#i never make vent posts or anything like this but I am just. so torn up about all of this

[peninkwrites]

.

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter Twenty-One

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: More angst, but of the wolfy-variety!

Notes: I know I said two chapters before Jasper, but I had to fit this one in which is why I’m posting out of my normal window. Trust the process when it comes to why I did what I did this chapter lol and if you don’t spot it, everything will be fine (famous last words). Honestly I think I’m just healing inner me with how I wish conversations should’ve happened in the movie lol

Word Count: 2401

Series Masterlist

• March 8th, 2006 • Home •

Reader

Time starts to pass by a little easier with Quil, the quiet isn’t as deafening even when there’s a comfortable silence. I think the same could be said for Quil, since all of his Rez friends have gone AWOL.

Our days are usually spent under blankets on my couch, watching movies and just being present for each other. Plus, there’s not much to do in this tiny ass town anyways.

“Heard anything?” I ask him tentatively, hopefully.

He shakes his head solemnly in response, eyes never leaving the tv. The fact that he doesn’t even want to talk about Jake or Embry twists a new little knife in my gut.

“I’m okay, Y/n/n.” The grin doesn’t quite reach his eyes and I hate it.

“It’s okay to miss them, I know it’s hard to be stuck with just me now-”

“Don’t.” He reaches over to grab my ankle since I’m facing him on the couch and drags it to his lap, “You’re here and they’re not. I was friends with them longer and they ditched me for other dudes. I’m where I want to be.”

“You don’t have to hold it all in, I’m familiar with that feeling.” I nudge his hand with my socked foot to get him to look at me. “What good am I if I don’t therapize you too?”

“That would insinuate I do anything for you, you won’t talk about him.” His gaze levels on me and I’m caught red handed.

“There’s not much to it, I-I loved him and he’s gone. End of story.” I pick at the loose strings on my blanket, the topic hard for me to meet his eyes.

“There’s everything to it.” He squeezes my foot, “Not end of story, you deserve to vent just as much as I do. You don’t need to feel guilty for grieving him, heartache is a real bitch.”

“Heartache is a bitch, huh?” I huff a laugh as I try to breathe through the tears that want to spring up.

“Y/n, I’m the loneliest guy on the planet. In the male friends department and the girlfriend department, don’t make fun of me.” His lighthearted tone trying and failing to make light of his situation.

“We’re just fucked, aren’t we?” His brown eyes meet mine as we commiserate in our collective sadness.

His head drops back against the back of the couch, “Beyond comprehension, my dear Y/n/n.”

• March 11th, 2006 • Home •

Reader

My finger hovers over a text to Quil, asking him to come over, when I get a call from my other best friend.

“Bells, hey-”

“I need backup.” Her request draws me up short. “I’m going to the Rez-I need to see Jacob.”

“Bella, he’s with Sam now-”

“I don’t care anymore, you in?” She presses.

“I was in the second you called, I’ll be waiting outside.”

“Good, because I’m almost there.” Hanging up the phone, I grab a jacket and my shoes.

So much for the first day of Spring Break, might as well start it off with a bang.

•March 11th, 2006 • Quileute Indian Reservation•

Reader

Bella slid to a stop in Jacob’s driveway and both of us hopped out, memories of bike-building settling like a weight in my stomach. It wasn’t even that long ago and I miss it, I miss Jacob.

Bella knocks on the glass pane of his front door and Billy Black answers, “Bella?”

“I need to see him.”

“He-,” glancing between us briefly, “he’s not in.” The lie blatantly obvious.

“I’m sorry,” Bella pushes past his wheelchair and inside the house, “I really need to see him.”

I remain awkwardly on the front porch, torn between not wanting to intrude or following my friend.

“Bella!” Billy’s warning is ineffective as she storms to Jacob’s room.

Just when the situation couldn’t possibly get worse, I spot four shirtless figures emerging from the forest by the house, Sam’s group.

I hear the back door open and shut and I just know it’s Bella.

I sprint around the house to catch up to her, “Bella!” But my warning falls on deaf ears, she’s on a warpath for the boys. “Shit.” I mutter under my breath.

Stomping up to the tallest - Sam, “What did you do?” She pushes his chest, hard. “What did you do, huh? What did you do to him?!”

“Hey - watch it!” The other two guys plus Embry shout as they step up around their leader.

“Easy.” The word is more of a growl than anything and it causes the hair on the back of my neck to rise.

If this comes to a fight, we’re fucked.

“He didn’t want this!” Her desperation pulls at my heart.

“What did we do? What did he do? What did he tell you?” The questions from the guy to Sam’s right are rapid-fire, his anger clearly volatile.

“He tells me nothing, because he’s scared of you!”

The same guy barks out a laugh, clearly he finds her concern for Jacob silly.

“Bella, let’s go home-” but my plead immediately goes unheard because she throws a fucking right hook for the guys face, son of a bitch.

“Too late now.” Another guy jokes, clearly enjoying the situation.

“Bella, get back!” Sam orders, trying to diffuse the situation as this guy begins to shake.

I grab her arm and we slowly start to retreat for her truck, too scared to turn and take our eyes off of the angry male.

“Bella…” I whisper, unsure of what to do.

“Paul! Calm down now.” The authority in Sam’s voice rings through the backyard, but it’s too late somehow.

The shaking and heavy breathing from Paul leads to a transformation that snatches my breath from my body - a wolf. And not just any wolf, a wolf from the fucking meadow. A wolf that saved us from Laraunt, now standing before us where Paul was.

Where Paul was.

Paul is a wolf. A really big one at that - a really big angry one.

Anger directed at Bella and by association, me. The death grip I have on her fucking arm has to be painful, but the menacing look in his eyes shocks me to my bones.

Bella moves before I do, using my tight grip on her to yank me into action with her as she makes for Jacob’s house.

“Bella! Y/n!” Jake yells, clearing the back porch railing in one leap, sprinting for us.

“Run! Jake, run!” Bella screams back at him, but he charges towards us anyways.

He jumps last minute before he reaches us and I trip trying to follow his path with my eyes before-

Before he turns into a fucking wolf too.

Jacob Black, our best friend, is a wolf? I mean, vampires are definitely a thing, but wolves?

Squaring off with Paul, both the russet-colored wolf and the silver-grey wolf launch for each other. Snapping and snarling as they roll into the woods, my heart painfully thumps in my chest, Jacob.

“Hey, take the girls back to Emily’s place.” Sam orders Embry and the last remaining male, both of them jogging over to us.

“I guess the wolf’s out of the bag.” They joke, ushering us up and towards Bella’s truck.

They’re wolves, Sam’s gaggle of Rez boys are fucking wolves. Jacob is one of them and so is Embry, what about Quil? Is this why they’ve ditched him, ditched us? Wolves can’t be friends with humans? What do I even tell him, or should I tell him anything?

My mind is racing a million miles an hour in the span of seconds with questions I desperately need answers to.

Embry holds open the passenger side door to Bella’s truck with a smile and I walk right past his invitation to climb in the bed with the newly acquainted Jared.

“Y/n, that’s not safe-”

“I’ll be fine.” I don’t even spare a glance at him with my monotone answer, I’m mad at him for how he’s treating Quil.

Jared raises his eyebrows and quirks a grin. “Feisty, I like it.”

Embry huffs as he shuts the door behind Bella and rounds the truck for the driver’s side, “Don’t encourage her, man.”

• March 11th, 2006 • Uley Residence •

Reader

“Hey I think we should go back and see if Jacob’s okay.” Bella rolls down her window as the rest of us hop out of her truck.

“I hope Paul sinks some teeth in him, serves him right.” Jared quips to Embry.

“No way! Jacob’s a natural, you see him phase on the fly? I got five that says Paul doesn’t even touch him.” Embry argues, “C’mon in Bella! We won’t bite.”

“Speak for yourself.” Jared jokes and I shove him as we turn to walk inside.

“Oh hey, about Emily - Sam’s fiancé? Don’t stare, it bugs Sam.” Embry warns both of us before following Jared.

“Why would we stare?” Bella asks and I shrug, just as confused.

“You guys hungry? Like I have to ask.” The female in the kitchen asks the boys, laughing at what must be an inside joke. “Who’s this?” She asks after turning around, glancing between us.

“Bella Swan and Y/n Y/l/n.” Jared answers her.

“Hmm… So, you’re the vampire girl-well, girls.” I instantly admire her easy-going vibe, diving straight in to acknowledge the elephant in the room to get it over with.

“So you’re the wolf girl?” Bella asks in return, accepting her olive branch.

“Guess so,” smiling to herself, she picks up the largest platter I’ve ever seen of muffins, “Well, I’m engaged to one.” Snatching both Embry and Jared’s hands as they reach- “Save some for your brothers! And ladies first, muffin?” It’s comical, the way she mothers them.

“Thank you, Emily.” I smile at her and sit across from Jared, the muffin still warm from the oven.

“Leave it to Jacob to find a way around Sam’s gag order.” Emily scoffs, not surprised.

“Umm, he didn’t… Say anything to us.” Glancing at me, Bella explains.

“That’s a wolf thing, alpha’s orders get obeyed whether we want ‘em to or not. Oh and check it out - we can hear each other’s thoughts.” Embry brags and I gape, this is all fucking wild.

“Would you shut up! These are trade secrets - damnit, these chicks run with vampires!” Jared’s frustration is lighthearted as he admonishes Embry for giving away some of their abilities.

“Can’t really run with vampires,” Emily and I chuckle at the boys not quite catching on, “Because they’re fast.”

“Yeah? Well we’re faster. Freaked out yet?”

“You’re not the first monsters we’ve met.”

“Jake’s right, you’re good with weird.” Sam nods at us, beelining for Emily as soon as he steps in the door. He presses kisses to her lips and then all over her face, causing her to giggle. The obvious display of affection carving out my heart just a little bit more - looking away I set my muffin down, no longer hungry.

Pushing and shoving each other, Paul and Jacob finally show - unhurt and brotherly even. They just beat the shit out of each other and they’re tighter than ever? Boys.

“Sorry.” Paul apologizes and flashes what has to be his signature smile at both of us.

I catch Jacob jerking his head towards the door and Bella follows, probably off to explain this whole entire shit show. I turn my gaze to Embry and level a glare on my former friend, waiting for him to say something.

“You going to let me explain? Or are you going to look at me like you’d like to castrate me until Bella gets back?” Embry stares right back, munching on another muffin.

“Jared?” I look at him sweetly and he grins, “take me home?”

Embry stands so quick and his chair teeters dangerously on two legs for a moment. “Y/n.” His tone is hard, done with this game.

“Embry.” I match him back.

He walks out the front door and it drags me from my own chair, this blowout long overdue.

“You know now and you’re still fucking mad at me?” He turns, leaning against Bella’s truck and folding his arms.

“I don’t even know where to start, Embry!” I yell at him exasperated. “You ditched us, you ditched your longest running best friend-”

“I had no choice!”

“He’s struggling-”

“I’m struggling!” His eyes are wild and his hands have a slight shake, “Cutting everyone out has been the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done! I can’t tell anyone, can’t see anyone, can’t do what I want to do anymore! I belong to this Reservation, to this pack, to Sam now. He says jump, I ask how high. He says keep your mouth shut, I cut everyone out. It’s how it has to be.”

“Embry, that’s no way to live.” My heart breaks for his situation.

“It’s in my blood and not something I can opt out of, Y/n/n. Besides, they’re my brothers now and they need me as much as I need them.”

I surge forward to hug him, “I’m still mad at you for Quil.”

“I missed you too.” I hear his grin as I hug him tight. “You can’t tell him though.”

Immediately I retreat, “What?”

“It’s a tribe secret, the pack is sacred and must be protected.”

“He wouldn’t done anything to endanger-”

“It doesn’t matter, anyone on the outside has to stay on the outside. It’s not like I don’t want to, he’s my best fucking friend. But he doesn’t have a need-to-know.”

“Embry-”

“I can’t argue with you about this, please drop it.” His wide eyes plead with me and I surrender.

“Okay, okay. Consider it dropped.” I mime like I’m locking my lips closed and I toss the invisible key over my shoulder.

“Good,” throwing an arm over my shoulder, he leads me back inside, “Now you can hang with the big dogs.”

“Okay I’m going to need you to not make stupid jokes about this situation.” But I laugh anyways, I miss this - him.

I smile to myself, happy to finally have people back in my life that I thought were gone for good. I still feel the massive hole in my chest, but the pain is on the back burner for now.

At least until I’m alone again.

Next

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[hero-israel]

Something I need to just vent: I'm half Jewish and half something US leftists have no trouble understanding as oppressed. I feel like I'm being torn in two. First there are the people from my non-Jewish half, which is, yeah, really fucking antisemitic. There's the garden-variety "fucking kikes deserved it" shit, but I am also fucking drowning in "well obvs we stand w/ the Palestinians" version that went to college, skimmed Fanon, and thinks every struggle is exactly the same. And they all want to pretend the rampant anitsemitism they were all raised with doesn't feed into it, but of course it does. These big name Twitter users of my bg pretty it up with blah blah decolonization isn't a metaphor, but they will never say the whole truth, which is that they visit home and break bread with parents who just say Jews are Satanic pieces of shit with their whole chest. Then there's my fucking idiot white friends who parrot it all. They don't know what's being carefully hidden from them, and if someone showed them, they'd bend over backwards to insist it was somehow totally justified. They know who the Good Guys are, and obviously it's not those loud, greedy, cruel Christ-kil-oh oooooops, I mean Israelis!!! And they're just rushing to like and retweet what the idiots from my other half have to say. They don't question why their pet issue isn't, say, Hawaiian independence, which they might have some weight in as Americans. They don't wonder why they don't give as much of a shit about tribal sovereignty. Hating Jews -- oops, Israelis! -- just feels somehow so much more satisfying and righteous, and whooo could possssibly say why? Definitely not those vicious settler colonialist Jews who just see Jew-hatred everywhere for SOME crazy made-up reasons. And I'm just here, alone. I don't want to act like my non-Jewish half has it easy; it doesn't. But on the left, at least there's like .... the *etiquette* of people pretending to support us, to sit down and listen, to acknowledge they probably have biases. But Jews....everyone just fucking hates us. All my life, I've felt the pressure from gentile people on the left (which is dominant where I'm from in MA) to only care about my gentile half, to only identify with it. I resist it every day, but it's so. hard. A secret I can only whisper here: Both my sides struggle. But I'm only ever truly afraid for my life as a Jewish person. That's the one that feels like it could get me killed. That's the one that I feel tempted to hide. I wear my chai, but sometimes, when I'm on the T and someone seems like they're staring, I panic and want to hide it. Maybe I'm wrong. But I know there's a significant chance I'm not. Especially when they're clearly from my other half, I know exactly what the fuck they're thinking. And I have nowhere to say it, except a stranger's askbox. Am Yisrael chai, motherfuckers.

I very much hope you stay safe, and am sorry you feel so unsupported by your friends.

I know what that is like. None of my actual goyische friends have said anything hostile, but most of them haven't said anything at all. I know it sounds minor but the days and days of posts of Mr. Rogers saying to look for the helpers, or Gandalf saying nobody wants to live through these times, the usual rounds of virtuous signals, are unmissably absent. And the friends-of-friends are pure violent garbage, which makes me wonder if my friends would have hated and rejected me as a Jew if they'd met me for the first time now and not when we were kids. Have had MULTIPLE friends-of-friends declare that the Israeli civilians weren't civilians, they were colonizers who can't be civilians and who all deserved it ("it" to include rape and infanticide). Every last one of those friends-of-friends are white Americans.

Please keep wearing the chai.

[ciaossu-imagines]

Could you do some kind of comfort headcanons for Yata? His s/o recently lost a relative and even though they weren’t especially close to this relative, they’re still really upset about it. The circumstances, the age of the relative and the fact that they know how torn up about it the family undoubtedly is is just all so horrible and the relative was just a generally nice person so it just hurts. Anything’s fine. Thanks a bunch in advance.

Of course I can, my dear!! I cannot say, again, just how sorry I am for you and how many hugs I send your way. Though it’s not much at all, I really hope these help even a little bit.

Okay, but I do believe that how Yata handles this is really going to depend on the Yata we’re really talking about because it really is going to differ quite dramatically. If this is the Yata pre-Totsuka death, it’s a completely different story because I really don’t think that Yata had much experience at all with death and grief. Once Totsuka, and then Mikoto dies, that Yata is much more familiar with those emotions and has personal experience handling grief, so how he’ll deal with his partner losing someone will change.

Pre-Totsuka Yata is definitely going to take the news hard. He’s someone who gets really invested in his partner’s life, including their family, so he’s definitely heard of this person before, even if he never met them because his partner wasn’t particularly close to them.

Even just hearing about the death of celebrities he really likes bums Yata out and pisses him off, so someone he has a little more personal connection to, even if it’s just through his partner, it really hits too close to home for Yata and he’s really affected by it. But he doesn’t really know how to act. He has no experience other than this.

He desperately wants to say the right thing for his partner. He wants to do something, anything, to make them feel at all better, but he doesn’t know what to say or do and it makes him so frustrated. It makes him feel useful, impotent, worthless.

There’s a lot of him taking little breaks, telling his partner that he’s just going to get them their favourite snack or drink (which he does), where he’s just so worked up because fuck, he can’t do anything for them, and he resorts to punching a wall or hell, even some other person he picks a fight for just to let that anger and frustration out.

I will say, both pre-Totsuka’s death and post-Totsuka’s death, Yata is never someone who will shame his partner for crying. If they need to cry because this is really sad and it doesn’t seem fair at all for the world to take someone so young, Yata will encourage them to cry. He’ll sit beside them, arm wrapped around them, hugging them into his body and he’ll just let them cry. Hell, he might shed a few silent tears beside them. He’ll listen if they want to talk and he’ll do the only thing he can think of – just be there for them.

Now, after Yata has had experiences with grief and death through Totsuka and Mikoto, I do think he’s a little better with the knowing what to say and do. He doesn’t have that same anger and frustration because he doesn’t know what to do or say. He kind of does now.

He’ll, of course, still be there for his partner as much as he can be and he’ll still let them cry, listen to them, and all that. But he also offers solutions and suggestions that helped him get through his grief. He’ll find little things to help distract them, things he knows are easy on their mind and won’t require too much mental energy. He’ll make sure they get outside so they shut themselves up because he found it a lot easier to deal when he was regularly getting outside. He’ll look at photos of their relative with them, go with them to the funeral, and let them vent when they need to.

[compassionatereminders]

This is, I think, a vent post. Even though I want to beg anyone and everyone for answers to the impossible questions swirling in my crazy head.

I've been in a toxic living situation for a long time and my CPTSD near-constantly triggered. This year between escalating abuse and suicidality, I lashed out at nearly all my closest friends with years worth of built up resentments, causing them to end their friendships with me. All the hurt they've caused me is still playing in endless loops even months later, while all the love and help they gave me feel distant and vague. I don't know how much of my pain is valid and how much this is just my traumatized brain distorting everything. It doesn't help that this is a pattern of behaviour with me. I invalidate my feelings and internalise hurt until I'm at too much of a low point to fight them, lash out, and lose the relationship. Granted, some of them really did treat me shittily, but it's still a dysfunctional and destructive way to interact with people.

I know I should find a therapist, but they've consistently invalidated and traumatized me, and the last one was so bad she made my suicidality go turbo. But I can't help thinking this is all my fault for not trying harder to get help, even though it's hard to pencil that in between wanting to die and stressing about money. My OCD is insisting that I'm a terrible, toxic person who's dangerous to associate with and has no appreciation for anything my friends have done for me over the years.

I just feel torn apart. I'm so angry at my friends but I can't figure out whether I just inflated it all in my head. I think the correct answer is that I didn't deserve the way I hurt them but my feelings insist they did, because they hurt me for so long. I can't figure out why they ended our friendships just because I was angry at all the wrongs they did to me. I think this might not be true and I probably really did mess up. I think I'm making my feelings everyone else's responsibility.

I want to know the correct answer. I want to know whether I'm a bad person who's not worth helping or befriending. I think I probably am, because I hurt everyone who loved and helped me and I'm not even sorry. I think I'm in a lot of pain and being very unkind to myself, but who could be kind to someone so self-pitying and destructive that behaves like this?

I'm so tired of hurting people and being hurt. I feel like those are the only two options as long as I'm living like this, and I can't see a way out of this situation, so I'm never going to be a good, safe person worth loving.

The thing is, even IF your trauma/mental health issues caused toxic behavior in past relationships, this does in no way equal you being irreparably broken and not worth loving. All that this would mean is that there are some patterns you would need to be aware of and work on in future relationships

[shishikusas]

what’s ur thoughts on the recent happenings with masa? im kinda torn on it myself tbh

hello anon, i'm glad u asked bc i felt like it would be awkward to bring up unprompted

i have a lot of complicated feelings, but most of all i am really concerned for masa's well-being, bc he posted some kind of disturbing vent art before completely vanishing and its been over a week and there has been no activity at all from his account and idk. i just have a bad feeling he has hurt himself..

this isn't me DEFENDING him though, i feel like i should make that very clear if anyone's been on twitter, you've probably seen the thread that was made basically listing all the things masa's done that are bad and i agree with some parts, but others i really don't get

for example: masa's drawn weird stuff involving kids! nothing that could be classified as CP, but still weird nonetheless, and i don't like it at all! this is including adult patch, which i wish i could forget the existence of bc i legit never looked at the lyrics until very recently. it's also important to mention that he hasn't drawn anything like that (to my knowledge) since 2013... almost 10 years ago. so i don't think he's about that anymore, but it's still something that definitely happened

there's also many people parroting the idea that masa doxxed a minor, which is FALSE. he never did anything of the sort. what DID happen was masa brought attention to a person illegally streaming the spider and the kitsune-like lion, and tried to ask him to take it down to no avail. people then sent him personal information on the guy (via DMs) and he essentially was going to use it to take legal action. it may seem harsh, but this person's reupload had almost a million plays on spotify and was actively profiting off of a song that a) masa owns and b) masa wants gone from the internet more than any song he's ever made. eventually, masa apologized on twitter, saying that his fans were never supposed to see this and that it wasn't supposed to go down this way. he deleted all the tweets relating to the spotify guy too.

theres a bunch of other stuff i could get into but it would make this post WAY TOO LONG!! so i'm not unless someone asks abt something specific

one last thing: the reactions i've seen from some 'fans' after his meltdown (idk what else to call it) are fucking disgusting. i've seen ppl say that he's overreacting, that its just bait, or just actively making fun of him for it without a shred of empathy. he very clearly has something going on mentally and we have no idea what his personal life is like, so it's just cruel to act like that. people like that have no conscience and i don't respect them at all

more than anything, i believe in giving people second chances and if/when masa comes back, i am willing to continue being a fan as long as he doesn't pretend like nothing happened. still, i'm really concerned that he won't come back :((

[lifesfeelings]

First "Breakup"...

My favorite thing that I just noticed is that I really only come back to Tumblr when things aren't going well 😂 I always want to keep posting here, for my own records, but when I have somebody in my life to vent to, I forget that I have this space! but anyway... So, I posted about him a handful of times I think. Sebastian? We met on Tinder back in April and we've been steadily getting more and more relationship-y. I thought that I was stringing him along. I really liked him, and if I was gonna make a relationship work, it would have been him. We don't live in the same town, but we made the trip to each other a handful of times, we texted everyday, we always were talking about the future: our halloween costumes we'd do together, Christmas plans, shows we were gonna watch together, plans for me to meet his parents, etc. We never made anything official, but I thought he was down bad... I kinda was "losing interest." Not in the sense that I wanted any other guy, but I sometimes think I'm aromantic and I just felt like it was getting too real. I wanted to run away. But... since Saturday, I have in fact learned that I am probably not aromantic and that I instead just have issues... He ended it out of nowhere. I've been obliterated. I can't go more than a few hours without crying, and they've been titanic like meltdown sobs... I can't get homework done. I can't focus on anything. I just came to my office (knowing I have fucking office hours and my students can come in at any time), and just finished sobbing for about two hours straight. He said that he had "felt nothingness come over him" a few months ago and that he had hoped it would go away with time. He said he just had lost the spark. And it's been fucking UGLY... I spent the weekend doing everything I thought I could. I did everything I thought I could do to claw back at his heart. I told him how much he meant, I apologized profusely for being a bit more cold and reserved the last like two weeks. I wrote him a fucking letter basically telling him how torn the fuck up I am and that I respect his choice but I'll be there if he changes his mind. I keep trying to think of the fucking perfect string of words that will move him, the "romantic acts" I could try, the posts that will get his attention... And it's just an endless cycle having to remind myself that it's over. This wasn't some skirmish or something I was doing that I can correct. He, in his heart of hearts, just truly doesn't feel it for me anymore. And he tried to let me down easily, but I kept pushing and the more I reread his texts the more clear it is to me that he has nothing for me... He said he wanted to be friends and all that. He said that maybe in time things will change. But in the letter, I basically told him that I wasn't going to hold my breath but that it would be a good while until I was done. That he could come back and I'd be there. and he basically was like "I hope that this hasn't ruined future endeavors or made you more hesitant with guys in the future" and was just politely basically telling me that it's not fucking happening... I just don't think I've been this wholly destroyed... My grandma passed away a year ago (in two days actually...). She was my best friend and the love of my life. And, this feels cringey to even be saying and thinking, but I've been taking this harder than I took that... I could bottle with her death. I could put it away and pretend that I'd be okay. I was able to keep going. This stuff with Sebastian has stopped my life. It feels like I lost the one thing that was keeping me here in line. I think between moving away from my past life, and starting a new school and new jobs in a new city.... I think Sebastian became my only rock and the only thing I could count on in my life that kept me grounded. and now he's just gone without warning. without anything I can do. I don't know what to do... I'm eviscerated. I just want this life to stop for a little bit.

10.09.23

[lolsexonthebeach]

Vent post please fuck off I just need to write this down to get it out of my head

In the last few years I've started to get to a place that isn't just full of misery and despite being terrified that it would all get torn away from me I've seriously enjoyed it

Like so many nights good things continually occur to the point where I'm alone I get overwhelmed and burst into tears because I'm so fucking happy and I haven't felt this way for years

I finally realized my teachers were wrong and I'm not a moron, I just never had anything to put my passion into like I do with Networking and Security and now that I've found it I'm obsessed, I can't stop writing scripts and learning

But ever since stuff changed at work Ive felt this dread seeping in, that same dread that left me all alone and half-dead because I was too passive to change my life

I am fucking terrified because I cannot believe in myself enough to trust that quitting for a higher paying job with a boss that actually gives a shit about what I do is the right move, all this doubt sets in about whether or not I would royally fuck myself by making a mistake

This company simultaneously pushed me to grow as a professional while fucking me over with a bare-minimum paycheck, complete ethical violations, 50-60 hour work weeks, and pressuring me into staying

I have known the entire time that they were fucking me over, but I bought into the "it'll get better" bullshit every time I thought about leaving

I hate this shit

I hate that I can't just believe in myself enough to trust that there's a reason my past mentors have offered me jobs using my brain

I hate that I can't believe in myself

I'm so tired of fucking living like this, I'm tired of reverting back to a fucking teenager and thinking I can't make my own decisions

I want this more than anything because it means I'm that much closer to having a family, something I used to tell myself I never deserved

I just don't know what the fuck to do about it

[ajockeynamedpod]

time to vent into the aether I guess

i am so tired of my useless cunt of a life. 33 years of FUCKING NOTHING. I’m sick of this. i don’t feel respected, anyone even remotely local blows me the fuck off. no one makes plans with me anymore. I’m a dog in a cage waiting for someone to come play with it and no one will. or they hang out with someone who actively adores my abuser/assaulter. that feels great.

The friends that live near me aren’t even always busy. I’ve told them many times “hey if you have free time lmk I’m always down to hang!!” And they say “oh yeah sure! It’s been awhile!” And then they constantly make posts about being bored on their days off with nothing to do. like…. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I’m nothing. if I had a heart attack and died these people wouldn’t even care. It’s multiple people.

I’m invisible to everyone. Even the things I’m proud of I feel like they get torn down. My love for certain characters because someone HAS to love them “better”, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE I AM GOOD AT. I am a stupid useless lump of meat with no skills and no talents. at least let me have this.

Speaking of, the fact that my comfort characters get FUCK ALL even when a big artist in the fandom does a huge release and INCLUDES EVERY CHARACTER IN THAT PART EXCEPT FOR THEM ON THEIR STICKER SHEETS AND PINS? When I know the person DOES like those characters and has posted as such before????

Or the fact that there’s NO ONE MAKES JOJOLION ANYTHING except for yasugap because I guess that’s all anyone got out of that entire 10 year long part is just The Main Guy and The Main Girl?

I have so little comfort content and it’s hard to make my own when the fibro and arthritis AND carpal tunnel are all flaring up bad and making drawing the way I do impossible right now. I hold a pencil and it feels like knives.

I’m still useless. It’s like pulling teeth to go anywhere and even then it’s only my mom. I can’t keep rotting here but I have no choice and I can’t work. I can’t even take commissions right now because of the stupid hand thing and I don’t think anyone else is going to want it. It’s not colored, it’s not beautiful, it’s a phone picture taken of a sketch on a piece of paper. Because I have no scanner and scanner apps are DOGSHIT.

I’m getting sicker and sicker. My body is in a constant state of adrenal response now which is funny because I’m also sleeping about 15 hours a day. I can’t stop being tired.

I wish I were dead but I can’t be because I’m a coward and I keep holding up hope stuff will get better. But it won’t. None of it will. I’ll be denied for disability I’m sure because I have been three separate times, even though it’s all worse now.

I don’t have income or any money of my own and my bf can’t help me anymore and I don’t wanna ask anyone. I’ve done it too much. I can’t do it anymore. People already look down oj me for it. “you’re a grown ass adult lmao” tell that to literally every part of my body that doesn’t fucking function right. I went to vocational rehab. There’s NOTHING I CAN DO. It all interferes with one disability or another. It’s the perfect storm of dogshit.

everything is breaking around me and no one cares and I never want to wake up again. i just wanna do dumb shit with salezucc and yotsusho forever because nothing else even matters anymore. but no one even cares about that anymore except like one person each. because they’re not Kakyoin or Risotto or Bruno or whatever.

fuck man. i hope I don’t wake up. everything I’ve done and tried so hard to do to get better is either not working or backfiring.

I’m gonna take my fourth nap of the day and my god do I hope I never wake up. All that would be missed is my fucking vagina at this point. all I am is a depressed sex doll with assault trauma who reopens that wound constantly.

I just don’t care enough anymore. I really don’t. I’m not even eating as much as I used to and food is such a joy for me. I can’t even bother to eat. what a fucking loser.

[cal-writes-never]

being one of vander's children

been a while since i've posted anything and i am a sucker for the act one group who have little to no content so instead of complaining i will be the one to make it (reader is written as the second oldest)

also please forgive me i know this is an encanto blog i never intended to post for other fandoms but aren't hyperfixations a crazy thing huh

pairings: young!vi + sibling!reader, mylo + sibling!reader, claggor + sibling!reader, powder + sibling!reader, young!ekko + reader, vander + child!reader

type: headcanons, found family (big middle finger to episode 3)

summary: what it's like to grow up in the last drop alongside four chaotic siblings (and ekko)

(cw: there's a lot of death, swearing and violence and all, but there's nothing included that wouldn't be in arcane)

---

- i feel like the way you're treated and viewed largely depends on your personality and how you act around everyone

- but let's assume you're not like mylo, because let's face it, they'd all hate you

- vander took you in at the same time as everyone else after the so-called uprising, which had come as a complete shock to each of you children

- you were so young and so small, yet you'd had everything you'd ever known torn away from you, and vander felt terrible for ever even wanting to fight piltover in the first place, so he vowed to put away his gaunlets and never fight again; for you

- needless to say, there was work to be done in zaun. buildings were wrecked, corpses laid everywhere, and countless children had been orphaned, but he could only take care of so many. he did his best to make sure each one went to a loving family, though there was so much he had to do to make up for the damage he had caused.

- though as you got older and the last drop became a booming business - and your home - your life slowly started to turn around for the better

- the undercity was all you'd ever known, and sure you were terrified to walk the streets and you could only dream of living the luxurious piltie life, but you'd found yourself a broken little family which was more than you could ever ask for after the trauma you'd had to endure those few years ago

- violet would no doubt love you just as much as she loves powder, even if she does struggle to show it

- she'd offer you pep talks and words of sisterly advice whenever you need it, and she would be ever so grateful if you were to do the same

- as the oldest vi often felt as if she was the one who had to constantly help everyone else, so you'd automatically become her second favourite if you ever did as much as simply let her vent to you (it would save her bruising her knuckles on the concrete walls again anyways)

- as the second oldest, you often feel similar pressures to vi, though you never have the heart to confide in her

- between breaking up brewing fights between mylo and powder (or anyone, for that matter), helping out vander in the bar, giving vi a hand with anything she needs, helping ekko get away with mischief without being caught by benzo and assisting claggor in keeping your living area in check, you rarely find yourself with time alone.

- you can't even go for a walk to clear your head

- so when your mind gets hectic and you feel overwhelmed and burned out, even if you try and hide it, vander will figure it out

- he knows you well, and he's learned your body language and mannerisms like the back of his hand

- it's no secret that he loves each one of you, and secretly you're his favourite, even if you're convinced it's vi because let's be honest; he sees himself in her, and he never wants to see her - or any of you - go down the path he did

- he adores spending quality time with his kids, too

- whether it be individually or as a group, he just wants you to feel the sense of a normal family - what he took away from you

- this includes walks through the lanes as a group, the one time the stares didn't bother you because vander was always there to scare people off, and him even going as far as to close the bar early so you guys can have the place to yourselves for the night

- the type of man to let you go to bed at stupid hours and then wake you up ridiculously early

- or he doesn't, and you wake up mid afternoon to him leaning on the doorframe looking at you all with that smile as he thinks about how lucky he is that he wound up with five children who he loves so much

- surprisingly calm and very rarely gets mad

- the only times you've seen him truly, truly angry are whenever one of you (namely you or vi) pulls a dangerous stunt or gets yourself into a dumb fight

- pissed off vander is a regular sight though, he can never catch a break with all his kids complaining about how mylo has hidden their prized possession or how vi is going a bit too far with the "work harder" attitude

- speaking of, you regularly train with vi

- she makes it a point to teach each of her siblings at the very least basic defense moves in case she's not there to help

- older sister vi brainrot i cannot lie

- mf does not trust you in the slightest. constantly panicking whenever you go out alone because, let's face it, you live in the undercity. when has it ever been safe?

- out of everyone, you're the one who argues with mylo the least

- because of this, he trusts you the most, and he always comes running to you if he's angry or upset (so once every fifteen minutes)

- secretly loves it whenever you hug him, would never admit it in a million years though

- he'd come and sit beside you while you're reading or something, completely in silence, and you know what this means. silently putting your book down you'd just open your arms like "c'mere" and he'd roll his eyes acting as if you were the most ridiculous person on earth but still hug you so tightly

- you'd also learned why he acts the way he does

- he had older siblings once. they were lost in the uprising along with pretty much everyone he knew, so whenever he sees the way vi treats powder, he gets jealous, so he holds that against powder.

- for self indulgent purposes you're probably the closest to mylo

- and ekko!!!! i can imagine you being very close to ekko and making whatever excuse you could to go to benzo's to see him

- benzo is sick of seeing you at this point - but he still likes you and sees you as a nice kid

- you and claggor would be regulars in his shop but you would never buy anything, you'd just be there to see the young boy

- and he adores the both of you and what you do, constantly asking about all the different things you get up to, like secret trips to piltover and your recent fights in the street that he hears about

- i can also imagine vander asking you to take over the last drop one day, and no matter what happens after he dies, you vow to yourself that one day the last drop will belong to you again

- this is so messy i'm sorry it's more of a brain dump than anything

- but claggor too!!!!! you love that boy. the better brother

- he's so nice and so easy??? three younger siblings is hard, but he's literally no work

- he'll let you vent to him if you ever need, and he'll just quietly listen and give you the relevant advice if you need, and if not, he'll sit with you until you feel better

- the giant pile of books in the corner of the room belongs to both of you

- often you'll compete to see who can finish their book the fastest, but you secretly rig it and give him the longer one (he knows you do this but he likes how happy you get when you win)

- i love claggor :(

- ok who's next powder!!

- sometimes powder can be a bit annoying but you love her

- you usually leave the tougher things to vi, mainly because powder will cry and cry until her sister is there, but the smaller things you'll always be there for

- often the one to keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't blow herself up or whatever

- doing her hair for her

- also you sing her to sleep, even if you can't sing there's worse things in the world

- i think overall everyone finds your presence both intimidating and calming

- teasing is incredibly common in your family, and sometimes it can go a little too far and apologies have to be made after complaints are made to vander

- but yeah!! your life is as good as it can be while living in zaun because your family (and ekko) make it worth it, and although you'd never admit it to them you love them dearly, and they love you

---

surprise!! (major spoilers for episode three)

- everything is going great until vander gets taken

- i'm not gonna go through the events you've probably watched the show, it doesn't end well

- of course you accompanied vi, claggor and mylo in going to save him, and of course you didn't expect powder to even show up, let alone blow the whole place - and family - to smithereens

- you're either caught in the crossfire or you're not, but there's nothing to say when you're dead so let's assume you lived

- it all happened so quickly, there was no time to think and suddenly you were stuck under a chunk of a door?

- you could only see vi right beside you so you tried to reach for her to no avail, though from her loud sobs you could only assume the worst for the others

- you teared up yourself, soon crying and babbling incoherent nonsense through your both physical and emotional pain

- you were so fucking close to escaping, what happened? everything was going perfectly!

- hearing vander trying to free himself, you called for him

- "it's okay, y/n, i'm here. i'm okay." he said as calmly as he could, which wasn't very calmly at all, considering he had just seen his children's dead bodies and had been thrown under tonnes of debris

- that didn't stop your sobbing, though, as your hopeless calls for your brothers fell on deaf ears.

- not a single nightmare you'd had could compare to this hell

- your already severe nausea only worsened when vander ran towards silco, except you couldn't see him

- you turned your attention back to vi, trying your best to comfort her, but this wasn't like the times you'd comforted her before. your brothers were dead and soon you would be too, your father had disappeared and from what you could make out from her screams and cries of agony, powder was gone too.

- it was an amalgam of both your voices screaming for the life you'd been living just yesterday

- fear overflowed in your body when deckard showed up. although he freed you, he was terrifying. and not the "he is so much bigger than me and could easily beat me up" type of terrifying that you'd experienced in the lanes countless times, no, this was the "i'm a kid and i'm about to die" kind of terrifying.

- you and vi gripped to one another like your lives depended on it (they kind of did)

- seeing vander's shimmer form was somehow even worse

- how could he just betray you like this?

- you crawled in between the fire, trying not to get burned too seriously, making sure to keep an eye on vi the whole time through your bouts of hysterical tears

- when you finally reached vander, it was painfully obvious that these were his final moments, and you didn't know what to do with yourself

- as he uttered his final words, "take care of powder," and his head lolled back, both you and vi screamed for what felt like the millionth time.

- your voice was raw and your throat hurt, but that was by far the least of your concerns. such a minuscule thing that you'd usually complain to vander about, and now he was gone. gone. he was dead.

- you held onto vi, and she did the same as you both cried into your father's chest. it was an awkward sight for sure, but you were overwhelmed with grief.

- after a few moments of calming you down, she pulled you up and stood in silence while the two of you silently grieved everyone you'd lost.

- "vi, y/n, it worked!" you suddenly heard the familiar voice of powder - what the fuck?

- she was so excited, and in any other situation you would've been just as excited as her, but she'd killed your family, her family

- "you did this?" she whispered, while you stood there in silence

- you only stepped in when she knocked powder down, grabbing her and pulling her away, "stop it, vi"

- and so you were torn. did you follow vi, or stick with powder?

[arty-shadow-morningstar]

Graveyard Siblings (5)

[Masterlink] (PART 1) (PART 4)

-----

Mari and Cass sometimes switch their suits as they have the same body type. Cass would sometimes go out in full Hellbat gear and give the appearance that Hellbat is out more often than she actually is.

So Orphan/Black Bat also sometimes uses guns.

This also helps with concealing secret identities. Maria was rescued by Hellbat from Joker’s Henchmen. (Vicki Vale was getting sus of the new Wayne and Hellbat.)

Unfortunately since Hellbat rarely comes out and she had already made all of her appearance for the month and it wasn’t a busy weekend, the public had come to the conclusion that Hellbat has a crush on the newest Wayne.

Basically everyone thought that Mari has a crush on herself. Which led to some teasing and escalated to Mari announcing that Jason had a crush on Red Hood on live TV.

It didn’t help that a video of Red Hood and Jason re-enacting Romeo and Juliet with Jason on his apartment balcony and Red Hood on the roof was posted on the internet a few days later. (Thank you, Trixx and Tim’s awesome video editing skills)

Sadly, it was taken down 24 hours later. (Tim and the others have multiple copies of it, on the cloud or hardware, hidden around in the manor and their respective safehouses in the US.)

Some people kidnapped Jason to hopefully gain leverage over the Red Hood and to their dismay and nightmares for years to come, Hellbat came instead.

One lucky and incredibly brave reporter asked why she was there instead of her brother.

Mari being a little shit, “Red Hood may be a tough and scary guy but when it comes to his feelings, my brother is a chicken.”

Pictures of Jason tackling Hellbat somehow never made it into any papers.

The criminal underworld hasn’t taken a hint and Jason has been kidnapped a few more times.

Other times Jason was kidnapped:

Robin: Red Hood made a fool of himself in front of Todd recently and he doesn’t dare to show his face.

Spoiler: He was taking too damn long checking his hair even though I told him that no one was going to see it under his helmet and he was so offended that he is currently sulking in the bathroom.

Red Robin: Red Hood can’t think straight when he is around Jason. I mean have you seen the dude.

Arsenal*during a rare visit to Gotham*: Red Hood owes me one now.

Dick finally ends it by going out as Red Hood and rescuing Jason. Gotham is happy that Redson (Red Hood x Jason) ship has finally sailed.

-------

Kate, Babs, Cass, Steph and Mari were out on Mari’s first girls’ night since her move to the manor.

This is set a little after she came back from Paris with Jason.

They watched rom-com movies, did hair and nails, gossip about the superhero community and bitch and vent to each other.

Marinette off-handedly mentioned the crazy shits she had done during her stint as Ladybug. It started with asking about the T-rex in the Batcave and she mentions jumping into the mouth of a live one before.

Everyone in the room was shocked and after a few more questions, it was obvious that she was very reckless and self-sacrificing. Yep, she was going to fit into this crazy family just fine.

And Holy Shit. There is so much trauma packed into this kid. She needs lots of therapy.

Babs finally decided that they all needed to get out and have some fun. All in their respective suits and they went out.

Joined by Harley, Ivy and Selina.

Plagg came along because I want Plagg to meet Selina.

It was a chaotic night and it was a miracle that Bruce didn’t find out about what the girls did.

-------

Batman and Red Hood were on patrol together when Selina jumped in front of them.

“Hello, Boys”

“What do you want, Catwoman?”

“I want to meet my new prodigy, Kitty Noire.”

Cue Marinette jumping down from her hiding spot, transformed with the Black Cat Miraculous. “Hiya.”

Red Hood carries her like a potato sack and points his gun at the other two.

“Nope, she’s my sister and I called dibs. I adopted her. She’s off limits.”

“Legally, she’s mine.” Batman coughed out.

“I did it first. Emotionally. She’s my emotional support sister. You have plenty kids already, B and Selina, get your own.”

“Hey, I am still here and can hear you.”- Maria

-------

Alya was worried for Lila. She had been acting weirdly for the past month.

She looked very out of sorts. Her clothes weren’t in order and her hair was in disarray. She had bags under her eyes and her eyes looked wild. Lila didn’t look like herself at all.

She jumped at any sound and flinched at really sudden movements.

Alya tried to find out what was wrong with Lila and received vague answers.

One time Lila said that Marinette is to blame.

Alya reaches the somewhat right conclusion that Marinette was haunting Lila and hurting her because Lila used to come to school with bruises and claims that Marinette did it.

Alya goes to Marinette’s grave to desecrate it. (Yeah, go anger the ghost that is haunting someone.)

Unfortunately, the moment she tries to do something, the sky turns dark, clouds appear and the wind begins whipping. A Lightning strike near her and there was a cloaked figure beside her with a scythe.

All Alya saw from the figure was the blood-red lips in a very sharp grin and glowing blue eyes, raising the scythe high before she ran away. The scythe swiped the air where her head once was.

Alya didn’t get far before she tripped and blacked out.

When she woke up, she found herself in the hospital with no idea how she got there.

She was told that somebody found her with a concussion in the park and took her to the hospital.

------

The next one on Mari’s hit list was Natalie.

She wasn’t as involved in the whole thing like Lila, Adrien or Gabriel but she still did it anyways.

Her punishment is a little mild compared to the others and was more of a warning to Gabriel.

Natalie woke up in the middle of the night to see a not-so-dead Ladybug sitting on her vanity chair with the moonlight from the windows illuminating her body and her neck. Her suit was torn exactly like the day of that battle with blood dripping down her arms and from her open wounds. The shadows kept her face hidden but glowing blue eyes stared at her.

Natalie was scared at first. But she regained her normal cool composure.

“I assume you are here to extract your revenge for aiding in your unfortunate demise. But before you kill me, I regret my part in my entire thing and I apologize for everything I have done against you even though I knew it was wrong.”

“At least you show remorse over what you have done. Visiting my grave when even my parents didn’t and leaving flowers. I love those purple hyacinths by the way. Did you know that they mean sorry in the language of the flowers?”

“Why are you stalling my death? Just kill me already.”

“Madam Sancouer. You just played a minor role in my downfall compared to what Adrien and Lila Rossi did to me. And you showed more guilt over your actions than they ever did and Adrien claimed to have loved me. And like I have told the Bats, Death is too swift of a punishment.”

“Who are the bats?”

“None of your concern. You should be more concerned about yourself.”

“Lila sees the ghosts of her past and they haunt her. Adrien is in a living nightmare and has no control over his actions and is despised by everyone. What are you going to do to me?”

“Well, since you show some guilt over your actions, let me tell you a little secret. I am not dead. Not really. I mean I did die. But there was a spell in the grimoire that revived me. It took a few days to work.”

Marinette changed to her normal form. It was a little jarring to see an older Marinette Dupain-Cheng sitting on her vanity chair like it was a throne. The Ladybug suit and the wounds were gone. She looked a little familiar.

“Why are you telling me this? What was the point?” Natalie faltered as she wondered why the girl looked familiar. Marinette moved closer and her face was fully illuminated by the moonlight.

“I intend to take everything by which I mean everything from Gabriel Agreste for what he did.”

“M. Agreste just wanted his wife back. You just gave him your Miraculous, you would still have everything.”

“What difference would it make? Sure I had friends and family before but they turned out to be disappointing. I might have become a famous designer like I dreamed of and can't achieve because I died. Besides, he never said about wanting his wife to come back in his tedious monologues. For all we knew back then, he wanted them for world domination. He showed that he would end the world for them. For kwamis’ sake, he nearly started World War III, just for a pair of earring and a ring. He was willing to kill me to have her back. No wait, he did that too. If he actually read the translated grimoire or asked the Guardian or at least someone with magic for help instead or maybe used his head and made some who can heal as his champion using the Butterfly, we wouldn’t even be in this mess. Face it, Mme Sancour, your boss is a power-hungry and very controlling maniac who is also thankfully an idiot.”

“But- he- he just-. You are just a child, what do you know? M. Agreste knew what he was doing.”

“A child who had a normal life up until he tried to ruin it with his idiotic schemes and hiring Lila to do it. A child who had to fight a war on her own.”

“I am sorry you had to go through that but I doubt you and your little revenge rampage is going to solve anything.”

Ghostly Chains wrapped around Natalie’s body, squeezing tight like it was squeezing the life out of her.

“I was all for sparing you, you know. If you had actually listened to my side of the story, you would have spared from my ‘little revenge rampage’. This is going to be a little painful. Sorry about that.” In a tone that was definitely not sorry.

Pain coursed through Natalie’s body. Her skin crawled and itched as pitch back feathers grew out of it. Her bones turned to dust and reformed.

Where Natalie Sancour once was, there was a raven.

An omen of death and destruction for one Gabriel Agreste.

Marinette leaned down towards the raven. Natalie tried to peck her eye out but Marinette held the beak in a firm grip.

“Ah. ah ah. Luckily for you this is temporary. Mostly. Every night, you will assume this shape and each night the longer you will stay in this form. Slowly counting down the days until Gabriel’s downfall. Since you love helping him so much, you are going to help him know how long he has to live. The night you are a raven from sunset to sunrise, that sunrise starts the day Gabriel Agreste will be utterly destroyed.”

She released the beak and headed towards the window.

"Send him my regards."

With that, she was gone.

(Part 6)

[sleepy-dreamers-inc]

Being Exiled with Tommy Headcannons!|| 🥀

irl/ in-game

Genre| angst + comfort

h e a d c a n n o n s||

Sypnosis|

Both you and Tommy ended up getting exiled together.

Artist| OliverSonder on twitter!!

Warnings] mentions of manipulation, character death, spoilers for Tommy’s Exile Arc and the Season 2 finale!!

[can be seen as both platonic or romantic!!]

||gender neutral reader!!||

(also this was not grammar checked and im to lazy to watch through hours of footage so if anything in here is wrong blame it on the DSMP Wiki OKAY LETS GO-)

So i think its pretty established that if you end up getting exiled with Tommy your one of two things.

- Really sweet and loyal friend that will stick up for in-justice and be there when someone needs you the most

Or

- A total fucking gremlin that will steal your kneecaps and toes and eat your shower curtains in the middle of the night.

There is no inbetween here you guys.

I did end up going for Reader A, though. But you guys tell me if you want headcannons for a gremlin!reader because i will gladly do that!!

But anyways just... enjoy exile!

Exile|

- It was about his third day in exile when Y/N appeared through the nether portal, bags, pouches, tools, armor, etc. on their person. Tommy thought they either were here to beat him up or got exiled themselves.

- Tommy was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Y/N was actually there on their own accord, helping him through exile and being his shoulder to lean on. The first few days we’re rough, fighting back mobs in the night and farming crops all day. His clothes we’re starting to get dirty and torn by the time Y/N got there.

- Y/N ended up making a little bunker about 30 blocks from where they’re tent was, where they hid all theirs and Tommy’s valuables, such as armor, diamonds & iron, and rations. Although Y/N never gave into Dream and gave him they’re stuff, Y/N simply refused, they wouldn’t be giving in that easily.

- Most of they’re days are spent in caves mining away, chatting and fighting off Creeper’s as they tried to keep the moral high, always keeping Tommy company. Y/N never let him go anywhere alone, they we’re always with him, like his own bodyguard of sorts.

- One time they both find a Mineshaft though and got lost, they ended up at the surface two dayd later with torn clothes, cuts and bruises and we’re in bad shape. Thankfully Y/N had a brewing stand at they’re camp though, so Healing Potions we’re semi-easy to make/get.

- After the duo end up going to the artic though... things got... weird.

- Techno was not expecting to open his door to find the heathen Tommy and sweetheart Y/N at his doorstep shivering and begging to come inside, bags thrown on they’re shoulders as they teeth chattered from the cold wind and snow.

- Whenever Dream comes to visit Y/N always has to hide with Tommy, reassuring him that its okay and they’ll always be there for him, and protect him at any cost, which he highly appreciates.

- The ‘gapple-eating’ thing Tommy did was a cute, yet depressing thing. Seeing him hasitly munching on golden-coated apples was funny and caused giggles, but the meaning behind it always left Y/N with a lump in their throat and a hole in their heart.

- Whenever Tommy is in danger and calls for Dream, Y/N always has to stop him and bring him back to reality, making Tommy realize Dream isnt his friend, and never was. Many nights have happened where the two talk about Tommy’s feelings with Dream, not only for Tommy to vent and let everything out, but also for Y/N to understand whats going on in his head.

- When going into the Nether Tommy always grips Y/N’s hand, as his fear of lava and heights consumes him whole in that firey dimension.

- When Tommy gets up close to Dream in the cabin? Y/N is scared spineless, if people could see them, they’d see the palest, most terrified and worried being on earth.

- Y/N having a heart attack when Ghostbur slips up

- Ghostbur is just a whole thing and just. Y/N needs a break, okay?

- Y/N begrudgingly helping Tommy build his cobblestone tower outside of Techno’s cabin.

- Y/N apologizing soon after to Techno only for him to laugh and ruffle Y/N’s hair, saying he knows how Tommy can get anyone to any situation.

- Very rarely does Y/N ever leave Tommy’s side, when they do its usually to get supplies or visit they’re friends. So when Y/N was walking back to the Nether portal to see Tommy, Techno and Dream all standing there, looking like they’re about to slit the others throat, well...

- Nobody has ever seen Y/N drop kick a person so fast.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” Y/N yelled, they’re sword at Dream’s neck, as he laid on his back, his mask covering his shocked expression.

“Answer. Me.” Y/N gritted through their teeth, pushing their swordfurther against the masked mans throat. Techno soon chimed in, reassuring Y/N that nothing to terrible happened.

“It’s fine, Y/N. He didn’t do anything, why not we head back home? Wouldn’t want that homeless man to be to scared spineless, eh?” Techno said, hand on they’re shoulder as he looked Y/N in the eyes.

The 3 walked back to the Nether portal, purple mist engulfing Tommy and Techno as Y/N stood in front of the portal. Back turned towards Dream, Y/N shifted they’re head and glared at Dream with eyes that could kill.

“Don’t do anything you might regret, you megalomaniac.”

- When Tommy and Tubbo decide to go fight Dream, Y/N is both excited and scared. They hope Dream will finally be taken down, but they dont want Tommy (& Tubbo) to be taken down as well.

- So like any amazing best friend, Y/N brews up a bunch of potions of Strength, Healing + Regen, Invisibility and more. Even if Tommy thought he was going to be walking out of there alone, he wasn’t going to be. Y/N would make sure.

- Y/N watched from afar as Tommy got his disc out of the jukebox, laughing in success. All Y/N did was clap quietly, making sure they’re Invisibility didn’t wear off. They we’re making sure Tommy stayed safe, even if he didn’t realize it. Y/N loved him with they’re whole heart, and everyone knew that.

- At Dreams secret base, Y/N was just getting there as Tommy took Dreams first canon life.

“Tommy. Stop. Dont do anything you might regret.” Dream snarled, looking at the teenage boy, his blue eyes dull, yet full of passion and vigor.

All Tommy did was pursue forward, as everyone waited for what was to come. Tommy took one step to close though, because Dream had decided that he had enough.

Dream brought his arm into the air, hand curled into a fist, he was about to hurl his hand into Tommy’s face when Dream suddenly fell to the ground, arrow in his forehead.

Dream was shot by Y/N

Y/N stood there, enchanted bow in hand, infront of the nether portal that swirled with an eerie purple mist. Y/N lowered their bow, staring at the man who tortured Tommy for weeks now. Y/N simply stepped forward and towered over Dreams corpse before it disappeared in thin air.

Lets just say Dream wouldn’t be hurting the blonde heathen anytime soon.

a/n: howdy everyone how we doing? Decided to do Tommy x Reader for this post, although i am MAJORLY simping for Wilbur atm and i have brainrot so that’ll most likely be the next post (if i dont do a pt. 2 for this one but even so WILBUR).

Anyways i hope i did racooninnit justice, i have no idea how to do headcannons since half the time i ramble (its the adhd) so this was new for me. Definitely not my strong suit but like you live ya learn. Also, sorry if i left out quite a lot, i might make a fic about this and include more events, but this is really long for headcannons (because of my layout) so i didn’t include to much. I dont want people scrolling for like 20 seconds to go to another post (i write on mobile so undercut is not a thing for me RIP)

Anyways have a lovely day and dont let Tommy eat all your gapples!!

[thefirsttree]

A personal update + my next game

OK, time to do this. I’ve been meaning to do a big DAVID WEHLE™ update for a while now and explain why I haven’t released a new game yet, but you know how life gets in the way. Especially when life is a quarantine hellscape, you have three beautiful, amazing, exhausting kids to raise, a spouse’s job you support, a viral YouTube channel that turns your brain to mush, a thousand emails waiting in your inbox since your game is free on the Epic Games Store (with an impressive number of redemptions too! … meaning lots of emails and customer support issues), etc., etc. What also contributes to my lack of updates is because… I just don’t really like posting online. Fascinating correlation, I know!

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a venting/ranting blog post (well, maybe a bit), because my life is seriously AMAZING and INSANELY BLESSED and LUCKY. I can’t believe how many dreams keep coming true, so much so that I feel I don’t deserve it and I really pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes… but I did want to at least be honest, because I owe that to myself.

Wow, where do I even begin? Well, how about we start with the reason I’m even a full-time indie game dev now: The First Tree. This small hobby project I worked on at night morphed into this gargantuan beast (or fox) that took over my life the past 5 years. Which is great! I’m living the dream! And yet, I really didn’t expect it to do as well as it did. At its core, my game is a slow-paced, sad walking simulator (ahem, I prefer the term “exploration game,” but you know what I mean) that somehow seemed to launch at the right time to the right audience. It resonated deeply with some of you, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I still get emails almost daily how my game changed their lives in some formative way. I’m beyond honored.

However, with that spotlight came criticism and demands from the ever-present, insatiable internet. I would randomly be surfing the gamedev subreddit trying to decompress, and I would see a comment by some rando saying how much I didn’t deserve my success, and how it was all one huge lucky fluke. And I believed them!

And to add to it, some devs considered me an indie marketing “guru”, which I was uncomfortable with. I worked hard to market my game every week, and after my GDC talk, people assumed marketing was my passion; the reason I got up every morning. Just to clarify… NO, I don’t like marketing, and I hate being the center of attention. I don’t like asking people for money and wishlists. But I did what was necessary because I was passionate about telling stories, and I wanted to give my story a fighting chance to be seen on the crowded pages of Steam.

So now, you’re probably wondering “well then David, why did you make fancy YouTube videos showing off your success? Not very modest if you ask me.” This honestly could be a long blog post all on its own, because my experience of putting myself in the spotlight and becoming a “content creator” is… complicated. It was an unusual step for me, especially since I never even showed my face online (as a game developer) until my GDC talk.

First off, I always wanted to teach and start a YouTube channel. I love video editing, especially since I’ve been doing it longer than making games! It’s a huge passion of mine. And teaching people who didn’t know they could make and finish games was a huge motivator (and it’s been so rewarding already). But the second reason is, I was scared. I was self-employed, and I was riding the success of a “huge lucky fluke” that would probably not happen again. I wanted to make sure I could provide for my amazing family, and give them food and health insurance and security in these tumultuous times. I was turning my lifelong passions and hobbies into a business, and it wasn’t as simple of a mental transition as I thought.

So, I went all in on YouTube and the accompanying online course called Game Dev Unlocked. I spent years editing the scripts and videos, and polishing them to a shine. At first, no one watched my videos, no one was buying… and in the blink of an eye, the YouTube algorithm picked up my main autobiographical video (“How Making Indie Games Changed My Life”), and I started getting 5,000 subscribers a day. Right now, I’m at 150,000 subs, which is still hard for me to believe. I always had a dream of earning 100k subs on YouTube, so I was pretty happy with the whole thing. Sales were OK, but mostly people didn’t want to buy the course. Then the emails came in…

Something you should know about me: I am a textbook “people pleaser,” and if someone asks for my help, I take it very seriously. If someone is mad at me, even if I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s all I can think about, and it ruins my day. So, taking an onslaught of people begging for help and multiplying that by an impossible amount of people for my brain to truly comprehend thanks to the internet… and let’s just say it wasn’t a healthy mix.

I received thousands of emails from people who were begging me for some kind of reassurance that everything would be OK. That their dreams would come true too. And I wanted to help every single one of them. I went from a nobody working on a game for fun to becoming a spokesperson for the indie game dream. I couldn’t even get a shake from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru without someone recognizing me and asking for game dev advice. And it didn’t stop there… I would get emails from suicidal kids asking for help, teenagers from Afghanistan asking me to get them out of their country, and on one occasion I received an email from a hopeful game developer in a war-torn country who had just experienced a bomb blowing up their neighboring village. His friends were dead, and he was hoping he could finish a game before he died too, and he needed my help. How do you say no to something like that? Didn’t I owe it to everyone because I was lucky with my hit game and I needed to “pay it forward”? (Something people constantly reminded me of)

And then to top it off, after you’ve given everything you’ve got to other people in need… you get hate mail in your inbox. You spend the whole day serving your children and strangers on the internet, then when the kids are finally asleep, you hit the bed to relax and take a look at your phone to decompress, and you randomly come across an angry gamer in your Twitter mentions telling you your game they got for free sucks, and that you took away a potentially great game from them and that your apology isn’t good enough.

Long story short, I went to a mental therapist for the first time in my life. I was broken trying to care for two toddlers and a new baby in a pandemic (which is very, very hard), taking care of my course students who gave me their hard-earned money and demanded results, and the countless people begging for help on the internet. I was this introverted, internet-lurker trying to take on the weight of the world. I was so tired and hurt that no one cared about me and my needs… only what I could do for them.

Quitting my day job and making this hobby my full-time job has stirred up… mixed emotions. This statement may disturb some of you, but I was definitely 100% happier when I had a full-time job and I was working on my game at night. I missed working with the amazing team at The VOID, working on Star Wars… back when the success of my game was this abstract thing I could only daydream about. Mostly, I was making my game for me with no outside expectations to pay the bills or satisfy the ever-demanding internet, and that brought me a lot of joy.

It’s not all doom and gloom though! I’m actually very happy now and in the best shape I’ve been since the pandemic started. I’ve had to confront my weaknesses and personality quirks, but I’m a better person for it (and I’m sure these issues would’ve come out eventually). I hired an awesome community manager for Game Dev Unlocked who is helping SO MUCH with the emails, I can’t even tell you the mental burden it alleviates. I even leased a co-working office to help separate work from my home, and that’s been a huge help too. I’ve decided to work with my old friends from The VOID on a cool, new VR experience. It will take me away from my projects a bit, but I’m ecstatic to work with a great team again (and not manage anything, whew).

These are all things I would’ve never guessed I needed, because I thought I knew myself pretty well… turns out I didn’t.

The reality is: running a business is HARD. Running it solo is even harder. You have to remember, I was burnt out on The First Tree well into the Steam release in 2017, but I kept working on it for 4 more years due to my fears of failing again and not earning enough money for my family.

So, I was wrestling with the age-old concept of commercialism and art. There was this dichotomy of doing whatever I wanted and being true to my vision (what most people assume the indie dev dream is like), and doing only what customers wanted to buy. This is something that has killed me with YouTube… in one specific instance, I was super excited to make the exact video I wanted to make. I loved every part of its creation, and I thought it had a message that would inspire everyone. I lovingly edited it over several weeks, posted it, and excitedly waited for the stats… and it was by far my worst performing video.

This is not a new problem. Even the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo was a commission forced upon him by the very violent Pope Julius II. My wife and I regularly talk about the fine balance between artistic integrity and commercialism, a problem she is very familiar with as an artist who constantly needs to balance what she wants to make with what the customer wants to hang up in their home.

For The First Tree, I was lucky. It was pretty much what I wanted to make (I had to compromise a lot of things of course), and it turned out millions of people wanted it too. Recently, I thought the safe business decision would be to do it all over again, so I started work on a spiritual successor to The First Tree (an idea that I may revisit one day since I do love the story idea). But that isn’t happening anytime soon. Trust me when I say I am now currently burnt out on animal exploration games.

So that realization left me with a question: what do I do next?

I’ve decided I need to make a game that I want to make, for me. It will be a bit different and I’m almost certain most fans of The First Tree will not love it… but it’s an idea that gets me super excited. It’s an idea that could help me fall in love with game development again.

A few more details: this game will be story-driven, first-person, and will use the Unreal Engine. That means development is gonna be slow going, because I have to learn a whole new tool. The “smart business” decision would be to make something quickly in Unity which I’m already familiar with… but I want to do this for me, and UE5 looks like a lot of fun. I’m also shooting for an early-ish release date so I avoid burn out and I keep the game short: I want to release it in Fall 2022, but knowing game development, it will probably take longer.

With the help of my therapist, I’ve also concluded that I’ve been too accessible on the internet and that my self-worth isn’t determined by the amount of people I try to help online. Of course, I love helping people and seeing them succeed, but I need to step back and focus on my family and myself. I will delete my social media apps on my phone (I will still post big updates occasionally) and stop responding to most emails, tweets, DMs, etc. It’s not that I’m ungrateful… in fact, if I don’t say thank you or at least acknowledge the incredibly nice people who share a sweet message about my game or want to tell me how I inspire them (still hard for me to believe, lol), I feel a ton of guilt… but I need to let that go. Please know I’m extremely grateful to all the fans who follow my work, so even if I don’t thank you directly, I truly mean it: thank you.

I will still post and stream occasionally on YouTube when I want to (and I still do live Q&A’s for my GDU students). The online course sales will help support my family as I work on a potentially risky game idea (and my new job will help alleviate the risk too). I’m gonna try one more marketing experiment and sell a mini-course soon (and add an Unreal section), and after that I’m done working on it. A gigantic thank you to the people who bought my course and are part of the amazing community, it has helped me and my family tremendously, and it’s inspiring seeing the games you make!

I’m a bit worried about the whole thing since this new game idea could flop, which could definitely affect my family. But a sappy, high-school yearbook quote is coming to mind…  I think it applies here: “A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.”

Thanks for reading,

David

[delimeful]

to taste your beating heart (4)

warnings: nightmares, flashbacks, mind control/thrall mention, mental breakdown, blood mention, impalement/staking, upsetting thoughts, panic, ptsd responses

-

A plastic-sounding click, like someone pressing a button.

Anx took a breath, staring intently at the person bustling around across from him.

Patton was making tea like someone vying for a professional butler position: setting saucers and cups in front of each of them, managing the teapot with a steady hand, motions smooth and automatic.

“Sorry, I’m just so used to setting up refreshments for guests,” he chuckled nervously. “My sister always insists on tea when she comes by, so—“

Logan shifted next to him, impatient and more than a little irritated after every one of his inquiries had been deflected or outright ignored. Patton had invited them in, though, and he was currently their best lead on one of the most vicious cases they’d ever dealt with.

Even if he seemed utterly incapable of answering any of their actual questions.

That wasn't saying he wasn't willing to talk at all. Roman was chattering with him, their most sociable member easily drawn into discussion and more than willing to natter on in the hopes that Patton would let some vital information slip.

Anx wasn’t the only one who noted the way their host set an extra saucer and cup out, but when he met Logan’s gaze, the hunter only rolled his eyes, more than content to dismiss it as another element of the stranger’s apparent airheaded personality.

Patton was still speaking, discussing the many alleged merits of ignoring allergies for the sake of fulfilling experiences. Roman, who was lactose intolerant, was nodding along wholeheartedly. Logan, who was the one to deal with Roman’s post-dairy consumption whining, looked a lot less agreeable.

His own attention remained pinned on Patton’s movements rather than his words. There was a pattern there, a careful turn of the cup so the handle was facing the right side, lift the teapot from the warmer, and pour. One by one, he went around the table.

Anx was the only one watching when the man finally fumbled. After pouring each of their cups with surprising grace, he reached that final, fifth teacup. He twisted the handle so it was right-aligned, lifted the teapot, poured— and then reached for what looked like a cream pitcher.

A beat late, Patton’s hands suddenly swerved to the side, and he pulled them back as though he’d been burned. His voice didn’t even falter.

Anx reached across the table lightning-quick and seized the pitcher, knocking a few of the porcelain jars over and effectively cutting through the conversion as he did. Roman was asking something, but Patton only stared at him, something both fearful and grateful in his gaze.

Anx pulled the lid off, and the thick smell of blood hit him, like iron and rust.

“Your sister, you said?” Logan asked, and Patton bit his lip hard enough to bleed.

Click.

He was in a different room of the same tiny apartment, though it took him a moment to recognize the interior.

Put bluntly, it looked as though a miniature hurricane had torn through it.

The wallpaper was shredded and splattered. The cute decorative furniture had been thrown askew at best, smashed to bits at worst. Everything was in disarray, the valuable and mundane targeted indiscriminately. An entire life torn to pieces.

In the eye of the storm, Patton stood, hands fisted in his hair and eyes bloodshot.

They’d known the backlash of the bond breaking would be hard on Patton, but they hadn’t been prepared for this. It was entirely possible that they had never run into a thrall this strong, one maintained for so long, in their entire hunting career.

Most aggressive thralls would attack relentlessly to defend their master from harm. Seeing as they’d been the ones to kill his “sister”, if Patton was going to vent his ire on anyone, it would be them. Roman stepped forwards carefully regardless, knowing that they owed it to him to at least try to help him recover. “Patton?”

“I should have helped her,” he replied tonelessly, voice half-ruined from screaming. He picked up a broken chunk of a table leg, and they all went tense, but all he did was slam it against the wall.

“I should have saved her!” he cried, punctuating every word with a swing. “Where is she, where is she, what did I do to her?”

“A better question would be: what did she do to you?” Logan asked, ignoring the sharp look Anx sent his way. They’d all been unsettled at the way the vamp had talked about Patton, like someone possessive over a favored plaything, but that didn’t mean they should be bringing it up now.

They’d finally gotten Patton’s full attention, as he turned to them with angry tears in his eyes. “She did everything for me! And I— I gave her away, I betrayed her…”

“She was hurting people,” Anx cut in, voice firm but not unkind. For all that he’d been through, Patton didn’t deserve unkind.

“I could have fixed it, I thought I was— I was getting through to her,” he pleaded, his voice unsteady and unconvincing even to himself. He dropped the wood, pressing bleeding knuckles against his face to stem the tears.

“It’s not your fault, Patton, okay?” Roman tried, stepping closer until he could reach out and set his hand on a trembling shoulder. Patton only seemed to bow further with the weight of his grief.

“Giving her up was supposed to kill me,” he said softly, the frenzy gone from him. “How am I supposed to live without her?”

“The same way everyone else does,” Roman pulled him in for a hug, his own eyes wetter than they’d been before. “One day at a time.”

Click.

The living room of the house— their house.

Perhaps more importantly, the smell of something burning.

Anx had always been twitchy about things like this-- a thousand potential disasters in mind for every little inconvenience-- so he bolted off the arm of the couch the moment the scent registered.

When he got to the kitchen, he heard the rattle of an active microwave, saw Patton standing and staring blankly at the display as the inside of the microwave clouded up with smoke.

Cringing at the thought of the smoke alarm going off, he turned on the overhead fan and pulled the window up before finally yanking the microwave door open.

A plastic takeout container was halfway to a melted puddle, mixing with whatever leftovers had formerly resided there. He slid on a pair of duck-themed oven mitts and grabbed the most solid-looking parts, quickly lifting and carrying the mess to the balcony where it could cool down without making their house smell like burnt plastic.

When he returned, Patton was still in that same spot, frowning slightly as though just realizing that something might be a little off. Like someone had pressed pause while the world fast-forwarded around him, Patton had described it once.

Anx flitted about for a moment, putting the mitts back and cleaning the leftover residue, and then finally faced his friend with a wry half-smile. Patton’s eyes snapped to him, as though just realizing he was there.

“Hey, Pat.” He reached out and set his hand against Patton’s back, watching as the touch helped ground him slightly. “Can you go sit at the table? I’ll bring us both something to eat.”

Without a word, Patton turned and walked to their little dining table.

Cooking was admittedly harder when he ducked away to check on the other room every few moments, but he managed alright, only singeing the eggs slightly where Roman would have incinerated them.

He set the table for them both, and sat across from Patton, who was motionless and quiet in his chair.

“Can we eat together?” Anx asked, offering Patton a fork so there was a physical prompt as well as a verbal one.

It took a moment, but Patton gripped the fork easily and started to work through the motions of eating, mirroring Anx. Whenever he faltered or seemed to forget what he was in the middle of, Anx would nudge his attention back on track.

Once they were finished, he gathered up his dishes and asked Patton to grab his, carrying them back to the kitchen together.

Patton paused for a moment at the sink, mouth twitching into a frown as he stared at his glass and the lingering layer of orange juice at the bottom.

“Does anyone want tea?” he asked suddenly, a well-practiced line in a cheery tone. “I’m very good at tea service, you know.”

Anx swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’m good, Pat,” he declined instead of pointing out that they didn’t have any tea in the house.

Patton seemed to get a little hazier, his face going sad and then quickly lax again. Anx took the glass from him and offered him a hand to hold instead, squeezing his palm comfortingly when he accepted.

“I need help out in the garden today. Do you think you could lend a hand or two?”

He dipped his head in a nod, and as they made their way to the back door, Anx shot a text off to the group chat.

> nightmare on edge street: out in the garden with pat. bad day protocol, stat

When they came back in hours later, dirt under their nail beds and probably a little sunburned, Roman and Logan had already combined their talents to set up an elaborately decorated but still structurally sound blanket fort spanning the entirety of the living room.

Patton’s face twitched into a tremulous little smile as the others waved them over, and Anx felt him squeeze their joined hands gratefully.

Click.

The sequence rewound, restarted. Ran him through it over and over, the same scenes-- the same memories. Patton pouring tea with a determined, terrified glint to his eye. Patton’s mind struggling under the stress of the snapped bond. Patton working through a difficult day with the help of friends.

The scenery grew brighter and brighter with every repetition, like saturation turned all the way up on a screen, until they were as painful as sunlight on his bare skin. He tried to close his eyes, to move away, to change something, anything, but his body wasn’t his own.

Look at him, it seemed to demand, keeping him frozen in a sensory hell. Pay attention. Look what you did. Understand how you hurt him.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Clunk.

Silence. The memories vanished, leaving him floating in an impossible, endless black space. Between one blink and the next, he was eye-to-eye with a mirror image, something about it just slightly off.

He didn’t notice the stake in its hand until it was too late.

---

Anx jerked upright, hands jumping to his chest as the phantom sensation of wood between his ribs faded. His breath stuttered painfully, as though he expected to feel ichor welling up in his mouth any minute.

Staking a vampire was an archaic hunter method. It was difficult to manage, it was messy, and it was the slowest and most painful way possible to kill a vampire. He knew this, though he wasn’t sure which life was providing the facts.

Regardless of memories, he couldn’t know how it felt to actually be staked. He’d been injured before, with a coven as temperamental as his, but nothing like that. Nothing even close to that. It was just a bad dream, an imagined pain.

There was a subtle shifting nearby, and his head snapped up, eyes bright and teeth bared. If those assholes thought he was in the mood to have his space invaded--

“Easy, Count Chocula.” Across the room, the sword-wielder-- Roman, that was his name-- settled back into the armchair by the door, watching him with narrowed eyes. “I was simply noticing your… abrupt awakening?”

Right. Because he wasn’t settled into one of the tiny, dark rooms reserved for the newly-turned and those who couldn’t shake off the urge to sleep. He was captured by weird hunters, who trapped him in their weird house, and asked weird invasive leading questions about his weird night terrors.

He was also tucked into a bed, for some reason.

The comforter had already slipped down halfway due to his sudden jolt into wakefulness, and he wasted no time in kicking free of the sheets. The room was surprisingly dark in both theme and lighting, with deep purple walls and heavy spiderweb-patterned curtains blocking out any potential sunlight.

There was also a warding circle of ash carefully smudged in a perimeter around the bed, the burning containment runes strong enough to make him want to sneeze even from this distance. The diameter of the circle was wide enough that he could theoretically keep away from any stabbings if he pissed Roman off enough, but add even one more hunter to the mix and it would take virtually no effort to pincer him.

Nothing he could do about the new cage for now, with the hunter staring at him expectantly from his sentry position. He sent a poisonous glare back and hissed, still crouched on the bed like an exceptionally angry gargoyle.

Roman pressed an offended hand to his chest, but was cut off by an inordinately cheerful knock at the door. His expression flickered to a sort of bitter resignation, and he shot Anx a much more serious warning look before unlocking and cracking the door open.

“Hey, Pat! I thought you were taking a nap?” he asked with impressively feigned lightness to his voice.

“I was, I just— Is he awake?” Another too-familiar voice replied, sounded distracted. “I felt…”

“Yeah, Padre,” Roman admitted after a strained pause. “He’s up. You remember your key?”

“Of course!” Patton said, and neither of them elaborated on what the hell that was supposed to mean. Roman stepped aside, and Patton beelined to the bed like a compass needle to true north.

He stopped just short of the circle, like a determined enough— or cornered enough— vamp couldn’t reach out and drag him in. “Anx! I’ve been so worried about you! You took quite a tumble, are you feeling alright?”

Anx stared at him. The words were bright, but there was a thread of something fervent and barely-controlled in them, something frenetic in the way he shifted from foot to foot. It sent a pervasive feeling of wrongness down his spine, like looking at an old photograph and realizing that something you remembered from it was entirely absent.

Anx didn’t— couldn’t know enough about Patton to recognize when he was acting off, but every piece slotted neatly into place anyways, dragging him to a conclusion he didn’t intend to realize; Patton was pretending, ignoring the parts of him that felt bad to reassure the rest of them. After everything he'd already gone through, he was bearing the stress of being thralled without a word.

He could feel the thrall tether pulled taut between them, already mentally frayed from both the time passed since feeding and the pain that had ricocheted through him at his last order. Looking at Patton like this, it was bizarrely easy to loosen his grip and let that last thread connecting them fall apart.

Patton’s shoulders eased, all of him sagging slightly like a puppet with strings cut. And wasn’t that just an uncomfortably accurate metaphor.

In the next moment, the hunter was stepping neatly over the line of ash and into the circle, arms lifted. Roman shouted something, but his alarmed words were meaningless noise against the roar of anticipatory fear that overcame Anx.

Get away, his instincts screamed, but his body remained stuck, stalled by a resentful whisper in the back of his mind: Doesn’t he deserve to get a few hits in though? Look at what you did to him.

A sudden touch made him curl in on himself, but the arms that folded around him were careful, even gentle. His head jerked up, and sure enough, Patton was hugging him. He froze, struck dumb.

Over Patton’s shoulder, Roman was stopped a few feet away, hand outstretched as though he’d planned to yank Patton back out of the danger zone. Anx met his stare, eyes round as quarters.

“I did not tell him to do this,” he blurted, and Patton’s chest vibrated with a little sniffly chuckle. The human was so warm.

At the door, Logan appeared, glasses slightly askew. “Patton? I heard—“

He paused, taking in the room. His expression grew more and more unimpressed. “... I see. Exactly what happened while I was away?”

[4x4girl]

I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore… he doesn’t seem to care enough about me to change.. even though I’ve pleaded with him to do SOMETHING. Anything! But he just doesn’t care.. I’m torn on trying to make things work, try couples counseling.. but a little over a year in and it shouldn’t be this way.. should it? Aren’t we supposed to be in the honeymoon stage still? It’s felt so long since he treated me like when we first started dating. The caring doting bf. I never stopped being the caring doting gf.. but I can’t even get a happy birthday on my birthday let alone a card or even a small gift to let me know he was thinking of me. No valentines anything. In fact I had planned a date to a adult arcade where they serve beer and cider. He likes video games… I do not but I can handle an evening of playing frogger and trying to connect with him over something he likes.. but last night he came at me and belittled my accomplishments I’ve been proud of up until he basically called me a liar. I work hard to support myself and not need a man. I still feel that’s how I am.. I still am completely capable of doing things without a man to help me. That’s how it’s always been.. me against the world. And I feel that’s the case again. My only friends I talk to on a regular basis live on the other side of the country. I was going to therapy to try and find ways to cope/ make things work. But my job fucked me over and now I have no health insurance and $100 out of pocket every time is out of my budget. So I feel like I have no one to talk to. I don’t wanna type out my life story either. I just want someone to hear me and understand what I’m going through and how hard I’ve been trying. I’m exhausted and just broken feeling. I’m saving money as much as I can so I can afford to get a camper and live in that. But until then I’m basically stuck. I want to leave and go back to Montana more then anything. I dream of it every day. Literally.. I miss being on my own and living my life as much as I can. Right now, I’m not living at all. My depression and anxiety has me beyond frazzled and overwhelmed. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry and sleep and snuggle my dogs. Even snuggling with my dogs has changed. They’re rarely allowed on the bed, and when they are well Addie doesn’t snuggle normally. But montana is all about the bf. He’ll go to me sometimes but more often he goes to him. Which I don’t understand. I miss taking my dogs on spontaneous adventures. We can’t do spontaneous.. he doesn’t like it. Either way.. I’m unhappy. And I feel myself getting lost.. I’m terrified of that. So I’m holding on as tight as I can to what little happiness I have. Hoping I can make it to being happy again.. some way some how😔

This was a vent post.

[amaya-chwan]

Takeaways from Therapy Game: Restart Chapter 09

HELLO FRIENDS! And we’re back at it again with chapter 9 featuring our favourite dorks, Shizuma and Minato! ❤️💛🎉

Sensei was kind enough to post the first page of this chapter on her Twitter!  🥰😍😘

“I thought you understood, but men who fail to keep their promises deserve punishment, okay?!”  --- The text next to Minato.

That’s just 🔥🔥🔥🥰😍🔥🔥🔥

Let’s get right into the takeaways, shall we? It’s a shorter chapter this month, but it is very focused on Shizuma’s residency journey while juggling his house hunting schedule with Minato, and with that, a lot of dialogue. There was also a lot of technical terminology I had to keep looking up ;A;

In this chapter:

Minato is an angry, scowly boy when Shizuma doesn’t keep his promises!😭

Poor Shizuma, he’s torn between keeping his promises and his work. 😭 😭 But I’m proud of you, Shizuma! 👏👏

Minato, my son, I am glad you are getting the simple happiness you deserve! Your patience really is a virtue! 🥰😍❤️

Onodera... really lacks person skills. Is she a recluse? Or someone with poor social skills? I hope we find out?? And she honestly... is so stoic. I cannot read her at all. 😅😅

SHIZUMA, I CAN FEEL YOUR DEDICATION TO AND LOVE FOR ANIMALS THROUGH THE PAGES! You are so very capable of being a vet and I’m glad you are getting the experience you wanted and needed to succeed! ❤️🐶🐱🐹❤️

Also, your k*nky thoughts during work really bit you in the butt, didn’t it, Shizuma? 🤣

Shizuma’s smile makes everyone weak. 🥰

And that’s it for this chapter’s takeaways! For a more detailed breakdown/summary of this chapter, please continue after the cut! As always, I promise there is a surprise (or two) at the end!  😉✨

Our chapter begins with a grumpy Minato sitting in a cafe. The shop attendants peg him as a celebrity of sorts because of his good looks, even though his face is hella scary to them.

We find out that Minato is annoyed and upset because his and Shizuma’s house hunting date (set for Shizuma’s next day off) is cut short since Shizuma is observing an operation in the morning on that day. In a flashback, he tells Minato that he should be able to make it in time for their afternoon appointment.

In that same flashback, Minato recounts his plans to Shizuma of going to a hotel and having a quickie with Shizuma to alleviate his pent up frustrations before heading to their appointment. He then continues to vent his pent-up frustations on Shizuma, saying “Will you take responsibility if my desires reach their limit and explode during our private house tour?”

Shizuma is caught in a bind and really wants his surgery to finish sooner, to which Minato responds by saying Shizuma isn’t the only person who can do this surgery. Nevertheless, Shizuma knows this is an invaluable opportunity for him, and promises Minato that he will make it in time for their 2PM private tour. Minato, still looking a little annoyed, tells Shizuma that he’ll be waiting in the cafe in front of the real estate agency and to meet him there. He warns Shizuma that if he is even a minute late, he’s will go home and never house hunt with him again. Shizuma then promises that he’ll be there!

The flashback ends, and we realise that today is the day of their house tour. Minato is caught up in some “Super Narrow-Minded Time” and worries if he’s going to be all alone with a girl, only then to remember Shizuma openly confessing to his colleagues that he’s dating Minato and that there’s no need to worry.

Minato looks over at the real estate agency and, in deep thought, reflects on how he never thought he’d be living with someone and, despite it being a weird feeling to him, he didn’t think he’d be able to have such an ordinary, simple “happiness”. He smirks to himself and says that he should be nice to Shizuma when he gets to the cafe.*

The scene changes to Shizuma, who will be our main focus for the rest of the chapter. He is observing Onodera in surgery along with her brother. They go through what happened with their patient (i.e. the dog belongs to Onodera’s brother’s daughter. The doggo ingested skewers and it appears to have gotten stuck in the dog’s throat/stomach). While talking about the suggestions from the neighbouring clinics on how to treat the dog--trying to get the dog to vomit and if that doesn’t work, they’ll have to do invasive surgery--Shizuma, having encountered her brother before, didn’t know they were related at all since they have different surnames.

Her brother goes on and vouches for his sister’s amazing skills as a vet, cutely calling her by her name “Akira”, to which she clicks her tongue at him. They have some short sibling bickering afterwards, and Onodera then reveals to Shizuma that he’s mainly there to keep her brother in check (i.e. babysit) and not so much hands-on experience.

With Onodera’s brother being a chatterbox, Shizuma is unable to ask critical questions during the procedure and wonders why he is even there at all.

We then see Onodera extract all the contents stuck in the dog’s throat (?) without having to do invasive surgery. Her brother is overjoyed, but she is appalled that the dog ate so much trash and hair. She then tells her brother that she won’t be helping next time unless they take better care of their dog and their house (so the dog doesn’t eat so much dirt and trash). Onodera then tells Shizuma, who she again calls Iijima-sensei and not Ikushima-sensei, to clean up.

Fast forward a bit and Shizuma is happily looking after the dogs being treated at the hospital/staying overnight. There is a thunderous roar and two dogs approach Shizuma to be hugged, to which he obliges. Knowing he has a lot of time to spare and will make it to the appointment, he thinks back to Minato and wonders if he is afraid of lightning. He then thinks of some naughty NSFW thoughts, imagining an X-rated scene in which Minato is scared of thunder and lightning and that affects their love-making session (in a good way 😉).

Another thunderous roar is heard, much louder than the first, and the dogs are so scared, they wet themselves... and pee on Shizuma’s scrubs and pants. (Also, we find out Minato isn’t afraid of T&L).

Going to the locker room to change, Shizuma is being nuzzled by the dogs, who appear to be very apologetic to him. He awkwardly smiles while thinking that the dogs peeing on him was punishment for his NSFW thoughts at work. While changing into his pants (but not scrubs), Onodera walks in and sees him in his boxers. Very flustered, he tells Onodera she’s walked into the wrong room. She then takes Shizuma to get his clothes washed, all the while the awkwardness in the room continues.

Breaking the silence, Onodera applauds Shizuma for his work in the OR, thinking he’d be more annoyed by her. He then tells her that it’s all thanks to the teachings from Hayami-san and everyone else at the clinic and from Onodera during the operation earlier that day. Onodera comments that he’s getting along with everyone in the clinic, to which Shizuma responds with how things were off to a rocky start at first, the nurses were scary and hostile, but now they can talk and are even going out for flower viewing together.

Onodera reveals she wasn’t invited to that and hasn’t heard of it until now, and Shizuma just sits there feeling bad. He then invites her to join them next time for a drink together. But she just says all his efforts in befriending everyone at the clinic would go to waste if he does that.

Before Shizuma can react, an elderly-ish woman and her daughter hurrily enter the clinic with their sick dog. They are Nakajou-sensei’s patients, but it is her day off today, so Onodera asks what she can do for them while telling Shizuma he can go home. The dog has been in labour for a couple of hours and the last puppy hasn’t come out. Onodera berates them for not bringing their dog in sooner.

The women are taken aback, with the elderly one clapping back at Onodera, expressing her worries and inexperience in a situation like this. Onodera, with her lack of people skills, essentially tells her to be quiet, saying a C-section is the only option for them--a natural birth isn’t possible at this point anymore since the dog has been in prolonged labour and is exhausted.

The elderly woman, angered at Onodera’s stoicism and bluntness, says she will go to another hospital if Nakajou-sensei can’t come in. Before anything escalates any further, Shizuma comes into the room with the patient records and diffuses the situation. With his very personable approach to the women, he speaks to them calmly and introduces himself as he was with Nakajou-sensei during their last consult. He pets their dog, named Hana-chan and praises her efforts**, while also calming down the women, telling them he understands their worries while sharing his own dog’s birthing struggles, trying to build that rapport with them.

He explains that given their dog’s current state, it would be wise for them to reconsider taking her to another hospital and keeping Hana-chan here, vouching for Onodera’s skills and assessment as a well-experienced vet. He asks them to believe in Onodera. The elderly woman thinks about it, and then tells Shizuma she will leave her dog in their hands ONLY if Shizuma stays with Hana-chan the whole time.

Shizuma, knowing that he might miss his private house tour and anger Minato, is resolved to helping his patient and says he will definitely stay to help.

And that’s it for this chapter! It’s a bit of a long read again and we get a slightly suspenseful cliffhanger here... will Shizuma make it or not? Will Hand-chan safely deliver the last puppy in her litter? Will Minato see Shizuma soon? I guess we’ll find out in the next chapter! 🥰

Since Minato and Shizuma don’t really have a lot of panels together, please enjoy two little snippets from this chapter~ ❤️💛

(*) Minato, thinking in the cafe

(**) Shizuma with his patient, Hana-chan

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR READING! 💜 📢  As always, please support Hinohara-sensei by purchasing her books and CDs! 📢

The next chapter will appear in next month’s Dear+ (the December issue) out in November and the cover page will feature our adorakble pair! ❤️💛

🎉⚠️🎉 ALSO in next month’s issue, there will be a Therapy Game Mini Drama CD 🎉⚠️🎉 Sensei is treating us a lot this year!

If you wish to order the magazine, I’ll be more than happy to let you know where I purchase mine, so please feel free to message me/comment here and I’ll let you know! 😁

As always, stay safe during these turbulent times and look out for each other and for your loved ones! 💜