#i forgot about this being the first day

[sunrisesunsetqueen]

Fictober Day 1: “It’s not too late, let’s go.”

Alright this is my first fic so be nice. I'm trying this out for Fictober but this part of a much longer fanfic centering around Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, my OC Willow Howard. This is a small piece in their timeline and it is before they "meet" Eddie. all of the other fics for this month will focus on different vignettes in the timeline of my larger story. (BTW Willow is plus sized and she is black. if you don't like it, don't read <3)

Word Count: 1752 TW: Insecurity, Menstruation, blood (only a little, nothing graphic), body dysmorphia

November 1985

She goes to lock the last door. Having pulled a double, Willow was exhausted from the stress of a release day at the comic book shop, and it didn't help that Max had called off again for the 3rd time this week. She was constantly concerned about her but at this moment, she didn’t care. Her feet and her back hurt from running around all day, standing up to check people out and to restock shelves that would quickly run out after she was done.

It also didn't help that she was on her period and the heaviest day of it as well. She felt every ache and cramp that her body had to offer her, so much so she thought she was going to cry when she got to take a five to go to the bathroom and replace her products. All she wanted was to go home, shower, and just lay still in bed. 

It was about 9 pm on a Saturday, which was usually the time that she would be over at Steve’s house, watching a movie with friends or just relaxing together, but because the shift went on longer than she wanted and her body felt like it was trying to kill itself from the inside, all before noon, she called him to cancel during her fifteen.

“But Will, you have to come, I haven't seen you all week” Steve whined. This was the longest time they had spent away from each other by themselves. Only stolen kisses before they would clock in and a few hugs during their breaks which were always around Robin or the kids or customers, never when they were alone. 

“I know, I know, but Stevie I'm so tired and my body is killing me, and I've had the worst cramps of my life today. I just can’t handle being around them right now. I promise I will make it up next week” It hurt Willow to even say no to spending time with Steve or the kids, but all she could do was maybe drive to her house, before she passed out on the front lawn, let alone be around the kids and put on a fake smile.

“I love you, I'll talk to you tomorrow, baby” She hung up the phone before he got a word in to protest. She didn’t want to be disrespectful, but she was exhausted then and now that she was leaving at the end of the night, she felt even worse. 

When she got to her house, she trudged through, dragging her body where it needed to go. When she got to the kitchen to grab a cup of lemonade, she saw a note on the refrigerator door that read:

“Willow,

We left to go visit Aunt Ivy in the city. She tripped and hurt her hip…again. Your dad and I will be back tomorrow afternoon. We left some money on the counter for food tonight.

Love you Honey,

Mommy”

She looked at the note her mother had left and huffed out. It's not that her parents leaving for the night was upsetting because she did want to be left alone, but it just felt like she had been abandoned by another person today, which she found annoying. Was it justified? Not really but with her emotions being out of whack due to her period, she took it as a small grievance she had.

She set the note down and walked off to the bathroom, completely forgetting the reason why she went into the kitchen in the first place and headed to the bathroom. When she turned on the lights to look in the mirror, she saw herself for the first time today since she clocked in. Her curly hair was in a mess in her scrunchie. Her eyeliner was much more smeared than it usually was and her face looked drained. It probably didn’t help that she barely had anything to eat or drink all day because she was running around catering to everyone else's needs. 

She touched her normally chubby, round rosy cheeks that now looked a little slimmer due to being dehydrated. She rubbed her eyes before trying to take the scrunchie out of her hair which took a lot more effort than it was worth. She started to tear up. The day had truly been draining and terrible. 

She went to the kitchen to grab a cup of water and chugged it because having a headache and then crying would only lead to a migraine and she couldn’t let her day end that bad. She walked back to the bathroom and began to slip her clothes off and turned on the water for the shower. When she gets down to her underwear, she notices that she has bleed through them. Her eyes started to well up, but she wiped them away. 

“It's okay, it's just underwear. I can clean them and wash or just throw them away, it's no big deal, it's no big deal” she tries to calm herself down. Once the water is warm enough she hops in the shower and cleans herself off of the sweat, grime, blood from today. The warm water feels nice on her skin, relaxing her muscles. She takes her time in the shower, wanting to savor the feel of the water, she sits on the floor of the shower.

She's probably in the shower for 45 minutes before it starts to get cold, the warm security water slowly turning to a chilling rain. She gets out of the shower and dries off and puts another pad on as she gets dressed in a pair of sweatpants and one of Steve's shirts that she stole from his house. The soft cotton only has the slightest hint of his scent left, but the feeling of it makes her feel safe.

After she gets dressed, Willow looks into the mirror again but the full length one in her bedroom. She looks at her body, picking out pieces of herself that she hasn't been insecure about herself in a while. Looking at how bloated she looked, touching her cheeks again and seeing how drained she looked. Her hair was a mess, her small coily ringlets were wet and dangling in front of her face in a mess. She hasn't been able to take care of her hair at all in the last 3 days, nor has she felt like it. She puts it up in one of her scrunchies, deciding that it is a tomorrow problem.

She begins to cry, thinking insecure thoughts of how she's perceived, of what everyone must say about her all day; what they say about her when she’s with Steve. She touches her thighs and hips. Her arms and her stomach, they all felt like too much, too big for what she thought Steve deserved; what she thought he wanted. 

Insecure and anxious thoughts fill her head as tears start to stream down her face. She goes to lay on her bed, tired of picking herself apart to nothing when she hears the phone ring. She reaches for it and picks up the phone blindly. 

“Howard residence” she answered, not caring how she sounds.

“Will?” Steve’s voice is soft and sweet. He knows that something is up just by her attitude.

“Oh,” She wipes her tears even though she knows that Steve can’t see her. “Hi” she responds softly, she can’t help it, but she also doesn't want to concern Steve even though her attempts are failing.

“Baby, are you okay? You didn't call me when you got home. I was worried about you, plus you don’t sound okay. Honey, what's wrong?” Steve says with so much concern and care in his voice.

Willow can’t help but burst into tears when Steve asks 'what's wrong?’ The second that he asks her all the defenses she's had up all day come crashing down.

“I–I had a terrible day. I dropped 2 boxes of comics and they spilled everywhere. Max called off so I worked all day. I had to close. I'm on my period and everything hurts. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my head hurts, my uterus is trying to kill itself. I bleed through my panties and my body feels weird and I look dead and my parents left for the night. And I haven’t seen you in so long and I didn’t want to come over because I love the kids but they're so loud sometimes and I couldn’t handle that, but you were there and I wanted to spend time with you, but I was going to be late anyway an–and” Willow rambles as quickly as Robin does on a regular basis. Steve’s heart breaks for her. His poor girl had a terrible day and she's all alone with her thoughts. 

“Honey, would you like me to come over?” Steve says calmly

“What about the kids? Are they still over there? You're still hosting, I don’t want to bother you”

“You’re never ever bothering me. And I don’t care about the kids, I care about you. They can go over the Wheeler's for the rest of the night. Nancy and Robin can babysit them.”

“Okay…only if you want”

“I would want nothing more. I've missed you so much this week”

Willow blushes. She knows that Steve loves her and cares about her, but something about her saying he would want nothing more than to see her after she sat and picked herself apart thinking about how Steve views her even though none of it was true, makes her feel warm inside.

“Will, have you eaten, yet?”

“No…”

“When did you last eat?”

“One…” She whispers on the phone

“Willow!!” Slightly upset that she hasn't taken care of herself but knowing that she was probably too busy to do it.

“I'm sorry, time got away from me!” 

“Well how about this? I can come and pick you up and then we can grab a pizza and some ice cream…and I can bring you back here so you can sleep in my bed with me and I can cuddle you all night until you feel better. How does that sound?” 

“Are you sure it's not too late?”

“I promise It's not too late, let's go, I'll come and pick you up at 10.”

Willow smiles ear to ear. “Okay, I’ll see you soon. I love you, Steve Harrington”

“I love you too Willow”

[flickerintwilights]

on the road to hell

[seventh-fantasy]

okay... idk at all if this has been discussed or that I'm just stating the obvious. I'm posting any way to get more feedback.

so. can we be sure that the last boat scene even happened (in the way we saw it at least)

yeah the letter was delivered to the intended recipients. the letter also did say 李相夷绝��� lit. the final writing by li xiangyi. there's a brief exchange between him and the assumed "boatman" asking him where he was going. and we see he spat blood while writing yeah but:

llh/lxy's eyesight had been failing for some time.

Professional Letter Writers are a thing in the past in service to people who can't write their own letters (idk enough to verify the historical accuracy in this specific context though)

what has been bugging me since forever is the manner of speech of the letter. yeah it's different from their everyday speech, but that's actually perfectly fine since this is A Letter so I'm good with it being more formal. but... there's something I just can't quite pinpoint. especially with the use of the 君 jun pronoun by llh/lxy to refer to dfs when there could be other pronouns with less connotations of intimacy (and scholarly/imperial court system) implied and still conveyed cordiality, marking a shift in their relationship. (I'm not well versed with wuxia as a genre enough to know what are the conventions. someone else who does can say something though.)

whatever these put together means (eg. he may not have written the letter personally, or he wrote it in a different situation from what we saw, etc etc.) alongside:

this scene existed only as part of a visualisation as the letter content is revealed to the audience (or assumed to be fdb reading the letter to dfs & guests of the wedding spectators of the duel)

the boat lxy/llh jumped on is not the same as the one he was writing the letter on - the boatman is also not on it despite the conversation at the beginning, but lxy/llh's dressing and hairpin are the same as the ones before he jumped. (the boatman delivered the letter so he's real though.)

also as @wonderfulnonsense happened to have just pointed out in the tags left in my other post: it's in fact the same boat he took to go fight dfs at donghai 10 years ago. (edit: or maybe it isn't? as pointed out by anon.)

if we viewed whatever we perceived in this scene as imaginary (not what actually happened), then the reading of it being a metaphor for lxy/llh being on his way to enlightenment just makes sense. (the boat being a carrier on his spiritual transformations.) especially when you consider that 彼岸 the other shore is another concept in buddhism to represent enlightenment, alongside the motif of lotuses. (credits to @markiafc for the buddhism reading - edit: mark's meta here) and then, consider the beach ending... yeah.

[harvestmoth]

more rejuv things but its. its just this guy again, im sorry shes all i can draw

[gregoftom]

alright nero damn

[gojooooo]

sukuna begging yuuji to take him back because he wants to feel his emotions again instead of his own emptiness and nothing but the closeness they once had is enough for him. and when yuuji does, because he feels incomplete as well without sukuna, he spawns into the domain again and walks around the familiar place, hesitantly calling out sukuna’s name to confirm he’s really there. “sukuna…?”

“…kozō” he hears in return, fondness in the tone, and when he looks up at where he remembers the throne to be he sees a face so similar to his staring down at him with a smile, a hand immediately reaching out to slick the pink hair back. after everything they went through there’s no reason to keep dancing around it – they belong to each other.

[fbfh]

The ending to chapter 11 of LUTD reminded me of this, ngl...

Nico: Y/N, you're going to have to stop screwing around if you want to be Leo's girlfriend.

Goth Shawty: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Girlfriend? I don't want to be Leo's "girlfriend".

Nico: Well... what do you want then?

Goth Shawty: I don't know. I just wanna be with him all the time. I wanna hear about his day, tell him about mine. I wanna hold his hand and smell his hair. But I don't want to be his stupid girlfriend.

Nico: Y/N, what you just described is a relationship between a boyfriend and a girlfriend.

Nico, under his breath: And a pretty clingy one at that.

JLKGJSLKJSSLKSDJD LITERALLY. anon you just described Leo and goth shawty perfectly. reader really said "I don't want to be his girlfriend ew no I just want him to be completly devoted to me and not touch anyone else or be attracted to anyone but me."

nico: "...so you want to be his girlfriend."

seriously though once Leo gets goth shawty to really open up she's going to be the clingiest motherfucker on earth but like same bc it's Leo. who wouldn't be clingy as hell with him.

[wholesomepostarchive]

the most wholesome thing is seeing that the wholesome post blog runner is probably one of the nicest people ever :3 i’m generally Terrified of sending asks especially to a blog that Does Things like this but seeing you talk in the tags instead of just reblogging and moving on makes you seem very friendly and approachable !!!! and i hope u know i appreciate that :] i hope you have a wonderful day and both sides of your pillow are always cool and that if you see a random cat on the sidewalk it won’t run away from U ♡

woah, META-WHOLESOME!! thank ya for the compliment, i try my best to carry out those kinds of traits i value!!!!! i’m SUPER super glad that ya did!!! THANK YOU THANK U!! always appreciating how much of an impact this lil blog has on top of appreciating u for sharing as much with me :-)

it’s always a TRIP getting to hear that something i do that i wasn’t even really mindfully doing makes all the difference?? i’m just really, REALLY grateful for all the different kinds of posts that get sent my way and seeing cool + uplifting + sentimental + OVERALL WHOLESOME posts that i express my thanks + ramble a bit in the tags haha !!

i ALSO hope you have as terrific of a day as you’re able to! and i hope you’ll enjoy seeing more posts pop up!

AND YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE but i got new pillow cases like a week ago THAT DO JUST THAT! AND THERE’S A NEW CAT ON THE STREET WHO HANGS OUT WITH ME SOMETIMES (i’ve been planning to see if he has a microchip, but i know for a fact that the neighbors who feed all the stray cats on our street already have a cage + are well-versed in TNR, so i’ve been thinking about asking them first because the thought that someone could be out there looking for their pal is enough for me to “do it scared”) !! SO THANK U NOT ONLY FOR THE SWEET SENTIMENTS BUT ALSO FOR THE UNEXPECTED HILARITY OVER THE FACT THAT THEY’VE COME TRUE???

[chirpsythismorning]

Didn’t think the first stranger things surprise would actually involve byler crumbs… and blue meets yellow in the west crumbs at that ???

[yeonban]

Sometimes I think about posting the one meme which goes "I want to ____ you" and see what your muses fill it in with for my muses but knowing my muses, I can already foresee an army of "kick" "beat" and "kill" <- in that order

[moonybadger]

Nearly done with this reread of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and I had forgotten how much Snow like... actually did love Sejanus? He whines about him a lot in the first half of the book but like... he does really stick his neck out for him a LOT. And even hugs Sejanus when they meet again in District 12! Once they’re peacekeepers together, Snow’s thinking of him shifts from being annoying to being a friend, at least until Sejanus starts hanging out with the rebels. And even then, Snow is extremely conflicted about his decision to record him with the jabber jay; it’s more an instant of panicked self protection then I remembered. He’s definitely burying his head in the sand about the ramifications of what he did right up until Sejanus is arrested (Snow convinces himself that Sejanus’s father will swoop in and save him again, but like come on dude. Definitely just not wanting to accept that his actions will result in Sejanus’s execution) And then later he refers to Lucy Gray as something along the lines of “the only person left he loves”.

Don’t get me wrong, Snow is absolutely 100% at fault for snitching on Sejanus; he just did what he does throughout the entire book. He chooses to save himself at the expense of other people and this the penultimate moment of that that’s been building the entire time. But it really did strike how much he actually cared about Sejanus in this read through. Not that it saved him in the end, but the love was there.

[eggs-love-loki]

Me: I’ll watch one episode of my hero after dinner that’ll be fun :)

Me three episodes later, having gone from crying earlier to just pure distress by the end: Well that was the worst choice ever

[potential-fate]

Might actually get my computer back on Tuesday. Hopefully.

[lesbianphan]

if I may be honest for a minute, this christmas is gonna be entirely weird to me (I already cried once) cause I basically have no family left (the ones I do don't spend time with me lol) and for the first time I can remember in life, I'm not making a christmas meal for my family and lots of desserts and doing my best to keep everyone entertained and even though it was super stressful, I already miss it. I'll be strong cause it's all that's left for me.

[nordicbananas]

bro I forgot that today my mom joked that eating dinner was a bonus smh

[idiotarsonist]

Some drawings of my oc with @tarantula-hawk-wasp’s oc Maera

The first one is when they first meet, the first time my oc sees Maera close a rift. I imagine her first reaction is ‘why are they having a child do this?’ and then when she finds out that Maera is the only one who can fix things she stays at the inquisition to help. The second picture is the two of them going on a picnic cuz my oc would definitely try to do fun stuff with Maera and try to give her some good memories.