#farther beyond that

[emcant]

Really sick reason to be happy but I can't stop smiling

TW/CW child abuse, mental illness, SH

One of my aunts calls our family "yours, mine, and ours", which is accurate. We've got me, my (step)brother, my dad, my stepmom, and my (half)sister. My brother is seven weeks younger than I am. Our parents got together when we were around four- "work spouses" who were both recently divorced- and our little sister came a few years later.

My bio mom and my brother's bio dad are a mess, somewhere between incapable and unwilling to parent full time. I've been in therapy off and on for most of my life and got my C-PTSD diagnosis at 15. My brother, god love him, just reached his first year of sobriety, having started drinking around the same age.

Naturally, every time we had a chance to say "This isn't normal" to our shared folks, we'd be told "Well of course you'd think that, you're used to your other parent!". The other person was a shovel used for digs: "This isn't their house!". They'd call me by my mom's name when I made them upset.

I assumed I was broken either because of my mom or because of the split. I can't know for certain, of course, but I think the cause of the C-PTSD was specifically that they traded custody daily, at my mom's request, until she moved out of state. She gives the silent treatment. My stepmom screams. The rules changed on me literally every 24 hours until I was 13.

Life evened out a lot when she did move away - but not entirely. I wound up in screamland 90% of the time rather than 50. I couldn't figure out why it didn't feel right or why it kept happening to me, but I believed my folks: I wasn't used to it because my mom's "parenting" is different and worse. I felt sickened to be involved with my mom at all. I thought that if only she wasn't waiting in the wings, I'd be entitled to a normal childhood, but because of her influence, I deserved everything I got.

Anyway, I have been texting my little sister about Christmas gifts for our brother, and out of nowhere, earlier this week, she tells me she's going to therapy for the first time... because she's realized it's not normal for your mom to scream at you literally all day and your dad to not intervene.

I haven't been home for more than three days since I moved out over a decade ago. I had a chance to pass through the town earlier this year, didn't do it, and still had panic attacks for two weeks straight. I can't hack it as someone's daughter; it makes me physically sick.

But that isn't a me problem.

Not a one of them could hack it as parents.

I've stopped hearing my mother's doubts in my head - I cut her off when I moved away. I've never been quite able to shut off my stepmom's. The screamer versus the silence... it fits.

I'm not a poser if I can't create when I don't have a comfortable space to work. I should not self-reject because I'm frightened. In the absence of an abuser, I'm finding that holding ideas in also hurts a lot.

I'm not stupid or useless or gearing up to be a failure for needing the introvert rest period and knowing my limits. It will not hold me back in life.

It isn't normal to want to hurt yourself. It isn't normal for people to laugh it off and talk about themselves when you tell them you want to hurt yourself.

The mandatory insincerity I grew up around has thankfully faded a lot - I don't think I could summarize that anymore if I tried.

I'm heartbroken that my little sister is going to need to learn these things - but ecstatic that she will, and is actively moving towards it. Had a similar conversation with our brother a few years ago, but of course, he has his dad in the wings; it hits differently now knowing that it would have happened no matter what. Children in that home are screamed at, hit, and not defended. Simple as.

I'm not what they wanted me to be.

I'd say that's "fine" but that doesn't even begin to cover it. It's exemplary.

[mettywiththenotes]

Chapter 20

Chapter 415

[polinscarriage]

also someone please check on hen 😭

[dark-elf-writes]

The urge to start reading fanfic vs the fact I am not yet at the end of the game and I know they are waiting to pull the biggest twist of all time

[mistswalker]

OKAY. NEW SOTO CHARACTER INTRO TIME.

Meet Stephan Corsello~!

Former street urchin kid turned into the most scholarly sneak-thief you've ever met. He grew up picking pockets on the streets of Garenhoff and daydreaming about what fantastic magical goodies could be sealed away up in the Wizard's Tower (and what those magical goodies might be capable of).

It had always been a dream of his to be able to properly case the place. Make off with a few trinkets or a powerful relic -- nothing too noteworthy. He didn't want to pick a fight, after all. He'd just never had the chance to properly study magic and feels that artifacts are the closest he'll be able to get.

That was, until something happened to the tower, and the elementals ran wild.

As it turns out, he's not from our Garenhoff. He's from the fractal Garenhoff that spilled out of the Mists. When everything in his life upends and suddenly goes pear-shaped, he gets the bonus crisis of his entire concept of reality being overturned added shortly thereafter.

After being helped to safety by Wayfinder Arwn, and beginning to put together bits and pieces of what's happening around him, he insists on joining her to help other refugees of the shattered fractals. Now, as a new and somewhat inadvertent recruit to the Astral Ward, he accompanies her through the events of SotO to learn more about the world he came from, the world he's now in, and hopefully help stabilize the Mists.

He's got some serious lost puppy energy, and his lifelong dreams of daring adventurous capers are helping him... postpone a bit of the existential crisis of processing the reality of his existence. He can get to that later, when there aren't demons to worry about, right? Right??

[shitty-eyepocalypse-domains]

Vast domain: at the end of your street is a stand of trees, and one day you duck beneath them for shade. The trees go on further than you thought, and you have a few minutes to kill, so you step closer, looking at the bark and the branches. It’s beautiful, so you stroll further into the trees, and the trunks grow wider, and the trees grow taller. You wonder at the difference in the light, before realizing there is no direct sunlight. You turn around to walk out, but there are still so many trees. It’s getting later and you’re beginning to be worried, so you climb one tree, hoping to see your street, your house. You finally find sunlight, but looking around you, all you see is a sea of leaves, rustling in the pale autumn wind. Climbing down the tree takes so much longer than climbing up, and as you drop to the fallen leaves beneath you, you feel the age of the forest on every side. It has lived so much longer than you have. It spreads further than you can walk. You can pick any direction you like, but it won’t matter. Leaving is no longer an option. The forest is endless. Are you?

Ohh damn I love the idea of the Vast as an endless forest. Y'all are so good at this I love your actually well written mini statements they fucking rock.

[weirdlizard26]

crowley getting really into astronomy. you understand

[anarchicarachnid]

good lord i see an unbelievable amount of posts circulate on this site that reflect neediness and possessiveness as being a good thing.

do y'all not realize the self sabotaging relationships you'll inevitably attract through the patterns of behavior you're formed because of your insecurity? like sweet christ there are more romantic things for a potential partner to say to you than "I won't get bored and leave you (for no reason)"

sorry fam but if you fantasize about a partner explicitly telling you they won't leave for no reason, not only are you insecure and craving surface level validation, but also you're vulnerable to the first manipulative person to understand what to say to someone like you.

[spkyscry-a]

This is a horror blog, I swear.

[fingertipsmp3]

Do I need a therapist or do I just need to move out. Genuinely.

[jellogram]

LIFE ADVICE FOR YOUR TEENS AND EARLY TWENTIES (and probably beyond but I haven't made it much farther than that so far):

GO OUT BY YOURSELF

LEARN HOW TO NAVIGATE PUBLIC TRANSIT WITH NO SMART PHONE

TAKE ONLINE CLASSES

MAKE PEACE WITH DISAPPOINTING YOUR PARENTS

GO TO THERAPY IF POSSIBLE

FOLLOW AFTERCARE INSTRUCTIONS FOR NEW TATTOOS AND PIERCINGS

EAT A MEAL BEFORE DRINKING

DON'T MIX DRUGS

IT'S HARD TO BE YOURSELF WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW YOURSELF SO JUST KEEP TRYING NEW THINGS

THROW EVERYTHING AT THE WALL LIKE SPAGHETTI TO SEE WHAT STICKS

YOU WILL DISCOVER YOURSELF THE SAME WAY YOU DISCOVER NEW COFFEE SHOPS AND NEW BANDS

YOU WILL GET THERE

DON'T MAKE A LONG POST IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE YOUR VOICE WILL START TO HURT FROM SHOUTING

[maggot-baggage]

I cant come onto this site amd say white people are annoying EVERY day but somehow yall give me a reason to regardless

[deep-space-netwerk]

What do you mean by Venus floating cities?

I'm hoping to write a science fiction story about visiting Venus as part of the space race and I would love your input

Alright so the thing with Venus is that we're all very familiar with her horrible hell-death clouds and 900°F surface temperatures. We all understand the surface of Venus is not a fun place for humans to be.

But, nobody ever talks about the fact that ABOVE the hell-death clouds, Venus is a paradise. The most Earth-like environment we know of in the solar system, beyond Earth itself, is actually in the skies of Venus.

About 30 miles above the surface, the pressure is ~1 atmosphere, and the temperature ranges from 30 - 100°F, which is Happy Human™ standard pressure and temperature.

What's more, a breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen provides over 60% the lifting power on Venus that helium does on Earth. In other words, a balloon full of human-breathable air would float to the habitable range of Venus's atmosphere. We could float a ship with the very air we breathe.

The other great thing about this is that it avoids one of the big problems with Mars colonization. On Mars, any habitat on the surface full of breathable air is vulnerable to leaks and explosive decompression, a la the Martian.

Floating on Venus, a balloon full of breathable air doesn't have a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside. Which means, any leaks or tears would be very slow and manageable. You could fix that shit with duct tape!

Similarly, because the environment outside the balloon is so Earth-like, humans living there wouldn't need any big fancy pressurized suits for extravehicular work. We'd need air to breathe, maybe some heat protection, and protection against the acid rain. That's it. 

Venus also provides the tools to keep us fed! It's atmosphere is made primarily of carbon dioxide, even above the dense horrible clouds. What likes carbon dioxide? Plants from Earth!! Lets grow FOOD on FLOATING PLATFORMS in the SKIES of VENUS.

This whole idea actually came out of a NASA effort exploring potential Venus colonization. The program was called HAVOC - the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept.

It hasn't really gone anywhere, and as far as I know there are no real plans to revisit it. Unfortunately, from a practicality standpoint, Mars is a much more viable target for human colonization. Not only is it better poised for outer solar system exploration, being farther away from the sun, but living on Venus would come with too many complicated contingencies. In the event of a major failure on Venus, you'd need to fly to another base, or fuck off all the way to orbit. I understand why people aren't really in a hurry to live somewhere where landing on the surface means certain death.

But that doesn't mean I won't be forever and always enamored by the skies of Venus. Here's one of the artist concepts to come out of HAVOC.

I want to be there.

[devotion-between-the-wheat]

the black cat insert wasn't planned to be a big thing but it looks like I'll need to dip into the comics to figure out possible pre-movie timeline/backstory beyond vauge concepts.

[sabertoothwalrus]

do you think Falin's chimerism would affect her lifespan and behaviors? or just her body? maybe she can make more animalistic noises or has vague dragon-like instincts?

that’s a really good question! I think we could probably figure this out by taking a look at what we know about Falin, what we know about red dragons, whether these things would apply to Falin, and go from there.

The obvious external changes Falin has are: her eyes, her teeth, and her feathers.

It’s hard to pin down what Falin is like! Throughout the duration of the manga, she wasn’t really a character so much as a plot device. We have almost nothing told from her point of view, and the majority of her unbiased (as in, we’re seeing her through a neutral lens and not another character’s perception of her) characterization is from the post-canon omake.

Even Falin believes that her wanderlust might come from her dragon side, but she's not sure. Personally, I think it’d make a lot of sense if it kind of does, in the sense that she has 20/20 vision now, haha! For most of her life, she could probably only see clearly within a relatively small sphere surrounding her, and now she can see everything. She can look up and around freely in a way she couldn’t before. Fuck man, if I had magic lasik I’d probably go out more too.

Some other quirks that are really unclear whether it’s typical for Falin or chimera-influenced:

she enters rooms through windows, sometimes. And given the leaves in her hair, I think it’s reasonable to assume this is not the first floor 💀 But who knows! Maybe that’s not new for Falin.

She points out that Laios’s scent could deter monsters. Maybe she has enhanced smell. But again, it isn’t unreasonable to think this is something she would have said before. (I think even Chilchuck and Izutsumi, whose senses of smell are enhanced, can’t identify scents well. Kuro, however, can.)

VIOLENCE! But again, we’ve seen her beat shit with her staff before, and she also used to wield a flail. It IS a trait for red dragons to fight any large threat, so if anything, she’s got even better monster fighting instincts than before. I don't think this would carry over to people. Falin has always been better with people, and I'm personally not a fan of seeing her depicted as territorial or possessive. Marcille is already the possessive one, and didn't need dragon blood to be like that.

Ultimately, I don't think her dragon traits extend much farther beyond this. Especially when you consider How Little the dragon is represented as in her conscience.

it's not like it's a 50/50 split. She's like a person with a dragon ratatouille. I don't think she'd be able to make dragon noises. I don't think her body is built for that. I know there's like, a set list of tropey characteristics that are given to almost every non-human character in fiction. and sure that's FINE but they tend not to be especially personalized to the character, and tend to just be an excuse to write them OOC. Like, sure, dragons may have instincts regarding sleep habits, hunting, courting, raising young, etc etc, but so do humans! And we don't compulsively act on every instinctual whim we have. I don't see why it'd be any harder for her new dragon instincts.

If anything, I think she'd feel more affected by the fact that she has part of the demon in her.

I don't think Falin's in any sort of trouble. All the demon was was a way to communicate with people. Here, it's representing Falin's tether to the infinite realm, to mana itself. The winged lion no longer has the desire to consume anymore because, yknow, Laios has that now. This is very likely why she no longer needs to chant to cast magic.

But what else does this mean for her? She already had unusually high reserves of mana + an innate connection with spirits, but is her mana essentially limitless now? How would that affect her lifespan? I'm leaning towards, it wouldn't really?? But is she immune to mana sickness now? Is it more like her magic is just sort of amplified like it would be in a dungeon?

We can infer that having more mana doesn't increase your lifespan, because-- while elves and gnomes have both naturally high levels of mana and longer lifespans-- dwarves live longer but have lowest levels of mana of all.

So to answer your question! Maybe a little bit?? But I don't think she'd change a whole lot.

[imaggots]

emo boy apple bees