#for the VIOLENT social anxiety i have been struggling with

[a1rightyaphrodite]

idk what stage of grief im in rn but i know its a silly one

[mr2swap]

The great shift: Swap Sindrome 1

In a dimly lit room, I was masturbating with my fingertips in front of a pale white monitor. As I watched the images of boys around the age of high school students lined up on the screen, I fantasized about taking off their clothes and touching their naked bodies.

-ahh, ahh… ahh-

I closed my eyes as I fantasized about the scenes that were still etched in my memory, the memories of my body and my Gymbros in the locker room flooded my mind, At this moment there was nothing erotic about looking at my best friends or touching their oily and muscles to feel The Progress we had made in the gym, but now it was different, I was different.

I continued looking at the photographs that were shown on the Instagram profiles of my former friends, while the desperation and excitement with which I moved My small cock increased more and more.

I kept changing the photos until a photograph of my old body was displayed on the entire screen. I enlarged the photograph just so I could rotate the most erotic parts of my old body. I focused my gaze on the armpits that still had a couple of drops of stinky and sticky sweat running down towards my abdomen.

-FUUUCK! What I wouldn't give to smell those musky holes again-

The shameful and perverted words that came out of my mouth really embarrassed me, but right now I had no control over myself the only thing I wanted was to fantasize about my old hairy armpits, lick his hard biceps and play with his grazed nipples, The memory of the last time I could smell a sweaty t-shirt from my original body made me ejaculate violently, the semen spread across the keyboard of the old computer that was in front of me.

At that moment my head cleared, from one moment to the next the animal instincts that dominated me a few seconds ago immediately disappeared... and then only remorse.

I took a piece of paper that was within my reach and began to clean up the mess that I had caused myself. When I finished cleaning my little cock, I threw the ball of paper into the trash can that was saturated with balls identical to that one in a yellowish color. And they left a disgusting smell in my room.

I stood up, pulled up my pants and slowly walked towards the kitchen, avoiding looking at my fat old face on the relevant surfaces that were in my messy apartment. After doing this, I feel disgusting, but no matter how hard I try to stop thinking about my old life and in my old body.

-The swap syndrome…-

I said quietly trying to justify my depraved obsession with my old life, I had all the symptoms I had read on the internet:

“ Swap syndrome is a disorder characterized by a persistent and overwhelming obsession with a person's past life after experiencing a body swap with another. This syndrome manifests itself when two individuals involuntarily exchange their bodies thanks to the event known as “The great shift.”

People affected by SS experience intense longing and nostalgia for their previous life. They feel a deep disconnection from their new body and struggle to adapt to their new physical identity. Meanwhile, they constantly long to return to their old lives, including their relationships, daily routines, and everyday activities.

Symptoms of SS may include episodes of obsessional love, masturbation, anxiety, depression, and dissociation, as well as a decrease in social and occupational functioning. Affected people may manifest compulsive behaviors related to the search for ways to reverse the body exchange and recover their previous life.“

I've been trapped in the body of this overweight middle-aged man named Hiroshi for two years, and one day I just woke up in a room full of trash and on the other side of the world. It had been a few hours since all this had started So it was easy I searched what was happening on the internet I tried to contact my parents, but none of them responded to me even now I haven't seen my parents after so long, maybe they have They've gotten better bodies and now they're having fun. Or maybe they're in one of the many prisons trapped in the body of some convict, I don't know...

At least they can put me in contact with the Old Hiroshi who was now on the beach in Miami enjoying that new teenage body. At first, we wrote to each other every day, trying to go unnoticed among all the chaos of the world. I had to eat. So I decided. Not to tell anyone that he was actually a 16-year-old American teenager instead of a Japanese man my father's age.

The real Hiroshi helped me adjust to my new life, while I naively believed that this was something that would be resolved in a couple of days. But over time I got used to my new job in a restaurant as a dishwasher, I didn't understand the language very well. , but he didn't need it, the real Hiroshi was a quiet and submissive guy, Very different from what the real Hiroshi is like in his new life, as a popular teenager. That he spends his afternoons tanning on the beach and flirting with beautiful girls.

I used to talk to the real Hiroshi every day, but over time he took longer to respond to the messages, then to look at them and just not respond and over time he started ignoring my calls, now the only thing I know is because of the photographs I uploads to Instagram and social networks of my former friends, I didn't dare tell them the truth, that their former friend was now trapped in the body of a 45 year old obese loser…

I've been saving everything I can to be able to travel back to America and reunite with my old life. Although the salary as a dishwasher is shit, it's better than nothing, but once I'm in front of my old body I don't know if I can control myself... look down and a tiny bulge formed again in my pants from just being in front of my old body.

-Shit….-

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[sister-lucifer]

what’s wrong with you based on your favorite creepypasta

(don’t take these too seriously it’s all /lh)

Ticci Toby: You have the diet of a five year old and need to stop eating whatever food is put in front of you without thinking about it, you don’t know where it’s been. No, it is not okay to dig food out of the trash, even if it’s on top. I’m sorry your family is so shitty. You’re also trans masc and autistic and/or adhd (+ if you like toby you should participate in my strip game w him:))

Jeff The Killer: You need to stop getting violently angry at every minor inconvenience. Like seriously, it’s okay, take a deep breath. And stop yelling at people. I know that to you it’s a normal tone of voice but you’re much louder than you think. You’re also trans masc and still processing your internalized biases

Laughing Jack: Sorry about the abandonment issues, but you also shouldn’t latch on to anyone who shows you even the smallest bit of kindness, you’ll get yourself hurt. Remember, it takes time to build meaningful relationships, and that’s ok. Also your relationship with gender is weird, and you either don’t have a gender or have one that is so hyper specific and personalized that you’re the only one who will really ever understand it. And your fashion sense is weird

Eyeless Jack: Someone really hurt you once and you’ve never really been the same since. You don’t speak very much and sort of keep to yourself and prefer to observe social interactions rather than partake in them. You have more books than you’ve had friends ever and rant to yourself about them. And you never turn the lights on if you can help it

BEN Drowned: Stop hiding your intense emotions behind humor. Memes are not a replacement for therapy. Neither is weed, but you should probably keep doing that because it’s the only thing keeping you from an anxiety attack. Also you’re short. Gross

Nina The Killer: How’s the hypersexuality going? Seriously, you can’t pretend you’re not struggling with loneliness and a lack of meaningful connections by being horny. Get off twitter and ao3 for like five minutes PLEASE. And you’re still thoroughly invested in trends from 2010. You are cringe, but by god you are free. Also sorry about the unrequited crush but you should really move on

[jrwi-most-nd]

Round 5/Final Poll:

Pictures and propaganda are under the cut!

Gillion Tidestrider (Riptide)

(Submitted for Autism, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and Dyslexia)

do i really need to say anything. do i really.  ~ Autism he has,,,,,,, an issue with textures and social interaction and just yknow gives off those v i b es  ~ Autism He misses social cues, mostly black and white thinking, especially towards the beginning of the series, strong morals, has stated he doesn’t like/struggles with change, etc etc  ~ Autism HE CANONICALLY DOESN’T LIKE VELVET HE CANONICALLY HAS TEXTURE/SENSORY ISSUES. His whole arc with the oversea is so autism coded (with not understanding things everybody else around him thinks is common knowledge even if it’s never been explained to him before). But ALSO HE TOTALLY HAS INTRUSIVE/IMPULISVE THOUGHTS he canonically has ‘blasphemous’ type thoughts (wanting to steal lemons with his friends even if it’s against his oath), plus there’s NO WAY he doesn’t have violent type intrusive thoughts about hurting his loved ones NO WAY. plus his overall stubbornness of not letting go of his oath and general struggles with change is so so so autism coded of him.  ~ Autism and OCD Gillion is literally so autistic. He misses social cues and is easily deceived. He also hates lying and is overall a very honest guy! he repeats certain phrases like ‘it is my destiny!’ which are actually vocal stims cause i said so. Could all of this be explained by him not having a childhood and never learning anythning other than fight? yup! Am i saying all of this cause im like that? yeah! and im autistic :D also hes very cool and thats also a sign of autism  ~ Autism being put through years of (training) torture can cause anxiety especially at the young age he was ive also seen him just do random shit which gives off the idea that he’s not reliant on social cues, for example; jumping out windows, kissing a man (chip), or just going off to do his own thing which is a thing i do alot,,not kissing men,,,or jumping out winows yet but hes not reliant on social cues, he also ties his hair up, and i know he didnt do it in the first design but sometimes my sensory issues go away and come back randomly like a vacation for those bastards anyway another thing with the anxiety autism and anxiety are both very common together like autism and adhd! thats all i got but i can go way more in depth  ~ Autism and Anxiety Gillion fishman nuerospicy asf and I need ppl to share in my hc that he has ocd look at him. Insert cool character analysis I don’t do words. Fish. ~ Autism, ADHD, and OCD

Peter Sqloint (Apotheosis)

(Submitted for Autism and AVPD)

Struggles with eye contact, misses social cues, special interest in rocks  ~ Autism literally changed the course of the story with his autism swag. with the power of rocks and lizard. killed god and pulled a bad bitch.  ~ Autism You cannot tell me he isn’t autistic, he literally hyperfixates on rocks he doesn’t even want children he will just raise lizards, he is so silly he just want rocks and logs for his lizard hhhhhhhhhh his magic can change rock colors  ~ Autism ROCKS  ~ Autism FUCKUNG LOOK AT HIM  ~ Autism

[sailorrlino]

Crown | One | (lmh)

𓆩⟡𓆪 Pairing: Lee Minho x reader

𓆩⟡𓆪 Summary: The prince of the Unseelie Court has a single job: find a suitable marriage to strengthen the ties of his court and to keep the peace of the city. But when he stumbles across you at a bar and feels the thread between you form, Minho knows immediately that he’s found his other half, his mate. When he comes across you again at the ball meant to find his marriage match, disaster ensues and the fight for his crown begins. 

𓆩⟡𓆪   Word Count: 8,542

𓆩⟡𓆪 Genre: Urban Fantasy | Soulmates | Angst | 

𓆩⟡𓆪 Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

𓆩⟡𓆪 Warnings: Explicit language, worldbuilding, talks of politics and social economic issues, slight depictions of anxiety, Minho and reader both are very cranky and overall don't have great outlooks on life, depictions of blood and core, violent action scenes, really creepy creatures idk, mentions of a deceased parent and mild references to childhood trauma (more like a suggestion that reader had a rough childhood) and Minho ruminates on some family obligations

𓆩⟡𓆪 A/N: This chapter took so much longer to write than I thought that it was going to but it is finally here. I have been super nervous about it and I kept editing it over and over again because the later half with the action/magic sequences were really giving me trouble. I don't usually struggle this much, but writing has been super hard which is also why I somehow managed to write something under 10k for the first time in what feels like a year? Also, the creatures mentioned here are inspired by displacer beasts in D&D in look/aesthetic only. I hope you enjoy my little fantasy world that I have been obsessing over - I am really excited to be writing this and cannot wait to delve into the plot fully. I have some really fun and crazy things planned!

𓆩⟡𓆪 Disclaimer: All members of Stray Kids are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

⟡ Main Masterlist ⟡ Series Masterlist ⟡ Playlist ⟡ Ask ⟡ Next Chapter

If there's one thing I am sure of, I am sure that you have always belonged with me. -AKIF KICHLOO

It’s going to be a bad day. To be fair, it usually is. This time, though, Minho wakes with premonition sweat on the back of his neck and a spark of magic at his fingers, brought to life by whatever nightmare plagued him just moments before. 

His worst days always start like this: a nightmare that feels more than just a dream but he cannot remember, sitting right on the edge of his vision, watching from the shadows. Sweat slips down his back, the touch of a reaper’s finger. Magic crackles at his fingertips, ready to protect himself. 

The dreams themselves don’t happen that often, but they happen enough that Minho’s looked into them. He’s asked the royal family Lorist about dreams numerous times. Seungmin is tricky, though, his words and explanations twisting and never really landing in anything that feels meaningful. Still, Minho remembers the way that Seungmin’s tricky chatter quieted when he told him about the dreams, the way the Lorist’s mirth faded, replaced with something darker before returning to his usual, smirking self. 

Peeling the sheets off of sweat-slick skin, Minho sits up. The world tilts, spinning unbalanced on its axis as he recovers from the dream. He leans forward, elbows pressed into the tops of his knees, and hangs his head down, taking in a deep breath. He remembers that the Lorist told him a calm, quiet mind was the best tool for remembering what is just beyond one’s reach. 

Minho tries and fails. His mind hasn’t been quiet in years and he doesn’t suppose it ever will be. 

Rain paints the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows in front of his bed. This high up in the building, the clouds darken the windows with a frosty glaze and the rain freezes, spider webbing once it hits the cool glass. The sun is hidden behind darker, thicker clouds somewhere in the east. He thinks he won’t see it today. 

Not that he minds the rain, usually. Stratos is a city of rain, the epicenter of unusual weather and lightning storms charged with the earth's natural magic. Minho can feel it humming in the air beyond the window as he walks barefoot and unsteady to the bathroom, eager to throw cold water on his face. 

Cool water spills from the wall in the bathroom. The wall is hewn rock and living lichen, glowing mushroom caps, and other fauna and flora that glow in the darkness where they thrive. The water spilling from the wall is always bitter, fresh and invigorating, waking him up further as he splashes his face. He’s unsure of the system of portals and ley lines that makes his home full of pieces of his home here, in the apartment building he pays too much coin for, but it’s a nice touch, to feel the bite of the river from home.

Home. 

The apartment building in the sky isn’t home. Not really. It’s a place that gives him space and the agency to be himself and do what he wants, but home is a faraway dimension that he hasn’t seen since he was five. Home is now one of the Burned Kingdoms, fallen away to ash and ruin. 

Except for the Gwy, this river that streams through the worlds. Through his childhood bedroom. Through the room reserved for him at the Unseelie Court, through many worlds and other places. There are other names for it, he knows, this river that runs through the entire world and other worlds. But it’s always been the Gwy to him, cold and sweet-tasting. 

It is one of the few memories of home he has, beyond the burning and the carnage. He tries not to think about that as he leaves, grabbing his tablet by the desk and flicking upward. His windows darken, muting the frosty rain in favor of moving pictures and screens. 

One panel of glass displays the news. Another panel brings up messages and an agenda for the day. He purposely doesn’t look at the agenda, tapping the tablet to bring up his recent messages, which are most notably from Chan. 

Chan: Jeongin and I will be escorting you tonight. No giving the kid a hard time, this is training. 

Chan: And before you ask, yes this is low-risk enough for him to be on duty for. No I will not hear any complaints as the captain of your guard. Yes, I think that he will be nervous and awkward.

Chan: Do not let Changbin bully his way into joining us. 

Chan: This is a gala not a party. 

Changbin: Tell the illustrious Captain Bang to let me fucking go tonight. The kid won’t even get to enjoy the fact that it’s a party.

Changbin: I don’t care what Chan says, it’s a ball and it’s got drinks and shit, it’s basically a party. Even if it’s fancy.

Blowing out a sigh, Minho pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t want to think about the gala tonight. Does not want to think about how once more his mother is going to push him into suitable marriage options, insisting that the world is going to end if they do not ally themselves with a suitable powerhouse in the city. 

It’s both true and untrue. Minho knew from a young age he would always have to fill obligations as the heir to the Unseelie throne. He would never get to have a life outside of politics and trickery and diamond-studded niceties. Yet despite his loyalty to his court and the fastness at which he obeys, there is something rearing inside of him that screams there is more there is more there is more. 

Minho doesn’t know where this comes from, this little sliver of him. He’s been an obedient and resolute child since birth - painfully so, according to most of the courtiers. And yet there is this tiny thread that unspools inside of him once in a while, filling him with doubt and chaos and thoughts that perhaps rebelling, that stepping away from his loyalties wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Perhaps there is something out there in the world calling to you, Seungmin had said one night over a glass of wine. His eyes had been twinkling and there was a little secret smirk on his face. Perhaps it is a part of you that exists elsewhere. 

Minho has no fucking idea what the Lorist means. He rarely does. Seungmin’s existence in the court is purely out of traditions to the old ways. Hundreds of years ago, he would have been a seneschal and something like a seer. Now, with the watered-down blood of the fae, Seungmin is little more than a showy novelty hidden in the astronomy tower of the Unseelie Court. 

Still, Minho likes him. Likes the way that they feel like friends, in a way. Doesn’t always mind that the Lorist talks in circles when giving advice, but is quite normal when he wants to play video games and frustrate the rest of them with his cheating. 

Honey-scented coffee reaches Minho as he leaves the bedroom, still dressed in nothing but sweatpants hung low on his hips. Felix is in the kitchen, a hot mug of coffee floating toward Minho. His lips twitch as he reaches out for it, plucking the mug from the air. It resits a little before Felix’s magic lets it go.

“Good morning, finish that fast. We have your suit fitting to get to.” Felix’s deep voice is a stark contrast to his elegant features. He turns to look at Minho with a smile, his eyes the color of emeralds. “I put it on your calendar that you probably ignored.”

“I didn’t ignore the calendar.”

Felix hums, turning back around. His blonde hair is pushed back, mullet-style, and soft looking. He’s already dressed for the day in jeans and a cable knit sweater, his bag laying across the counter where his tablet lights up with notifications. 

“So you were just afraid of a specific event on your calendar,” Felix supplies. Minho winces and sips the coffee. It is perfectly flavored with sweet cream and hints of honey, his favorite. “Either way, we need to get to Almas early. You know she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Lifting a hand, Felix snaps his fingers once. There’s a spark as green as his eyes between them and a scone appears in front of Minho. He plucks it out of the air, eyeing the witch whose back is turned to him. Felix’s magic always leaves the scent of cinnamon when he uses it, singing Minho’s nose. 

“Thanks,” he deadpans, tearing into the scone with his teeth. “Can you order a box of those chocolates that Jeongin likes from Sprinkled Sprite? He’s on duty tonight training with Chan. I’d like to give him a gift.” 

“How kind of you.” 

Minho heads back to his room to change. “It’s not from me,” he corrects, even though Felix is already scoffing as he turns and begins tapping on his tablet. “Please address it from the royal family, Felix.”

“Uh huh.”

In his room, Minho gets dressed, eyes on the screen as the news blares on, red font swiping across the screen for an emergency announcement. His brows pull together, eyes fixed on the images in front of him as he buttons his shirt from bottom to top, fingers nimble. 

A reporter is on the scene, holographic caution tape flashing in the rain behind her. Minho thinks she’s a werewolf from the amber color of her eyes and claw-tipped fingers, but he looks away from her to focus on the flurry of activity behind her where nephilim police keep people on the other side talking to one another as rain slicks off their police-issued coats. 

“Another grisly murder in the third floor of this apartment building,” the reporter says, speaking loud enough that the mic can pick up her voice over the tap tap tap of the deluge. “Located in downtown in the Lethe sector, it’s the second murder in recent weeks, coming days after a brutal crime scene just three blocks down. Is it a coincidence? Is it the start of a serial killer? SPD says it's too early to tell.”

The TV turns off and Minho looks at where Felix is standing in the doorway, green eyes fixed on the now empty windows. He flicks his gaze to Minho and offers him a tight-lipped smile. “Perhaps best not to start the morning with such dreadful news.”

“I’m going to have to hear about it anyway. The daemons are pushing for an audience. They say the reported murder wasn’t the first and that this has been going on for weeks.” 

“Well, then the queen will take an audience with them if she feels it’s necessary.” Minho eyes Felix, but there’s no emotion on the witch’s face. “Ready to go?” 

Minho flexes his fingers and rolls his shoulders. “Yes.”

-

You’re going to have a bad day. You knew it when you woke up on the edge of a dream that left you sweat-slick and short of breath. The dream hovered right on the edge of your mind, slipping through your grasp like grains of sand as you tried to dig and pull the memories back. 

It’s always like this. Waking up from something you can’t remember, carrying around the dregs of a nightmare with you all day. You always feel hollow after, like something terrible has happened but you can’t recall what. Can’t place the feeling of the shadow that slinks from your dreamscape into your waking hours, watching and waiting until you fall asleep again. 

The bad day comes for you like you knew it would. You’re going to be late to work. Again. It’s a condition that the public transportation system has made incurable. Buses are always behind, the subway is only reliable from midtown to uptown, and the only carpooling services here are run by the pixies who are too easily distracted by lights to get you where you’re going on time. Especially in the Lethe sector. 

Jisung will just have to cover for you like he always does. He’s good at that, turning on the vila charm and glittering smile. It’s useful, having him to count on. You feel a little bad about it, but you make up for your lack of timeliness in other ways like making sure he doesn’t get the shit beat out of him when he takes on dangerous clients, his knife in the dark. 

Still, as the rain pours down on your coat and the street's drain systems fail, causing water to surge around your ankle along with the garbage clogging the drains in the first place, you wonder if he’ll ever get tired of covering for you. 

A cat yowls and runs down an alleyway as you walk by, startling you. Pulling your jacket closer, you keep your eyes lingering in the shadows of each alley you pass. Your dagger is strapped to your calf under your pants, but you’re still wary walking down the streets in the pouring rain, especially now. 

Murders happen in the Lethe sector all the time. You’re no stranger to that. You’re even responsible for a few of them. But the types of murders being whispered about in the circles that you pass and being murmured in the closed doors of the clubs is that something isn’t right. There is something moving through downtown, tearing creatures apart. 

In a way, you’re unconcerned. As long as you and yours are safe and protected, it isn’t your business what is prowling through Lethe. As long as Hyunjin and Jisung are alive and healthy, you don’t particularly care to find out what’s murdering its way through apartment complexes. 

Below the drowning surface of the streets is worse than above. Water runs down the steps of the subway like a waterfall, splashing out onto the floor before it spreads and eventually spills onto the tracks. There are wet floor signs everywhere as the subway androids drive around with mops, doing nothing but certainly trying to squeegee the water into drains. 

You jump the pay meter, ignoring the way it blares red when you do so. The little androids are so worried about the deluge that they don’t turn at the sound of a payment being skipped, making you grin. Serves the transportation system right for charging you at all for something public. 

The train car is full of soaked wet people huddling in seats. At least the air conditioning doesn’t work so you don’t have the sting of cold air clinging to your skin as you tuck yourself in an empty seat, trying to make yourself as small as possible. 

At the end of the car is a group of solitary fae, heads tilted together and giggling over their phones. You watch them from the corner of your eye. They’re dressed mostly in black with merchandise from a vampire band you vaguely recognize. 

Dropping your eyes to the ground, you stare at the scuffed shoes on your feet. You wonder what it’s like to go out to a concert with friends dressed in band tees and high on pre-concert adrenaline. When you go out with your friends, it’s to work. To watch Jisung bat his eyelashes and trade secrets and kisses for the elite who come from uptown to slum it without watchful eyes. To slip a knife between the ribs of someone who got a little too close, who was a little too rough. To get battered by Hyunjin as he tries to hone you into a warrior he so desperately tells you that you need to be. 

With a heavy sigh, you lean back and close your eyes, pressing your head against the window. The rocking of the subway car on the tracks is gentle, soothing almost. As you sink into the exhaustion that pulls at your skin and bones with greedy hands, you slip away somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, a sort of in-between. 

Here, in between, is where you feel the same thing you always do: a void. A missing piece. Something not right inside of you, like a lock with no key. For a long time, you thought that perhaps you were just built wrong. It was a good enough guess because you’re certainly not the kind of faerie that your mother’s court is proud of.

This feels deeper, though. Like there is something out there waiting for you, calling to you. Your father wasn’t helpful when you told him about this feeling of something waiting for you beyond, chalking it up with a tight smile and a mutter of the word destiny. 

You don’t believe in destiny, though. There is nothing meant for anyone. People are born, things happen to them, then they die. Unless they’re immortal, which is pretty common in Stratos. 

An announcement chimes above your head announcing a stop and you look up to see the group of solitary fae clambering to get off the car. As they pass, one of them turns to look at you. Their eyes are large and round, like a horse. One is crystal blue while the other is wholly black, no iris, no whites. You startle, recognizing the dark eye of a seer as the faerie stares at you with uncanny sharpness. 

Something tingles at the back of your neck. The faerie doesn’t move and outside of the train car, their friends start to call their name, but the faerie is motionless, cocking their head and pinning you with that stare. Ice forms in your veins as their friends all turn to you, mouths going tight like they sense what's about to happen. 

“Save Jeongin,” the faerie says, voice paper thin. They nod as if confirming what they’re telling you. “Save Jeongin, find the missing half.” 

The words hit you with an invisible force. You squirm in your seat, watching as the faerie blinks, a little dazed. They turn on their heel and rush off the train just as the doors to the car shut and the train dings as it shoots forward again, leaving you staring at the shut doors. 

Goosebumps break out over your arms. Something within you stirs, like a predestined feeling of knowing. Perhaps it's because the seer just told you something that is most likely valuable and a little haunting, but perhaps it's your instinct. Your father always said you had a preternatural instinct, a gut feeling about things that were beyond the normal predictiveness of the fae. 

Swallowing hard, you lean back in your seat and fight a shiver. Jeongin. You have no idea who or what that is. The name means nothing to you, and you know a lot of names. You’re in the business of knowing names. You memorize the sound and shape of it, running over the faerie's instructions over and over until it's committed to memory to ask Jisung about it later. 

Save Jeongin, find the missing half. 

Anxiety creeps up your spine, walking its cool fingers up to the nap of your neck where it settles like a collar. You feel it squeeze as you replay the words over and over in your head. You have no idea what the ‘missing half’ is but it doesn’t feel good. 

Cool air meets you when you step off the train and into the much drier air of the subway uptown. There are transportation workers here, dressed in all black with red sashes and polite smiles. Though the smell of rain rushes down the stairwell, there’s no deluge of water, no cloying scent of garbage. 

Topside, the world is still covered by misty rain. At least the sidewalks aren’t swimming, rain rushing down the gutters with a loud roar as the storm drain systems operate. Umbrellas move along the sidewalk like beetles, their little black shells crawling along the evening foot traffic.

To your right, cars are lined up, occasionally beeping impatiently from people who are tired from their day working in the city and just want to go home. You wonder what it must be like, to wake up at the same time every morning and sit in a car for an hour to go to some flashy building uptown. Maybe you’d have a desk in a nice glass office and get to look out over the rest of the world, watching the people below you move like ants. 

Or perhaps you’d be one of those workers who only worked until you found a wealthy partner to support you, becoming the trophy they could tout around at parties and drape in jewels. Then, your partner would slip down to downtown in the middle of the night and visit the seedy bars and clubs in the underbelly, where they would ultimately whore their way through the riff raff. 

You grit your teeth. It always comes back to this, your dreams coming full circle to your reality. You’re not good at dreaming. Perhaps as a child, tucked against the small window at your father’s cafe you were a dreamer. Thought about what you might do with your life, what potential you might have. 

That was snuffed out. No need to think about it, no need to lament over it.

The Glass Thorn Hotel stretches upward into the sky, iridescent and glowing from all of the hidden lights fixed to the building. It stands out among the rest of the city, a shining beacon of light among dark office windows. Crowds of people with their umbrellas press together behind red rope, watching the slow drag of cars come along to drop off the city's elite: government officials, royals, music idols, movie stars, business owners. 

A car hits a puddle as you walk around the side of the building, splashing you from ankle to hip. You let out a frustrated yell. You were already wet from the knee down, but how you feel clammy near your ass as you hurry to the rear of the building, flashing your phone to show your ID and work badge at the door. 

The Unseelie faerie at the door scrutinizes your ID, white eyes flickering from the glowing screen to your face. You grit your teeth and stare back at him, daring him to say something. His lips twitch in a frown before he hands you the phone back and opens the door further.

“Do dry off,” he murmurs, voice like velvet. “You’re dripping all over the place like a wild animal.” 

“Noted,” you grit back, stepping inside.

The service hall is tight and bustling with activity. There’s an intention detector just ahead of you, a line of creatures going through and waiting for the thrumming energy field to buzz green. The detector is made up of two glass panes on either side of a carpet, flowing with magical energy as two armed vampires stand on either side. 

Shoving your phone in your pocket, you ask for a towel to dry off, shivering in the cool of the hallway.

A scoff comes from behind you. You turn your head to the side a fraction, glancing at the security guard who shakes his head and mumbles something under his breath. Your hearing isn’t as sharp as a full-blooded fae, but you hear him well enough to know he calls you a half-breed.

You stiffen and turn forward, determined not to let it get to you. It isn’t the worst thing you’ve been called and it won’t be the last time you earn the name either. Your lack of magic has earned you snide glances your entire life. They have no idea that there is a river of magic running deep in you. It’s just inaccessible. Useless.

Passing through the intention detector is easy, though uncomfortable. The magic clings to your skin like tiny little claws latching in, sticking to you and digging in to find your intention, to see if you mean harm. You certainly don’t mean harm to anyone here.

Save Jeongin, find the missing half. 

You hope that if someone in the building tonight is looking to harm this Jeongin that they get disintegrated by the detectors long before you have to do anything. 

After signing in, you get directed to wardrobe where you pull on black dress shirt and quickly tuck it into your black pants before rushing toward the swinging kitchen doors.

Noise explodes when you enter the kitchens. People hollering, the sound of oil crackling accompanied by the slamming of metal knives and pans against burners, glass shattering followed by screaming as someone drops a dining plate. 

You spot Jisung lifting a serving platter of champagne flutes, his ochre eyes on the pixie being scolded as he makes a face you can only read as yikes while rushing over to him. He doesn’t see you coming at first, standing and watching the chaos, golden glow around him as his mind wanders.

“You’re glowing,” you mumble to him as you pick up a serving tray of champagne. He snaps his head in your direction, the faint glimmer around his body vanishing but his million-watt smile making up for it. “Why are you so giddy?”

“Perhaps the pixie who dropped her serving plate called me a cunt earlier,” he said, sniffing indifferently as you both head toward the servants hall to slip through the dark and enter the banquet hall of the hotel. “Perhaps I charmed a spriggan to tie her shoe laces.” 

“Deserved it, then.”

“Perhaps so.” 

Darkness envelops the two of you as you move behind a murky, darkened veil. The magical veil is for cosmetic purposes only, shielding the entire venue from the unsightly serving staff as the gala on the other side of the dark wall buzzes with activity. 

“You were late again, by the way. Shira asked where you were.” 

“I’m sure you lied and said I was here.”

“I did,” he confirms, sighing as the two of you step around rushing servers.

Jisung gives you a dark look. He looks exquisite tonight, his almond eyes lined with brown kohl, enhancing their alluring pull. There’s a sweep of shimmer on his cheekbones and his golden hair is styled back and laced with lines of glitter. His features are soft and round - innocent, which is what he likes people to think. You know he’s anything but. 

“You look beautiful,” you offer as he gestures for you to lead the way through the darkened veil. “Stay away from the Unseelie.”

He nods, eyes serious. “I know.”

Giving Jisung a single encouraging nod,  you step through the veil. It feels like stepping through static, your ears popping on the other side. The gala is loud, the sound of all the voices and the music bustle washing over you as you slip into your role as a server for the night.

When Jisung told you that the events company he sometimes works for needed extra bodies to serve at an event uptown, you’d immediately said yes. You needed the extra cash and beyond the fact that the opulence reminds you how you are worlds awat from the elite members of Stratos, they’re not the worst jobs. 

But you’d almost bailed when you realized that the event was hosted by the Unseelie Court. Hyunjin was going to have a meltdown when he realized where you were too. But a single look at your bank account had you swallowing down years of bad memories and putting on a smile as you extended your tray of champagne flutes. 

Attending patrons tended to ignore you anyways. No one's eyes drifted to your tipped ears that were far too short to be entirely fae. No one glanced twice at your face, a mess of fae features with something else. Something unnamed. 

A black and blue butterfly passes you, a glowing trail of blue following its path. Your eyes follow it as it floats upward toward effervescent lighting. The ballroom has been transformed into a glowing cave of darkness and magic. Glowing flowers and vines drape on the walls and across the ceiling, floating lights of pink and blue drifting in the air offering gentle lighting. 

Beneath your feet, the floor is soft moss, dotted with mushrooms and other illuminated flora. The air smells sweet, sticky and humid against your skin. You imagine yourself on the inside of a volcano long burned out, the inside becoming home to all of the things that thrive in the dark, that make their own light.

It’s beautiful, and the creatures inside of it are all the more beautiful still. A moon wraith drifts by, her hair long and silvery. She’s watery at the edges and opaque enough that you can see right through her in some parts. She’s in silk that looks spun out of light, eyes wholly black with glittering stars.

A dizzying number of creatures drift by you. You see glittering gossamer wings, soft-furred brownies, sharp-fanged vampires, a grinning werewolf, groups of nymphs giggling behind scaled hands. A popular musician passes you, his siren song making you turn your head as he drifts by. He’s not even speaking but you hear the soft purr of his music, the longing notes as he continues into the room, turning heads as he goes. 

Cameras flash as a group of politicians pose together. You recognize the princes of the Solar court posing for a photo. She’s otherworldly, her moss eyes vulpine and sharp, her doll-like face illuminated in the lowlight. Her dress looks like it’s made of light, threads of glowing sun wrapping around her light body and casting her in a gold gleam. 

Council members fill up the room. As you navigate, you recognize the leading members of the species of Stratos in the room. Not all twelve are present, but not all twelve members of the city’s ruling body are equal as they should be. Even among the top there is a social hierarchy that dictates invitations. 

A routine forms for your night. Circumnavigate the room while holding a tray, keep your eyes down, go back to the kitchen to receive another when you’ve emptied what you’re carrying. It’s easy money though your arm is a little sore and your shoes feel too tight on your feet. Ignoring it, you enter the main gala again, eyes scanning the room for Jisung. 

Your eyes alight on the vila as he bows his head and accepts thanks for something that a werewolf is telling him. As though he senses your eyes, Jisung looks across the room in your direction until he finds you. He offers a small smile and nod, letting you know that he’s okay. He’s well-enough equipped to take care of himself, but you have been his protector since you were children in school, standing up to the bullies who used to knock him down and cut his hair. 

A tingling sensation slides down the back of your neck. You pause and stiffen, staring at a lichen covered wall where two spriggans swing from vines, but you’re not watching them. Your eyes unfocus as you feel the prickling awareness bloom, static spreading down your spine. 

It’s a peculiar feeling that’s similar to when your instincts kick in and scream at you to do something specific. Lifting your gaze, you sweep the room a few times, looking for a noticeable threat or whatever is giving you this niggling feeling. There’s nothing that immediately looks out of place to you: flashing lights, low pulsing music, the din of voices and writhing bodies as they move around one another. 

There’s a larger crowd than there was before. Late comers are filling in before the seat portion of the gala starts and they have dinner while the faerie courts lament about the long-lasting history between them as they approach the anniversary of the peace between the four of them. You hope you get to sit in the server hall and rest your feet for that portion. Listening to the leaders of the city is the last thing you feel like doing.

A server hisses at you to move and snaps you from your trance. You nod and roll your shoulders, joining the rotation again. The platter feels heavier in your hand and your heart beats a little faster. Instead of keeping your eyes low and to the ground as you carry around what looks like truffled kelpie eyes, you keep watch on your surroundings. The tingling sensation that you’re missing something immediate is there, pressing down on your spine.

Applause starts to thrum through the crowd of attendees as you pass off the last of the eyeball truffles on your serving platter. You glance toward the front of the room where there are two holographic screens displayed as the queen of the Unseelie Court takes center stage on a glass platform. 

Queen Jieun is a spectacle to look at. Her hair is raven black, shining blue under the lights of the floating orbs and glowing flora. Her dress is a marvel of sweeping skirts of black and charcoal gray, tiny beaded details depicting vines twisting up the dress. The bodice is a cage of black branches and thorns, frosted with frozen dew and forming a violent collar around her delicate throat. 

The queen of the Unseelie Court is everything she could be, delicate and sharp, dangerous but coy, beautiful but terrifying. You swallow past the sour taste in your mouth at seeing her, repressing a shiver as you bow your head down and make a beeline for the opaque veil as she gives her opening address, voice like dark velvet. 

Jisung grabs you and yanks you to a standstill. You bare your teeth at him in frustration but he gives you a wide-eyed, pleading look. A quick glance around the room lets you know that none of the other servers are moving, all standing rigid around the room with their heads cast down and arms laced behind their back because it’s impolite to not show reverence while the queen is speaking.

Gritting your teeth, you stand next to him and lace your hands behind your back. Fixing your eyes on the floor, you take deep breaths in through your nose and let it out slowly through your mouth. The queen’s voice is like nails on your skin, rattling you down to your core the more you hear the raspy laugh and each accented word. 

Queen Jieun doesn’t know your face or you wouldn’t have come tonight, knowing that the Unseelie Court would be here. But she does know your name - especially your mother’s - and being in the same room as her feels oppressive. Like a hand is pressing down on our throat, determined to crush your airway. 

A brush of fingers against yours draws your attention. Jisung isn’t looking at you, but his fingers are twining with yours, giving you a squeeze. Your heart constricts and your throat tightens, nearly overcome by a sweeping of fondness for him. You squeeze his hand back and turn forward, steeled and strengthened to listen to a woman who unknowingly shapes your entire existence.

There’s a round of applause as she asks the queen of the Solar Court to join her. They use fanciful words to depict how long ago, the four courts of the fae were at odds with one another. It was far before Stratos ever existed and the fae lived in their own world before it joined the Burned Kingdoms. Worlds lost to some magical blight, something all-consuming. 

Now, the four courts of the fae live in harmony. Tense harmony filled with political jockeying, vying for the council seat, and an ever-changing game of chess where they seek to out power one another. The Unseelie Court is better at it than most, but they aren’t where the power lies here this evening. 

The sovereign of the Seelie Court sits at the table of honor, their jade eyes honed in on the two monarchs speaking at the front of the stage. The sovereign is beautiful, with high cheekbones that look sharp enough to cut glass and red stained lips the color of crushed berries. Their copper long hair is intricately braided and there’s a circlet resting just above a proud brow. It’s hard to look at them for any amount of time, the power and glamor radiating from the faerie always makes you avert your eyes after a few seconds. 

Sovereign Seren is the Unseelie queen’s opposite in almost every way. Where color seems to blanch where Queen Jieun goes, the world around the sovereign is brighter and warmer and you swear you see colors you never knew existed before. This is what the old blood of the original fae kingdom looks like. This is a faerie who has existed for thousands of years, and pins a cutting stare onto the two fae on the stage. 

A static pulse ripping from somewhere in the building distracts you. You turn toward the kitchens where you felt it from, staring at the opaque veil between the gala and the serving staff. You can’t see through the veil at all, can’t hear any sounds but what is on this side of the magical barrier. 

Your stomach sinks. The feeling of wrongness creeps up on you and you glance around to see if anyone else felt a shiver of strange magic. No one seems alarmed or looking in the direction you felt the wave emanate from. Jisung is staring at his feet, yawning. 

Turning back to the magical wall, you stare at it as though you could will it to show you what's on the other side. This feeling of anxiety and fight or flight is different from earlier in the evening when you felt that cool tingle pressing on your neck. Now, your gut twists and you cannot shake the omen that has settled deep in your stomach, warning bells going off.

You turn to Jisung. “Something isn’t right,” you murmur to him. He looks up at you, eyes round and alarmed. He knows to trust you. “I think I felt something a moment ago and I have this horrible feeling-”

Terrible screams rip through the gala as servants spill through the magical wall. Immediately there are creatures shooting to their feet from tables and guards swarming the two fae royals on the stage. Jisung grabs your arm in alarm, looking as chaos breaks out along the far side of the room where servants are stumbling into tables and fleeing from the kitchens and halls in droves, several of them slick with blood. 

Grabbing Jisung’s arm, you pull him behind you as the table in front of you gets shoved, the attendees rushing to get away from the unknown source of terror. You feel the threat like a pinprick, a knife of awareness as you move backward toward the gala entrance with Jisung pressed behind you. The two of you are careful to keep together, feet tangling with one another in the mess while your eyes are trained on the veil, waiting. 

When you see the source of the mayhem, you freeze. The creature is a void, so dark that it bends the light as it slinks through the magical veil. As it passes, the wall of magic crackles, electricity popping and whining as it shatters and drops, revealing the servant hall. Jisung’s nails dig into your skin, drawing half moon circles of blood with his grip as the two of you stare at the massacre of bodies and limbs. 

“What the fuck is that?” Jisung breathes, hand trembling.

You have no idea what the creature in question is. It’s sleek and shaped like a jungle cat, but its entire hide shines with leathery skin as it prowls into the room, shadows flickering strangely around it. Two long appendages grow from its back, lashing out like a whip and plunging into people. There are rows of serrated teeth at the end of each appendage, chittering like a saw as it pulls victims down.

It’s hard to watch but harder to look away as the creature holds a Solar Court guard down to the ground and turns him into something unrecognizable, an oozing husk of a body as the guard nearly melts with whatever the teeth do to him. 

Jisung turns and vomits behind you. Your stomach is hardly in better condition when another creature slinks around the corner from the kitchen, the same buzz shivering over you with its presence. This one is closer and you realize that it’s just you and Jisung, frozen and staring as fae guards and a pack of werewolves press in on the first creature.

This one, though, seemsed fixed on you. It’s hard to make out and discernable facial features, but you immediately feel like prey. You squeeze Jisung’s arm. “Run,” you whisper. 

Jisung doesn’t hesitate. He lets you go in favor of running and you’re on his heels, leaping over a broken chair as you go. The banquet hall doors are a mass of bodies and screaming creatures shoving and pulling. Only three sets of doors are available for the escape of the people inside as hundreds of people try to stampede through them. 

As you approach the crowd, they start screaming and running toward you, herded toward the center of the gala as more of the cat-creatures prowl from the lobby into the event space, their whip-like limbs and teeth tearing into victims as they go.

Bodies slam into you. Jisung’s hand gets knocked from yours and you scream his name. He’s yanked from you in the sea of people and you shove your way through the panicking crowd in the direction you think he was pulled in. 

Stumbling, you end up at the south end of the room, a body slamming into you and knocking you to the ground. Rolling to your front and pushing yourself up, you freeze, eye level with one of the creatures that is cornering a faerie dressed in the leathers of the Unseelie Guard. He’s got a sword out and he’s bleeding from his brow, standing in front of either a dead body or someone who is unconscious as he snarls.

He’s young you realize, vulpine face full of terror but eyes lit with fire. You scrambled to your feet, slipping on spilled blood. The creature prowls toward the faerie but he doesn’t move, determined to stand over the body laying on the floor instead of turning to run. 

Around the room, there are several people trying to fight off the monsters. You see the Sovereign from the corner of your eye, her green magic flashing so bright you see stars. Behind you, a faerie skids to a halt and looks at the Unseelie guard.

“Jeongin!” he screams, voice cracking. 

Jeongin. The name resonates with you immediately and the hair on the back of your neck stands on end. Save Jeongin, find the missing half. 

Without considering the consequences, you stepward and teeter right into the pool of your magic, falling headfirst into the bottomless well of energy. 

Your magic is unpredictable at best and you’re wildly untrained. Beyond a few parlor tricks, your energy sits inside of you untapped and waiting. It feels like an ever-flowing river, cycling and rushing through your entire body. Sometimes, you try to dip your hand in. But you can never grasp it, can never pull out a handful of it to do what you want. 

That certainly insn’t the case now as your panic jumpstarts your magic. You’ve only done this twice before. Once was the first time you ever fell headfirst into your magic. You had just been trying to get a jar of cookies from the highest shelf, but you’d fallen from the counter and tried to soften the blow. You’d melted right through the floor and set off some sort of reaction, your magic eating away at the foundations of your home until there was nothing left.

The second time, you’d been ambushed with your mother leaving a very tense meeting with her family at their estate. You’d been afraid and reacting out of instinct to protect yourself, pulsing like an electromagnetic generator and sending a wave of energy outward. 

It had leveled a building and left a scorch mark on the earth. You hadn’t even managed to save your mother. 

Now, it doesn’t matter. The seer’s words echo through you and you lose yourself to the surging power, becoming a livewire. The thing senses you, turning on you and away from the faerie - Jeongin - to attack. It’s too late. Your palms are burning up with magic and you imagine a blade, something to cut away at the creature. You let your magic fly, a flash of something razor thin. 

Black ichor sprays as it hits the monster. It splatters outward, making you flinch as it hits you hot and wet. Its two halves fall on the ground, leaking onto the floor. The air around it shimmers for a moment, vibrating before it settles and all that’s left is the dead thing. 

Someone screams your name. Jisung comes running toward you, a loping creature following him. Jisung is covered in blood, blonde hair soaked red. Your power shakes as you reach for him, one hand outstretched the other shaping another blade of energy. 

Jisung’s hand grabs yours and you pull him to your chest, holding him as you throw your magic again. You hear the way it cuts the air, an audible hum as it hits the creature and slices thickly through its hide. It hits the ground heavily, the air glimmering again like the fabric of this world is registering that something has happened. 

Elsewhere, beasts are slowly being felled. The high priestess of the witch covens wields white fire around her, a whip of flame cracking as she advances on a creature. Lightning crackles up the sword of a nephilim solider, arching as he slices through the leg of another. 

“What the fuck was that?” Jisung breathes, holding on to you for dear life. “Did you just-”

“Yes,” you pant.

“How?”

“I just panicked, honestly. I have no idea.” 

Jisung hugs you tightly. “Thank you.” You give him a squeeze back and he peels away, looking over your shoulder. “There are three Unseelie fae staring at you.”

Save Jeongin, find the missing half. 

Licking your lips, you turn to look at the group of fae behind you. The young one that you saved - Jeongin - stares at you with wide eyes and his mouth open. A little marveled. A little afraid. Behind him, the faerie that he was standing in front of is sitting up with the help of the one who had yelled Jeongin’s name, his eyes glued to you as well. 

It’s the one Jeongin had been protecting that attracts your attention. When you look at him the sounds of death and chaos fade to a dull roar, blocked out by your tunnel vision as you stare at him. Suddenly, the world feels right, like everything makes perfect sense. Everything is aligned. 

He’s devastating to look at. Amethyst hair hands down in his face, matted with the blood that drips down the side of his head. He has unfathomably dark eyes, feline-shaped and sharp. He’s made up of equally soft and sharp features, nose round and jaw honed. His mouth is fixed in a grimace, but you think his lips are plush. Gentle. 

Your heart beats loud in your ears as you stare at him. That strange sense of instinct is screaming now, louder than before, pressing down on you like you’ve finally figured out what it wants from you. It tells you that it wanted you to look here, at this person. The man sitting on the floor, staring up at you with a mix of confusion and wariness. 

Suddenly, you realize that in this moment there is the absence of something else. Most of your life you’ve spent wandering around as though you were looking for something else or like something was missing. Just a small piece of you that was impossible to find. 

Now there’s a key sliding into a lock. Your mouth dries as you feel like something clicks. Like suddenly, now that the two of you are staring at one another, everything makes sense. Rationally, none of what has happened tonight makes sense. The creatures, the attack, the chaos and your sudden dip into your magic. 

Yet… it feels right. Entirely, wholly right, for the first time in your life. 

Horror creeps in slowly as your mind begins to put together the details too slowly. It seems that the faerie on the floor - someone important, by the looks of his guards - has already come to a conclusion you haven’t reached just yet. He’s shaking his head and pushing back a little bit, eyes never leaving you. 

Such beautiful eyes, you think absently, under all of the whirring of your thoughts. 

When you were little, you asked your dad what it felt like when he realized your mother was his mate. It had seemed like a good idea at the time but this face had clouded over in a way you’d never seen before, etched glass of pain and sadness. You’d regret asking immediately and thought that he wouldn’t answer until he finally did.

Like suddenly there was no longer a piece of me missing or looking for something, he’d said. Like everything made sense, even if it didn’t really. Just instinctual knowing that I was suddenly whole. 

Jisung says your name and pulls on your arm but you’re anchored to where you stand. Unable to move and think beyond the word that is circling your thoughts over and over again. As soon as you even think of the word, you can’t get rid of it. Can’t shake the feeling that you’ve come to the right conclusion about whatever this feeling is.

Mate you think. Mate. Mate. Mate. 

No word in the world seems more appropriate. It echoes inside of you - rattles the stars, even. You’re so sure that he’s your mate, not a sliver of doubt in your heart. Fear, perhaps. Despair, even. But nothing has felt surer to you than this moment, looking at him. 

“Your highness,” Jeongin says, though it’s phrased like a question. He’s looking at the faerie on the floor and you put the rest of the pieces together. Unknowing, the young  guard continues. “She just saved our lives.” 

Your highness. You look at the crest on his broach. The elm tree that is stitched in the armor of the guards. Horror unravels in you like a slow blooming flower, each petal bringing with it the new weight of trepidation as you stare at the prince of the Unseelie Court.

“Doesn’t matter,” the other guard growls and points a blade at you. “Until this is sorted out, everyone is an enemy.” 

The prince snarls vicious sound, canines on display as he jumps to his feet, hand shooting out to grab his guard’s arm. “Do not,” he hisses. “Point your weapon at my mate.” 

⟡ Main Masterlist ⟡ Series Masterlist ⟡ Playlist ⟡ Ask ⟡ Next Chapter

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

Xander is genuinely an interesting character. It’s complicated because a lot of people now just see him as aged poorly or Joss 2.0 and completely ignore the actual show itself and why he is the way he is.

Between the books, not the comics, the actual books and the TV show you come to learn incredibly important things:

Xander had a goth phase for a while that is brought up in the books.

Xander struggles with depression and loneliness.

Xander’s bedroom was in the basement as far removed as a kid could get from their parents.

Xander’s parents fight frequently and violently.

Xander’s father is a cruel drunk who treats his son like an abomination.

All of the above literally explain why Xander is the way that he is….and current fans blatantly ignore and avoid that and it is mind boggling to me.

He wants to joke constantly and make awkward comments and jokes especially if he’s anxious or scared or uncomfortable. He seemingly doubts people aside from Willow could ever like him for himself so he settles for the role of being the clown. He wants to be seen and understood and loved and when Anya eventually offers him this he panics due to the fear that he will turn into an abusive monster like his father and ruin her. Xander ruined his relationship with Cordelia for essentially the same reason, the fear of ruining things, of dragging her into his family and this life that would result in depression and resentment for her. He cheated on her with Willow because Willow is the only person who knows him and knows his family situation and she is safe and comfortable and familiar and kissing her knowing she has loved him most her life at that point was manipulative and misdirected and wrong on his part…..but look at his home life.

The boy never saw what a relationship is meant to be. His parents were hateful and resentful. He didn’t grow up seeing love and he has a deep fear that maybe he can’t actually love somebody.

Even his relationship to Buffy feels like deep down she is who he wants to be more than wants to be with. She’s brave and strong and witty and smart and resourceful and can easily come across like she doesn’t have time to care what people think of her.

And because of the toxic masculinity of the 90s and the shit his own father tried to beat into him about being a real man….he resents that. He feels humiliated and resentful that this girl is everything he’s been told he should be. It’s why he gets so up in arms about Buffy breaking it off with Riley, because Riley is the type of man Xander grew up being told is a real man and he idolizes that.

Spike and Angel don’t fall into this role. Spike ironically enough like Xander we learn was soft and gentle and loved poetry and kind things and was mocked and teased by people for being the way that he was. Spike became a vampire and became blood thirsty but even seeing him with Dru through the centuries the gentle lover never died with his humanity, it comes out more and more as the show progresses and frankly it comes down to vampires have no need to care.

Once you have lived hundreds of years and may live hundreds more then the concept of gender norms and sexuality come to be meaningless human concepts.

Xander is this sort of tragic character who is trapped under so much fear and anxiety and grew up in a time when the worst things you could be is a woman or gay and he wanted badly to be masculine to be a hero to be brave and manly and all of that and it frequently ended up with him distancing from his friends, losing women who did love him and tried to understand him but he never let them close enough.

So anyway I really wish people would look at story more than 2023 social norms in a show made back in the 90s/2000s and also I wish the show had made Xander gay.

[oc-poll-tournament]

OC Poll Tournament Round 1 Poll 5

Propaganda below the cut:

Meparik (he/him) @gailynovelry: Meparik of the Frostbitten Court (he/him)

Meparik is many things! He is a feyrie, a pickpocket, a sign-language user, a voracious reader, and an accidental religious leader. He understands more of the political goings-on of his realm than most adults do, and profusely hates the gods for it. His bedraggledness is matched only by that of his best friend (unwilling messiah lesbian). Gaze upon the child, your honor. Do you feel it? The desire to feed him warm soups and wrap him up in a cozy blanket? I rest my case, your honor. I rest it well.

Nat Finch (he/him) @albatris: I'd like to submit Nat Finch! he/him, 25 years old, brand new baby vampire. he works the night shift at dodgy petrol and convenience store Stop 'N' Go, where he falls asleep on the clock and encourages shoplifting. he's schizotypal like me and he loves cats, cooking, and his friends! he's the protagonist of my campy gory horror trilogy, though he'd rather not be!

he's short and fat with red eyes and lots of freckles. his hair is long and black, often uneven and choppy in length, because he just cuts tangles out instead of untangling them ❤

he's a sweet boy, earnest boy, awkward boy; he doesn't have many friends at the start of the story due to his paranoia, psychosis, and social anxiety, but by the end of it has a whole bunch of good friends AND a kitty he adores named Grub who purrs like a faulty tractor

in this story vampirism is a sentient entity and all connected via a hivemind known as "the Garble".... it lives in the vampires' blood and can manipulate their thoughts as well as give them heightened strength and speed, claws and fangs, and night vision when they need it. it can be useful, but mostly it's a bully and an inconvenience

at the centre of the Garble hivemind lives the very first vampire, an undead rotting corpse and the god of vampires, and a few of their close friends and confidants. all life force collected by regular vampires flows to them at the centre and grants them immortality and power. it's a sweet deal for the folks at the centre, and a terrible deal for ordinary vampires like Nat who rarely reap any real benefits from their condition, but are threatened and manipulated into participating in this system regardless

Nat's story sees him struggling to solve the mystery of how and why he was turned and trying to balance his kind, caring nature with his new violent condition... and eventually leads him to, "hey, I think I'm going to hunt down and eat the rest of vampire god"

good for him!

some other Nat Facts:

huge drama queen (will play up being sad and pathetic to get what he wants)

vampires are hardwired to seek warmth and coziness so Nat is always down to snuggle 24/7

bouncy cheery overexcited lad who will grin for weeks if you say something nice to him

vegetarian, aside from eating people, which he insists does not count

speaking of eating people, primarily preys on rich pricks and abusive bosses

is too awkward to tell his neighbours he bought them a cute knitted blanket he thought they might like for their corgi because what if that's a weird thing to do. this has been going on for three weeks

is too awkward to tell his neighbours his name is Nat, not Matt. this has been going on for three years

has a giant scary monster mode full of eyes and teeth >:3

please consider voting for my boy!

[thebpdcrybaby]

My name is Sadie and I'm 32 years old with autism and borderline personality disorder. I am not in treatment because I have Medicare for insurance and there are 4+ year waiting lists for therapy. I am on three medications. I have major depression, severe anxiety, agoraphobia, adjustment disorder, unspecified mood disorder. I have binge eating disorder and struggle with self harm. I'm obese and have always struggled with my weight. I live on my own in an apartment complex, where my mother and five year old son also live. She is raising him. I have been in a relationship with my son's father for 9 years, it has been a lot of ups and downs. He is my FP (favorite person). I'm on social security income and live in Pennsylvania, USA. I have heavy suicide ideations. My BPD type is "self destructive."

- she/her/hers

- LGBT ally

- extremely liberal

- non religious with interest in The Satanic Temple

- 420 friendly

- no ableism

- no fatphobia

Horror movie fanatic.

Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, HIM, Linkin Park, Grey Daze, Jack Off Jill, Nirvana, Green Day, Yungblud, Melanie Martinez, Lana Del Rey, Halsey, Buckcherry, Korn, Pearl Jam, Fuel, Pink Floyd, John Mellencamp, She Wants Revenge, Oasis, Pixies, Maroon 5, Sick Puppies, Sixx:A.M., Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Third Eye Blind, Thirty Seconds to Mars, AFI, Violent Femmes, Rise Against, The Struts, In This Moment, The Pretty Reckless, Evanescence, Shinedown, Hollywood Undead, Daughtry, The 69 Eyes, Mindless Self Indulgence, Filter, Rob Zombie, Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, Papa Roach, Seether, Puddle of Mudd, Bush, Creed, P!nk, Rancid, The Doors, Radiohead, Gin Blossoms, Sex Pistols, My Chemical Romance, Tool, Hole, Good Charlotte, Sublime, Machine Gun Kelly, Eminem, Miley Cyrus, Noah Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift

My comforts and hyperfixations: The Twilight Zone, The Golden Girls, Home Improvement sitcom, Art the Clown, Jack Skellington, Hello Kitty, Rugrats, the 90s, cemeteries, true crime, splatterpunk, gore, slashers, collecting DVDs and Blu-ray, reading books and Kindle, "alternative" goth, punk, emo, The Sims, casual mobile gaming, poetry, Tate Langdon from American Horror Story season one, American Horror StorIES show on Hulu, Kurt Cobain, Chester Bennington, The Virgin Suicides, Girl Interrupted, Pearl, Euphoria, girlblogging, Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka

[albatris]

Nat Post!

@original-character-championship

well he is just a little guy <3

Nathaniel Felix Finch!

he's 25 years old and he works at dodgy petrol and convenience store Stop 'N' Go! he's schizotypal like me and he loves cats, cooking, and his friends! he's the protagonist of my campy gory vampire horror trilogy, though he'd rather not be!

in this story vampirism is a sentient entity and all connected via a hivemind known as "the Garble".... it lives in the vampires' blood and can manipulate their thoughts as well as give them heightened strength and speed, claws and fangs, and night vision when they need it. it can be useful, but mostly it's a bully and an inconvenience

at the centre of the Garble hivemind is the very first vampire, a vampire god, if you will, and a small group of their vampire friends and confidants. all life force collected by other regular vampires flows to them at the centre and grants those select few immortality and power. it's a sweet deal for the folks at the centre, and a terrible deal for ordinary vampires who rarely reap any real benefits from their condition. but the Garble makes 'em participate through all kinds of threats and discomfort. it's a bummer

Nat is a brand new freshly-turned baby vampire! he was turned by a group of vampires with ~nefarious intentions~, who forcefed him part of the original vampire's rotting undead corpse. his story sees him struggling to solve the mystery of why this happened to him and trying to balance his kind, caring nature with his new violent condition... and eventually leads him to, "hey, I think I'm going to hunt down and eat the rest of vampire god"

good for him!

he's a sweet boy, gentle boy, awkward boy; he doesn't have many friends at the start of the story due to his paranoia, psychosis, and social anxiety, but by the end of it has a whole bunch of good friends AND a kitty he adores named Grub who purrs like a faulty tractor

rapid-fire Nat Facts!

huge drama queen (will play up being sad and pathetic to get what he wants)

vampires are hardwired to seek warmth and coziness so Nat is always down to snuggle 24/7

bouncy cheery overexcited lad who will grin for weeks if you say something nice to him

collector of trinkets

excellent cook and especially loves cooking for other people, because he likes to feel useful and enjoys being showered in compliments

vegetarian, aside from eating people, which he insists does not count

speaking of eating people, primarily preys on rich pricks and abusive bosses where he can

is too awkward to tell his neighbours he bought them a cute knitted blanket he thought they might like for their corgi because what if that's a weird thing to do. this has been going on for three weeks

is too awkward to tell his neighbours his name is nat not matthew. this has been going on for three years

look at he:

there's also a lil playlist of Nat tunes!

ok bye!

[enluto]

"society coddles teenage girls" and "society listens and cares about teenage girls' feelings and mental health" should be laughably wrong assertions to anyone with even a cursory knowledge about internet gore/shock and true crime history.

cw: please exercise extreme caution if u decide to google any of these cases. i have included links/articles i have vetted as being safe for further research, but it is very easy to stumble upon graphic crime scene photos.

rina palenkova (x): famously known as a casuality of the 'blue whale' or suicide game, which saw a brief stint of popularity among troubled teens in the 2010s. her crime scene photos (suicide via decapitation by train) were widely circulated on gore sites, and her memory was mocked and ridiculed by the unsympathetic masses. people would leave demeaning and insulting comments on posts with her photos. no regard at all for her mental health or what could have driven her to such extremes like taking her own life. she is sickeningly known as an internet darling in the more unsavory parts of the internet due to the sheer virality of her photos.

amanda todd (x): she was a victim of extortion by an online predator, who leveraged a compromising screenshot of her for further csa material. when she refused to comply with his demands, he destroyed her life by sharing her topless photo on facebook. as a result, she became a social pariah and turned to abusing substances to cope. she ultimately took her own life at age 17, leaving behind a video (x) she had made months prior sharing her story of extortion and bullying. now she is remembered as a victim of blackmail and online predation, but at the time she was largely ridiculed and blamed for the entire ordeal; more emphasis was placed on why she flashed her webcam as a tween than on why an adult man would solicit sexual content from a young girl. it is believed a prior unsuccessful suicide attempt of hers helped popularized the term "go drink bleach."

bianca devins (x): she was brutally murdered by an incel she was friends with after they attended a nicole dollanganger concert together and she kissed another boy. due to jealousy, he cut her throat and then took photos of her body and posted them to various social media platforms, including his instagram and the discord group they were both members of. these photos were saved and posted to other social media platforms like 4chan and went viral. incels took control of the narrative, and smeared bianca as an "e-thot" and "slut" who deserved to be murdered for "leading on" her killer. bianca had struggled her for most of her life with depression and anxiety, and had turned to discord for friendship. her mother, stepfather and sister have been harassed with the photo. the circulation of the photo was so widespread that nicole dollanganger herself asked her fans and social media users alike to stop spreading the image. bianca's mother advocated for a new law to be passed to avoid the circulation of such images.

nicole "nikki" catsouras (x): she was a california teen who died in a violent car accident following an argument with her father. she suffered disfiguring injuries and died at the scene. photos of the scene, which included the shocking state of her body, were taken per police protocol. however, these pictures were leaked to the internet following crime scene technicians forwarding the photos to various parties for "personal viewing." i will let u guys speculate what these recipients were doing with her photos. nikki herself received little sympathy for her passing, as traces of cocaine were found in her system, so it was widely assumed the crash was a result of her personal negligence. her family was terrorized with her crime scene photos by online trolls; the photos have been sent to her parents' personal emails, social media, and they even pulled nikki's sister out of school due to fear she may be exposed to the photos by classmates. like palenkova, nikki is famous in the shock/gore community due to her post-mortem photos and viciously mocked to this day.

it is not lost on me that many of the most viral photos of dead bodies on the internet are those of teenage girls. the gendered state of gore virality becomes even more obvious if u include young women into the pool. elizabeth short (x) and evelyn mchale (x) are two more examples. short (also nicknamed "the black dahlia") was brutally murdered and mutilated, and mchale died by suicide. the latter had even made it known through her suicide note that she wished to not be remembered or publicized for her death, yet the photos of her body, dubbed "the most beautiful suicide" were widely published in the papers and sensationalized. these photos are of women and girls at their lowest and most vulnerable, yet society (and especially male-dominated audiences) used their likenesses as entertainment. their deceased bodies are reduced to a spectacle, and in more extreme cases, as a weapon against her surviving family.

society decidedly doesn't care about teenage girls' mental health or dignity, so i wish this lie would stop that they are somehow more cherished and protected than teenage boys.

as an aside, this is one of the reasons why i don't believe "pretty privilege" is real in any meaningful way. the perceived physical attractiveness of these deceased women and girls was absolutely a factor in the virality of their post-mortem images. people (especially men) love to see the aftermath of the destruction of a beautiful woman/girl.

[poddopetals]

TWEWY Bang 2023 Entry by poddopetals — art by @sitraxis @subasekabang

Run Through Fire — Part 1: Starless Nights

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences (T)

Pairing: Bito "Beat" Daisukenojo/Kanade Rindo (main) Additional pairings:

Furesawa "Fret" Tosai/Kanade Rindo

Bito "Beat" Daisukenojo/Sakuraba Neku (mentioned)

Furesawa "Fret" Tosai/Kanade Rindo/Sakurane Shoka (mentioned)

Kanade Rindo/Sakurane Shoka (mentioned)

WARNINGS:

Prominent appearances: Swearing, light body horror/gore, burning to death, non-canon character death, blood, nightmares, insomnia, vandalism, vehicle accident, emetophobia, headaches, fainting, food and eating, social avoidance issues, hallucinations, paranoia, characters struggling with mental health, mentions of homelessness, mentions of protests, unspecified anxiety disorder, unspecified hallucinatory disorder, characters argue often

Minor appearances: City destruction, neglectful parents (implied), claustrophobia in crowds, allusion to gang violence, mentions of cops, mentions of politics, mentions of therapy

Summary: Rindo Kanade, now 19, has been having violent nightmares and visions of his time in the Underground. For reasons he can't explain, they subject him to watching himself lose his friend of four years, Beat Bito, to inevitable disasters. This story follows Rindo's journey towards realizing exactly why he's having this issue as he gracelessly and awkwardly navigates his complicated memories and feelings for Beat, laying out a tale that shows the boy's plights of his crippling trauma clashing with young love.

Partner: sitraxis @sitraxis on Twitter @sitraxis on Tumblr Credits

tinpin.bin for proof-reading my grammar

@tinpinwin on Twitter

@tinpinwin on Tumblr

Felix Mittermeier on unsplash for graphics

This series has an official playlist on spotify!

(Or YouTube)

Read on...

AO3:

Google Docs:

WattPad:

Art © sitraxis

Read my thoughts below!

HI GUYS 💜

SO I'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FIC FOR A WHIIIILE NOW

I'M SO SO HAPPY TO FINALLY POST IT WITH THE TWEWY BANG!!! WORKING WITH MY BETA READER @TINPINWIN AND MY ARTIST SITRAXIS WAS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME AND THE STAFF OF THE BANG ALONG WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS WERE ALL SO AMAZING AND NICE AND I MADE NEW FRIENDS AND HAD SUCH A GREAT TIME!! If you read this fic, I hope you like it!! It's the first entry to my Run Through Fire series, which will be a BeatRindo fanfic universe that I'll make lots of art and fics and maybe even videos for!! Stay tuned!!!!! :D

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Julian Adorney and Mark Johnson

Published: Apr 3, 2024

Something is wrong in modern life. We're experiencing levels of safety and security that our ancestors would have found unfathomable. According to Statista, the rate of violent crime in the United States fell by almost half from 1990 to 2022. That's not an anomaly; as Harvard University professor of psychology Steven Pinker notes in Better Angels of Our Nature, crime of all kinds has been falling for centuries. We experience far less rape, murder, and robbery than did our ancestors. We're also much less likely to die in war. While the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tragic, it's also a far cry from the continent-spanning conflicts of centuries past, like the Thirty Years War or the Napoleonic Wars.

Similarly, we're experiencing a level of material prosperity that our ancestors could only dream of. According to economic historians at the Maddison Project Database, from around 1 CE to 1800 CE, the annual real (or inflation-adjusted) income per person was under $2,000. By 2016, that number in the United States was a comparatively staggering $53,015. Life expectancy for most of human history was around 30 years; in the United States, life expectancy in 2022 was 76.1 years. We even work fewer hours than people even a century ago. 

And yet, in spite of our historical levels of privilege, many of us are miserable. Over 40 million people in the United States suffer from an anxiety disorder. 47 million Americans suffer from depression. As Dr. Alok Kanojia, a psychiatrist at Harvard University, puts it when describing modern life, "Life just seems to be squeezing everyone dry."

What's going on? Why are we struggling so much to cope with the demands of modern life, even though those demands are lighter than anything our ancestors had to contend with? Our ancestors slew dragons on a daily basis; why are we struggling to beat back chihuahuas?

The truth is that humans evolved specific powerful ways to cope with the world. Our ancestors used these to great effect to thrive in conditions of intense danger and poverty. Over the past several decades, most of our society has accidentally turned away from these ways.

In order to cope with negative experiences, we need two things: time and mental space. We need idle time, in which our hands might be occupied but our minds are not, in order to let our minds simply process whatever has happened to us. Here's how Dr. Kanojia describes it: "[emotional] processing is actually…a subconscious or relatively automatic activity that…happens over long periods of time." This is a very powerful process and can help folks to work through brutal experiences. 

In ages past, humans had lots of idle time. We fished, sharpened spears, tended fires, repaired nets, and performed other physical activities that kept our hands busy while leaving our minds free to process the events of the day. By contrast, in the modern world, we have little to no idle time. Every spare minute is filled with distractions: we listen to podcasts, read books, text friends, and check social media ten thousand times per day. As a result, we never actually process our emotions and work through them. Dr. Kanojia describes this phenomenon using an example of a bad date:

"Let's say I have a bad date. What I end up doing immediately after the bad date…is distract myself and then what happens is—as I distract myself—I don't process any of those emotions. They kind of just go dormant…as this goes on again and again and again what we tend to see is that our life is filled with negative impacts that we don't allow ourselves time to actually process."

As humans, we're designed to be very resilient; but a primary mechanism of that resilience is giving ourselves idle time in which to process our emotions. In the absence of that idle time, we start to feel very fragile. As Dr. Kanojia puts it, we experience "death by a thousand cuts." He says he works with a lot of people who "as they try to move through life, they're just getting more and more shriveled and kind of patched up and defunct." Or, as he sums it up, "We're not able to recover from things the way that we used to."

It's not just lack of idle time that's handicapping our ability to cope with life's challenges. Sebastian Junger is a war correspondent who spent time on the front lines of the Afghanistan conflict. In a piece for Vanity Fair titled "How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield," he points out that chronic PTSD was rare in pre-modern societies. "Ethnographic studies on hunter-gatherer societies rarely turn up evidence of chronic PTSD among their warriors," he writes, "and oral histories of Native American warfare consistently fail to mention psychological trauma." Even fifty years ago, reports of PTSD were relatively low among soldiers. But modern soldiers experience high rates of PTSD; as of 2015, he notes, fully half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans applied for disability. As Junger puts it: "They return from wars that are safer than those their fathers and grandfathers fought, and yet far greater numbers of them wind up alienated and depressed."

What's driving this increase in PTSD among modern soldiers? Junger chalks it up to changes in modern society. We evolved as hunter-gatherers; we lived in small communal tribes where we worked, hunted, and slept surrounded by our fellows. That communal experience is common for soldiers, who live in tight-knit platoons and have to rely on their brothers for their daily survival. By contrast, modern civilian society in the United States is isolationist and atomistic. Most of us are lonely; according to an Advisory by the Surgeon General, "In recent years, about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness." Even those of us with spouses and close friend networks don't experience the deep web of social connection that hunter-gatherers—or many soldiers on active duty—experience.

Leaving a close-knit platoon to return to a society where a "strong support network" might mean a few friends that you see once per week can be jarring. According to anthropologist Sharon Abramowitz, "Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that." 

The alienating effects of modern society can even prevent recovery after a traumatic event. Junger describes an experiment with lab rats in which a rat is traumatized by an attack by a larger rat. The smaller rat, who was frightened but not injured, generally recovered within 48 hours—unless it was kept in isolation. As Junger puts it, "The ones that are kept apart from other rats are the only ones that develop long-term traumatic symptoms." Our veterans spend years overseas in the kind of dense social web that we evolved to thrive in, and then return to a society that feels utterly isolating by contrast. No wonder so many of them experience long-term PTSD.

It's not just veterans who suffer from this alienation, of course. Many Americans experience trauma of some kind. We evolved to heal from that trauma; but when our mechanism for healing (social connection) is hijacked, we shouldn't be surprised when people start to seem more fragile. 

We see the same story in conflict resolution. We have a lot of conflict in our society. According to a 2021 study by the American Enterprise Institute,15 percent of American adults have ended a relationship over politics. 40-50 percent of first marriages end in divorce (and the numbers are even higher for second marriages). And a quick glance at Twitter will reveal that, when it comes to conflict, we're bursting at the seams.

Partly, this is because we don't process our emotions, so they keep bubbling out of us in unpleasant ways. But part of it is that we rarely take advantage of how our bodies were designed to work through conflict.

In his book The Way Out, Columbia University professor of psychology Peter T. Coleman notes that when we have conflict with someone, we normally sit down to hash it out. But this is suboptimal; in fact, it's much more productive to physically move with the person. As Coleman reports, "physically moving in sync with others has been shown to enhance cooperation, prosocial behavior, and the ability to achieve joint goals, and it also increases our compassion and helping behavior." "One study," he said, even "showed that walking in sync with a group of people made them more willing to make personal sacrifices that benefited the group."

When you have conflict with someone, taking a walk or even going for a run with them can be a much more powerful way to get back to peace than simply sitting down with them. Our bodies evolved to move. When we ignore this and assume that our thoughts and our words are the only things that matter, we shouldn't be surprised when conflict starts to feel endemic and unfixable.

Another way to reduce conflict is to take some time away from the conflict to breathe. As psychologist Chris Ferguson explained to us in an interview, doing this can help us to calm down and not fly off the handle at small conflicts. Ferguson explains that "there are two related issues here…emotional responses usually peak immediately after a stressor, then lessen with time, and, second, emotional responses tend to impair problem-solving." "Thus," he argues, "you see people have a bad emotional response, impulsively do something stupid, only to later acknowledge how stupid it was." When we pause and take time to process, we can "evaluate if the situation is really as bad as we initially thought it was" and calibrate our response from there. Again, this is something that most of our ancestors did very easily; in a relatively slow-paced society, you have a lot of time to breathe when it comes to addressing (non-violent) conflict. But in our hyper-online age, we're far more used to experiencing a stimulus (for example, a tweet we don't like) and immediately reacting. That's a formula for conflict escalation that our ancestors rarely had to deal with.

This rejection of our biology and the rhythms for which we evolved is having damaging effects on our psyches. But even more concerning is its erosion of our civic society.

For most of American history, the United States has been characterized by the strong bonds of civic association. In his book Democracy In America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the United States was unique in terms of our willingness to band together to form private organizations in order to address problems. In the 20th century, these organizations included religious groups, bowling leagues, charitable organizations, interest groups, trade unions, and more. They bound us together in a tight web of interpersonal associations that helped us feel connected to the world and to our neighbors.

The problem with human connection, though, is that it's inherently risky. If you go on a date, you might find true love…or you might get rejected. If you join a bowling league with your neighbors, you might find a much-needed sense of community…or you might feel humiliated by your low score or hurt by something that another league member said (whether or not their statement was intended to be hurtful). Our ancestors were able to shrug off this risk and deal with the rough-and-tumble of human interaction because they used the powerful strategies that our biology and evolution gave us. But because we've turned away from these strategies, human interaction has started to feel substantially more dangerous. When we stop processing our emotions, we stop recovering from interactions that might rub us the wrong way. We move away from seeing these annoyances as a minor irritant and the small price of human connection and start to experience death by a thousand cuts.

This trend is most pronounced among younger generations, who are more prone to living online and more cut off from in-person connection and physical movement. Is it any wonder that 73% of Gen Z’ers (age 18-22) report "sometimes or always feeling alone?" Or that 63% percent of men aged 18 to 29 are single, according to Pew Research? More and more young people are deciding that IRL social relationships are too risky for them because they've never been taught the coping mechanisms that our bodies and evolution gave us.

The rejection of these coping mechanisms also poses dangers for our republic. Our republic requires that people come together to debate and discuss ideas. As governmental systems go, this is pretty rough-and-tumble. It requires that we engage with people in good faith who might disagree with us or even believe that decisions we have made should be illegal. When we take time to process our emotions, this engagement is highly doable. But when we neglect to do so, these conversations start to feel riskier. We have trouble coping with opposing views and are more likely to stew and ruminate on the perceived awfulness of those views to our psychological detriment. This is made worse by the fact that more people are carrying around a lot of bottled-up anger and frustration, looking to vent it on someone else. We're all getting more angry at the same time that we're getting more sensitive, which is not a recipe for productive conversations. In the absence of these productive conversations, we may find that people lose their appetite for democracy.

This isn't hypothetical. Again, the problems that we've identified in this piece are most acute among younger Americans. And young Americans are indeed losing faith in democracy. Only 59 percent of Americans aged 18-25 agree that "Democracy may have problems, but it is the best system of government" (compared to 74 percent of Americans as a whole). 

So what can we do to ameliorate the malaise of modern society and get back to the emotional peace and well-being that our ancestors experienced? One key is to get back into the rhythms from which we evolved. Cultivate idle time. Develop a closer circle of friends, and spend more time in person with other human beings rather than trying to connect through a keyboard (as far as our evolved brains are concerned, the latter is mostly pseudo-connection anyway). If you're in conflict with someone else, get together in person and physically move through it. Once we start working with our biology instead of against it, we might be surprised at how much better we, and our society as a whole, start to feel.

Another key is to stop letting ourselves be artificially divided into in-groups and out-groups. Illiberal attitudes towards race and gender can certainly contribute to us not interacting as often or as deeply with people who have superficial differences (for example, college students are warned to avoid an ever-increasing list of microaggressions when interacting with someone of a different race or gender, some of which are just basic get-to-know-you questions). But we can choose to not fall into these divides to instead recognize another core component of our biology, which is that we are all one human species and that our differences are dwarfed by our similarities. If we do that, we might all feel a little bit less lonely.

[divinekangaroo]

Been binging your fics. When you write, what kind of consideration you make about Grace, Lizzie and May as Tommys love interest. Grace being the one he truly loved is undeniable, but he seemed to be very interested in May as well in S2/S4. Doesn't show the same interest in Lizzie. Even with the events that took place post S3, he might've loved and treated May better, a better fit as his partner. I wonder why he never sort May out after Graces death but went to Lizzie instead

I've writ about Grace before so will focus on May.

I don't think May would have been a good fit as a long term partner. I saw May's interest in Tommy exactly as he said 'because I represent something to you'. But he might as well have been talking about what she meant to him, because she was very significantly representative to him: because of her class, because of how she approached him, all the ribbing his brothers gave him, the fact that he, Small Heath shitty little gangster, could afford her...

I do think they had such a soft, sweet, tender and beautiful affair it was probably very healing and soothing for both, given they were trying to recover from losing loved ones, but it couldn't last. He was so very careful to only show certain aspects of himself to her.

I think of their attempted reconnection in S4 and his frustrated 'you people' outburst, his disgust at 'you people' and his self-disgust in dialogue with her at how business was less moral and clean caused more widespread damage than his gangster life, but he was looked down on by 'you people' for his gangster actions and lauded for the business ones. I suspect if he'd tried being with her long term, that 'you people' would have become quite a violent, extended piece of pain and friction. He would have either been swallowing it down constantly and hurting himself from it, or lashing out and hurting her for it.

I feel like he never wanted to hurt May at all and just didn't want to risk situations where he would hurt her. Hence how readily he accepted her breaking it off with him immediately after his 'you people' scene, which was pretty much the first and only time he expresses that layer of his actual, unadulterated self with her, and he almost ruefully accepts that that means he's now made it very clear he's unsuitable as a partner.

I think he was also very conscious that a fling with a racketeer adds a bit of spice to May's reputation in social circles, but taking up with him long term? He would have damaged her reputation significantly.

So as to speculation on why he went to Lizzie and not May in S3: Lizzie was close (daily exposure), Lizzie had done this for him before (the dispassionate sex scene in S2 is very shortly after Polly told him he needed to get over Grace; the dispassion could be read as him trying to just fuck it out of his system), no matter what he does with Lizzie it's not going to hurt her reputation any more and I feel like he was just sick of constantly hurting people/women by that point - in some ways Lizzie is a lot more reputationally durable to his 'corrupted touch' than any of his other women.

I also feel like Grace's death made him feel very out of control, and Tatiana's approach made him feel out of control, the whole Russian affair was something he was struggling to control, he had whatever weird sexual trauma/disgust/horror thing going on with Hughes as well (powerlessness?), and he couldn't do anything about any of that. Probably a lot of anxiety there and a desperation to feel like something was in his control. His engagement with Lizzie during S3 ('having sex again when he feels like it') felt like it had a lot of him exercising his control, including how where when and if they have sex. Someone like May wouldn't enable this level of control, and hence no sense of 'safety'/appeasement of anxiety around sex and women generally.

I think a huge part of Tommy and Lizzie's interactions were non romantic, off-screen and only alluded to, which makes it harder to see how they ended up marrying/becoming a couple when compared to these more obvious romantic-style relationships in May and Grace. But as a writer the invisible is absolutely fascinating to me so I think that's why Lizzie x Tommy appeals more to explore than Tommy x May or even Tommy x Grace. We saw and understood what was happening with Tommy x May; by contrast I'm still puzzling out what was going on with Lizzie x Tommy to build to the relationship complexity we see in S5 and particularly S6.

[jrwi-most-nd]

Round 4/Semi-Final Poll:

Pictures and propaganda are under the cut!

Gillion Tidestrider (Riptide)

(Submitted for Autism, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and Dyslexia)

do i really need to say anything. do i really.  ~ Autism he has,,,,,,, an issue with textures and social interaction and just yknow gives off those v i b es  ~ Autism He misses social cues, mostly black and white thinking, especially towards the beginning of the series, strong morals, has stated he doesn’t like/struggles with change, etc etc  ~ Autism HE CANONICALLY DOESN’T LIKE VELVET HE CANONICALLY HAS TEXTURE/SENSORY ISSUES. His whole arc with the oversea is so autism coded (with not understanding things everybody else around him thinks is common knowledge even if it’s never been explained to him before). But ALSO HE TOTALLY HAS INTRUSIVE/IMPULISVE THOUGHTS he canonically has ‘blasphemous’ type thoughts (wanting to steal lemons with his friends even if it’s against his oath), plus there’s NO WAY he doesn’t have violent type intrusive thoughts about hurting his loved ones NO WAY. plus his overall stubbornness of not letting go of his oath and general struggles with change is so so so autism coded of him.  ~ Autism and OCD Gillion is literally so autistic. He misses social cues and is easily deceived. He also hates lying and is overall a very honest guy! he repeats certain phrases like ‘it is my destiny!’ which are actually vocal stims cause i said so. Could all of this be explained by him not having a childhood and never learning anythning other than fight? yup! Am i saying all of this cause im like that? yeah! and im autistic :D also hes very cool and thats also a sign of autism  ~ Autism being put through years of (training) torture can cause anxiety especially at the young age he was ive also seen him just do random shit which gives off the idea that he’s not reliant on social cues, for example; jumping out windows, kissing a man (chip), or just going off to do his own thing which is a thing i do alot,,not kissing men,,,or jumping out winows yet but hes not reliant on social cues, he also ties his hair up, and i know he didnt do it in the first design but sometimes my sensory issues go away and come back randomly like a vacation for those bastards anyway another thing with the anxiety autism and anxiety are both very common together like autism and adhd! thats all i got but i can go way more in depth  ~ Autism and Anxiety Gillion fishman nuerospicy asf and I need ppl to share in my hc that he has ocd look at him. Insert cool character analysis I don’t do words. Fish. ~ Autism, ADHD, and OCD

Dakota Cole (Prime Defenders)

(Submitted for Autism, ADHD, OCD, OSDD, PTSD, Dissociative Disorder, and Dyslexia)

Dakota Cole  ~ Autism and ADHD Misses social cues, high sense of justice, pretty black and white morals, stims, struggles with change, special interest in superheroes, struggles to process his emotions, wears noise cancelling headphones, gets overstimulated, need I go on?  ~ Autism Tends to jump into things without thinking, pretty short attention span especially with stuff he doesn’t like, very AuDHD vibes ~ ADHD Come on, now. Be honest with yourself. ~ Autism and ADHD LOOK AT THAT CREATURE OF A MAN. Sensitive to loud noise/generally gets overwhelmed at chaotic situations, cannot fucking keep a thought straight, uiwrehfgpiouwygehfiu LOOK AT HIM. He’s my little chaos boy and he needs to be kept safe and cozy please. dont let him down. protecc. win.  ~ Autism and ADHD Grizzly has stated both in PD episodes and in the rolled that Dakota does not know how to process complex emotions. Like, at all. He is also constantly flirting from one idea to the next in a way that is common in ADHD. I would like to spin him around in a microwave  ~ Autism and ADHD I like them a lot :333  ~ Autism and OCD super hero hyperfixation, canonically has sensory issues, tendency to have black and white morality (and also sticks to that moral code strictly). also you can argue that when he went feral due to overstimulation, that was just a meltdown that got supercharged by his heart.  ~ Autism Dakota has repeatedly had trouble/stated that he can’t read. While this could be to the vision loss that he needs glasses for in season two, it could just as easily be attributed to dyslexia  ~ Dyslexia

[daenerysoftarth]

what are you favourite and least favourite aspects of living in japan? also, are you in tokyo or a different city? i visited japan once with my family years and years ago and i loved the food so much. i do remember a guy pissing on the street though and i always remember that when westerners get all weird and orientalist about how special and perfect and clean japan is

Ok so like I’m not living in Tokyo anymore rn tho I do plan to return eventually

My feelings about moving to japan are extremely complex because it was such a volatile, traumatic event for me personally. And while I simultaneously acknowledge and adore a lot of aspects of japan, it will never change those very hard and violent feeling first emotions I associated with the country

Which is part of the reason I’m back in the US now. When I come back to japan, it needs to be on my own terms. Not forced into it, like every time before

But I digress. One of my favorite parts about Tokyo is ofc the trains. The general city layout. The safety. I almost always felt safe, which is remarkable for the biggest city in the world. Meanwhile I live in a city 1/40th the size rn and it’s 1000x more violent, because that’s the US for ya. The lack of gun violence is honestly tbqh to be real the biggest difference between growing up in the US vs moving to japan. It’s hard to express how universal gun violence is in america, but it really is everywhere. I was shot at by my best friend’s dad when I was 11. I remember ducking from bullets in our apartment growing up with my mom. SWAT regularly was sent to various schools in the city, and once raided a house down the street from us. Urban america is a lot different from what’s shown on the movies. It’s violent. It’s harsh. It’s desperate. I look back on my childhood and am shocked by what I considered menial and normal back then. It’s not normal. And I think I always knew that on some level, but moving to another country provided that proof that it didn’t have ti be that way. I didn’t have to grow up like that. It was all unnecessary. It could’ve been avoided. We could’ve had our dreams.

One of the reasons I always felt discontented in japan, though, was the gaijin factor. Japan is extremely extremely homogenous and you will stick out if you’re not Japanese (some other nationalities can pass as Japanese but even then certain fashion styles or behaviors can mark you as Not Japanese, and thus mean you’re treated differently). Being a foreigner honestly made me agoraphobic for a long time. I had struggled with that in the US due to gun violence in my neighborhood, and japan almost exacerbated it simply for the social anxiety factor of sticking out like a sore thumb as a non-Japanese person. That’s something I do not miss at all. I described it to my mom as feeling like Big Bird whenever you enter a room. People won’t necessarily be mean to you or treat you unkindly, but it is very much a Factor that people Notice even if they don’t comment on it.

[mattodore]

Tell me more abt Theo 👁️

being asked about my little guy makes me feel so warm 🥹 but whew... i don't even know where to begin.

cw for mentions of drug use and child abuse

so this is theodore or theo as he prefers. everyone say hi theo 👋

theo is a man in his early twenties who's been having a pretty rough time coping with the traumas of his life and has developed some nasty habits and defensive behaviors because of that. theo was born as the only child of an investment banker (his father) and a heart surgeon (his mother), who were both very clinical and hands-off parents — in fact, the only time they were hands-on were when they were hurting him. so theo initially grew up more under the care of his childhood au pair rather than his parents.

theo's parents were more on the outside of his life up until they started pushing their ideas of academic and social excellence onto him around his teenage years, which was also around the time they sent away his au pair and expected him to start fending for himself. he was maybe around ten or eleven years-old then. theo's rebellious phase was very short-lived at this age as he was cowed back into line pretty quickly. in such a high-tension household he was always on edge unless his parents were away, which gave him a messed up sense of comfort in isolation.

being sent to boarding school for his summers gave him the chance to explore his sexual orientation but the shame overwhelmed him back into repressing. as he got older the idea of love and physical affection distorted pretty bad when he was so used to any kind of touch being a source of hurt. late in his teens he began to rebel again in little ways like with his fashion choices and growing out his hair. theo was used to the violent reactions his parents would show in the face of these infinitesimal rebellions and, in a way, he craved them. in his mind, the only time his parents showed him attention was when they were hurting him... and he wanted any kind of acknowledgement he could get from them. the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference... and they proved themselves to be far from indifferent when he was acting out.

when he moved out for college he didn't know what to do with himself. theo struggled a lot in that first year of college... he was suffering from some fucked up kind of separation anxiety, almost, despite everything. he very quickly fell into unhealthy coping mechanisms to handle the pain of separation. partying was something he found himself doing a lot. all those people showing him attention, the alcohol, the drugs... self-destruction was an easy vice to fall into for him and in many ways was another way to rebel. he escaped that way. in college, theo has a group of people he sees often who view him as a friend, but his view of himself as unlovable from an adolescence of abuse and neglect has him unreceptive to the notion.

as an adult, theo is still closeted when he's with his family. he can't help but crave the approval and affection of his parents, so he dresses the part and he tries to be what they want him to be. alone, he tries to be himself... but he doesn't exactly know who that is anymore.

theo is a loner, prone to bouts of depression, noncommittal, easily jealous, competitive, kind of waspish and mean at times, and touchy; like an injured animal with its hackles raised, who lashes out to scare others away. he's also desperate for affection, fashionable, diligent, intelligent, and alluringly magnetic.