#if anyone is reading all this just know i am ok and in therapy for all this

[coridallasmultipass]

Personal vent and ugly mental illness symptom talk

So, I should unpack this with my therapist, but shit's embarrassing, so I'm just gonna vent it out on the public internet lmao.

I was typing out a whole thing about how I KNOW I'm aromantic, and despite that, still have moments where my brain gaslights me into believing I'm in fairytale love.

I should preface by saying I have not officially been diagnosed with either additional mental illnesses I believe that I have (B.P//D and AD//HD [which lol being on AD//HD meds since antidepressants didn't do anything has given me some notable improvement, but I'm still without a diagnosis], nor Au//tism) DESPITE repeatedly asking multiple therapists multiple times and a psych like 100 times to give me a definitive yes or a no.

But holy shit. So I'm typing about how I've 'Favourite Person'-ed multiple people at multiple points in my life across all ages, and I'm like, okay, it's been a hot minute since I refreshed my definition of that, I should make sure that's still a thing and not something I just made up or has been dropped from the symptoms or whatever the case. I wanna make sure I'm using it right in this rant about how falling into Favourite Personing people in the past has made me believe 'wait, maybe I'm not aro, this HAS to be like the deepest truest love in existence, despite my years of knowing I'm aro.' Like, I'm so aro I once calculated out the date, months in advance, I was gonna tell someone I was dating that I loved them, only because it seemed like a socially acceptable amount of time to say it. I wasn't thinking about what I actually felt lmao. (And that was probably not a FP relationship, too, so I know that was absolutely an aro incident.)

Anyways, so I'm reading a couple articles to make sure I articulate my points about how it's conflicted with being aro, and I read about how people falling into having a FP will even hate that person for the slightest perceived wrongs. (I knew this, I just was thinking about the love incidents since that's what was related to my point about being aro.)

And holy shit. That just. Unlocked a memory I have about when I was an older kid, like probably 9ish (and older), I HATED my best friend of many years and who would continue being my bff for more years. Who was my everything. I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hated them. I would lie awake at night (insomnia too tho) thinking about how much I hated them and I couldn't understand why I didn't just stop being their friend and start hanging out with old friends more instead. I just couldn't do it, I wanted to hang out with THEM. I was so sick and feeling jealous of them whenever I found out they'd been hanging out with someone else one-on-one and I wasn't invited. Even when it was their own family. One time they brought me a plate of cookies by surprise for (before) a holiday that they'd just made with their cousin or something. And I felt so sick about how I wasn't there for that, it felt like an insult. I couldn't have put this into words, unless I just now read that point in an article and made a connection. It was so confusing, because usually the people who hated their 'best friend' was like, the mean girl kinda character who intentionally does it to hurt the innocent main character or something, but I was the one who felt wronged every time those feelings would come up. And this wasn't just a 'man it's so annoying when they do this specific thing.' This was active stewing, in a slow cooker, all day and all night kinda thing.

I was never romantically or sexually attracted to that person, but I probably wrote all this off as either unrelated sexuality or gender bullshit when I figured that out later. But knowing now that there was definitely someone (actually, I'm thinking of WAY more people as I'm typing this, and just realized why I stopped loving a band and started hating them 'for no reason' wow lmao) that I FP'ed who I definitely WASN'T attracted to, suddenly convinces me that I was probably right in suspecting B.P//D. (Or, y'know, maybe I don't have that specifically, and it's the symptom from a different facet of mental illness or whatever.) I've been so hung up over how I'm aro, sometimes ace, and then this 'only' happens towards people I am attracted to. Like, 'maybe it was love and I'm just terrible at it.' (No! It's not! Aro is correct! That's just the brain manipulating me to get another hit of dopamine off a FP! It's just easier to happen to someone I'm attracted to!)

It's no fucking wonder why I always worried about people hating me in secret, and it's because I was absolutely making myself insufferable because of that worry. I know for a fact that some people definitely did hate (or. Lmao. Shut up. Like, 'resented' maybe fits better) me for demanding constant attention that was never reciprocated by anyone I've ever met in my entire life.

I probably wrote-off so many symptoms as 'I was a moody teen and kind of an asshole.' Except it happened before and after I was a teen, too. I would have excused everything that happened during and before high school, when I should have been looking for these patterns I kept following for years after. It doesn't help that my first relationship was wildly toxic (mostly against me in this one case), and while I didn't feel particularly bothered by it after I got over the nightmare breakup, I just kept going 'What if it was the sole cause of all of this and I'm just repressing that?' Well, phew! No, it's not, that was thankfully just a toxic embarrassment, and not the source of all my problems. I was already on the shitstorm trajectory. That's a major relief. If you can call it that. I really don't like discussing that one, but not in a trauma way, more like a, you don't really wanna discuss pissing your pants on accident kinda way. Unpleasant to remember, wildly embarrassing to talk about, but ultimately not a life-altering event.

Ughhhhh. Maybe I should bring this (the mental illness not the relationship) up to the therapist. But like, I haven't been close friends with anyone in like 6 years or so, so I don't have any current or even recent examples about how being in friendships has always turned out Russian Roulette for me. My therapist doesn't seem to believe how bad it was for me to be in friendships where I was unintentionally FP'ing someone. Because besides the depression and anxiety (and mild OCD), I'm a totally normal person to her who's just dealing with shit health problems and grief (and frustration from being trans and not in a safe place to transition). Y'know, normal life problems most people will feel at some point, just chronic in my case. I may be weird, but I'm obviously far from the worst she's seen. I'm not uniquely mentally ill.

((Except the whole 'treatment resistant depression' diagnosis bullshit from the psych, but I'm learning it's not just mental issues I have that are treatment resistant lol.))

I tried talking to her about a small part of all this before, but IDK what I did wrong, she took it 100% as me being the one unintentionally wronged and not setting MY own boundaries (lmao), so like I don't know how to word this in a way she'd understand that most of my problems in this area were my own fault. (I mean that both negatively and neutrally, because it's an ugly side of mental illness, but not one I chose or know how to help.)

Not being in close friendships with anyone has had an understandably sane-ifying effect on me (barring the, y'know, depression/anxiety/OCD and baseline weirdness), which has gotten me trapped for the 5th time in 6 years of making my therapists believe I'm better off than I actually am. (I've done this to every therapist I've ever had before that, too.) But like, again, at least for the past 3 therapists and the latest psych, I AM actually better for not having close friends lmao. Only one therapist ever had one visit of me wanting to address these concerns specifically while they were currently active, and by the next visit, we had to shift exclusively to sudden new grief lol. (What a shitshow. It somehow always ends up that whenever I wanna treat an illness, it's like opening a can of worms, except the worms are firecrackers and I didn't set the can down and step back a few feet.)

Like, it obviously feels safer to not have close friends at all because there's no fear of abandonment if I have no one to begin with. And, genuinely, I operate better when I'm alone. But now that I've known safety, it's hard to imagine throwing myself back into the roulette wheel, hoping I don't land on red OR black. But fuck, man. It is lonely.

And being aro? It's freeing, and validating too, to have a word for it, but I'm not gonna mince words here, I hate it. I wish I could feel romantic love. Like normal, not mentally ill ""love."" I feel platonic love all the time, like for friends (not FP) always. I love saying 'I love you' to friends and meaning it. But I want to feel romantic love. I just don't. I just feel friendship, Favoriting, and/or sexual attraction sometimes. Probably why I'm so into shipping and fanfics. I got a lot more "probably why's" but I don't wanna go down that in this already vulnerable post lol. (I already made a whole post about one of the why's back in like 2013 or 14 lmao, without connecting it to this.)

Anyway, I put this whole mental illness and relationships deal into ugly imagery in a current fic WIP I'm working on, since recognizing I was aro took living through FP'ing a few 'romantic' relationships, before I even first heard the term FP. I only saw my experiences as 'I don't think I've been experiencing love' and that by itself felt like it fit. I didn't realize there was anything wrong, even as I outwardly said shit like 'I don't think I'm fit for being in a relationship' to the few people who asked me out, even when I wanted to say yes.

And then I kept trying to make relationships work lmao. I don't know why I even bothered. I just wanted to be wrong about being aro, especially when it was a point of contention (aro and ace separately) with some of the relationships.

I'd probably have to meet another aro person of the exact same flavour of aromanticism to make it work, but even then the mental illness would just be a ticking time bomb. No one wants to be the recipient of FP 'affection', except maybe sometimes the fictional people in a certain fiction trope that winds up being fetishistic, even if it's not intended to insult real people (but sometimes it is). And it's just a reminder of how I was probably a big source of toxicity for probably half the people who have ever been close with me, if it's even half of how fiction portrays people with this symptom.

I dunno where I wanted to end this vent, so here's probably a good place. Just wanted to get this off my chest, because it just now felt like a pretty big revelation that my problems weren't related to romanticism, I've had purely platonic instances of this dating back to being an older kid, and more during high school, and I just never connected the two before now.

[medicinemane]

I'm very tired, I have to do everything around the house myself (as in, I keep having to turn the water off and on to the kitchen sink until I teach myself to install a new faucet, and negative cleaning gets done if I don't do it), and the money is in the hands of the third worst person in the whole family when it comes to money (the worst being my grandpa who is dead, and my grandma who blows all her money on overpriced jackets and other junk)

I'm very tired, I have to teach myself how to do everything, and I have almost literally no support in any way shape or form ever

I can't remember the last time anyone said they were proud of me... I don't actually know if anyone's ever used that word with me before. When I do something like get the trailer cleaned out or buy a house, frankly no one gives a fuck, except my grandma who gets mad

I haven't actually had a chance to see anyone that counts as a friend in like 15 years, and I mean even in high school everyone liked me but no one could be bothered to actually ever even talk outside school... so even back then it's not like I had anyone I was close with

I'm providing this version where I totally remove how I feel or how I view myself from the description and instead try to provide something close to an objective description of things

So if you wonder why I say what I say about myself, honestly I think it's pretty much all summed up here

[terramassakin]

Ugggghhhh...

[jade-len]

guys, guys.

be honest with me. would anybody be willing to read any SVSSS x reader stuff (or, just SVSSS with reader fanfics in general?) like please i'm being so deadass right now. i am very willing to write, it's just that i have no clue if anyone would want to read that???

i know that the people in this fandom don't necessarily have any x or & readers, but i'm sad and pathetic and have a weird emotional attachment to the characters. like hear me out guys.

i present to you all a few ideas i have:

1. reader transmigrates into SVSSS and decides, fuck it, let's become a counselor/therapist/emotional support service pal. half of the conflicts in the novel would've been prevented if therapy, communication, and simple observation existed! mu qingfan, give me a chance!! i promise this will lower the qi deviation rates by at least 50%.

liu qingge? alright, let's work on learning identifying your feelings better and not respond via violence to every situation. shen jiu? hey, hey, it's okay to be vulnerable! no- please don't go self projecting yourself onto an innocent 14 year old. luo binghe? *pulls out 5 different documents* heavens, where do we even start? like, gods forbid any of them have a proper support system, or at least be able to express their feelings and deal with them in a healthy manner!

2. liu qingge x reader where he gradually stops painfully pining and gets the love that he deserves. he gets his pretty face cupped gently and kisses all over it. that's it. that's the fic idea.

3. bingge, the original luo binghe, gets sent back in time.. all the way back to right when his mother died. he believes that he's been given a chance to re-enact his revenge, play it smart all the way from the start and have an upper hand now that he has to relive this! however, that quickly changes when this random fucking person (aka, reader) just wont stop bothering him?? what the hell do they want??? (for this one, i'm not sure if reader should be a transmigrator who believes they're in SVSSS instead of PIDW and is unaware of the whole bingge thing, or just some npc that proves him wrong about kindness).

4. SVSSS hater (or someone who just has a very complicated relationship with it!) reader transmigrates into it after tweeting "stupid author, stupid novels". they then proceed to accidentally collect two husbands they were so actively against before. ugh! now that i'm here, i guess i'll try to help out with their relationship and give my advice so that they won't have so much conflict, ones that were super frustrating to even hear about!! shen qingqiu, that dense ass guy and unhealthily codependent luo binghe! wait, what? what do you mean they both want me to be part of their marriage now??

sincerely, very much inspired by this tweet (reader most likely isn't going to be an anti, though);

low-key might combine the first and fourth fanfic idea? will make reader gender neutral (or even male!) though. but overall idk. idk if people will even wanna see that at all, man. ok please give thoughts. or not lol

(10-11-23 edit: i'm currently writing the bingge one rn!)

[bomberqueen17]

*vibrating slightly in place*

So ok. When I was in kindergarten, my classroom was arranged so that four desks were linked together, so we were in little groups. I used to regularly vibrate my desk and the three it was attached to, with three other children in them, across several feet of floor space, until the linked desks ran into the teacher's desk, which was larger and did not move with the force of my vibrations. I was a good student, but hard to control, and markedly uneven in my ability to like. Do anything. "Well," my mom said once, upon beholding my entire spectrum of a report card, "we'd just hate to be bored."

When I graduated with my bachelor's degree, seventeen years later, my mom said "I never thought you could do it," and when I, shocked, said "what?" she said "well what with your ADHD and all," and I said "my what?" and she said "well, i never wanted to shake your confidence, and I thought once they put a label on you it'd be over, but you super have like, turbo ADHD. Why, what do you think your deal is?" She said it nicely and not in those words at all, but it was the first time I'd ever really realized that I wasn't just mildly eccentric, I did seem to actually have something wrong with me.

I've been trying to get a diagnosis ever since. I've never been able to. I had no health insurance at all for a huge chunk of my twenties, which put a damper on things. One doctor told me "you'd know if you had that" and when I was like "I... do" she was like "no i mean. you'd already be being treated." Which shows a wild and totally unwarranted optimism in our medical system, but she was a resident. The doctor overseeing her care of me suggested I try taking fish oil capsules. To "rebuild my brain tissue".

I did. It didn't help. I still buy them but mostly I use them now to get my cat to take pills.

Eventually in my 30s my doctors started sort of believing me maybe, or at least realizing they couldn't really brush me off (I have gotten... less easily-cowed as I've aged) but they were all like "oh, I can't evaluate that. You'll have to research and find a place that can do a neuropsych eval for you. Insurance doesn't cover those. So good luck. Have some antidepressants in the meantime."

I slid into my 40s, still undiagnosed. I read as many self-help books on the topic as I could find, did all the checklists I found. They all said "girl you super have like turbo ADHD." I tried meditation. I tried divination. I tried bullet journaling, which was hilarious. I tried yoga.

I actually damaged myself doing yoga and am banned from yoga, but at least I'm in physical therapy now. (Word to the wise: if you have really really flexible hip joints, don't fucking do yoga. "Usually I don't have to tell people not to get into that position," said my bemused physical therapist. "Oh," I said, blissfully bepretzeled. "It feels super good." "Mm," she said, "you've torn your labrum. Stop doing that." Now I do really, really boring stretches that don't feel nearly as good, but I also can walk without limping, so. Like. We take the good with the bad I guess.)

Anyway. My PCP in January was like "wait you didn't follow my super vague directions to go see 'the guys downstairs' and see if they can squeeze you into their eleven-month waiting period to get an evaluation that i cannot mention without saying it's several thousand dollars and your insurance surely won't cover it? you must not want this diagnosis very badly!" (At no point has anyone ever given me a phone number for 'the guys downstairs'. I still don't know what she meant by any of those directions. This PCP and I technically speak the same language but I've never understood a single thing she has told me and I don't think she understands a word I say in return, everything I tell her seems to be such a shock to her. You blame antidepressants for your weight gain? I've never heard of that. Ma'am please look up what the incredibly common side effects of antidepressants are.)

I called around but noplace both took my insurance and was accepting new patients. Finally I gave up. Then my Dude went on our insurance company's website and took over the search. He found that there's some kind of concierge service thing, which the insurance company normally charges $450/mo for but our plan includes it, because it's pretty well-hidden on the website and most people aren't ever going to find it anyway. So he said, you know what, I am going to instigate a query on this.

They took two weeks but eventually came back with a list of 13 places, most of them not remotely local. Ten of them were red X's, disqualified for varying reasons-- one because the phone number didn't work, another because it's a seven-hour drive away and doesn't do telehealth. One was in New Jersey. None of them were the local places I had already called.

Two of them were valid, but the insurance wouldn't cover the evaluation for various reasons.

One of them was fully covered, the insurance company said. So I went there.

Their website said "no you're not we can't see you". But Dude was like, call them on the phone. Surely, surely, the concierge service couldn't have lied??? Bet, I said, and called them and left a message, and said to him, if they call me back I will eat a hat.

But they did. They called me back. "Our insurance checker widget is down," they said. "But we do take your insurance! We can see you. We just don't know how much it will cost."

Ominous.

But. They could see me later in the week, via a telehealth appointment.

So I signed up.

The appointment was this morning. I turned up. Their insurance checker thingy still wasn't working so they couldn't be sure how much the appointment would cost me. I at this point don't care, and gave them my HSA credit card, and said do what you will.

I waited 45 minutes and then texted the number they'd texted me from with the confirmation, and a moment later the guy showed up. "Whoops," he said, "that system isn't working quite right either!"

He talked to me for like. Three minutes, and was like "yeah that sounds. Pretty textbook. I'm going to prescribe you stimulants." He then proceeded to take a very basic medical history, and I recognized all the questions because I have researched stimulant medication for ADHD so much. And he was like "We're going to start with Adderall, check at your pharmacy in like an hour." And then he gave me extremely useful and detailed instructions on how to take it, when to take it, what side effects to worry about, what to expect, what to note down in case it might mean a problem, and how to be safe about it. (He asked me three times if I'd ever been suicidal, and it had also been in the online pre-screening. I am aware that can be a rare but very serious side effect of stimulants!)

And then I went to Rite-Aid and I now have 16 pills in my possession, and i am going to wait until tomorrow morning to start taking them, and I am already scheduled for my follow-up in 15 days.

I have absolutely no idea how much any of that is going to cost, but for the record the pills were eleven dollars.

So. I don't know why the last decade of my life has been spent being told that a comprehensive and unattainably expensive neuropsychological evaluation was my only option. Maybe this place is a disreputable pill mill or whatever. But. I am going to get to try to medicate this disorder that has warped my entire life to this point, and I am going to try to see if I can't have some more control over my life, and if it doesn't work then at least I will know, instead of on my deathbed being like "i wonder if i'd ever tried amphetamines maybe I'd have been able to finish a project ever in my life, guess we'll never know".

Which was what I was starting to genuinely think was going to happen.

Literally though why can't a primary care doctor just refer you to a psychiatrist who can then decide whether you need an assessment or whether your condition is likely to respond well to a basic diagnosis?? I get needing the whole nine yards if you're not sure what's wrong with this kid and you don't want to give them the wrong thing-- like I know misdiagnosing a bipolar sufferer with depression can give you really bad outcomes, for example-- but-- I don't know? I don't know.

I just want to be able to start and finish projects. What I'd really love is to be able to make to-do lists meaningfully, as that is an ability I did used to have and now absolutely don't. I legit cannot make a to-do list in any meaningful or useful way.

So we'll see. I'm going to keep a journal and the real test of whether the pills work is to see whether I can actually keep the journal.

But I need to find some kind of edible hat, at some point, just to keep my word.

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think a lot of my complaints about Oppenheimer might boil down to- "it's a movie about Oppenheimer, not Los Alamos, and I kinda just wanted a movie about Los Alamos."

But also, which things get call backs later in the film and which things don't, and whether or not the call backs make sense? Doesn't? Really? Track? (Granted, I just saw the film, so maybe it needs to marinate more.)

But like, we spend a whole scene establishing that Oppie knows that New Mexico thunderstorms break before dawn....so that when it's raining in the Trinity test, we're like "oh! But he knows about the rain." ....which...ok? Sure.

But at the beginning of the film, we get a whole sequence where he tries to kill a teacher with a poisoned apple, realizes that was fucked up, and is able to stop it from harming anyone. Rather than like...connecting this to how he creates the bomb, realizes the damage it will do, but is UNABLE to stop it- the only call back is...he tells Jean about it and she tells him that he needed to get laid?

And speaking of Jean. Oh Jean. Jesus, Nolan needs some therapy about women. But like... the fact that Oppie reads the "I am become death" line *while having sex with Jean*- why? Why is the movie trying to connect that moment to the Trinity Test. It FEELS like it could be a metaphor. At the Trinity Test, its all about the duality of accomplishment and dread- of success and impending doom. But why are we connecting that to him sleeping with Jean the first time? If she played a larger role in the movie or in his eventual "downfall", it might make for a metaphor. But....it doesn't? So why, except to have another scene with topless Florence Pugh? (Which, hey, I get it.)

Nolan, if you are going to create a mental connection between fucking a beautiful unstable communist woman and the *Trinity Test*, at least have it mean something, my dude. Otherwise it just feels like a "heeeeey, I understood that reference" moment.

[queerprayers]

1/2- Sorry if this is a weird ask. You're a person of sincere faith who doesn't judge and I'm desperate for outside opinions. I've recently learned that many modern tarot readers don't believe in divination or spirits, but rather that the images on the cards can help us think about things and bring out deeper ideas from our own subconscious. Zero future telling, only for self reflection. That sounds ok to me, and using the cards for visio divina has done really good things for my prayer life.

2/2- But still I worry- what if the more conservative types are right and all use of the cards is bad? What if it's displeasing to God? I beg and pray but I can't seem to find any peace or inner sense of guidance on the topic. Can you please pray for me, and share any wisdom you might have about this? Thank you so much.

Hello, beloved--I don't think this is weird at all! There's so much fearmongering among Christians about things being Satanic or pagan or whatever else, and it's important to not give into that panic while also taking our faith seriously.

None of the people I know who have been interested in tarot do it as a religious or really even spiritual practice--for most of them, it's been a fun thing, like getting your fortune read at a county fair, and it's not something to "believe in" so much as do and think about. I also know people who, as you said, find it useful for reflection, usually for finding new ways of looking at things. I'm not scared of tarot, and I don't think it's demonic.

Christian history is full of things like opening your Bible to a random page to see what God has in store for you or protecting yourself from evil spirits or saying a certain prayer so that a saint will do something for you. Everyone has these superstitious instincts, to find stories in chance, to not waste the few things that are in our control. I don't think there's inherent evil there--evil comes when we trust these things more than God, when we look in our own actions more than God's, when we think we can know the full story, when we try to pin God down. And I don't think superstition with Christian wrappings is any less superstitious, or any more truthful, to be honest.

A lot of people fearmongering about stuff like this are scared about where it might lead--that you'll end up somewhere chanting around a human sacrifice. And of course there are people who start with harmless religious experiences and end up in evil places--lots of Christians go to a potluck and end up believing in prosperity gospel and putting their kids in conversion therapy. But I don't hear you in danger of abandoning God or of harming anyone. And any religious practice can go too far, no matter how pure its roots. What you bring to the practice makes up most of whether you are reaching out toward God with it, and we can balance it with other traditions and other impulses.

In case someone's using the Bible to scare you: what the Bible tells us about fortune-telling/magic/communing with spirits is from a very specific Ancient Israelite perspective that I'm not qualified to unpack, but we don't find it an applicable worldview today. We have different ideas of how to live in community with other religions, and religious practices serve very different functions. We don't follow Ancient Israelite cultic practices--nor do modern Jewish people, for that matter. Christian practice has developed in the past two millennia in so many directions, and barely any of it would be recognizable to the Biblical authors. I obviously trust that God gave us these writings for a reason, and am not saying to ignore them--we can find useful ideas, but not a rule book.

The tarot deck most people know was created in 1909 by an occult secret society, who used symbols from Christianity and astrology. I think it's misguided to find truth in them as they exist, but neither do I think they're inherently evil--they're archetypes, stories. They're just human. I find occult secret societies generally more silly than demonic--although there is lots of racism/cultural appropriation in their histories. I respect those who avoid tarot based on its origins, just as I respect those who won't do yoga because it's a Hindu practice. But so many things come from non-Christian origins, and we cannot throw away the world if we want to live in community with it. (Yes, we are called to be set apart from the world as Christians, but also to love it--there is the line we must walk.)

There is real Biblical precedent for avoiding a practice associated with things outside of your faith--ancient Israelite religion was very concerned with these associations. Paul did not think meat that had originally been offered to pagan gods was sinful to eat, but basically advised people not to eat it because of how it would affect others or perhaps normalize idol worship. These are things we're continually navigating, and in any Christian community you're gonna have to be clear where your faith lies and probably answer some questions. I think it's a good thing that we're called to be purposeful, and to be aware how our actions affect others.

So my general advice would be to really think about it, to do it all purposefully, paying attention to how it affects your life, relationships, and practice, and whether it's bringing you to the life you know God wants from you (one of love). But this sounds like what you're already doing! I think you care more about this than most people I know, and you're coming to God genuinely--these are gifts.

Prayer is sensory, story-filled, interactive. It's a way of moving through the world. You say this has done good things for your prayer life, and I believe you. Contemplation is a major Christian prayer tradition. Anything can give us a new perspective, anything can shove us toward the truth. You're not causing harm, and neither are you abandoning your faith. There are other people navigating the same things as you--Contemplative Tarot is a book by a Catholic tarot practitioner, and it looks really interesting. I know people who have made their own tarot cards, and I wonder what that would look like with more intentional Christian symbolism/stories, even saints. Sometimes I pick a random prayer card to say--this is coincidence, and while it's not something I'm depending on, it does affect how my day goes.

Don't fall for anything or anyone that claims to know the ultimate truth, don't fall for the people who say that tarot has ancient Egyptian/kabbalah roots, don't fall for people who are just selling you things, don't believe anyone who tells you the truth is inside you if they aren't making clear that it's God that's living there, don't base your entire religious practice on something like this. But don't throw away a way of looking at things if God has led you through it. Don't put your life in the hands of cards, but move through your life with stories and new perspectives and contemplation. God's mercies are new every morning.

I don't know if I've given you peace--maybe just more questions. The good news is, you don't have to figure it all out now, and the bad news is you'll never figure it all out. Religious practice is a continuous dialogue and negotiation with the world. I have faith in you, and in the ways God is moving in your life. Bring Jesus with you, wherever you end up--he'll come regardless, of course, but see it happening. A man with a sword or a cup doesn't know your future, nor is he doing anything--but you know that. You're seeing more of the story, you're contemplating the wonders of God, you know the swords and cups that matter, and they are present with you, and seeing them everywhere is a gift.

Something my mother says before I start anything new, or go anywhere important--what she said when I went to the psych ward, and on the first days of school, and when I go to a protest--is "remember your baptism." I think my grandfather said it to her, too. I don't know whether you've been formally baptized, but remember your calling. Remember the beginning of your journey, and why you're still on it, and how you're being a representative of it. Remember your baptism, whatever that means to you. We have been marked with the cross of Christ forever.

<3 Johanna

[v0rewhxre]

Heyy could you write abt how Noah would be having a gf/partner with past trauma/ SA trauma and how he would help with that? No worries if not I get it’s triggering <3

Hello! I can write this, but this content may be triggering for folks to read! I am only writing this because I am someone who has personally gone through past trauma/SA trauma. I'll write this more as a head cannon.

I will not be going into full detail of types of trauma. I will be writing entirely from my experiences in my own personal relationships from the past or things I wished I had in relationships.

18+ MDNI

CW: [Mentions of past trauma and SA trauma, mentions of emotional distress due to past traumas, mentions of relationship strife due to past traumas, conversations may be distressing as well, mentions of sex and sexual relations]

This isn't in chronological order I'm sorry :)

This is also all I can write cause I do not/will not make up experiences I haven't had surrounding trauma/SA. These are very personalized things I needed in relationships/I have experienced in my relationships related to my trauma. This may not apply to you and/or your trauma

Noah is extremely supportive with your therapy and things you do for your mental wellness. He often buys you expensive journals and fancy pens to keep up with your journaling. He will drive you to therapy and wait for you (when he's home from touring). He will research ways to support you in his own time too, making sure that he approaches everything in a trauma-informed way.

The relationship moved very slowly. It took you a lot of time to trust Noah, you didn't even kiss until the 4th date! But that was ok! Noah was so in love with you the minute he met you, he moved at the pace you wanted and needed. He saw parts of himself in you, realizing that you had a lot of lived experience in life and that there was the good and the bad. He was just as patient with you as you were with him.

The first time you had a panic attack was really scary. You freaked out when Noah touched you in a way that caused you to have a flashback. At first Noah freaked out, unsure what to do, but then he slowly realized you were having a panic attack. He sat with you, holding your hand and taking deep breaths. He asked you what worked best for you in those moments, offering snacks and water if you needed. He just sat with you, which no one had every done. Just being there for you made you realize how in love you were with Noah.

Now Noah is a pro at panic attacks. He can sense them coming on, he has categorized all your triggers in his mind. He knows when they are about to happen, helping you remove yourself from situations when you can. Although, a few still surprise you both and he's there holding your hand. He places kisses on your forehead when you want, sometimes he even shares some of his meditation techniques he's learned for his own.

You don't always share what is going on, internalizing things deeply. This sometimes comes from a place of trust, other times because you don't want to burden him. It can be hard when you have so much going on internally, and Noah has so much going on externally.

When you shared what happened to you for the first time, it broke him. How could anyone hurt you the way those people did? He listened intently, only asking questions he deemed comfortable for you. He didn't want to ask anything too intense at first. Over time you did share the details he had wondered about, conscious that it was something you needed to share and not something he should ask. He listened to you and when it came time for him to share, he made sure you were also ready to receive his trauma story.

Noah also has significant trauma. And sometimes he has the same reactions or the same issue you do in the relationship. This can lead to a lot of fights or contention, but at the end of the day you both try to understand each other.

Noah tries to fix you sometimes and it drives you crazy! He comes from a good place, only wanting you to be ok, but it's not always helpful. You have to explain to him that sometimes he just needs to listen and be there rather than trying to fix everything.

You have an extremely hard time trusting Noah because of your experiences with your ex-boyfriend. This has led to you constantly asking if he's cheating on you, where he was Friday night, why his texts came in late. You were weary when his moods were off and often times you were stubborn in believing him, even when he was telling the truth.

The first time you had sex was hard. Being so vulnerable with someone after being violated was hard. Being able to trust him enough to be naked, alone in a room was really intense emotionally. It took a few times to fully have sex with each other. Noah never made you feel bad about anything, he took things slowly. He always looked in your eyes to make sure something was ok, he didn't overtly ask because he didn't want to put you on spot either. The experience was very emotional for you, but also very liberating. You were taking your body back, you felt sexy and beautiful for the first time in a long time. You cried in Noah's arms after sex, Noah rubbing small circles over your lower back.

When he doesn't want to have sex, you take it extremely personally and have a hard time believing that he still loves you. Sometimes when he's extremely horny, you take that personally as well. Thinking he only wants you for sex.

*************************************************

[azuree1733]

Gotham war rant- :D

Ok so at first I really hated it and was like in the same boat with everyone about how cat woman vs Batman is stupid and unnecessary and don’t get me wrong I still am, the whole idea of her training people to be criminals with rules is ridiculous. However as the comic progresses and we see the whole other plot of Batman (Zur) and the rest of the family dealing with him is actually a really cool concept for two reasons. 1- because we get to see the family work together and it opens up future storylines with those characters so they can be written in either team-ups or solo comics and 2-acknowledging the whole Batman has multiple personalities (not like Bruce Wayne but all the other little “characters” in his head because we saw not just Zur locked away in his brain but there was a bunch of other “characters” up in his little mind prison) is really useful to help “retcon” mischaracterizations of him in that past and present like oh Batman gave one of his sons medically induced anxiety nope wasn’t him, he doesn’t know how to deal with children? Nope different personality. I think it’s a smart move and if they somehow get rid of these personalities by the end of the run (medicate him send him to therapy god knows he needs it) then there whole plan of making the batfam get along will seem so much less forced and it will make Batman a much more consistent character.

I also think they are setting it up for someone to die and ik we’re all thinking Jason but personally I’m thinking it’s gonna be Tim bro never dies so it’s gonna catch everyone off guard, it means nothing tho since he’ll come back immediately but with more trauma! For Jason it makes more sense for him to just leave like honestly stop trying to force him into the family. He can make appearances but that’s it, they just need a good writer who actually likes him to give him a run where he can actually have character development. He’s not super hard to write he’s literally Batman but he’s not afraid to break the no kill/no gun rule, yet he also has morals so he’s not gonna kill a bunch of innocents. (Also Jason finding out his bio dad is alive arc when???) (or Jason becoming a father arc when? Cause he would be such a good father I will show y’all panels if u disagree) (kinda want him to go back to a bit of an assassin/mercenary arc tho)

Anyway that’s my lil rant I kinda went off on a tangent, idk if u can tell yet but I really just want a good Jason comic 😛

If anyone reads all this yapping you get a gold star cause what 😭🫶

[laguezze]

PAC: Bold Words You Need to Hear

Theme: BS&T by BTS

Hello! I know my scheduled reading is "Characteristics of your soulmate" however I had a different calling. I sensed that some people needed to hear some advice so here I am with some bold words channeled for you all! As always, take what resonates!

WARNING ⚠️

These messages are BOLD. Some of it may not be pretty and what you want to hear. Please please please take what resonates and leave if it doesn't. I don't want to hurt anyone but it's what I channeled and what I feel called to share by my guides.

Here are the piles!

Pile I

Pile II

Pile III

Ready? Let's go!

Pile 1

You are not lost. You're not beyond repair. But you are guilty.

The things that happened, happened. That's it. Can't change it, can't go back and fix it.

Now what will you do? How do you repair the damage done? How will you change for the better?

Stop whining about feeling guilt and do something about it. Playing the victim will not do anything. If you're so guilty and ashamed give yourself the accountability you need in order to heal.

You messed up, that happened. Now what?

Don't just stand there, do something. TAKE ACTION TOWARDS GROWTH.

You might have done something to someone, yourself, or a group of people.

I'm hearing certain things that are a bit PG and uncomfortable so I won't share.

I'm hearing some of you need to go to a support group, some of you might need to try therapy, join an activism group you damaged, have a conversation with the people you hurt, stop some bad habits you might have with yourself, quit addiction, respect yourself, journal.

Pile 2

Do you actually hate yourself? Do you actually feel sad and helpless? Because it feels like you may be enjoying this darkness you live in wayyy too much. Stop complaining about your issues while you do nothing about them. It's as if someone broke their arm and complained about the pain all the while not resting or visiting a doctor. Realize that true happiness is what you want and although it won't make you feel edgy and alternative and different from everyone else, it's what you need and want.

If you're gonna revel on your pain, at least be honest about it and stop complaining about it. Do you actually wanna be happy? Do you actually hate being this way?

Feels like some of you may be struggling with some things, you're not alone. However this is a call to get better.

It's easy to let yourself be consumed by the pain and to enjoy the attention it brings due to the pity you receive. But it's not healthy. Be aware of this.

If you're in need of help, seek it. There's nothing wrong with that.

Pile 3

Stop envying every single person you come into contact with. You want their life? Ok, then take steps in yours instead of longingly staring at them and expecting some miracle to happen that will make you become them. You're you and that's fine. Stop trying to imitate people. Envying someone is not good for you or them, realize that your life is yours and so you have power to shape it however you want.

You are not a little helpless peasant staring at some evil, big noblemen. Quit that. You're putting yourself in a position of weakness.

Don't hate people for having what you want. Work to have it yourself. Empathize. You're no different, you both pee and poop and breathe the same air so stop it.

Some of you have bad attitudes and resentment towards a group of people or person because of the fact that they have something you lack.

You are being called to work inwards and observe that your behavior is not great.

Work on being kinder and empathetic.

The End.

(it said bold and it is bold.)

[goodnitedrdead]

winter falls

Colonel Carrillo x Reader

Summary: winter blows again, and time has flown by. Colonel Carrillo never thought he'd be fearing the solitude that came with the season. Just as he thought he was about to fall apart, you rush in to keep him together. To help scare away the tormenting thoughts that were haunting him, you decided to take him out for a walk surrounded by the bright Christmas lights that adorned the local plaza.

Word Count: 5.8k (not bad for a girl with no talent)

Warnings: Carrillo lives. Slight/mild PTSD from the night Escobar shot him. Talks about divorce. Intrusive thoughts. Lonely holiday time. Talks about religion. Emotional infidelity, I guess? Lots of feelings. Fluff. Angst with an... okay ending?

Author's Note: don't let the kpop icon scare you, ok? pls be kind to me this is the second fic I've ever written, I'd really appreciate the feedback. ALSO, I am absolutely in love with the colonel. Inspiration for this came from the song Winter Falls by Stray Kids. I recommend looking up the lyric translation because I tried to include them through the fic, but it's not required. THANK YOU FOR READING!!! IT MEANS A LOT TO ME. MWAH TO ALL THOSE WHO WILL READ THIS <3 also, i cross posted this on ao3 in case y'all would like to follow me there, I know sometimes Tumblr tends to be... mean.

IF YOU HAVE ANY REQUESTS FOR THE COLONEL PLS SEND THEM MY WAY.

Colonel Carrillo didn’t fear many things. Hell, he didn’t even fear death itself. But recently, as the nights got longer and the temperatures started to drop, he started to know fear. The thing that embarrassed him the most was that it was an intangible fear. It wasn’t the bullets that flew left and right past him as he was in the streets of Colombia. It wasn’t the sicarios that etched the notorious Colonel’s name in their minds, hiding in the shadows waiting to pounce and take his life. It wasn’t the blood, nor the warzone he lived in day in and day out. No, it wasn’t any of that. Horacio Carrillo was afraid of desolation.

He thought he’d have more time to get used to it. As he awoke one day from being in a coma for who knows how long, he found his wife by his side. He felt a sense of relief, there was somebody there to greet him back to the realm of the living. There was someone who yearned for his existence. Someone that prayed for his return. Someone that needed him.

That feeling was short-lived as he woke one day and noticed she was gone. Divorce papers waiting on the table by his side, along with a long letter explaining her decision. 

Days, weeks, months passed as he went through numerous sessions of physical therapy. He felt a broken man. A once fearsome and lethal man… and now just a man trying to learn simple tasks like if he were a child.

When Escobar shot him, the news of Colonel Horacio Carrillo’s death spread like wildfire. However, thanks to Trujillo, one of the few survivors of the ambush that day, he was rushed to the hospital. Fortunately, the bullets had missed all the important parts of him. Of course there was damage, but little by little, thanks to the help of the doctors, nurses, therapists and everyone in between, the Colonel was able to make it. 

Oh how he wished he would’ve been left to die.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

He was raised a catholic man. His family never missed mass on Sundays, no matter how much anyone protested. He’ll admit, there were times when he hated it. He doubted the existence of God. He doubted the existence of la Virgen. He doubted the existence of any omnipotent presence because if anyone in this universe existed, men like Escobar would be brought to justice. 

As he laid on the cold concrete that day, he recited a prayer. A simple prayer, asking for forgiveness for his sins and whatnot. To be completely honest he didn’t even believe the words that he was saying. The overwhelming taste of blood in his mouth bothered him, and kept interrupting his prayer. Now, as the devil himself stood above him, he started to see his life flash before him. Once again, death itself didn’t scare him. He was ready to welcome it, in fact. Unfortunately he couldn’t even focus on that when someone else was occupying his mind. He felt a bit guilty, to be honest. He thought of his wife, Juliana. He thought of his children. He thought of the pain they’d have to endure because of his death. He thought of his mother. How his dear mother would grieve the death of his son. She would always voice her worries to him, but he always reassured her that nothing would ever happen to him. Until Escobar happened, then Horacio started to keep quiet. His reassurances to his whole family turned into nothing but silence. He kept thinking of his family, and he wished that was the extent of who he kept thinking.

That wasn’t the case.

You kept invading his mind like poison. In fact, that’s exactly how you slowly started to infiltrate his every thought. It was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, accepting you into the Search Bloc team. From the very first moment he laid eyes on you, he knew he had broken his sacred vows. He never did anything to you, he kept the relationship professional. Actually, he tried his best to avoid having any ties to you, but due to the nature of your job, it was almost impossible. No matter what he did, no matter where he turned, no matter where he went you always followed. It was as if a snake bit him, and little by little you started to take over every part of him. The poison coursed through his bloodstream, intoxicating him as it spread to every inch of his very being . 

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 The last few months leading up to his ‘death,’ he spent it at the office. It was during those months where Juliana started to doubt their marriage. Long hours away from home, the pressure and torment that rested upon Horacio’s shoulders, the way Escobar was draining him little by little started to affect Juliana. She didn’t know when this was going to come to an end. If there was even an end. What about when Escobar was caught? Who will follow? She will know no peace next to Horacio. Their children will know no peace next to their father. Not anymore. 

He’d once promised her it wouldn’t always be like this. But unfortunately, she knew that promise would not be fulfilled.

So when she received news that he was caught up in an ambush, she felt life escape her. She regretted ever thinking that. But, as the months passed and she was informed that her husband had made it after all, she felt a tightness in her chest. 

When she saw him there, almost lifeless, she begged God for forgiveness. She begged God for forgiveness for what she had in mind. It’s not that she didn’t love him, no that wasn’t the case at all. But she did not want to live in a constant state of fear. She did not want to get caught up in the war that followed him. So when he woke one day, she allowed herself a few days to feel out her emotions. But, seeing as how close he had come to dying, she came to a conclusion. She had to put herself first. She had to put her children first… and that’s what she did. She had no time to think as she placed the divorce papers on the table next to his bed. She reached into her purse, pulled out the letter that she hoped he’d read, and rested it on top of the papers that were about to end it all. Slowly, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. Disculpame, cariño. 

Now, as the nights got longer and the winds grew colder, he found himself in the position he feared the most. Horacio Carrillo was alone. 

The fact that it was nearing Christmas was worse. He always thought he’d have more time to get used to it. But it was one of those things that he shoved to the back of his mind as he tried to get himself back together. It caught up to him though, and now there was nothing he could do to make peace with solitude. 

The war had been won, to an extent. Escobar was dead. The Cali godfathers were a distant threat. Colombia was starting to get well acquainted with peace. The Americans were still infiltrating his life. That was starting to become the norm for him. 

He was definitely not sure why they had wanted him back. After he was discharged from the hospital and he was able to walk again and become a fraction of what he used to be, he was offered the same position. The same position, minus the physical aspect. Now, he had to hide behind his office and bark orders at men and wait for reports of how stakeouts and raids went. This isn’t how he wanted to live. 

It was starting to get late. The building was starting to empty out quickly as the weekend before Christmas arrived. Carrillo looked out his office to find you on your desk. Murphy sat atop the files you had laid out on the table, throwing a ball of paper into the air before catching it and repeating the same motions. You sat on your chair, a smile adorning your face as you talked about nonsense with Murphy, Peña, and Trujillo. Carrillo felt a ping of jealousy sting him. He wished he would have that same smile directed towards him. He wished that smile was reserved for him and him only. 

See, from the moment you joined the team you became a huge distraction for the Colonel. Your bright eyes, full of wonder and curiosity. Your smile, radiant as the sun and contagious to everyone around you. Your laugh, oh how your laugh was music to his ears. Your hair, the way it framed your beautiful face and left a haunting yet comforting trail of your scent as you walked past him. The way you were friendly with everyone around you and provided everyone that crossed your path with a sense of comfort. The unforgiving way you lit up any room you walked in to.

You were transferred to Colombia from Juarez. You had arrived at the same time, if not a bit after Agent Murphy. Unlike Steve and Javier, you were not a pain in his ass. Carrillo felt a tad bit of hostility towards the gringos, but never to you. Well, you weren’t really considered one to him. He’d come to learn that you were born and partly raised in Mexico, you became an American citizen when you were a teenager. He thought that must’ve been hard for you, leaving your home country and trading it for one that was so… hostile. Carrillo always thought America was like a wild bull, untamable and stubborn. That was one of the many things he’d come to admire about you: the way you’d easily adjust to the situation around you, no matter what it was.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

Outside the church, you leaned on your forearms against the side of the car, aimlessly tracing the letters on the hood of the beat up police car. Steve leaned with his back against the bumper of the car while Peña and Carrillo questioned where Javier’s informant was. Helena, you recalled Javier sharing her name with the Colonel. You listened to their conversation in Spanish, and you assumed it was because they were trying to hide something from Steve and yourself.

You didn’t really care if they were trying to hide something. You understood every word they were saying, though they did not have a clue you were fluent in the language. Steve, however… 

You felt so bad for the poor man. A white man in a foreign country, with no concept or knowledge of the language, much less the culture. You felt the need to approach him and inform him of the conversation he was excluded from, but you stopped yourself when you heard the men start to question your presence. 

“¿y la chica?”  

“No, ella se queda con Murphy. Será mucho para ella,” you heard Javier say. Carrillo asked Javier about you, and Peña, most likely thinking you were some sort of fragile porcelain doll, told him you were to stay with Steve. Asshole, you thought to yourself. You looked at both of the men, and heard Javier say, “you two stay here and see if she comes back, okay?”

With that you saw as they both got onto a truck and left, leaving you and Murphy to stare at each other in confusion. 

Time passed and you two decided to get acquainted with one another. You learned Steve was born in Tennessee but grew up in West Virginia. He told you all about his career, how he ended up in Colombia, and the love of his life who waited for him back at the house. You smiled at the way he talked about her. You didn’t really believe in true love, but the way Steve was expressing himself about Connie? You might start to actually believe it. 

The church bells started to toll, and Steve let out a yawn. He excused himself for a moment before he walked to the driver’s side of the car. With a soft knock on the windshield, he approached the officer that sat at the wheel. 

“Any news on the radio?” Steve asked.

“¿Le digo?” The soldier asked his partner. 

“No. Acuérdese lo que dijo Carrillo,” The soldier replied to his partner, eyeing Steve cautiously. 

“Perdón, pero yo no hablo inglés,” The soldier on the driver seat told Steve. An apologetic smile on his face.

Steve sighed. With a frustrated huff he walked back next to you and leaned against the car.

“Nothing yet. Can’t believe they left us behind just like that,” Steve told you while he pulled a cigarette out of the pocket of his jacket.

“There’s something they don't want us to know. Carrillo’s men clearly have instructions to not share any information with either of us. Might want to start questioning who we got as partners,” you told him.

As you lit the cigarette Steve offered you, you noticed how he looked at you confused. 

“What makes you say that?” He asked you.

You shrugged and exhaled the smoke from your cigarette slowly, “I understood what they were saying. One of Carrillo’s men said to remember what he’d told them. That sounds like they’re withholding their whereabouts.”

Steve let out a chuckle. “You know Spanish? How come you never said anything?”

You smirked and shrugged again, “Nobody ever asked. My superiors know, that’s what matters.”

“Remind me to keep you around me as a translator then,” Steve smiled at you.

“Oh honey, I am more than just a translator.”

And that’s how Steve learned about your past. Where you were born, where you came from, what got you to this place. From that moment on, you made an agreement with Murphy that you’d help him with the language. Maybe not with the teaching, but letting him know what those around him would say. 

So long as he didn’t tell Peña or Carrillo that you knew Spanish. You wanted to see how far this little game could go.

Carrillo’s men eventually called the both of you and took you to where Peña and the Colonel were. Steve got out of the car frustrated, immediately asking where Peña was. When you saw he stormed towards both men, you got out of the car. You gave a brief ‘thank you’ to the men that drove you there and tried to catch up with Steve. 

When you got there you heard Steve and Javier speaking about Helena. How she was and if she was gonna be okay. As you listened and looked between the both of them, you felt a strong pair of eyes on you. You shifted your gaze and found the Colonel looking at you. You weren’t gonna deny it, his stare was overwhelming. If he would’ve been any other man, or any other person you worked with, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. However, the fact that they both left you behind on purpose stirred frustration within you. 

You stared back at him, no intention of backing down from this silent challenge. You thought it might’ve been a meaningless action, but you hoped it got the message across. You weren’t going to give in. Not to him. Not to anybody. There was a reason you were sent down here, and you were here to stay as long as they needed you. 

Eventually Carrillo lowered his gaze. He’d never admit it but he felt small in your presence. Your gaze was soft. Stern, but somehow tender. And that’s what made him uncomfortable. You weren’t just looking at him. You were looking at him. Through him. That made him uncomfortable. That was the moment when he knew you weren’t just going to be another member of the team. And he’d start to regret laying his eyes on you, for it was going to be impossible to get you out of his mind. 

“You left me behind on purpose,” Murphy exclaimed to Javier. 

“Look, man–” Javier started to explain. More than likely it was gonna be some bullshit excuse as to why he abandoned you both.

“If we’re gonna be partners, I don’t get left behind. We don’t get left behind. We didn’t come all the way down here, Peña, to sit on the fucking sidelines.”

Javier looked at Steve and then to you. You gave him a simple nod, signifying that you completely agreed with your companion. You didn’t come here to waste your time. 

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

It was late. Nearing midnight. Yet, Colonel Carrillo sat still in his office. The soft ticking of the clock on the wall became louder each time. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to go home. He couldn’t even call it home anymore. The empty structure that held so many memories, so much warmth and love now turned into an unwelcoming and haunted place. The ghost of the memories he shared with his family. 

His mind started to betray him. He thought of the man he used to be. The collected, composed, and stoic Colonel Horacio Carrillo. Leader of the Search Bloc. Escobar’s nightmare.

Now? A broken man with broken dreams. 

He felt the walls he built around himself start to crack.

It’s not like he did it on purpose, as a military man it was more of a requirement. And he wasn’t always like this. 

He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. Keep it together, Horacio. He thought to himself. The rampage of his ongoing self-sabotaging thoughts were interrupted by a series of laughs that came from outside his office. He stood up and walked towards the door, he stopped in his tracks when he found you shoving Agent Peña away from you. The laughter that came out of you was angelical to him. 

Peña, Murphy, and Trujillo looked up at the Colonel, and immediately quieted down. At the sudden change in atmosphere, you turned and followed their gaze and found none other than the Colonel looking at all of you. 

“Carrillo, we were just going to go out for some drinks. Care to join us?” Asked Murphy. 

The Colonel politely declined the offer but wished them a good time. He saw as all three men walked away, waving their goodbyes to you. You turned to settle back into your chair and looked up at the Colonel. 

“You’re not going to join them?” He asked you curiously.

“No, I’m okay. Not really in the mood to join them. I spend enough time with them as it is,” you smiled at him.

He couldn’t even begin to describe the feeling that engulfed him at seeing you smile directly at him. 

He nodded. 

“Shouldn’t you be going home, then?” He asked you once again.

You shook your head. Sure, it could be the weekend and all but you knew if you went home it’d just be a long episode of absolute boredom. Maybe you’d consider joining your friends for a drink.

“Very well then,” he said to you. With a small turn he went back into his office and sat on his chair.

Fuck. He thought. Had you really just smiled at him? He felt like an idiot. He felt like a teenage boy all over again when their crush would spare a glance at their direction.  Keep it together, Horacio. For fuck’s sake. 

He didn’t know long he stayed that way. His face burrowed in his hands. His elbows deeply planted on the surface of his desk. His tormenting thoughts were back. 

Good for nothing. You couldn't even take down Escobar, yourself. The whole nation calls you a hero but that’s not who you actually are. Murderer. Colonel Martinez is ten times better a man than you are, pendejo. You should've died that day. Trujillo should've left you to die--

His body gently started to shake as he remembered Pablo looming above his body. Darkness started to surround him. The agonizing piercing pain of the first bullet Pablo shot at his body. He remembers he didn’t even make a sound when the bullet entered him. He couldn’t give Escobar the satisfaction. 

A knock at his door snapped him out of it.

He looked up to find you, eyes full of concern for him. 

“Everything okay, Colonel?” you asked him. Your tone barely above a whisper. 

He stayed silent as he averted his eyes to his lap. He tried to breathe, but he felt as if he were frozen, under the ice. No matter how hard he hit the layer of ice he was trapped under, it wouldn’t break and he was about to drown. He tried taking another breath, but the oxygen wouldn’t reach his lungs. He slowly started to get pulled deeper and deeper into the depths of the unforgiving arctic, not knowing if he’d ever make it back.

He suddenly felt tears stain his cheeks. The cracks of the walls started to get bigger and bigger, and he knew he was at his breaking point. 

At the sight of the poor man before you, you rushed to his side. You didn’t know what to do. You didn’t know what was acceptable to do. Surely your eyes were playing tricks with you. The rigid man you always knew was shattering before you. So you did what you’d never thought you’d ever do.

You wrapped your arms tightly around him. 

Every single moment after that kept coming as a surprise for you. 

You held him tightly as he sobbed in your arms. His body shook with every gasp he took. You’re not sure how you both ended up on the floor, but the fact of the matter was that he was still in your arms. You were awkwardly sitting with one leg tucked underneath you and the other extended to the side to accommodate the Colonel’s body into yours. You started to stroke his hair and run your fingers through it absentmindedly. Wondering what had brought him to this point. 

Whatever it was you wished you could take it all away. Truth be told you had developed feelings for the man that seemed to not have any. You loved the way he carried himself. Always so full of confidence. You particularly loved that he was such an ass. All because you knew he wasn’t really like that. It was all a show. You just knew there was a playful and gentle man behind the mask of what was Colonel Horacio Carrillo. You knew there was a man worth loving.

You also knew he was married before, so you kept your distance. Always tried keeping it professional. But you’d be a damn liar if you said you wouldn’t go out of your way to make sure the Colonel noticed you. Not in a cringe way, you were slightly younger than him, so you didn’t want to embarrass yourself. Plus, he was married. You weren’t about to become a home wrecker, but the feelings you developed for him weren’t harming anyone but yourself. You could live with that. 

You weren’t an idiot either. You’d sometimes notice the way his gaze would linger on you a little bit longer than other people. The way sometimes he’d use a softer tone with you. The way he’d, although very rarely, would give you the smallest of smiles. This would cause you to go home at the end of the night and smile to yourself like a teenage girl while you attempted to sleep. Maybe it was all in your head, but it made going to work worthwhile. 

As the Colonel slowly came back to his senses, he started to pull himself away from you. He gave you an apologetic look that shattered your heart. It’s okay, you wanted to tell him, I got you.

“I am sorry, agent. I do not know what came over me,” he said as he wiped his nose. Gosh, he felt so stupid. A broken man that was falling apart in the arms of the person who was not supposed to see this side of him.

“No se disculpe, coronel. No hay por qué pedir perdón,” you told him with the softest tone you could muster. You were saying the truth though, there was absolutely no reason for him to apologize. He had done nothing wrong.

Carrillo had once heard that people expressed their feelings better in a different language than their mother tongue. This was due to the fact another language served as a distraction from their actual feelings. So although you were both fluent in Spanish, he felt safer communicating with you in english. If he would’ve been within his five senses, he would’ve started questioning you about the language you replied to him in. 

Horacio took a deep breath and felt the oxygen reach his lungs this time. Your scent filled his system and he felt like he had broken through the ice that trapped him. His head was above the water now.

You both stayed sitting on the floor, at this point you decided to cross your legs and get into a more comfortable position across from him. He sat with his back against the drawers of his desk, his feet planted on the floor and his knees bent. He ran his hands up and down the expanse of his legs slowly, as if he were trying to comfort himself. 

“I am going to be honest with you, agent. I have not been well. I know there’s been… talk. About me, about what happened to me after Escobar, about my life,” he sighed and tried to think of the point he wanted to make, if there was even one. Truth be told, if you had already seen him cry, hell, what else could he lose by sharing a bit of what was on his mind. “My wife left me after I woke up from… the aftermath. I do not blame her, I hold no negative feelings towards her. But I have found myself in a position that I did not prepare for. The days get shorter and the nights get longer..”

You gave him a small nod to indicate that you were listening to him. Gosh, you could listen to him even if there were a million people around you talking all at once. Only him. 

“... Time has passed and everyone except me has changed. I–I am lonely to the point of pain,” he continued. His voice is slow and soft, but the unsteadiness in it was hard to miss.

You took in a deep breath and looked around you, trying to find the right words to say. Trying to find the perfect words for him, because you truly believed if this man asked you for the world right now, you’d find a way to get him the damn universe. 

“I can’t say I understand what you’re going through, Colonel–”

“Horacio,” he interrupted you, “please call me Horacio.”

You gave him a gentle smile before continuing, “Horacio. I can’t say I understand what you’re going through because I have never gone through that myself. However, I can understand your loneliness. But the thing is,” you threaded lightly, because you still didn’t know what was acceptable in this situation, “you don’t have to be. Look, I know it’s hard and all but you somewhat have a second family here. Agent Peña, Agent Murphy, your soldiers… me.”

Horacio Carrillo felt a jolt of electricity run through his body as you looked at him. Truly looked at him. Your own intense eyes focusing on his own. He felt you were a storm. A storm with the darkest of skies and the heaviest of rains that could somehow lullaby him into the most relaxing sleep of his life. 

“Did Martinez… was he a good leader?” he asked, tears once again threatening to fill his eyes.

You let out a soft laugh and looked at your legs. Was he questioning the leadership style of Colonel Martinez because he was… insecure? Was Colonel Horacio Carrillo, the daring leader everyone came to know, insecure? Was he really comparing himself to Martinez?

“Colonel Martinez was good. A very respectable man. But,” you looked back up to him and scooted a bit closer to him, “he wasn’t you. I don’t think there’s any man in the world that would be able to fill your shoes.” You weren’t referring to the previous Colonel’s leadership style. No, this was personal.

He scoffed softly and rolled his eyes. He didn’t mean to do this in a rude way, but he felt you were just saying this out of pity. 

“I am just a fraction of the man Hugo Martinez is,” he said coldly. 

“This isn’t about who’s a bigger or better man, Horacio. Sure, under Martinez’s leadership we were able to bring down Pablo. But at the end of the day, you were the one that haunted Escobar’s dreams. You led one of Colombia’s most important unit. Colonel Martinez continued what you started,” you grabbed his face in your hands and let your thumbs stroke his cheeks. The rough feeling of the stubble that was beginning to grow under your fingers. “Did you hear that? What you, Horacio Carrillo, started.”

“I did terrible things that he never even had to do,” he protested.

“We all did, my dear. But we all did what we had to do in order to survive.”

My dear. That alone blew away the brewing tempest that was forming his mind. He nodded in your hands and swallowed the tightness he felt in his throat.

You pulled your hands away from his face and stood up, extending one of your hands to him to pull him back to his feet. He wanted to chuckle at that. You, smaller than him in size, wanted to bring him back to his feet. He ended up taking your hand but didn’t put any of his weight on you as he rose to stand.

“Come with me. Let’s go think of something else,” you smiled brightly up at him. A full smile that reached your eyes and hinted at a bit of mischief that somehow put him at ease.

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

You had convinced him to climb in your car without saying where you were taking him. He didn’t mind though, he trusted you with his life. You’d been by his side during some of the most dangerous moments of his life, what would make him think you’d want to hurt him.

Nearing your destination, you instructed him to close his eyes. He obeyed without having to ask him twice. He was starting to come to the realization that he quite enjoyed following your commands. His mind started to wonder to more pleasant situations as you drove. How would it feel for you to give him simple domestic commands? For you to tell him to do the dishes… to let you cook in peace… to give you one more kiss before he left for work. He snapped out of it before his mind decided to wander off too far. He felt the car come to a complete stop and heard you change gears to park. 

“Keep them closed, okay?” you instructed him once again and he gave you a nod, the smallest hint of a smile starting to form on his face.

You got out of the driver’s seat and rushed to his side to open the door. You told him he could come out and held the door open for him as he undid his seatbelt and got out slowly. Once he was completely out of the car, you closed the door and took a deep breath.

“Alright, should I cover your eyes or guide you with my hands?” 

He raised an eyebrow and started to grow suspicious. What could you possibly be hiding from him? He wasn’t going to give up the chance to have close contact with you though, even if it was just the feeling of his hand in yours.

He didn’t reply, instead he just extended his hand out to you. You smiled to yourself at the motion, immediately reaching out to hold his hand before you started to walk forward at a careful pace so he wouldn’t trip.

Horacio had lived most, if not all, of his life in Colombia. The cold weather didn’t faze him, hell, he was in the military and they had to endure rigid temperatures as part of their training. However, today in particular was cold. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had unconsciously lowered his defenses while he was with you, but the cold was starting to get to him. Even with his jacket on, he still felt the chill in the air as you guided him through wherever it was you took him to. His mind going haywire between the stark difference of the crisp weather and your warm hand holding his. 

He heard the distant sound of children laughing, families calling out for their kids, conversations here and there, cars passing by. His suspicion grew by the second as he followed you, his eyes still closed when you came to a stop. 

“Okay Horacio, you can open your eyes now.”

At your command, he opened his eyes and looked around, his sight trying to adjust to the environment around him. You’d taken him to a local plaza, a tourist-y area adorned and decorated with Christmas lights on every surface. There were lights wrapped around the trunks of the trees, lights hanging from the branches that swayed with the wind, lights resting on top of some small and well-kept bushes, lights that paved the way to the different directions of the plaza. Colorful lights everywhere. 

“Ta-da!” you exclaimed, a bright smile on your face as you looked at him, waiting for a reaction.

He tried to take it all in, kept looking around before focusing on you. He saw the way you smiled at him, a hopeful expression in your eyes almost as if asking, do you like it?

He gave your hand a gentle squeeze before taking a deep breath. He didn’t have time to think before he wrapped his arms around you this time, his lips resting against the soft skin of your forehead. 

“Thank you,” he whispered against your skin. A million words he wanted to say but couldn’t. Thank you for not letting me fall apart. Thank you for not letting me drown. 

You closed your eyes as you returned the embrace. Wishing that, somehow, you could make him feel the love (that you’d been trying to bury deep down) through this simple act. Wishing that, maybe one day, you’d be able to tell him that if he were drowning you’d drain the whole ocean for him. Only for him.

[ouatsqincorrect]

hey i saw your headcanons about david/snow/regina and i was wondering if you have any about regina and coras mother/daughter relationship and/or regina and rumples twisted father/daughter/mentor relationship

sure! (but a real quick disclaimer: if you like cora, don’t read this. if you think rumple did not harm regina in any way, don’t read this. do not get mad at me for having my own opinions on them, please and thank you) ALSO tw for abuse.

i am a firm believer in the fact that regina needs therapy. this woman has been through hell and back and you can’t convince me that forgiving herself in 6x14 was all it took to “move on” from everything

she starts going to archie, even though it’s not ideal. (he’s still the only therapist in town and one day, regina will fix this, but for now he’s the only option she’s got) and she begins to work through her past for the first time

this involves accepting that cora harmed her much more than she’s ever been able to admit to herself

she still feels like she’s forgiven her, but forgiving your abuser doesn’t take away the years of trauma they caused

this goes the same for rumple. he may be an actual member of her family now, but he did manipulate her when she was just 18 and broke her down until he could use her to do his bidding (not to mention the whole “no one will ever love you” and “you’re weak when you’re not evil” mindset he introduced to her)

cora is gone. regina has to deal with that trauma without her because there is no bringing cora back, but rumple is still here

and he’s an active part of her life in a very different way then he used to be

rumple never becomes a hero, not really, but he’s also no longer a villain and even though he’s not necessarily getting any professional help anywhere like regina is, he is learning how to articulate his thoughts about his past and what he did

and rumple, just like regina, is willing to admit there are some people who are never going to be able to forgive him and that’s ok

he knows he hurt regina. he’s always known that. even back in the EF, he knew what he was doing to her was wrong

which is why when they actually end up being a part of the same family, he doesn’t pressure her to forgive him or start treating him like they’ve been good friends forever

instead, he shows he cares for her in little ways. he’ll magic over some coffee on rainy days because he knows regina hates when the weather’s bad or he’ll put an extra protection spell around her house when there’s a villain in town because even though he knows she can take care of herself, he still wants to protect her (and henry and emma)

they never talk about these things he does and rumple knows they probably never will

also, he never touches regina without her permission. (i can go on for years about how regina feels about close contact with each member of her family but anyway)

more so than almost anyone else, he understands what she went through back during her “marriage” to the king and he refuses to break any boundaries she might have

(this is different than what happened between him and the evil queen. and he regrets that immensely)

regina, for her part, knows rumple is trying and although she’s certain a part of her will always be a little pissed at him, she does slowly start to forgive him

they never won’t butt heads though. there will always be a lot of unnecessary sass between them but that’s just who they are as people and they both know that, at the end of the day, they’re there for each other if they need it

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

For a long time I thought I was allo (I'm ashamed to admit that I only learned the word allo in the last few years), but recently I started to think that I may be aroace.

I thought I had been romantically attracted to many people. But after learning about SOGI and reflecting on myself, I came across the mystery: "What makes me think I have been romantically attracted to someone?"

Sorry to make this a very personal story, but one of my parents was a person who did not care about me at all. That part of my life has influenced my personality development in a crazy way. I wanted a replacement for my parents, a replacement for my family - someone who would be sincerely committed to me. And it was complicated when someone I trusted, liked and wanted to get to know better treated me as unimportant, or when I learned that someone in their life was very important to them. I would put them in a box called "jealousy," and when I discovered that box, I would say, "Oh, I see, that's romance". But now I think those were not romantic attraction. I think it was more like a vague sense of frustration (I never had siblings, so I don't know if this is the right way to describe it) that my parents were so focused on their younger siblings that I might have become invisible and forgotten about in the family.

After I began to think that I might be an aroace, I read various aroace stories and sympathized with some of them, but most of the aros talked about how they had never been in love since they were little and that they did not fit in with the love talk around them. My distorted past does not fit there at all. I shared those things that I assumed were romantic attraction with my friends at the time and mingled in their talk. I am concerned that my behavior may have traumatized someone, and more importantly, I don't think I am qualified to call myself aro. Is it possible that I was romantically attracted to them, or that I was just crazy and not romantically attracted to them?

then, am I an uninvited guest to the aroace community, or are there aros like me who reconsider and say "that was not a love affair"?

Sorry for the long, rambling, and incoherent sentence.

It sounds like you're going through a difficult time, Anon. It sounds like apart from your questioning journey, you've also been isolated emotionally which is adding to the confusion. If accessible to you, you may want to consider therapy for this, make sure if you go this route that you find a therapist that will not try to treat your a-spec identity or treat it as at all the issue. (Remember you can change therapists at any time for any reason.)

For figuring out if you might be aro or not, it can definitely be difficult, especially if you're trying to analyse past experiences you're no longer experiencing. One thing that can help is to look at a label as something that describes your experiences now, not necessarily what you've experienced in the past. So whether what you were experiencing in the past was romantic attraction or not matters less than whether you're currently experiencing romantic attraction, so if this isn't something you've experienced in a while you're OK. Remember too that sometimes orientations can be fluid, and it is possible to be aro and have experienced romantic attraction in the past.

It can also be difficult to sort out your feelings when you're dealing with other complicated emotions, especially relating to figuring out your relationship to other people. It's also OK if you don't feel ready at this stage to decide if you're aro or not, there's no deadline to questioning, But I wouldn't say you're an uninvited guest, anyone who is questioning is welcome to explore and ask questions. No one own's these labels, there's no in-groups, these are just words that help people make sense of their experiences and find communities and others with similar experiences to theirs.

Hopefully this is helpful, Anon, but if you have questions or want to talk about anything in more detail, please do feel free to send in another ask. All the best and take care!

[sunlitlemonade]

y'all can actually 100% disagree with me on this. like genuinely. but every time ian is mentioned and alex is like 'he was training me into something i never wanted to be' i have to take a second and wonder if it was actually like that or if he's just a teenager who never even knew his parents finding out the only living relative he had, the one who brought him up, was something alex never expected him to be. he must feel untethered and betrayed. add to that the trauma he was so nicely handed on a platter right after ian's death and seeing that the skills he had been taught by ian actually helped him. there must be so much bitterness. i think that's part of the reason why every memory mentioned then on is just,,,, tainted with that visceral mix of emotions he never got to process.

lemme show y'all some snippets from Spy Trap. it's a short story set between Skeleton Key and Eagle Strike. anyone who hasn't read it/doesn't want to, the gist is: alex and crawley are in 'car crash' and alex wakes up in a place which acts like a rehabilitation center for MI6 operatives after missions with absolutely ZERO memory of what happened for him to get there. truth is alex and crawley are being kept on a steady diet of drugs to keep them confused and loose to extract valuable intel under the guise of therapy sessions and there was never any car crash. they were drugged and brought in. it was not a hospital for MI6 agents but a set up by foreign intelligence. with all of that in mind - y'know that alex is clearly very disturbed and agitated and under the influence of bad bad stuff - lets see what he has to say about ian [and i know i put a significant chunk here but bear with me]

do you notice how he was prompted into saying what ian wanted from him when dr feng said 'and he wanted you to be a spy too'? for real, with conviction, i know for a fact that he would have refused to elaborate/volunteer any information on ian just the way he did with jack. he wouldn't have said another word. not if that sore spot wasn't hit. and in the very last section we see it boil down to him feeling like luckiest boy in the world but learning he was lied to. we see it all came down to 'I don't even know what Ian really felt about me. Did he like me or did he just want to use me?'

tell me this isn't a boy that hasn't had every memory he had with his uncle overshadowed and tainted by grief and lies. he just wanted love and i truly do think ian loved him. maybe that's just me but hey you're reading my post and i for one am incapable of being normal about these guys.

just think about it - alex was ian's only remaining family too. tell me ian wasn't worried that the way john's work had caught up with him and had gotten him killed, the same might happen to him too? or maybe one day alex could be used as leverage against him and he wanted alex to be ready to defend himself? ok, you might say 'but sunny. that explains the martial arts and physical fitness. what about all the extreme sports and other skills.' well there's this lovely little post by @lapseinart that might give you a little insight. besides, we are working on very little material because we really don't know much about ian except the fact that he was one of the best operatives MI6 had and was important to alex and his competency as a spy.

anyways so immediately after this he says:

and you can see him actively trying to put the session behind him because he seemed to verbally admitted to things he hadn't even admitted to himself before.

idk. i just have a lot of emotions and thoughts but its very interesting to see it progress from 'ian had taught him *insert skill* which is useful here!' to 'ofc another thing ian taught him to discreetly make him into something he didn't want to be'. there's never any proof that ian did that to turn him into a spy [at least as far as i remember lmao. i read the books years back and am on the 4th one on the reread. so my memory of the rest of the books is pretty hazy. correct me if im wrong lol] we never will have a concrete answer because well. ian's dead lmao. we'll never know what he had in mind for alex and why exactly he did all of this. but also,,, the way sorrow and lividity at being lied to twists alex's way of thinking about ian is Something Else.

[selfox]

Friend gave me the best idea to live blog my reactions on reading fics.

This one is rtod by @gothicthundra ^^

Ngl I've never did life reactions on a broadcast level. But at least it's gonna save people's dms bdjdjd sorry for intruding if you, guys, found it annoying OTL

Currently I'm on gauntlets ark and already finished it ^^' . In case to avoid spoilers and not make anyone sit through it (unless, they want to see my ramble tdvdfd), I'll put my reactions and overall thoughts under the cut

HOLY HELL THE ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS

This break up was one of the most gut wrenching out of all of them. Yes it is break up you two *points at Shego and Drakken*

Those 2 shouldn't be separated otherwise some Armageddon occurs. But they do need some elaborate couples therapy, and individual therapies OTL

Ok, so I'll back up a bit to chapter Sorry and go up till Changing Tides (I've managed to gulp those chapters in one go)

Sorry

I have never felt such desire to comfort a character. Such a clear subtext as he, deep inside, wanted to be a dad and Erik was, in a way, his child. Wish it come up more ^^'

Bad times and rumors

One of the interesting chapters where Shego's insecurities shine the most. Calling out future chapter: Pandora is so right about Shego. just wow. And the "accessory" line that will be eventually used by Ed.

So hurt to see her spiral like this. "I am no one's friend, I am no one's side-kick" ;;;;^;;;; Nooooo Shego nooooo ;;;;^;;;;

Breaking Point (s)

I love the format of seeing the same event showed by thier perspectives.

Props to Drakken not killing Lucre. Seriously......... Eddie, I will forever curse your ability to make people use this word AND hearing it in your voice.

Nah, Dr. D, that rap was amazing XD heh, kinda love that mirror with them, when Shego's mind repeaded it. Yes, ma'am, it is very catchy. Just shows how close those two really are even when they aren't together.

"What was the harm in having two helpers?" oh, baby boy OTL Next moment was OYL so sorry Drakken.

Why does it feel like Avengers Civil War? OTL Sorry Shego I'm on Drakken's side OTL I know when you smirked you were thinking how sweet he was because he returned after you OTL (literally have those 2 chapters open to see with one eye Dr. D's pov and with the other Shego's)

Interesting how he didn't hear her yelling at him. OTL

;-; singing in the hover car and wine floats.

Ma'am... your green is showing. But also her worrying about him is precious

MA"AM HE ISN'T SUPER HUMAN HE IS JUST BLUE OF COUSE HE IS BADLY INJURED... baby blue ;-;

OTL ough that all hurts

The Gauntlets

Opening scene is actually pretty badass and .... made me very concerned with how many times Drakken must have done putting back the bone into its socket as ... you don't actually supposed to do that on your own or at least without professional help.

DREW YOU DONT MESS WITH CURSES AND CURSED ITEMS!!! READ THE THING FULLY MY GOD NOOOOOO that's surely gonna end well 눈_눈 (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

;-; the heist ark mention

I assume Kim saw him glowing red from gauntlets? Tho I'd be surprised too if I just got fried with laser gun. ..... Yep, dude's glowing.

"I was just trying to help" "Nothing ever changes with you, does it?" oh boy OYL

Double Crossed

The concept of The Company i got to know from this fic, along with other villains that hadn't been used in the actual show. And I say what a shame that it wasn't incorporated. Want to know more about them.

Overall the idea behind it with elder hardcore villains ... It has so many mysteries especially concerning Shego and Drakken... and who knows who else. I've read Lipsky's family shorts and other tales and I adored the past snippets with Estelle and Theo. Both of them are such beans.... ngl really wish to see/read more about them and overall how those lived, assuming that Theo and Bart had double life. What was it like?

And the relationship between Shego and Estelle gives me so many fluffy emotions. Girl you do love her ;-;

Honestly, I don't know who creeps me out and intrigues me more in the olden villains cast. Every single one of them deserve their own tier label.

With Botox... thinking about this person I doubt that they were showing the fear...?

Stormy Tides

Loved the shift between Dr. Taxley he/him and Dr. Botox they/them ^^ nice touch 👌 agender approved fjdvnkd

Shego you really gotta think what exactly you teach others OTL especially with the whole idea of what villain is OTL I understand that you are trying to make yourself believe that but girl c'mon OTL

Side notes: Hermes and Pandora, both are so right about their exes, it's incredible how well those 2 can read Drakken and Shego. Despite how much everyone claimed it was brief and unserious relationships were, of course it wasn't the case at all. Can't wait to read the "flashback" chapter (yes, I spoiled myself plenty with this fic, I'm not sorry)

And again in Villains Inn.

Shego he is indeed your friend and close confidant OTL

Aaaaand she is on a drinking spree......... How in the all hells she didn't fried her liver?

side note.... to see my rl name being used twice in the fic still makes me jump XD first it was Drakken and Eddy's cousin and now bartender ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Shego and henchmen are something precious. Those guys in general are precious beans. YES, SHEGO YOU MISS HIM. Your thoughts almost exclusively filled with him, or things around him (like his mom).

;;-;; The questionable Chinese food.

Poor dr D OTL those gauntlets are something else, DR D WHY DID YOU HAVE TO STICK YOUR FINGERS THERE??? that's what she said I'm not sorry.

"The rain obscuring her aim" yeah, right, rain. Salty rain I'm sure of it.

SHE ADMITTED IT HE IS HER FRIEND!!!

OTL now dr d's side. I guess one of the scariest things about the gauntlets for me that .... It wasn't always certain for me where were his own thoughts and where those gauntlets were speaking... well apart from obvious "we".

It's so scarry to get how many days he had spent awake. Awake, hungry, alone and with those things... and to what length he was trying to go to remove them before Shego got here. Heck he was afraid for others - his henchmen ;-; Shego

OTL scalpel OTL

OTL just OTL for the rest of the chapter

Changing tides

Him barricading himself from her to make sure she was safe from him OTL

Shego, just wish it was a minor inconvenience OTL

hwsbfajh Shego, girl OTL he loves you OTL man ... is it he or the gauntlets or both? I understand it's a more chaotic ... heh... khaotic... form of moodulator? More like the amplifier to Drakken's anger, loathing and many more things.

OTL she fried those things off of his arms omg...

Babies with sameish sense of humor ;;;-;;; I missed your banter, guys.

Fighting bad thoughts with work jdvfbdfv I get that OTL

That uncertainty is so palpable with both of them. ;-; brushing his face absentmindedly.

Pancakes ;-; hehe like I've said I've missed your banter. And I love those little teasing pet names Shego uses.

Last note: F Cleo

Well, If you got there, thank you and sorry that you have to put yourself into ^^' Hope that some things were a bit entertaining. I do hope to do this again as I continue reading it.... Especially with Bed Time Stories approaching ^^

[breesays]

My son, my sun

Where did my little boo learn to talk to plants? We take plant babies from Gramma Lita's massive yard, recently started propagating them in water. Nothing for the first couple of weeks. Then Des said, "Mama, let me hold them" - and he took the bulb in his hand, looked lovingly at that little would-be-could-be plant and spoke to it in a way that astonished me. "You are so beautiful" he said. "You are doing such a good job. I am so happy to see you." I died, they thrived.

Four nights ago we unwrapped a fragrant bath bomb and I said, "Mmm, rose" and he started serenading me, from the "wonderful roses" part of "Til There Was You" and who can even do that? I feel like if I want to sing something, even casually, I have to start from the top. He vocalizes the percussion part of songs. Chh chh chh. Probably not revolutionary, but something new for my brain.

Some of the moms who got a spot in TK are reporting back that one of their kids "goals" for the year is to count to 20. Oh. Des can count to 100, and in Spanish. The other day he taught me how to say "knees" in Spanish, which is when I found out he can sing "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" in a second language. He remembers numbers really well, and has a good grasp of time. He can math way more at 4 years old than I could at like, 7 years old - and that's just because it's interesting to him, measurements and doubling things and how old was his friend Felix when he turned 2? Sometimes I just have to say, "That is a calculation I can't do on the fly, buddy."

He's growing his hair out long so he can make it curly, like his friend Vienna and his cousin Emerson. I wish he liked to read books together more, but maybe that will come later. It's OK if that's an interest we don't share. We make up new words until we're too tired, me channeling the IKEA catalog. Sometimes he says, "I have an idea - let's count to the highest number we know" to which I reply, "That does not sound like fun to mama, can we play a word game instead?" He also loves blowing up and popping balloons. Actually, he loves doing a lot of things with balloons - keepy uppy, birdy-flying, inflating then deflating, using them as stamps, talking about them on his imaginary YouTube channel...

He likes to eat seaweed snacks and will basically try any food at least once. He loves tomatoes, so much so that he will eat them like an apple. He steals my sushi and told me the pumpkin seeds needed "more paprika."

He makes funny observations. I took him to my work party recently and I told him Erica was in charge. When we looked back at photos from that night he asked, "Does Erica ever go home?" I said "Yes, of course, she has two kiddos of her own - why do you think that she doesn't?" He said, "Well, she's in charge."

My therapist is retiring at the end of the year, and then I won't have anyone to tell me what's healthy or adjusted anymore. I told her that sometimes Desmond says, "You know, Mama, I love Dada more than you." I respond: "That's OK, my love for you doesn't change." It doesn't hurt me, it makes me curious - what is he trying to accomplish? That non-judgemental curiosity they tried to summon from the depth of my cold being during the "can we save this marriage?" time - there it is! Therapist said: It's remarkable that he even vocalized this. It's called secure attachment.

For awhile I also wondered - does Des need therapy during this transition? He has asked why we don't live together anymore and I said, "not all families live together" - but all the families he knew of, did. So we got a couple books. Representation. Therapist said: Unless he is acting out, or it's disrupting, he is ok. Again, the fact that he's even asking these questions is GREAT. I do a value a good question-asker.

I'm still writing my book of essays and I've recently hit 38K words. I've considered publishing under a pseudonym, because I don't want to FIGHT about asexuality. I just want some previously unlearned people to know that it EXISTS. I publish most of my revelations and feelings about being Ace on my Medium. The blog that upset him was titled "Ace Week 2023" - and posted on Medium. I didn't have the time or mental capacity to react at the time. I just chose not to. Spiral, if you must - I will not add any fuel. But I did feel mad, when I unboxed that compartmentalization --

Sometimes I want to be kind and gentle and empathic because, wow we didn’t know anything, did we? There wasn’t the vocabulary for what I was experiencing. There were no alternate storylines to draw inspiration from. But sometimes I am furious, violated, underestimated. 

If you just light the path, everyone will find their own way there, right? I’m the deer in headlights, then I run towards the inevitable crash. Scampering off into the unlit wild was somehow more intimidating. So, blind yourself. Numb yourself. Anything to get to the other side.