#if i get bitten too many times my tongue goes numb and i get dizzy

[eelslippers]

Not looking forward to mosquito season when I have to explain to people that yes, I'm actually allergic to mosquitos and no, not everyone is allergic to mosquitos but I am and it can give me anaphylaxis (for some reason people don't believe me when I say I'm allergic??)

[izaswritings]

Title: a downward spiral

Synopsis: It’s a long walk from the castle to Old Corona.

Notes: I don’t blame Rapunzel for what happened to Varian or Quirin, and I honestly agree with her choice in Queen for a Day—  her kingdom needed her. Varian, though? Varian is fourteen, and he looked up to Rapunzel. What had he been thinking, as he made that long trek home… alone?

Viola, this fic. It was born.

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AO3 Link is here.

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When the guards throw him out into the snow, for a moment Varian is stunned into stillness. It as if the whole world has stopped, took a breath and held it, and even the biting cold of the snowstorm cannot break through the sudden fog of Varian’s mind or the numb horror crawling up his throat.

She promised, Varian thinks. She promised—

He feels dizzy and both too hot and too cold in equal measure, his skin too tight, and no matter how hard he tries he can’t suck in enough air. She promised, Varian thinks, over and over in a hysterical loop. She promised to help me, she said she would, but now—and Dad is—

His breath stutters. Dad.

He scrambles to his feet, trembling so badly the wind nearly knocks him over again. He braces himself against the wall and scrambles for his pouch with numb fingers. The guards had—he’d dropped his staff getting past them, but he can probably find it again, if he has some more light—

The orange vial has a fainter glow than the green and purple concoctions, but it serves its purpose well enough all the same. The color makes him shudder, though, reminds him of the amber and why he’d come in the first place—

No, no, he can’t think about it, he can’t. Dad. He just has to get back to Dad. He can figure this out even—even without Rapunzel. He can! He just— he just needs to find his staff and then—

His cold fingers hit wood and Varian nearly sobs. It’s embarrassing, but there is no one to see, so it doesn’t really matter. He drags the staff from the snowbank and hugs it close to his chest, body shaking in the brutal wind. Tears sting his eyes, and he struggles to hold them back, biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

He’s strong enough. He is. It was—it was his alchemy that did this, so Varian— there must be a way Varian can fix this. He doesn’t need Rapunzel’s help. She—she’s looking after Corona, the kingdom, so that just means Varian has to look out for his dad… all by himself.

He waits there, kneeling in the snow, cold seeping through his pant legs, trembling in the fury of the storm. For a moment he thinks—maybe, maybe the Princess will come. Maybe she will run after him, come with him anyway, keep her promise. He would give almost anything to see her come out of those gates, her determined eyes and long golden hair, like some mythical hero from the old stories. The kind of person who makes everything okay again, the kind of person who keeps their promises, the kind of person who— who can save his dad.

Varian stares at those castle doors until his vision goes blurry, and the tears end up dripping down his face regardless of his wishes. He wipes at them roughly, breath hitching, and turns on his heels to head back out into the storm. He doesn’t dare look back again. If he does, he thinks the dismay might cripple him.

It is only when he has reached the hill overlooking the capital city, as he fights his way alone through the wind back to Old Corona, his earlier energy diminished and withered—it is only then, that Varian is struck with a sudden and blinding hatred. It’s an awful emotion, hatred, too much for his small hands. It fills up his throat and strangles his heart, and for a moment he can’t even see, his whole range of vision going white and fuzzy.

My Dad is going to die, Varian realizes with sudden clarity, and it will be Rapunzel’s fault.

Almost immediately he shies away from it, physically recoils from the idea hard enough send him tripping face-first into the snow. The shock of cold send him spluttering, the terrible emotion smacked away by the cold reality, and Varian spits out ice, scrubbing at his face with his gloves.

“It’s not her fault,” he instructs himself under his breath, freeing his staff from the snow with a swift yank. “It’s not Rapunzel’s fault,” he repeats, through chattering teeth. “The k-kingdom’s in a crisis. She can’t h-help me. She said herself, she needed t-two—two—two days—”

His teeth are chattering so bad he almost bites his tongue by accident. Varian forces himself to breathe. “Not her fault,” he whispers into his palms, trying desperately to ignore the ache of loneliness, the sudden fear at walking through this storm alone. “Not her fault. Not her fault.”

He tells himself this as he makes his way through the snow, forces the words past numb and blue lips. Over and over until his voice scrapes in his throat, a mantra in tune with every trembling footstep.

“She’d help me if she could,” Varian assures himself when he reaches the caves. His voice bounces off the ice, echoes back, soft and uncertain. The storm roars above him.

“She’s the Princess, I’m an idiot, she has a kingdom to save,” when he gets to the rock pillars. His voice is thin, weakening. His knees shake at the mere idea of crossing.

“She’s my friend, she’ll come soon, she said—not right now, Varian, she’ll come soon,” at the river. When he crosses, his foot slips, and he nearly falls into the icy waters, raging with the wind.

“She has to,” soft and thin and desperate, when he finds the wooden bridge destroyed by the snow. It takes him another half-hour trying to pick his way across.

Nothing at all, when he reaches the edge of his village, four hours later, cold to his bones and shaking too hard to speak.

He runs to his house in a daze, his breathing loud and raspy in his ears, but even that seems drowned out by the furious and ugly winds. The cold has pierced through the layers of his coat, bitten past even his alchemic attempts at warmth. It’s sunk so deep in his bones that every step is a battle, his legs shaking so severely it hurts to walk. The back of his throat stings, and no matter how many times he swallows, his mouth feels stiff and cold, his teeth aching.

It is nothing at all to the terror in his heart as he walks to his house, as he steps up to the door, closed shut. He almost drops his staff in his scramble for the doorknob, and the first time he tries to turn it, open the door and run inside, his numb fingers slide clean off.

Varian bites back a sob, staring down at that frozen handle. His eyes fill with hot tears, burning behind his eyes, almost endless, dripping down his face like a stream, his face twisted and teeth grit in an effort to keep from breaking down entirely at this tiny mishap.

“She promised me,” Varian whispers, to no-one, because there is no-one here but him. “She promised.”

There is no answer. Just the wind, and the snow, and Varian—alone, afraid of his own house, left out in the cold.

If Rapunzel wants to save her kingdom, then—that’s fine. That’s fine. She can save the kingdom. All Varian needs is to save his father. To make him proud. If Rapunzel won’t help him… then that’s fine too. He doesn’t need her help. He doesn’t need her.

Varian lifts his ice-caked gloves and scours it down his face, cheeks red from cold but free of tears. This time when he grabs the handle, his hand doesn’t slip.

Varian goes in alone.

[ofhxrror]

OFHXRROR’S RP GUIDE: HOW TO PLAY A CHARACTER WITH EPILEPSY. 

While I have nothing against the other rp guide’s who tell you what epilepsy and some of them explain it great, they feel like that’s all they are doing explaining it. So here is an rp guide coming from someone who has GE for those who want to play a character with it. ( below will have what GE is, what it can feel like, how it can effect the people around you, how to roleplay a grand mal / tonic - colonic seizure, and the long term + short term effects of a seizure. ) 

UPDATED:  06/16/2020

What is GE ( Generalized Epilepsy )

GE is a type of epilepsy that comes with no primary cause and comes from the whole brain rather than it stemming from one part of the brain, it also mostly happens durning childhood ( but can happen in adulthood just when that happens their’s less of a chance that you will grow out of it ). There is two possible outcomes with this type of epilepsy, Option One the patient stays on medication for two years and at the end is able to be taken off those meds without any trouble thus for some reason is now cured of GE; Option Two however is more common and likely they stay two years on medication but still have trouble thus aren’t cured of GE. 

Symptoms of GE ( what it can feel like ) 

This is my personally experience with GE but before I was on medication this is what it normally felt like to me which scary enough often felt close enough to an aura ( aka a warning sign to a seizure ); - Numbness / Out Of Body Moments  - Tasting Copper / Blood  - Random Dizziness / Lightheadedness  - Getting Nauseous - Sleepiness  - Headaches - Anxiety / Worsen Anxiety  - Depression / Worsen Depression  - Myoclonic Jerking: which fun fact is another minor form of seizing, I developed this over a very short period of time and it comes even though I am medicated. 

How GE might effect your Muse 

GE is one of those things that can effect people in so many different ways that it’s hard to guess which ways you muse might be effected so here are so suggestions; - your muse might just hole up in a comfy place out of fear of having a seizure at an unknown point ( me for like a month after my first one )  / place or they might keep living their life giving GE a big fuck you and just shrugging it off ?  - if your muse already has anxiety and / or depression think would they get worse for having this in their life?  - your muse might draw away from people due to just panic and stress or would your muse lean on the ones that they have more? - if they have anger problems they might get worse because they might feel like the world if screwing with them? - if they are super prepared they might wear a medical alert bracelet or carry a card with them at all times that says they have GE now. I didn’t leave my room for a month unless it was to shower, I did all my school work at home, and my depression shot through the roof after my first seizure. But then after awhile I missed people so I got out again and it was scary at first so I clung to those I could trust like a baby monkey. Now I’m not scared at all of having an attack because I trust the people around me which leads me too... 

How GE might effect the people around your Muse.

Okay this will hit people hard or soft from what I’ve seen there is no two ways about it folks, if they have seen your muse have a seizure it’s going to hard and if they haven’t seen your muse have a seizure it’s going to be soft. Right after my first seizure my mom didn’t leave my side and then when I had a seizure around a guy I was seeing he didn’t let go of my hand. But when I tell people I have GE it’s “okay so you wanna get pizza later.” but sometimes it’s “okay so if you have a seizure what do you want me to do.” So it just makes a difference on what type of personality your muse’s people have, plot it out, ask your the other muse’s owner “does this work?” and if not keep plotting till you find something that works. 

How to roleplay a Grand Mal Seizure.

You’re muse is overworked, or is lacking sleep, or is just unlucky whatever the case you want to roleplay a seizure. Well here the info you will need labeled from start to finish from a good amount of research and memory:  START; your muse might get something called an aura which could be a number of things, for me it was always the taste of blood like loads and loads it followed my right hand jerking out of my control ( a myoclonic seizure ). For your muse it could be anything ranging from numbness, to a headache, to nausea. These can last anywhere to ten mintues to an hour and half but they don’t last much longer than that because next is... MIDDLE; if your muse is really unlucky they might just skip right to this part which is when the seizure happens, which durning a bunch of things can happen. Now these have two phases which are known as the tonic phase and the colonic phase which is the reason for  the name. During the tonic phase your muse will lose consciousness ( though sometimes people don’t and are awake which isn’t rare but is really uncommon ) and they start to tense up, often making loud moaning sounds as air is being force out of their lungs. If your muse is standing or sitting they will fall down due to the fact that their skeletal muscles are tensing up, this phase is the shortest. In the colonic phase your muse will start to convulse, which can be as light or as violent as the seizure goes on. The eyes will roll up into head and often if your muse is not not biting down on something the tongue / lips will get bitten ( sometimes to the point where it might get bitten off, meaning do not have or let anyone put their muses hands in your’s mouth because they will lose them ), the lips may turn blue. finally it’s over but now comes the .... END; when your muse wakes up they might not know where they are or who they are but they will get it all back shortly, it helps to have someone remind them. vomiting and crying are also side effects due to the large emotional stress it does apply to the brain / body (  I experianced vomiting, crying, panic and huge amounts of tiredness due to the seizure, it took the nursing staff telling me what happened for me to be okay. ) 

Long Term + Short Term effects of seizures. 

Even one seizure can effect your brain so your muse will have both Short Term and Long Term effects to struggle with, I know this fact very well. The shorter effects of the seizures can be:

- Amnesia / Confusion  - Suttering  - Crying / Violent Sobbing  - Vomiting - Low Emotional Thresh Hold  - Short Term Memory Loss  - Shaking  - Cuts / Broken Bones / Bruises - Sore Muscles - Intense Sleepiness

Long Term effects can be: 

- Suttering  - Trouble With Memory  - Worsened ADD / ADHD  - Twitching / Jerking / Shaking Hand Motions also know as myoclonic seizures.  - Confusion  - Sleepiness  - Lack Of Appetite - Weight Loss  - Coma’s / Death / Brain Bleeds 

Why do you want to roleplay this?

Finally I have to ask this question as someone who lives their life with this curse, it’s truly a hellscape some days and honestly it’s no fun waking up some mornings with your head spinning and arm smacking you in the face. My body does not feel like mine, it’s possessed by some creature that I cannot get rid of because modern medicine doesn’t have a fix yet. Please think about that when you add this to your character, I just want you to know all the points of epilepsy that while yes most people with the disease can live normal healthy lives, it’s not fun and it sucks. I’m not trying to be an asshole I just wanted to underline how serious it really is and make sure you aren’t just sticking your chara with this illness for brownie points. 

thank you for coming to my ted talk! 

[not-so-secret-nerd]

Tunnel Rats: Part 1 of ?

Word Count: 1168 Pairing: Holtzbert Rating: M (violence and physical assault) Summary: Kidnapped, beaten, and left for dead, Erin Gilbert finds herself at the mercy of gentle but secretive Samaritan linked to a world she never knew existed below the streets of New York. A/N: You all, I have officially lost control of my life. I don’t even know where this came from, but here you go. Angsty hurt/comfort holtzbert with a little torture thrown in for fun in the beginning. No idea how long this will be. Posting on AO3 too. Put in a “read more” because below this is kind of violent and brutal. 

A rough hand dug into her scalp, jerking her head back with bruising force that pulls a gasp from her lips. The van was dark and rocks with every turn and pothole hit, but Erin can see enough to make out small details. Namely, the faces of the three men towering above her.

“Snitches get stiches, bitch,” one of them snarls, close enough to her ear she can smell the day-old rum on his breath. He cracks his knuckles, the sound overly loud in the small space. Erin’s attempt to recoil earns her a hard jerk back to center.

She doesn’t know what’s going on or what these men are talking about. She doesn’t know them. She doesn’t know how she got into this situation. One second she was walking home for her office at the DA’s high-rise, going over case briefings for the following morning, and the next she’s being pulled into a maroon van by six sets of hands. It was a woman’s worst nightmare come true, only she was living it live and in person.

“I—I don’t—“

The first blow that hits her sinks into Erin’s stomach and doubles her over, pushing the breath from her lungs. She might have vomited her lunch all over the dirty van floor had a second fist not connected with her right jaw, spinning her halfway around. She doesn’t fall, held aloft by a vice-like grip on her upper arms. Her tongue is sore and bleeding from where she’d bitten it. A third blow has her seeing stars, the skin of her cheek on fire. Something wet begins to warm her upper lips, cutting a path down her face.

“Didn’t give you permission to talk, cunt.” Thick fingers close around Erin’s throat, choking off any pleas of innocence or mercy. She’s drawn closer to the speaker: a nondescript, white male with a scar on his upper lip and cold, dead brown eyes. “You know what you did. Marco doesn’t like when his girls get out of line, so we got a lesson to teach you.”

Marco…Erin’s panicked mind rips through her memory, seeking the name. A client? A perp? Only one comes up, and it chills her. Erin struggles to swallow around the hand silencing her. Marco Felconi …notorisou crime boss…oh God. Oh God, please not that.

“Don’t know…F-Felconi,” she manages to gasp, but she might as well have been screaming into the wind. Thugs weren’t hired to listen to their marks. They were hired to follow orders.

“Sure you don’t,” comes the cold reply, tinted with grim amusement. The man in front of her nods for the others to continue.

Something white hot sparks against Erin’s lower back. Her muscles seize—knees turning to jelly—and she drops, barely able to scream as the electricity works through her. Taser. She’d just been tasered.

Again she’s pulled up by her hair, but this time the man behind her holds her in place—muscular arm across her chest—ensuring she wouldn’t go anywhere when the electricity arced through her again. This time, Erin does scream, back bowed against the pain. Her cries are only silences when a fist connects with the bridge of her nose, snapping her head back. Erin’s eyes roll. Hot liquid gushes from her nostrils. The world dims, narrowing into a straw-like focal point she can’t seem to catch. Her heart feels like a battery ram behind her ribs. She can’t suck in enough air. Something knocks her forward. Clawing into her hands and knees, Erin catches the swing of a boot that launches her bodily into the wall of the van. This time, she does vomit, lacking the strength to rise afterward.

It was difficult determining where one fist ended and the other began. Or was that a foot? Hard telling. Erin tucked into herself as best she could, curled on her side, covering her head with her hands. It was little protection, especially when most of the boots connecting with her body were steel-toed. Boots meant for dolling out punishment. Boots meant to kill if necessary.

The assault goes on for what feels like an eternity. Lost in the tight curl of self-preservation, Erin loses track of how many turns the van makes and how many times it lurches to a stop. It doesn’t matter. She’s dead anyway, so the only thing that truly shocks her was when the hail of abuse abruptly stops.

Erin didn’t even begin to hope her ordeal was over. Not in the slightest. So when she’s hauled to her knees again, head held up once more by her hair, she stares incoherently through her only working eye at the scarred man crouched in front of her. He moves something metallic into her line of sight, waving it teasingly.

“Now, I hope you’ve enjoyed our little talk,” he sneers, joined by his comrades in a slithering snicker. But just as quickly, his smile falls, replaced with a rage Erin can almost feel. “Felconi said to shut you up, but that mouth of yours got my brother put behind bars for five years. Five fucking years. So we’re gonna go off the rails a bit. Felconi isn’t going to miss one whore.”

Erin chokes on a gurgling breath when she feels the knife bite into her side. She can’t scream, only grunt, cut off by the thick trickle of blood seeping into her mouth and bubbling past her lips. Her one seeing eye goes wide seconds before the man’s forehead connects with hers and the world fades to black.  

Her next sensation is the sense of falling. Tumbling. Rolling down an incline until her momentum peters out. The stagnant, sick-smelling musk of the van is replaced with the sharp scent of cold, open air and frost. She’s outside. In the elements. In the snow. Somewhere above, Erin hears the van speed away, rubber tires chirping before the area grows still once more.

Where was she? Still in New York City? Maybe in Jersey? She can’t tell. Can’t even rise to crawl out of the ditch she’d been thrown into. Every inhale rattles in the back of her throat like gravel in a jar. Iron is the only thing she can taste. She can’t draw in enough air to fend off the dizziness clawing at her.

This is it, she thinks morosely, able to feel tears welling in her non-swollen eye. I’m going to die.  

A part of Erin was grimly thankful. The cold was a compassionate killer. First it numbed you. Then it lulled you to sleep with a gentle lullaby, cradled in arms of frost and ice. Erin could feel her only working eyelid beginning to droop even as she struggled to move, to crawl, to live, the snow under her—quickly turning red—wicking the pain away along with her life. All she had to do was close her eyes and rest and the agony would be over.

Please,

she thinks blearily, darkness creeping in.

Please, someone…help me.