks it's sad that I have to strategize and manage my signs of affection for him, but to be fair it can't be healthy for either of us for me to give and give and give and desire and desire and desire.

Now I know I am but a soft woman. My default subconscious desire must be to morph into one person with my significant other and live in the comfort of constant oxytocin pumping in my veins. That's something I didn't know about myself before him. Whereas when we were in our flirting stage, if he didn't text me back for a while, I would be mainly unbothered because in the end, he was just some dude and I was Me, now, I tend to feel deceived: he said he loved me so why is he acting like he doesn't? It's safe to say, I catch myself having unreasonable expectations for him, and I don't like either of these new tendencies, and am actively looking to find a safe balance.

It's tough because I feel a little jaded when I look at him now, and I really feel in my bones the notion that love is a choice: love is as love does. The naive butterflies that come with the hopes that romantic love will complete me have not returned with the blossoms this spring. But thinking this much about our relationship has also caused me to be better about detecting effort when it does happen, from him, from me, and from friends. And finding ways to put in effort that show him that I love him without feeling like I'm putting my life on the line.

For this amount of personal growth, I am so fortunate to be experiencing this relationship. I feel like I'm growing up late. That perhaps, if I had been less academic as a teen, I would've learned these lessons at the same time as the rest of my peers.

Love is hard, but for what it's worth, I'm still trying. There have been more rigorous proofs, but I hope this blog post will show an active form of love, growth, and the struggle of forgiveness that is foundational to both.

[ina-nis]

Why are you an avoidant?

You think it’s a waste of time.

Why spend your very precious and very little energy trying to form connections to soothe your pain and maybe relieve the loneliness, when you know how deep the wounds go and how old the loneliness is? The very act of seeking out bonds becomes a trigger, as you see it with weary eyes, and ask yourself: “Should I even bother?” The answer is clear as water. At least on your own, you will not be hurt anymore, you won’t have have to deal with added pain and rejection, and you won’t be constantly reminded of how lonely you are.

You’re aware of depriving yourself from opportunities for connection - which are the things you ought to seek, to heal your wounds and resolve the loneliness - and yet, you still feel like it’s a waste of time. The opportunities and any advantages that might come from engaging are not worth it, again, they end up serving as a trigger.

Even though you know there’s many ways to connect, the ways you know how, and the ways that are considered normally, don’t seem to be able to help you, they do not give you the reassurance and safety you need, they don’t go deep enough, and they don’t stay.

What do you avoid?

You avoid pain, discomfort, stress.

You take the “easy” way out, even though it’s far from easy, considering the ramifications and consequences.

You’re aware pain, discomfort and stress are inescapable aspects of life. You also know those can give you great opportunities for growth and learning. The issue is how unbalanced all that goes for you: even with the soothing comfort of good experiences, even when met with a complete trivial and uneventful calm day, those are not the things that stay with you. They don’t require you to rear your defenses, they generally don’t drain your energy (emotionally or otherwise). Nothing is wrong or going badly, so you can just live, instead of surviving. Ultimately, the impact they have on you is minimal when compared to the frustrating and stressful experiences.

Those are the ones that keep you on the edge, and those are the ones that stay with you. They’re old, they go deep, they’re numerous. Holding onto the “good” will do... nothing for you, even more if you can hold these distinct feelings dialectically inside of you: “Having a good and comfortable life, doesn’t erase or ease the pain of my old, deep wounds.” It feels like avoidance, doesn’t it? You look on the bright side to avoid seeing the darkness.

How do you avoid?

A better question would be: how do you not avoid? Avoidance comes naturally for you, and after a while, it stops feeling like avoidance.

The ways your mind work always boil down to finding an escape route, maybe seeing some situation from another angle and deciding whichever way feels less straining on you, to minimize discomfort and stress.

A lot of your “minimizing”, “reframing” and “harm reduction”, among other things, are essentially avoidant behaviours.

You’re aware you need to see (and act) past these so you can move past your limitations, find more power, learning, growth, etc. The problem is just the price being too high, and “failure” means more scars and wounds to be tended for. You cannot afford that price, and the alternative just is not worth it, considering how fleeting and superficial.

Where do you draw the line? Aren’t certain behaviours avoidant or is there another explanation?

Absolutely.

The lines are blurred because avoidance is also a good strategy. You can absolutely avoid places, people and feelings, and have that be beneficial for you; you can avoid memories, until you’re able to process them properly; you can avoid reactions in certain situations, for safety and other reasons; and so on.

Avoidance is a very powerful tool, that has many advantages. It’s hard to separate what is a healthy avoidance from what is a disordered avoidance though. It’s hard to know what to do or where to go from there, since it’s the same, but also not at all. It’s also hard finding alternative strategies to use instead. People avoid because it works well, other things might not do the job with the same intensity, giving the same comfort or safety as avoidance does.

Isn’t your avoidance, then, originated from all these pessimistic/negative behaviours and thoughts? How can you move forward when you’re stuck with such maladaptive strategies?

It can be, but not necessarily.

Avoidance is neutral. It can work in your favour, or against you, or anything in between really.

The thing with pessimism and negative behaviours is that, oftentimes, they don’t come out of nowhere. There’s very good reasons, and it usually has to do with chronic and/or complex trauma. In that context, avoidance could be considered “flight”.

The obvious answer to changing pessimism/negativity is to use optimism/positivity, right? When you take chronic/complex trauma into consideration things become far more complicated and difficult to address, to the point where using “good” to combat the “bad” could end up doing more harm than good. A good example of that is one of the “remedies” for avoidance: connection.

In theory, feeling connected and safe is one way to stay more grounded and feeling less like running away. The more you connect, the more present you become, and the less you avoid.

In practice, you end up having to deal with a lot of barriers. You learn quickly that connections are very brittle and they mostly remain superficial. Quantity doesn’t matter, since there’s no quality. You also learn these connections come with lots of strings attached, with lots of unspoken rules and conditions. These connections are also conditional, to a space, to a group, to a circumstance, etc. These connections are also transitional, they come, and then they go. They are temporary.

A lot of your wounds and trauma have to do with exactly that.

Even if you try your best to understand, accept and not take it personally, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe you remain alone with the knowledge that “this is how it is” and “maybe it’s not for me” and “I can have a good life regardless” and you’re... alone. That very fact haven’t changed, and maybe you have more scars now, from trying out all these, supposedly, “helpful” things.

Did they really help you? It doesn’t seem like it.

No matter how much you try to look on the bright side and have a more optimistic and positive outlook on life, your wounds are there, your scars too, and so is your loneliness. They remain unaddressed.

All you do is... avoiding them, huh? That’s what it feels like when you’re told, either directly or indirectly, to try to change the focus of your life: “just avoid these hurtful things, focus on what you can control.”

Thus, worsening avoidance even further.

How can you escape this?

[thundersyst3m]

Hey guys, just came back from therapy,

Abuser talk cuz i'm in my emotions (not enough to be on the vent acc) so feel free to skip if you want to

Topics of abuse, stockholm syndrome, defending abusers and dissociation

Writer: Nimbus, Blade

The topic was the same abuser, again... I really wanna work on something else but we keep going back there,

My therapist says that the move i avoid a subject, the more it will linger inside me, "everything that you resist, persists"

I can't help but dissociate the whole session, it's terrible, i don't feel real and i don't feel like myself when she speaks to me, it's a mess of multiple people speaking at the same time, hating him, missing him, condemning his actions, justifying them, and i think my therapist notices it, cuz today was pretty much focused on preparing me to talk in more detail about the abuse next session, I've been avoiding getting into the more gruesome details because it makes me feel sick, plus it takes a lot of organising between alters so we can let people who have memories about that time front in safety, like Memory, Blade, Minty and Purple,

She mentioned stockholm syndrome when referring to Alice, one of our alters who constantly appears in therapy to justify the abusers actions and missing him, and I am really scared of that possibility, these episodes of her constantly defending him and crying over him were the reason she isn't allowed to front alone anymore, she isn't a bad person, she just stuck at a time it doesn't exist.

She asks me what I feel when I think about him,

"I feel anger, disgust."

I hear the voice at the back of headspace

"Saudades"

I feel my stomach get even sicker than this morning, the dissociation is so intense I can barely understand what my therapist is trying to tell me, all i feel is tears, multiple voices inside of headspace questioning how we got here, what was going to happen.

My therapist refers to my abuser as perverse, someone who enjoys watching others be in pain, I talk to her back, "Maybe he was so abused he felt the need to use pain to control others around him".

Why are we defending him to our therapist?

I think in a way, this is a sign that I refuse to believe that anyone could be perverse, a sign that something must be justifiable to things to be happening, my therapist stays some time in silence, and then tells me that this could be a possibility, that it was a very serious manner, and that abuse does not justify the abuse i've been through.

"So he gets abused in his life, and then to feel in control, he goes and hurts multiple people? That isn't right, regardless of how hurt he is."

Sometimes I look at Alice when she age-slides to 14 - 16 years old, she constantly follows our alter Fawn around, they laugh, they joke, they have fun drawing in headspace and playing games together, she looks so happy around him, which makes me feel like she holds onto that good memory as much as she can.

I see the same regressed Alice run away from our alter Aidan and our alter Misery, she curses at them, they curse back, they are constantly fighting when meeting each other, i think that's just the other side of memories we don't really explore much.

It's like looking at a life that doesn't belong to me, it belongs to her, but she was so hurt that it stopped belonging only to her, it now belongs to us, she is us, and we are her, she needs us to work through life,

And we need her,

She might justify the most horrible of things to want our abuser back, but that's because she's kind, she's lovely, she's trying to be the most full of love even when it goes over her boundaries, even when she has to pretend she approves horrible things or that horrible things didn't happen,

Alice, I love you, I love you with all my heart, we promise that life will give you people who are worth staying around for,

You will always be our favorite little girl, regardless of your age.

[raccoonfallsharder]

hey I'm sorry for doing this but you kinda feel like an older sister to me and I didn't really know where else to go

I lost a friend today. It was a long time coming. We'd been struggling to talk to each other for a really long time. She said some things that made me feel like a really bad person.

But I know I have a tendency to blame myself for everything and for once I didn't think that was right. I didn't think it was all my fault. I constantly told her what I was feeling and thinking and tried to be as transparent as I could and she still accused me of lying to her about it all. She made me miserable. Conversations with her felt like walking on a tightrope made of candy rocks.

She told me that she hated that she would miss me. I should have told her the only thing I'm going to miss is the person she was a year ago.

dear sweet lil sib nonnie, i read this before work and i’ve been thinking about it all day. i wanted to give your ask all my care and attention. i don’t know if any of this will be useful to you, but i hope it at least allows you to feel heard, supported, and loved. (and please don't apologize. there is nothing here to apologize for.)

i don’t know how familiar you are with gardening, but have you heard of something called “deadheading”? i mean it’s a phrase used for a lot of things, but in this case, i’m talking about a practice used to keep flowers (roses especially) healthy and happy and growing. If you don’t know (and apologies if you do), it’s when old blossoms and seed pods are clipped off the plant just above the next set of healthy leaves. the reason (which probably seems self-evident) is because the clinging, dying blooms will continue to draw on a plant’s nutrition and strength. when they’re clipped, the plant is able to redirect that energy into creating new blooms and blossoms for themselves and their pollinator friends. they can flourish again.

i’m sure you can see the analogy i’m trying to draw here. stepping away from a meaningful relationship – one that is no longer healthy – is one of the wisest and most difficult, painful things a person can do. it almost always takes a long time, even just to get to the stage of realizing that things aren’t right anymore. we so often want to hope beyond the time that hoping “makes sense,” and grief and anger and exhaustion are all normal parts of that process. i truly hope you’re proud of yourself because honestly, every piece of a journey like this is vulnerable and exhausting. it’s frustrating to still go unheard, and it hurts to give up the flower that you had imagined carrying with you into the future. 

i also want to draw your attention to another part of this analogy though. because you’ve done a lot of work in order to allow yourself a better chance to thrive and you should be so proud of yourself for that, and. we can still appreciate how beautiful that flower was before its time passed, before it became unhealthy and needed to be cut off. at some point, i’m sure your friendship was lovely and beautiful, and then nature and life happened, and you had to teach yourself to let it go. and that is all worth honoring and remembering – and even mourning, if you ever find yourself feeling sad or complicated about it.

i say this to encourage you to be gentle and kind with yourself, to be patient with yourself, and to be proud of yourself. 

i also want to respond to your last paragraph – about how you “should” have told her you’d only miss the person she was last year. you know, i think when people hurt us, it’s natural for us to walk away and then think of twenty things we wish we’d said. but i guess i’d ask why you think you should've said that. did she deserve it? it sounds like it. would it have made you feel better? i could be wrong but i kinda suspect not? it probably wouldn’t have made you feel worse, either, but i don’t think it would have given you any real relief or peace of mind. i think you probably would have walked away and just thought of something else you wish you would’ve said. it’s just the curse of these kinds of situations. and it doesn’t seem like she would have like, learned anything from that. 

i am NOT trying to say “oh, you shouldn’t say hard truths” because fuck that. sometimes you should say hard truths in the harshest way you possibly can (any day i can make a nazi-adjacent scumbag or abuser feel like shit is a good fucken day for example). but what i am saying is that i don’t think, in this case, it’s worth giving any extra time and energy to thinking about what you did or didn’t say. it wouldn’t have made a difference, and it doesn’t deserve to take up that kind of space in your head anymore. 

you did the best you could with what you had in every moment of this friendship, including its ending, and that is all that matters.

i’m sending you my love, nonnie. i’m wishing for you that today is better than yesterday, that the weather is lovely, that you get fresh air in your lungs, and that everything looks hopeful from where you’re standing.

[dreadreflection-if]

How would I react if the next time they meet the mc they see that mc is wearing necklace with an engagement ring in it? (And if they didn't already know it was for them before they died, how would they react if when they ask about it mc just smile sadly and say "i mean, they're back now but i don't know if it's a good idea anymore... I love them, i really do, but i don't want to get my hopes up just to be hurt again..."

😭😭😭

I’m going to do the version where I doesn’t know it’s for them. The first one is… Actual Spoilers.🤐 Also, I’m assuming they both had unresolved feelings before The Incident.

Sorry this one took a bit longer, it kind of got out of hand… as you can see.😅 I need to work on cutting down on the set-up in the future… And maybe have longer ones like this be a once in a while thing. Hope you don’t mind the length, anon.😣

I’ll put it under a read more because, try as I might, there’s still gonna be some spoilery details. I just be like that.🤷‍♀️

———

As you both sit within the dim lighting of your cramped room, huddled together between stacks of tomes and papers, I stares at you.

They’re supposed to be helping you prepare for the next case in your letter by searching the records hemming you in, but at some point I glanced over to ask you a question and realized they couldn’t look away.

They’ve noticed that happening a lot, since you found each other again.

It’s because you’re different from how they remember. Not drastically - they can tell it hasn’t been that long since your parting - but it’s like coming back to a place you call home and realizing that it’s changed in your absence; that time didn’t stop turning while you were gone.

It’s these changes that draw I’s gaze. Freckles on spots where there used to be none. A ring hanging from a chain round your neck. Faint scars cutting across your skin, never fully healed. A ring hanging from a chain round your neck. Weariness in your eyes that was not there when they left you.

A ring hanging from a chain round your neck.

If they still had any breath to draw, they think it would have died on their lips.

It’s not one they recognize from your years together: it’s too pristine, and worth more than even your families would normally spend. Whoever the accessory belongs to, they must have spent a small fortune. They must also mean a great deal to you - why else would you keep their engagement ring so close to your heart?

Of course, whispers a small voice in their mind. You are always too late. Too late to save them. Too late to keep them. Too late, too late, too late -

“You’re staring, I.”

They startle, blinking as they are yanked out of their spiraling thoughts. You’ve turned from the book you were flipping through and are now studying them instead. They hate that they can’t read the look on your face. They always used to know what you were thinking.

…Would the owner of that ring know what was in your mind right now?

“Sorry,” they manage to breathe out past the lump in their throat. “I wasn’t aware.”

You give them a small smile, eyes still filled with that strange mix of emotions they can’t define. Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, you reach over and lay your hand on top of theirs. The warmth from your touch is still alien to them after so long apart, and they feel their fingers twitch in surprise. Idly, they wonder what the contact feels like to you - can you even sense anything underneath your palm?

“Something’s troubling you,” you say after a few moments. It’s a statement, not a question. I tries not to grimace, but they can tell their mouth still pulls into a frown.

“Not at all!” they reply, too quickly. They’re sure a blush is forming on their face as they try again. “It’s - it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

You hum in acknowledgement, but you also don’t stop staring, which means you aren’t convinced. If this were the past, I would have kept insisting they were alright - that there was nothing for you to worry about.

If this were the past, they would have avoided the subject and ran away.

Look where that got them, though: sitting on a floor they barely feel beneath them while you proudly wear a token of someone else’s affection. So even though they can’t move their gaze from your joined hands, they still find the courage to ask their next question.

“That ring…” they begin, clenching the hand you don’t hold when they feel you stiffen. “Is it - I mean, uh, whose - who does it belong to?”

You’re quiet for so long that the air becomes stifling. Congratulations, I, the voice in their mind snarks. You just had to be nosy. They’ll never talk to you again.

Before they can fully panic, you finally reply. “It’s mine,” you say with a carefully neutral voice. “I bought it for someone, but - “ A pause. “ - well, they never got it, as you can see.” I hates the self-deprecating laugh that accompanies the last part.

They wish they were brave enough to see what face you make. An uncomfortable silence follows your confession, and I searches for the words to soothe you. What do they even say? ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘Their loss?’

‘Choose me instead’, supplies their traitorous mind, but they squash that thought before it hurts the both of you.

“I see,” is all they manage, and if they knew how they would disappear right then and there.

“I could always give it to them now, I suppose…,” you continue, running your thumb over the ring’s surface, “but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Getting my hopes up… would probably just hurt me again.” The hand still resting on I’s trembles.

I bites their lip, swallowing down the words that threaten to spill out - let me keep it, and I’ll make sure you never suffer again. A surefire way to destroy your rekindled friendship. Instead, they look at you and earnestly say, “They - they would be foolish not to accept it… whoever they are.”

The words taste bitter on their tongue, but the gentle smile that blooms on your face is worth the acridity.

“Thank you, I.” They watch your gaze become wistful as it turns to the hands still joined between you. “Maybe in the future, then.”

If they still had a heart to break, they think it would have shattered at that moment. Silently - selfishly - they send a prayer to Ezra, though it fills them with guilt and self-loathing.

A prayer that the future you hope for arrives long after they are gone.

[xplrvibes]

I've had acne my entire life, I've been through those phases of trying different methods to clear it multiple times. At this point being in my late-20s, I couldn't give a rats ass. My dad still has it in his 60s so I've just accepted the fact that I'm probably going to have it for the rest of my life. I've learned not to give a shit about it anymore and I truly do hope that Colby can do the same. It honestly makes me so sad because, for one, I really dislike the idea of taking literal pills to get rid of it, especially if they're making him nauseous but even when he had it, he looked absolutely fine, it didn't even seem that severe unless it was genuinely hurting him which is different. I hate that we're still trivializing something as common as acne as if everyone must have the purest, smoothest skin. Of course he can clear it up if he wants to but I truly do hope he learns not to give a shit if it does end up coming back (and let's be honest, it probably will). It's times like this when I wish he would actually call out fans on their behavior sometimes.

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I didn't even notice the acne on him until he started pointing it out and drawing attention to it, and after that I only noticed it because he was pointing out and talking about how it kept happening. And that's the thing, I think- it's something that is a source of severe insecurity for him, especially since he has to edit their videos and sit there and stare at his own face day in and day out- and it's warping his own sense of self worth. He's seeing every little so-called "imperfection" about himself 8 hours a day, 5 days a week in video format (which, to your point- acne is something a lot of people go through and does not have to be treated as an "imperfection," but here we are) and he can't escape them. And then he goes online to see what the kids are saying today (cause we all know this man lurks) and THEY'RE talking about it, too- and not always in a flattering way.

And sure, there were people trying to be encouraging, but when you're already just buried under a mountain of your own insecurity, all you're gonna see is the negativity.

So now, here we are. People were running around for weeks trying to say that Colby had BOTOX (which is one of the more "wtf are you all on" things I've heard in a while) because his face "looks different" than it used to, and it turns out that it's because he's taking a hardcore anti-bacterial with a shitload of side effects to try and cure the last thing they were making fun of him for. It's an insecurity driven catch 22. He doesn't win.

I won't even get into the other stuff being said about him. But it needs to stop, before he goes too far with some of these remedies and cures of his.

He'll never tell people to lighten the fuck up, unfortunately. But it really is times like these when they would deserve it.