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mrs-kodzuken · 9 days

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hard to desire ⨟ kenma k.

chapter one

can I call you tonight? dayglow

❝There's so much time

For me to speak up, but I keep quiet

I'll complicate most of the mantra❞

"This is the coffee shop that I was telling you about," Kuroo gestured towards a small building that seemed to have a theme of dark academia and books.

The cafe didn't seem all that bad, you thought. It would be the perfect place to study before a huge exam, the tall windows which showed the beautiful inside were not forgettable.

"It looks so pretty. Do you come here often after class?" You questioned as the little bell rang when Kuroo held open the door for you. A wondrous smell of coffee, books, and spice wafted into your nose. It could have been a bit overwhelming if you hadn't loved the scent.

It almost brings you to your favorite season of them all, which is definitely autumn.

"No, only once in a while. This place is kind of pricey, but it gives good beverages and great seats." Kuroo chuckled, looking down at you as you scoured the menu. There were definitely a lot of choices to choose from and yet you still didn’t know what to pick.

"See anything you like?" He asked as you guys stood off to the side – by the entry way that had a lot of books nearby.

"Hm, I think I would like to try the toffee crunch espresso? It seems good." You pondered on that, not really liking coffee but love to try different kinds once in a while.

"Sounds great. You go pick a seat for us and I'll get our orders." He patted your head and slightly pushed your forward a bit in case you decided to protest on the matter.

You rolled your eyes a bit at that but looked across the cafe to see where you wanted to sit. Eventually you decided on the floral printed sofa that had an antique wooden table to set the drinks on. This place was definitely one for the books.

Kuroo soon came back with the drinks and taking that first sip was always magical – until it gave you the shits later.

"Thank you for this. You didn't have to buy it for me, you know." You made a point at that, even though he knew that too. Your parents still give you an allowance, especially now more than ever too. They don't want you working your ass off in college at a dead-end job when you could be focusing on studies.

"I know, little one. But you're my favorite non-biological sister, so why wouldn't I?" He remarked, sipping his drink as the warmth fogged up his reading glasses that he only wears occasionally.

Your heart strings tugged at the nickname Kuroo used for you.

He had given you that name when you were very young and needed help on something so small at the time that your parents thought it was huge – your writing skills.

"So, you have other not favorite non-biological sisters?" You snorted, as that sounded weird coming from your mouth.

"Yeah, yeah." He waved you off, rolling his eyes at your dumb question.

"Okay, so, when can I move in? I was kind of wondering why we aren't there now and instead at a coffee shop." You raised an eyebrow at that. It was kind of weird Kuroo wasn't showing you where you were going to live for the next four years.

"Well, there is something I was supposed to tell you about, but in all honesty, I kind of forgot."

You urged him to go on.

"So, I have a roommate too. His name is Kenma and he's super chill and goes to uni with me and I've known him since we were young." He spit out all at once, leaving you stunned.

"A roommate? How old is he? I mean, I haven't met him. What if he kills me in my sleep, Tetsu?" You can't possibly move in with Kuroo and his roommate that you don't even know! That's just crazy work, he was trying to get you killed.

"I promise Kenma is a good guy. He likes video games and cats. He used to play volleyball with me in high school. Like I've known him forever, there won't be anything to worry about!" He tried to reassure you. Tetsuro had promised your parents that he'd take extra special care of you once you got accepted into his university.

And right now, he hoped that you would look past not knowing Kenma very well and agree. It never really came up in the past letters about Kuroo’s social life – probably because of the age difference. Not only that but your parents had monitored all of your letter conversations till they got you a phone.

"I mean... I guess it's fine," You trailed off a bit, wanting more time to think on it but then again, he's right in front of you. And Kuroo would never purposefully put you in danger, he's not like that. You’ve known him since you were in primary too.

Kuroo blew a sigh of relief, "Great! I swear it will all be fine. Want to go look around a bit? I can show you some good places around this town, so you'll be more familiar with it once you move."

You sipped your coffee, now bitter in your mouth – from how long it sat there untouched or from the conversation? You don't know.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I don't want to not know where a gas station is and have to pull over on the side of the road and a stranger kidnap and kill me." You got up from the cushioned couch to stretch a bit before leaving.

"Did someone make you watch a scary movie lately? You sure are being a bit weird, little one." He chuckled as if it was funny. You're deathly scared of gory, horror movies.

"As if, this is just my regular morbid self." You laughed, exiting the cafe and taking in the scenery of the streets. It wasn't a bad town at all. It looked kind of magical like it came out of a movie or something.

After a bit of sight-seeing, you gathered that there were a lot of thrifting shops, coffee places, a public library and even different kinds of food areas that you'd definitely be trying out once you move.

Your feet started to hurt but you wouldn't tell Kuroo that, he'd make fun of you for being such a big baby.

So, you decided on, "Tell me more about Kenma? I'm still a bit nervous of actually moving in with a stranger I've only heard stories of."

"I'm not sure what to say. He's a year younger than me, Christmas is his favorite holiday, and he's started a small YouTube channel a bit ago."

He saw the look on your face and then added, "He knows you're moving in; it'll all be okay. Save the worries for your new classes, okay?" He ruffled your head, effectively messing up your hair that you worked hard on this morning.

"Agh, stop," You pulled his hand away, "You're annoying." You scoffed at him as you guys arrived at your small car.

This beauty has gotten you through senior year and you're just praying she'll get you through this year of college. It was a red VW convertible that your parents graciously gave you on your 18th birthday.

You had decked her out with plenty of red accessories and most of which were strawberry or hello kitty themed. What can you say? You're just a girl after all.

"Thanks for the day Tetsu, it was really nice. I'm feeling a bit better about moving here." You give him a genuine smile as you unlock your car door.

"Anytime for you, little one." He reached over to give you a squeezing hug and then released you.

"I'll see you soon then, bye!" You waved once you were buckled in your cute little car. Kuroo gave you a huge wave and a smile goodbye.

As you were driving back home, you couldn't help but to roll your windows down and let the air flow through your hair. At a red light, you connected your phone to the car and started playing your favorite song.

A man crossed the road, you couldn't help but to stare at his outfit. Who in the hell wears a hoodie and sweatpants in the summer? Granted, it was the end of summer, so the heat was slowly fleeting but just barely.

As if he heard you, his head snapped up, locking eyes with yours. His strange golden ones felt like they could have pierced your soul with how hard the expression on his face was. Even with the windows down, in the summer heat, you managed to shiver just from him.

As you drove by, you couldn't get the image out of your mind nor the feeling off your skin. You hoped it maybe was the music that had perhaps made that man stare you down in the middle of the crosswalk.

You turned the music up a little louder, hoping to drown the thoughts out and letting the wind send a different type of chills down your back.

. . .

On the long drive home, you couldn't help your mind from wandering to when you had your first encounter with Kuroo. You had maybe been no older than nine or ten. You remember your parents sitting you down at the kitchen table with serious looks on their faces that had you worried.

They had told you that they had been concerned about the way you had been writing your past few school assignments. However, those couldn't have been not much longer than a paragraph or two, so you didn't really understand.

Anyways, that's when they signed up for a program to help you connect with another grade schooler to improve your writing skills. You had been excited to use the many pretty stationary that your parents had gifted you to get you into writing.

You soon had met a junior high version of Kuroo -- through pen pal letters of course. He had introduced himself and mostly asked about you and gave you tips to correct your writing. And then, well, the rest is history.

Not to mention that you definitely kept all of the letters that Kuroo had sent to you as memories.

As the years blended away, you finally got your first phone when you reached your last year in junior high! That was Kuroo's third year too and after the long wait of your letter sending through the mail with the excitement of your new phone, you finally got a message back.

That is when you both decided to meet up in person, conventionally it was right after Kuroo had a match and won it that same day. It's safe to say that he was exceptionally happy to win a match with his team and meet his pen pal sister.

You still remember cringing away from him trying to give you a hug because you both just now met up in person, but he did just win a match. Over the course of your high school years, he would occasionally come back on breaks from university and take you out for ice cream or help with your science homework.

Kuroo was like the big brother you never got, and you were like the little sister he always wished for. It was the perfect duo.

You wish you could have recorded his face once you facetimed him about being accepted into his college. That was the day that he had sworn to your parents that he'd take excellent care of you if you decided to go there with him.

Safe to say, your parents loved and trusted Kuroo.

You couldn't help but to smile at all the delightful memories that ran through your head. 'It'll be weird for a bit, but I'll have my bro Kuroo, so it'll be fine' you thought to yourself, pulling into the driveway of your house.

Maybe it all would be okay.

synopsis: it's the summer before you go to university, and you decide to become roommates with your pen pal that you've known since you were in primary. big problem arises, he's got a roommate, and it just so happens that his roommate either has a sexual want for you or hates your guts – or probably both?

tag list: [let me know if you’d like to be in the tag list!]

@geektastic84 @lavanderdreamve @hhoneyhan @kirikeijii @marsoverthestars @nymphsdomain @justagirlnamedkai @kodzukein @74zix47 @kakuzone @jaeminaur @3lectraheart

a/n: i hope you enjoyed, and the idea for this entire smau came from @deftrow !! i made the banner <3

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wolfawaycamp · 4 months

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Alternate Truth or Dare "Truth" scene, because Emma's question in-game was super boring. She could've come up with something shippy for that, surely.

🐼 I had a million different ideas for this and maybe I'll write them out someday, but for the sake of brevity, here is (1) slightly shippier version of Emma Mountebank's infamously boring 'truth' question! Thanks for the ask :)

The warm smoke of the campfire mixed with the earthy scent wafting off of Lake Septimus’ surface makes for a nice, comfortable atmosphere for the Hacketteers’ last hurrah around the firepit.

Ryan can appreciate the sentimentality of it, as he had built up a nice camaraderie with these (mostly) strangers, but of course Dylan had to be Dylan and throw a Truth-or-Dare-shaped wrench into things. Ryan’s already nervous enough, what with Chris freaking out and demanding they stay in the lodge with all of the escapes locked as if there’s some wild animal on the loose.

To Ryan, the only thing worse than being attacked by a savage bear or feral hog is exactly what Emma is doing to him right now: putting him on the spot. “Ryan — truth or dare?”

He weighs his options.

Truth — knowing Emma, she's probably going to ask something nosy like "What were you and Chris talking about in his office?" which is annoying but ultimately uninteresting. Easy, painless, and forgettable.

Dare — she's going to make him kiss someone. Sure, he could be a killjoy and say no, but he's already on thin ice with this crowd and he's not so much of an asshole that he's going to ruin everyone's fun by refusing a dare. Besides, he knows it's either going to be Dylan or Kaitlyn. He can handle that. They're both attractive, and they both clearly have a crush on him. But what if she makes you choose? nags a voice in the back of his mind, and that gives him pause. Because — because if he's forced to make a choice, people are going to make assumptions and tease him and Dylan — or Kaitlyn — mercilessly about it for the rest of the night. Truly a fate worse than death.

He goes with the safe option. "Truth. I'm an open book."

"Okay, okay. Let's get right down to it." Emma narrows her eyes suspiciously.

"Let's do." Ryan makes his best attempt to match her energy. He’s sure he looks as terrified as a first-time camper during opening week.

"What were you and Dylan doing when you two snuck away from Mandatory Movie Night last month?"

Fuck. That wasn’t part of the script.

"You left the lodge after Mr. H told you not to? What a little rebel!" Abi blurts out in mock surprise.

Ryan rolls his eyes. "No, we...we went upstairs. Wanted to get away from the kids. Nothing really happened. We just talked."

Somehow, he’s forgotten that the other person in question is sitting six feet away from him, ready to call him out on his bullshit. "C'mon, tell them the rest of it,” Dylan encourages, taking another sip of his beer.

Betrayal. Ryan really was an idiot to think he’d get out of this one so easily. "Whose side are you on, man?"

"Well, obviously, as the one who's laying down the law here, I'm on the side of the truth!" Dylan responds matter-of-factly.

Emma, who’d been watching the exchange and quietly enjoying the drama, leans in. "What are you hiding from us, you mysterious bad boy?”

I’m really not beating the ‘brooding loner’ allegations, am I? "First off, never say that again." Everyone is staring at him in anticipation, except Dylan, who’s looking away and visibly trying (and failing) to maintain his poker face while reveling in Ryan’s discomfort.

Ryan sighs. "We also…might have found some vodka and drank it. But we were just drinking and chilling like we are right now. Nothing to write home about."

“Vodka and chill, huh?” Jacob waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“No,” Ryan responds, trying to sound as unbothered as possible. Unless you count Dylan acting serious for more than ten seconds as ‘chill.’

In all honesty, they didn’t do anything crazy. They'd started that night sharing childhood camp stories, and it had eventually turned into deep discussions about their fears, their dreams, and their plans for the future after camp, but the other counselors don’t need to know every detail. Ryan had seen Dylan in a different light since that night and they’d grown closer from it. That moment is special, and Ryan intends to keep at least some things between himself and Dylan.

Nick takes a break from basking in the warmth of the campfire to speak up. "Ugh. Boring!”

"On the contrary. My curiosity's been satisfied." Emma is staring at Ryan with an unnerving grin plastered onto her face. In the firelight, she almost looks like a demon. “Thank you for sharing.”

Jacob isn't having it. "No way. That can't really be it. Dylan?"

Ryan shoots Dylan a look that hopefully screams “save me.” Dylan obliges. "No, no, I'd say he's off the hook. That’s all she wrote. Scout's honor." He holds up his hand and crosses his fingers.

"Doesn't that mean you're lying?" Jacob presses.

Kaitlyn responds to Jacob’s comment with derision, "No, dumbass, that's only if he does it behind his back where we can't see it. Duh." Ryan stays silent, letting the two bicker amongst themselves. At least they’re not all still staring at him with those creepy fucking smiles.

"Children! Settle down!" Right on cue, Emma turns everyone’s attention back to their favorite social punching bag. Well, second favorite to Jacob. "Your turn, Ryan." She’s still grinning. She genuinely looks pleased. It wasn’t just some juicy gossip she wanted from Ryan; her goal was to make him uncomfortable, and he played right into her trap perfectly.

Scanning the rest of the group, he sure does feel the discomfort; half of the counselors are giving him and Dylan knowing glances, while the other half look deeply disappointed with his answer. Well, too bad. He’ll let them speculate.

Ryan finds his victim. “Kaitlyn. What d’ya say — truth or dare?”

As she ponders the question, his eyes catch Dylan’s and he can’t help but wonder what would have happened had he chosen ‘dare.’

#the quarry #rylan #ryan erzahler #dylan lenivy #radioheads #truth or dare: dylan style #expert meddler emma mountebank #i'm obsessed with the idea of ryan being so utterly mortified by the idea of discussing any form of intimacy at all #ficlet #ask box #cam #🐼

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paullicino · 24 days

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Six Years - On PTSD and Choosing Life

Content warning: This essay very frankly discusses mental health, trauma, gaslighting and suicide. It also links to discussions of abuse and sexual assault.

If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, know that you are not alone and help is available to you or anyone who might need it, such as the Samaritans, the Suicide Prevention Hotline, or this list of other crisis hotlines and this list of international support resources.

This was reposted from my Patreon.

There are blue skies today. The sun bounces off the mirrored windows of a skyscraper downtown. It cuts straight across my balcony and shines onto my wall. A few blocks away, the staff of my favourite café will share their latest gossip with me, as they always like to do, and maybe later tonight I will make good food and play games with friends until unwise times in the morning. Isn’t life full of wonderful things?

You can find them everywhere. And I certainly do. Sometimes I’ve found them in the intimate, up-close details of a famous oil painting, between the notes of a new song heard by chance, even in the rustling at the bottom of a dumpster, which becomes chittering and then fur and a tail and then direct eye contact with a tiny criminal whose only felony was hunger. I’ve found them amongst perfectly crafted sentences that capture thoughts and feelings and hold them forever on the page, in the silence of the impossibly wild mountain wilderness a thousand miles from home, in the first moments that I’ve taken someone’s hand and watched the gaudy lights of some forgettable venue play across the lines and the shapes of their face.

That’s so many wonderful things to live for. And I can get overdramatically passionate about the tiniest, silliest little details.

I’ve been trying to write this for a long time. I had three significant dreams during that period. In the most recent, I had moved into a dark and barren basement, with most of my possessions still in boxes. Some old friends from long ago came knocking. They pressed their faces against the small windows and tried to force the ageing door. “Where did you go?” they kept asking, their voices entering through every crack. “What happened?”

Six years ago this month I destroyed my suicide note. I burned it on a rainy August night and watched it curl into a tiny, helpless twisting of ashes and charred plastic that no longer had any power or purpose. The note was inside of a ziploc bag, a choice I’d made to ensure its integrity and survival against any of the several different plans I’d made to end my life, and this had melted into black strands of hair-like debris that reached up to nothing. One or two of my handwritten words remained half legible in this mess and tried to reach beyond the flames, to share their intent with the world, but they would never again mean anything to anyone.

I made videos of the burning and took a few pictures, a sort of ritual of recording, then I told a close friend what I’d just done, and then, for a very long time, I set the image as the wallpaper on my phone. It would be an ever-present reminder to me of my choice to stay alive. It was supposed to help me feel strong, though the truth is that I rarely did. It was the worst, most harrowing and most damaging period of my life and with help, honesty, insight, therapy, time and invaluable connection with others who have either seen the same things that I have or had comparable experiences, I managed to fumble and fight my way through it all. But I will never be the same. Six years is a long time and I am still profoundly affected by so much. I am still trying to understand things. I am still trying to figure myself out, to make sense of my identity, my situation, my experiences. To work out where I went and what happened. And I am still trying to move on.

These words are something about that ongoing experience, that work in progress, and about the dual significance of a span of six years. It is not so much about causes or causers, but instead about consequences and changes, and that’s for three reasons.

The first is because what happens after and as a result of trauma is so enduring and significant, perhaps even the most significant consideration of all, and it’s how we find ourselves discussing things like spans of six years or, for some people, far longer. I want to try to explain some of that sort of intensity and that sort of timescale.

The second is because it’s my hope that this is the most helpful way for me to talk about all this, the most illustrative to other people, the most constructive. I could have chosen many approaches, some which I believe might have been more harmful and destructive, and I don’t generally want to be a punitive or destructive person. Ultimately I think this is the most positive and productive approach.

The third is because I’m still not ready to unpack many things, as so much is still ongoing. I am not at the end of this, not out of the woods, and I think I need to know that I’ve reached the end of whatever journey I’m on before I can return to the start.

There is, allegedly, a power in choosing how your own story is told. So I’m choosing to tell it this way and, I hope, with the awareness that any exercise of power requires consideration and responsibility.

Six years is a long time, and while I’ve been trying to write and rewrite this thing for months, those months still pale in comparison to more than half a decade. A lot has changed in six years, and yet I also wish some things weren’t still the same, that I would have been able to make more progress, that I would have been able to create more distance.

Because, while I am six years from that burning note, from that summer rain, in my memory and my mind it doesn’t work like that. I still find myself beside that moment in time, like I could open the door to the next room and once again be right there.

---

Writing this has been very difficult. Writing is supposed to be one of the things that I am best at, and in the past words used to spill out of me so regularly that I wrote a tri-weekly diary, but I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my relationship to writing has changed. It’s not just that this is a difficult topic. It’s that words don’t come as easily or as fluidly as they once did, making it much easier, all too appealing, to simply not push myself. To avoid things entirely.

But I wanted to write this, in part, because it would be another act of not giving up. I wanted to show myself what I could do, what I still can do, and that, even if I’m changed, I’m still stubborn enough to fumble and fight my way through.

---

I want you to imagine a house. It can be any kind of house, that part isn’t important. What is important is that the house is your home and you have lived there for a very, very long time. It is comfortable. It is safe. It is so intimately familiar that it is a part of your identity. Perhaps you grew up there, or you raised a family there, or you retired there. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s your home and that everyone knows you live there.

Next, imagine that you have a terrible day. The worst day. And at the end of this terrible, terrible day, on a bleak and dusky evening, you expect at least to be able to come back to your house, your home. You take the same route back to the same address, where you see the same building stood before you and open the same front door, ready for the comfort of a place you’ve made your own.

You enter this space that you’ve known for so long and you notice something is wrong. The first clue is something small, perhaps a lamp missing from its usual spot, or you collide with furniture moved somewhere unexpected. You feel for a light switch that is now on a different wall. You stumble on the stairs as you make your way to a bed that is hard and unwelcoming. In the morning, the light from the window is not only a different shape, but cast in the opposite direction.

The changes stop being so subtle. After you notice that a carpet is suddenly faded and pale, you open a closet to find it is twice as deep. Some of your possessions are missing. The spare room no longer has a skylight. The kitchen is a different colour, with different appliances, with no back door, half the size it once was because the walls have been moved. There are new rooms whose arrival and contents are both equally inexplicable. Your most cozy corner is now cold and uncomfortable. You must relearn the entire layout, from bathroom to basement, because moving around the way you once would only causes you to stub your toes, to trip, even to fall.

Your friends don’t understand why you no longer enjoy going back to your house, your home. They don’t understand why you screamed at the different closet, why the sunlight on the wall makes you nervous. Being in your own home now hurts and scares you. How can you possibly relax here? But this is still your same house, at your same address, the one that everybody knows. You can’t argue that it isn’t. And if you invite a friend inside, after ranting about everything that is different, they ask “Why did you change all this? It’s so much worse.”

What can you even say in return? “I didn’t”? That shit’s insane.

But that is how it feels, like I live in a house that isn’t my home. Sometimes I don’t recognise myself. Sometimes, on the worst days, I don’t know who I am any more.

“Where did you go?” ask the voices, entering through every crack. “What happened?”

---

Last summer, a man came roaring down my street in his flawless luxury emerald convertible. I remember him well. He had dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket and a hairstyle slick with oil, like he was being a parody of a rich man from an eighties film. He surged through the stop sign right in front of me and I let him know what I thought of his public display of privilege and indifference.

“Go a little faster, you cunt,” I yelled. “Maybe you can hit a kid.”

He swivelled his head, looked back over his shoulder and stared straight at me.

He also slowed down.

It was then that I realised the volume I must have used to project myself, over the noise of his engine and toward a driver already continuing down the street, meant a few of my neighbours had likely heard me too.

I’m not sure I cared.

I used to be a more modest and deferential person, and often that is still the case. But often it is not. I have less patience. I have less fear. And I have less trust.

The fear thing is great. Last autumn I walked across a narrow, quivering suspension bridge with no care for the drop below. Later, I found another far narrower, far smaller one and, all by myself, alone in the woods sixteen kilometres up a trail, I jumped up and down on the thing until it shook and swung.

I used to be terrified of heights.

My sense of fear isn’t gone. But it’s both so much more manageable and also, quite often, a thrill. It’s taken me a while to realise that I increasingly seek out things that are exciting, risky or extremely stimulating. I am frank with strangers. I am quick to make decisions. I am keen to try new things.

It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? That’s because it isn’t. Not all change is bad and not every consequence of my experience has been negative. Slowly, gradually, I am learning to appreciate a few of the changes, to lean into them. While one part of me feels sad that I’m less trusting than I used to be, another part of me sees this as more practical. I’m far quicker to drop something or someone like a rock the moment I sense things that I don’t like, and my sense for such things is certainly sharper than it used to be. Am I always right? I don’t know about that. Perhaps some people have been casualties of an overabundance of caution. Or paranoia.

That might just be the new cost of doing business.

---

It was some time in early 2020, while talking with my GP and taking some evaluations, that we began to look at my behaviour more closely. A year before, I’d talked extensively with a therapist about anxiety and about a growing sense of discomfort and distrust. I had far less patience, particularly for those who pushed boundaries, violated or were exploitative, often regardless of whether these things even involved or affected me. Anything that felt uncomfortably familiar, whether it was something I saw in a film, caught on the news or heard about on social media, could ruin my day. I would become jumpy, irritable, scared, or simply unable to do much beyond lie down and try everything I could to banish the feeling that my chest was being crushed. This might take hours. One evening, an ex found me curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. On another evening, a routine trip to see an exciting film turned into a sleepless night of panic and distress.

I began taking tests and found myself either dismissing the results or retaking them over and over in an attempt to get different answers. The outcomes kept telling me I had the symptoms of PTSD. This was far too dramatic a result and there had already been enough drama in my life already. I myself was too much drama.

Anyway, I thought, having the symptoms isn’t the same as having.

Sometimes I think about how, during some of my most difficult moments, the toughest weeks and months that I didn’t really know how I was going to get through, I made a lot of haphazard decisions motivated by panic and fear and ignorance, by doing my best to improvise and cope and adapt. Some things worked out. Some things did not. Probably the deciding factor there was luck and I’m not really sure I can look back with any wisdom or insight.

I didn’t always know what to do, what to say, who to trust, or how much to trust, how to respond to new information and changing situations, or what in holy hell might ever work out. My response to all of this was to keep secrets or to be cagey, to avoid places and people, to suddenly and liberally cut others off through a mix of ghosting, avoidance and outright blocking, or to occasionally have three-day long anxiety spikes in which I remained highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. During one of these, someone teasingly pushed me to take part in something that I didn’t want to, something that wasn’t even a big deal, and I was so close to breaking down that I had to almost run from my friends and find a quiet place to catch my breath, all the emotions in my body somehow pinched into a single point somewhere in my gut. During another, a laptop accidentally nudged half an inch sent me into panic mode, manifesting a feeling like a blade of ice slicing straight through my pulmonary artery.

These sorts of responses and behaviours would happen even in spite of all the various combinations of therapy and medication and support I was cycling my way through. I don’t feel proud of how I handled many of these things. I would love to be able to say that I handle them so much better now, with the aid of wisdom and insight. Perhaps sometimes I do.

Sometimes I have simply made terrible decisions and, looking back, I am still not sure how I might have ever done any different. I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further.

---

It’s a magnificent day as I write this. The world is jade and azure and gold. The sky is exquisitely, flawlessly blue. Every leaf is rich with the gloss of summer. The sun is setting into the sparkling sea beside a succession of fading distant mountain ridges, each hazier than the last, the furthest so indistinct it looks almost like mist, a ghost of an idea two thousand metres tall. Container ships the size of city blocks sleep in the bay, their hulls traced and wrinkled with rust from a lifetime of global migration. As the growing shadows of slowly swaying trees reach their way toward me, the last light of the day glides over the ground, over the grass and even over my body itself, like spilled wine gushing from a glass. It colours everything the sweet shade of nostalgia. The air is gently warm and the grass is soft beneath me.

I love days like this. They are one of the reasons why I moved here, why I put so much time and effort and energy into relocating halfway around the world. Into building the life that I wanted, piece by piece.

And I love so many of those pieces. I love my little apartment, with the balcony that I always wanted, with its ragtag assortment of secondhand furniture collected one item at a time, with its shelves tucked in here or squeezed in there, never quite tidy enough to look presentable. I love my walkable neighbourhood, with its shops and cafés and cats that follow me from block to block, or critters that peer out from between bushes in the rustling dusk. I love how low cloud creeps in to cover the tips of the skyscrapers downtown, or how the jagged outline of mountains shape the horizon in almost every direction. I love trying to make things, especially with other people, and the reward of being creative, of being silly or being funny. I love all the things I’ve learned to cook, or the ways I can warm myself up on a cold day, or the late nights I can so often indulge, with no care for what might come tomorrow.

I have so much to be grateful for and so much to be proud of. So much here. So much now.

Pretty soon, the sunset will transform the whole sky into a gradient of colour. Someone somewhere will be playing guitar on the beach, and maybe they’ll be good. Stars will appear in the sky, above the familiar urban zodiac traced out by the city lights of apartment buildings. If I stay up late again, the dawn sky will turn the royal blue of an emperor’s cloak. And then all of this will happen again.

I have so much to be grateful for. So much to appreciate.

---

A few weeks ago I had my first nightmare in some time. They still happen. The specifics matter less than the broad themes. Deception. Gaslighting. Manipulation. Boundary violation. All of it in plain sight, yet still unseen, making me feel like I’m helpless, like I’m crazy, like I have no hope of ever being believed.

I thought about it all day. The situations, the faces and the fears. This is the way it’s always been and once one of these nightmares visits you, it stays for a while. It’s like a small stain, an odour that gets into your clothes, the stink of cigarettes after a party the evening before.

Can you wash out a stain? Sometimes. With the right substances, with the correct regimen. And with some aggressive, persistent scrubbing.

One summer night years ago an ex woke me up because I had been thrashing about in my sleep. I had worried her by rolling around and muttering like a madman. Was I having a nightmare, she asked, and it wasn’t just that I was, but that I had them all the time. Every week, at least, each leaving that same gross feeling of violation and abuse. The anxiety medication that I had been prescribed was helping me sleep more, but it also seemed to make my dreams more vivid and profound. It was either that or barely being able to sleep at all, woken by the slightest of noises, up before the crack of dawn because some unresolved tension in my body overpowered all tiredness and fatigue. Even with medication, the smallest of things could still turn me into a nervous wreck, and one night I cried cross-legged on my bed as I explained to my ex not just that I had interpreted a few of her utterly inconsequential actions as a sign she wanted to leave me, but also that I might always be like this. Forever.

The nightmares began a few months after I burned my note. It was right after I opened up to another friend about what was going on in my life, and their response was to tell me about something else that had happened, the full story of an event from another six years before, from distant 2012.

It’s not my tale to tell, but six years is a long time to not know the full story of something. A long time to be deceived, to find out you’ve been lied to by someone you trust and that your ignorance has affected many decisions that you’ve made. Again, I am lucky that the vast, vast majority of those decisions didn’t fuck things up further. But some did.

Six years. It hit me then how long it can take for people to feel able to talk about something, as well as continue to be affected by it. How far the ripples travel and who they touch. And now, here I am, with my own six years.

That discovery was one of several experiences that transformed me into that person having three-day long anxiety spikes, remaining highly activated, oversensitive and endlessly insecure. That person thrashing about in his sleep. That person yelling “You cunt,” down his street.

---

I’ve written before about my physical health and my relationship to my body. I was anxious about things being wrong with it long before I had thorough examinations and validating diagnoses, but as part of those treatments I wrote about, a trio of doctors warned me about how stress was worsening every condition and symptom I experienced. Stress was ruining my health. I was having so many migraines that my GP sent me for an MRI that revealed how those migraines were changing the white matter in my brain.

I would have to do something about this.

Those doctors would help me do something about this, as would other professionals, and their help was invaluable. This would be impossible to tackle alone.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard say such things as “It’s not your responsibility to fix someone else,” and, while I don’t disagree, doesn’t such a phrase also imply it’s surely somebody’s responsibility, in this society that we all share, built from things that help us support one another?

Otherwise we’d be suggesting that people fix themselves.

Sometimes I think about people I’ve heard tell others, or themselves, or sometimes the world via the spontaneous and sneeze-like broadcasts of social media “It’s on you to fix your shit,” and I wonder if that’s where that sentence should terminate, if that’s exactly how it should be phrased, if those are really the words that everyone, or anyone, needs to hear.

Because sometimes I also think of another clumsy analogy I once put together. It’s a scenario in which I describe a pedestrian struck by a car, perhaps one driven by a rich cunt with dark sunglasses and a tan suit jacket, perhaps even one that has mounted the curb or surged into a crossing. The pedestrian is knocked down, maybe immobile from the pain and injury that comes from a broken pelvis or fractured leg. An ambulance is summoned, a customised vehicle equipped to transport them to a hospital. In that hospital, that specialised medical facility, a team of trained experts will use skills and equipment to triage and manage, to analyse the pedestrian’s injuries, to provide relief and to chart a course toward recovery. There will be x-rays, there will be drugs, there may well be physiotherapy. I doubt at any point that the person lying in the street would be told, by someone coming upon the scene, “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

No. Not any more than they’d be expected to walk to the hospital, to interpret their x-rays or to prescribe their own medication. Indeed, if they attempted any of these things themselves I wouldn’t be surprised if someone along the way communicated to them some more polite version of “What the holy fucking fuck do you think you’re doing?” and “You’re in no state to do this yourself, let alone know what you need,” and “Fucking hell. You’re at your most vulnerable right now. Fuuuck.”

Hopefully.

Once, many years ago, I knew someone who broke their pelvis. It takes months to recover, maybe a year or more for a limp to fully disappear. And it requires all kinds of help and oversight. It worked out. Doctors and medical professionals can be remarkable.

I have read a lot of books and papers over the last six years. I have listened to a lot of podcasts and interviews. I have been recommended a lot of material by therapists, by friends, by fellow PTSD sufferers. One well-known trauma expert I was pointed toward is Canadian psychologist Dr. Gabor Maté. And he says this:

”Everybody is born needing help.”

He means that it’s a fundamental element of the human experience.

---

Sometimes I go running and sometimes I go to the gym. The reasons I do this are complex, ranging from wanting to be healthier, to wanting to feel better about my body and how it behaves, to feeling like I am making progress with something. That last one is particularly important, because I’m doing something where I’m objectively able to recognise change.

When I run, an app tells me how far I ran and how long it took. I can’t disagree with the app, because it’s entirely objective, and so when I have a bad day, feel terrible and wonder what the point of anything is, the app still shows me that I achieved a reasonable or even an improved time.

It wasn’t always like this. I was bad at these things. I run better than I used to. I perform better at the gym than I used to. I have the metrics to prove it, and while I’m not a particularly dedicated or regular person with my exercise, I still keep at it and I still see improvements.

Whatever it is I’m doing, these apps and their statistics all offer me the same, very simple analysis:

“You’re doing better.”

I motivate myself to run, to go to the gym, to go on twenty-five kilometre hikes over difficult terrain, but I don’t do these things without some kind of help that comes from either expert resources, advice or training.

I don’t exist in a vacuum. None of us do.

---

Help is important because it offers things like perspective and expertise and informed advice. And don’t all of those things sound so extremely important?

How about we imagine that our immobilised pedestrian wasn’t collected by an ambulance. Let’s imagine instead that the driver of the car that hit them stepped out of their vehicle, shook their head, put their hands on their hips and said “Look what you’ve done.”

And then “It’s okay, I know what’s best for you,” before carrying the inert person into their car and driving away. Perhaps even unseen. No witnesses.

If such a thing happened, in this society that we all share, with that person at their most vulnerable, who is responsible then? Who is responsible for what happens next? Who is responsible when that pedestrian, forever limping, says things like “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have been walking there,” or “I should have been looking out,” or “I should have been more visible,” and so on?

A lot of accidents and injuries and collisions and whatnot can be traumatic, scary, confusing. “How do I make sense of this?” asks that person, whether carried away alone in a car, or surrounded by doctors in the emergency room, or anywhere else they may happen to find themselves. “How do I deal with this?” And who might be around them at that moment to help answer such things?

And what will they say?

Perhaps you know someone who was, metaphorically, struck by such a car, before being then carried away by a driver with all sorts of ideas about what’s best, and who later blamed themselves for everything that happened. I don’t know.

I do know how important it was to receive the right help from the right people.

---

It’s hard to know exactly what to do. You may respond to your trauma with a desire for revenge, retribution or restoration. You may not have the insight or the time or the means to do anything much at all. There is the ideal of what could or should happen when harm has been caused, but there is also the uncomfortable reality of how such things actually play out, of how long justice can take, of who is granted credibility, of how complex social dynamics can quickly become, of how awkwardly and uncomfortably people can react when they discover something they would rather not have, or that they have been misled, or so much more. We’ve all seen such things play out secondhand and firsthand.

I have had six years to consider the most helpful way to respond, the most constructive, the most positive and productive. I am still considering. I don’t have much in the way of answers or advice there.

Sometimes I think about the anonymous Broken Teapot essay, with all it has to say about the complexity of dealing with abuse dynamics, of harm happening within a group or community, about social consequences. It was written over a decade ago now, but it remains a very relevant piece of writing that brings up all sorts of considerations around responsibility, about trying to come to terms with trauma and abuse, and about how people might try to use systems or processes to try to solve things in unhelpful ways or even for their own ends.

People can have a lot of opinions about how to handle trauma, how to respond to abuse and how to leap into some sort of process of justice or accountability or reparation or even plain old revenge. So many opinions.

It’s exhausting.

Back in 2020 I tried to write something about all these complications and considerations that I was going to title The Calculus of Abuse. Like much else, it rots in my drafts folder.

Sometimes I think about how many of the ways that we push people to address both their trauma and the things or people that have caused their trauma only makes things worse. I am sceptical about the practicality, value and effectiveness of processes of justice, reparation and accountability. I think a lot of people believe that they will fix things, that they will be fair, that they will spotlight situations and systems and people that cause harm. That, in this cold and unflinching exposure, justice will be done and books will be closed on long and difficult stories.

And I think that’s because we see this happen now and then. Sometimes it happens very publicly. It seems to at least occasionally all work out.

Sometimes I think about friends who were excluded from social circles because they spoke up about something creepy or problematic, because it mattered less what actions or behaviour someone had demonstrated, even what could be proven, and much more who was more popular, or that the status quo be maintained, or that applecarts not be upset. I think about how different people share or don’t share their traumas and their experiences, what they include and what they leave out. I think about people who weren’t believed, people who were misrepresented, people who were shut down. I think about people who spent so long trying to get a handle on their trauma that any thing or person they might want to stand up to already had so much time to prepare, to seed the ground, to dig in, to get a head start. And I even think about the capacity people have to improve, to feel regret, to move forward as better humans. It’s a potential that I hope exists in us all and the writer Kai Cheng Thom seems to agree, saying that even those who cause harm themselves need help to “exit harmful behaviour patterns.”

Sometimes I think about what a friend of mine said about abusive people just being "regular people with very limited tools." And that’s not so different from a child. Doesn’t that make you feel sad?

I think about all of these things because how could you not? How could you not worry about how taking action to address a terrible thing would, in fact, only make that terrible thing even worse?

There is a paper by the American psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman called Justice From the Victim’s Perspective that touches on how many processes and pushes toward addressing abuse and trauma can be retraumatising, without any guarantee they will lead to a meaningful outcome or significant change. It touches on how legal processes and systems can be manipulated to further harm and harass those seeking redress, or how disparities of power and status and money can immediately put the damaged and disadvantaged people who try this on the back foot. It touches on difficulties presented by such things as burden of proof, especially combined with the challenge of a memory minced by traumatic events. How does someone demonstrate and prove trauma, or gaslighting, or manipulation, or anything else?

It also talks about how not everybody seeks such things as justice, restitution, revenge, or not always in the ways that we think, and for a multitude of reasons. These can vary from worrying they won’t be believed or that the process will serve them, to wanting to move on, to the idea that it may be pointless, as some “offenders are empathetically disabled… not capable of a meaningful apology, so they can never provide anything to victims that would be useful.”

Both this and the Broken Teapot essay also feature people examining how they themselves have handled abuse and trauma. I think this is probably the most difficult part of many years of therapy, reading and reflection. Sure, it sucks to have been harmed by an event, a situation, a person or a system, but at some point you also start asking yourself difficult questions like “How do I avoid something like this again?” and “Did I do anything that made this worse?” and “Was I codependent, did I enable someone or did I perpetuate something with my reactions or my responses?”

“Abuse dynamics aren’t so simple,” says the Broken Teapot essay, at one small but very important moment, not long after “I was not solely ‘a victim’. Is anyone?” And, after all those years of therapy, reading and reflection, I’ve come to believe that abusive people and systems gain at least some of their power from how you interact with and respond to them. If we were, all of us, perhaps better informed, we might understand, avoid or escape so many difficult things so much sooner.

And while both the Broken Teapot essay and Justice From the Victim’s Perspective talk a lot about sexual assault, their considerations and their examinations of consequence are more broadly applicable. This reflects how I find myself relating to so many stories of trauma and abuse, regardless of what the specifics of any incidents might be. It’s because I recognise the same things in the subsequent developments, reactions and outcomes, much like I might recognise the same chord pattern in different songs. I see people trying to understand their own changing behaviours, trying to articulate why they won’t do a particular thing or go to a particular place any more, trying to both explain and understand how their body or their health has been affected. The specifics don’t need to be the same for so many of the consequences to be. And I recognise and am much more attuned to recognising those consequences.

Both these pieces of writing are also very good at illustrating one of the most important things that you can learn about trauma, and that is, whatever happens or whatever choices you make, things can never be put back in the box.

Trauma is never erased.

---

Here’s what I think is another of the most important things we can learn about trauma, which is that people are generally very bad at dealing with it and are even worse at dealing with it if they are unsupported. And even if they have all the support in the world, they are probably still going to make bad choices, self-sabotage, lose perspective and do things they regret.

They will probably be foolish, be confused and be likely to make choices that could hurt other people. They may not have great insight or work against their own best interests. That doesn’t mean that they get a free pass. It doesn’t mean we are obliged to simply accept these behaviours. But I think these are realistic expectations that we should have.

In his pioneering book The Body Keeps the Score, the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk writes that many trauma responses are “irrational and largely outside people's control,” coming from people who are “rarely in touch with the origins of their alienation.” An awful lot of the book is about helping such people to find ways past this, rather than disregarding them or pushing them away, even though this will be difficult. I don’t remember anything in the book that comes close to “It’s on you to fix your shit.”

---

While one part of me wishes many things had not happened, feeling both weaker and sadder, another part of me acknowledges that I have gained new skills and strengths. And one of the best things about what I’ve gained is that all this doesn’t just help me, but can also be applied to help others.

That’s a good thing.

I’m a tiny bit wiser than I used to be. A lot of reading and talking to experts and digesting all sorts of media leaves its mark. It’s not just that I know a little more about myself and my experiences, it’s that I can now better recognise parallels to those experiences in other people’s situations, behaviours and pasts. I anticipate slightly better, seeing problems further ahead, and I have a stronger sense of what I need to drop or to avoid.

I’m doing better.

---

I don’t have much that I can write here in terms of the specifics of therapy. I would describe a lot of the process of unpacking and analysing the causes of my PTSD as being extremely painful, like trying to both tidy up and then reassemble broken glass with your bare hands. The things that brought about your PTSD are shameful and harrowing. Their analysis can also be, through a process that can variously be sad, scary, frustrating, educational, validating and empowering. It takes a long time and requires expert assistance, which means the help you need can be a somewhat scarce resource and very, very expensive.

You pay for your trauma for a very long time.

---

I discovered one of the most beautiful sounds in the world some time after 2016, some unknown amount of time after I moved into this apartment of mine, with its balcony and its skyscraper views. I don’t remember now when I first heard it, but it’s been years now and I still adore it whenever it happens. It’s small and subtle and can happen at almost any time of night or day. It’s a sound that makes me think of safety and independence, of making my own space and then occupying it. Of security and stability.

I really, really appreciate security and stability. Much as I increasingly seek out change and crave new experiences or opportunities, these things feel so much better if I can enjoy them with the understanding that I have some sort of foundation under me. Something solid. No matter how small or how far away. Some place of safety.

The sound happens when it’s raining. Whatever metal it is that rings my balcony is hollow, so that when rainfall strikes it, it responds with a kind of subtle but sonorous singing. This ringing isn’t the specific sound I’m talking about, though. That sound is slightly different, something that rises above this other background arrangement.

When a particularly large drop of water hits my balcony railing, it gives a flat, gentle ping of appreciation. The background patter of the other raindrops will continue and then, again, after some irregular interval, presumably as water has collected from the balcony above into a particularly large drop, the ping will sound again.

I heard it one morning this spring, months ago now, right after I woke up and not long after I had started writing all this. I lay there in bed on a day the colour of slate and cigarette smoke and I thought about how the world is made up of so many beautiful, tiny things. Ping, goes one of them, and maybe nobody else on the planet notices or cares. But I try to remind myself of this and how my life is full of so many other probably stupid little things that I like, that I love. Don’t lose these things, I try to tell myself. Don’t forget about them and don’t forget to notice them when they happen. You gave yourself so many more of them when you chose to stay alive.

You get a lot of time to think on days the colour of slate and cigarette smoke.

---

You’ll notice I say “sometimes I think about” a lot here, when reflecting on less positive things, and you might consider this a writing device or a cheap hook or some other writer’s cheat. It partly is, but it’s also a truth. I do think about these things, and so many other things, very often. I think about one or another of them almost all of the time. I find it very hard not to think, to turn my brain off, and the unfortunate truth is that it reminds me about things to do with my trauma almost every day. It has done so for six years now and, as we’ve already established, six years is a long time.

Evenings can be the most difficult time. While I’ve always had a flippant attitude toward sleep schedules, I never used to have trouble going to bed. Some nights my brain will never switch off. My memory is overflowing. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, it makes no difference if I’m exhausted. The rules around sleep are different now and I think I’m still trying to relearn them.

One therapist described the traumatised mind as like an overflowing wastepaper basket full of difficult memories that are constantly falling out. Any new addition can cause one or many of them to spill and scatter. Time and therapy can help to more properly sort them and make space for other, new things.

What a good analogy.

Occasionally, there might be a suggestion of ADHD sent my way. I can understand why things would look that way and a lot has been said by people more experienced than I about how ADHD and PTSD can seem similar. I think if ADHD had ever been the case some mental health professional or other member of the medical community that I’ve dealt with would have spotted this by now. But no. I’m distracted by some memory or flashback. I’m avoidant, or I’m in need of some thrill or stimulation. I might be full of nervous energy or unusually, intensely focused on something because it feels so good to be thinking about something I enjoy.

And sometimes things are bounding out of that wastepaper basket like clowns out of a clown car. I can feel like I've lost a lot of control over my mind and it's all I can do to rein it in. Some days I have coping strategies and some days I'm sick of it and wish I didn't need to have to cope.

And so I keep myself busy with the stimulation and the novelty that I crave. With people. With events. With runs, with the gym and with twenty-five kilometre hikes. Whatever it takes, whenever I can. It’s not ideal. I’m still figuring out what I need. I don’t always get the balance right. Sometimes unexpected things make me very emotional, either very sad or very frustrated, and I rarely know in advance what might do that. Sometimes I sleep less than four hours a night. Sometimes I want to be alone. Sometimes I desperately need company. I probably seem very strange.

But, let’s not forget, in the past I would lose whole days. For hours, my chest would feel like it was being crushed. I might be found curled up on the floor, ashamed of my own sadness. The nightmares would come every week. So things have clearly, obviously, demonstrably improved.

I’m doing better.

---

I still suck at writing. I don’t know how to fix that yet. I still very regularly feel like there is a gulf between me and so many other people, even my friends. I still have outsize reactions to irrelevant, immaterial things. I still lack confidence in my own personal calibration. "Many traumatised people find themselves chronically out of sync with the people around them,” writes Bessel van der Kolk. Yeah.

Toward the end of its six season existence there is an episode of BoJack Horseman where an actor reacts angrily to some improvisation and unexpected physical contact that happens during filming. Her colleagues are confused as to why she does this, and perhaps she doesn’t understand herself, but we the audience know that this a response to a physical assault by the titular character some time before. She never finds out, but this leads to her missing out on perhaps the biggest opportunity of her life, after a director discreetly describes her as erratic.

There is no further development with this plotline, no resolution to be had. Nobody finds out why she is like this, nor wants to, nor sets things on a new, better course. I try to remind myself that this sort of thing can be happening all the time, to try and grant people some grace and compassion, but also I try to remind myself that this is me. I have my versions of this behaviour. Maybe fewer than I used to, but still. I can be erratic and I have to face the consequences of that, as well as minimise it as much as I can.

I recently stopped buying fresh fruit from my local store because they would repeatedly put mouldy, furry produce on display. The last time I discovered this, I was holding up a box of ostensibly shiny, blood-red strawberries to once again discover the mass of fuzz hidden underneath. Food is expensive enough as it is, I thought, and it doesn’t also need to be garbage. Too late, the look on the face of the customer standing next to me clued me in to how vocal I’d been with my three-word expression of disgust and displeasure.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

---

You’ve read a little about my first dream, about old friends. You’ve read a little about my second dream, the nightmare. Here comes my third, from earlier this summer.

I dreamt that I was trying to get home again. I was confused about where I was, trying to remember a route through unfamiliar Vancouver alleys. It was evening, not yet dark, but the time between when you lose the long shadows cast by the last of the sunlight and begin to wear the rich, jewelled canvas of the stars. None of the people I stopped and spoke to knew the streets I named. None of the alleyways I walked down took me in familiar directions.

I never found my way home, but I never stopped trying. Perhaps this does indeed mean I haven’t reached the end of whatever journey I’m on, that I can’t yet return to the start. I think it’s both practical and pragmatic for me to accept that the next six years might still present me with many challenges. That I will have bad, directionless days. That sometimes I’m going to fuck up and fall short.

I woke up to another bright, warm summer’s day, far later than I meant to, and I made myself a fine cup of coffee and a rich breakfast that I would be foolish not to enjoy.

Sometimes I think about suicide. Those thoughts haven’t left me yet and I’m not sure they ever will. Sometimes they arrive strong and loud and insistent, from out of nowhere and with all the power of a thunderbolt in a storm. Sometimes I want to be a shining example of how to conquer PTSD and sometimes I'm so sad I can’t get out of bed and sometimes I am just pissed off and angry. Each day is still different. But tomorrow I will wake up and perhaps I will think to myself “There are blue skies today,” or perhaps I will hear ping, or perhaps I won’t need anything at all to feel great. And perhaps there will be some undeniable sign in the day’s events, in my behaviour, even in the world around me, that demonstrates to me how much I’ve improved.

Each day is still different and today the glib part of my personality says “I sure hope you’ve improved, it’s been six years! That’s six years of painful PTSD examination, therapy, medication, reading, research, specialist appointments, many thousands of dollars spent and a god damn MRI of your weird and messed up brain.” And am I being disrespectfully flippant of my own experiences when I add that having an MRI of my brain was, at least, kind of cool?

Because another part of my personality wants to remind me I’m wiser, braver and maybe even a little more able to help others, people who I will remind myself can’t be expected to fix their own shit alone. People who shouldn’t be pushed aside, in this society that we all share.

And I don’t regret calling that cunt a cunt.

It’s been six years and each day is still different and this morning, when I pause to ask myself how I’m doing, I find I have the most simple of answers.

It’s three words.

“I’m doing better.”

#PTSD #mental health #survivor #suicide prevention #writing #patreon

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stillhavetodothat · 1 year

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Replaying Nancy Drew without Cheating - Part 11: Secret of the Old Clock

UGHH. I am so torn on how to even discuss this game. Do I absolutely love the 1930s gimmick, to honor the anniversary of the Nancy Drew books? Of course. It is adorable, and it is charming. I recently read the first 4 books of the Nancy Drew series, which was an interesting experience (the narrator never fails to mention how attractive Nancy is, nor how absolutely flawless she is in everything she does), but it does make me appreciate more the fact that HerInteractive decided to make this game. I can now forgive them for creating a hole in the space-time continuum by randomly plopping an 18-year-old Nancy down in 1930 in between two current-day games, which my young mind could neither understand nor accept.

In general, though, this game may be one of my least favorites that I’ve played so far in the Replaying Nancy Drew Without Cheating project. I don’t DISLIKE any Nancy Drew game by any means, but this one had a lot of tedium. I mean a lot. It manages to be an extremely easy game with some of the most frustrating puzzles of any game - I’m thinking mini golf, Jim Archer’s wife’s dress, driving your car and delivering telegrams. By the end, I wasn’t sad for it to be over.

Was I tempted to cheat this game? No, not once. I’m not sure if the games are getting easier as I go on, if my patience is growing in resolve, or if the gameplay is just more linear, or maybe a combination of all three, but it has been a few games since I’ve felt like I needed a hint. This game is perfect if you want to relax, enjoy some bright colors and upbeat vintage music, or think 1930s slang is delightful; ultimately though, it is a bit forgettable.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. I'll give props to the opening of the game with this cut-scene. You really dive head-first into small town America, nearly a century ago, complete with a fun narration to really get you in the mood. Who is Emily Crandall? Why DID she invite Nancy out to the Lilac Inn? What IS the Lilac Inn? It gets you brimming with questions, and you’re not even out of the car yet.

2. I know this is low-hanging fruit as far as complaints go, and anyone who has played this game has probably mentioned it at one point or another, but the driving interface is a nightmare. I switched between using my keyboard and using my mouse, but each option was equally torturous. My goal this playthrough was to have to deliver as few telegrams as possible, and I still heard “WELCOME TO ZIPPY’S!!” squawked at me over half a dozen times.

3. I really wish the people of Titusville would stop insulting me by acting like they WOULD give me a tip, with some bullshit excuse as to why they can’t. Everyone in that town can suck it as far as I’m concerned.

4. Speaking of the asshole residents of Titusville, by far one of the most irritating parts of the game is that infinitely long quest you’re sent on just to get that stupid trivet (ultimately ended up being necessary, but Christ bro, the fact that I needed to bring 5 toys to Mrs. O’Shea, FREE OF CHARGE, just to get raffle tickets that were already owed to Miss Jakowski, AND THEN MRS. O’SHEA HAD THE GALL TO TELL ME SHE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE TICKETS AND I HAD TO GO PICK THEM UP MYSELF??? My blood was BOILIN).

5. Is this the one and only game with TWO culprits? And are these the two most loathesome culprits in the entire world? In all honesty, I hate Jane mostly because she is absolutely hideous. Her weaponized incompetence grinds my gears, and yes, the fact that she is putting a vulnerable, recently orphaned minor through hell in the hopes of a profit is certainly morally evil, but it’s mostly that face and horrible, bottle-dyed hairstyle (did they have bottle dye in the 1930s?). Richard Topham is just a loon with the stiffest, most awkward posture I’ve ever seen. I can’t stand conversing with either of them.

My god, just look at that face.

6. This is a weird period for the ND characters. I feel like the devs were trying something out here? They are so blurry, their movements so unnatural. I think Her is on the prescipice of improved animation, but they aren’t quite there yet.

7. Puzzles I enjoyed: Bard’s Bounce (taken from some of the earlier games, and I enjoy it every time). The pies (love a good logic puzzle, and those things looked delicious). Using the HAM radio to talk to Josiah’s old radio friends (Josiah seemed like an interesting guy, so I actually enjoyed this aspect of the story-telling).

Puzzles I did not enjoy: Mini-golf (I saw recently somewhere that you should save between each hole you get par on, so that if you fail the next hole you can just open your old save. This is absolutely genius and would have saved me so much heartache. Why is this game so hard? Why is “I hit it too hard” the only thing Nancy knows how to say in this entire segment?). Sewing the dress (this is, first of all, not how sewing works at all). Topham’s idiotic guess-the-card challenge (did I mention how much of an idiot this guy is?).

8. The number of times I had to watch some of these cut-scenes, like the golf ball on the train or the shed’s attic opening up, was excessive. I appreciate the animations, but don’t make me watch it 10 times in a row.

9. I found it absolutely hilarious that at the end of the game, when you’re chasing Jane around town, if you lose her or fail to cut her off at the state line, the newspapers somehow make it your fault. Not hers for committing fraud, or for grand theft, but yours, a random teenager, for not driving like enough of a maniac as you for some reason take law enforcement into your own hands.

I wish I had more positive things to say about this game. It's a nice change of pace, coming on the heels of Curse of Blackmoor Manor. It’s fun. It’s cute. It just isn’t my favorite. Curse of Blackmoor is probably my all-time favorite, and Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon is up there too, so CLK is a bit of a bump in the road for me.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #nancy drew pc games #herinteractive #secret of the old clock #clk

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tsfs-dragon · 1 year

Text

Finally finished the DLC.

You know.... the first story DLC for Xenoblade was XBC2: Torna the Golden Country. And in all honesty, that first time was their best work without a doubt. I felt that some things could have gone on a bit longer to flesh out things a little more. But all in all Torna really filled out events and characters as we see them in the main game. And sadly all DLC stories after that fell so short.

With Xenoblade Definitive Edition’s DLC story (yeah in all honesty it technically isn’t one but since it was mostly a remaster of shorts adding that and the challenge area in the base game was to likely help sell this game as the usual $60 and it plays exactly like a DLC story) Future Connected, and it was mid at best. A story that doesn’t really progress the main story as a whole. The big old fog beast plot is really as it is... nothing but hot air with no substance and easily forgettable.

Now you have Xenoblade 3 you have the Future Redeemed. There will be SPOILERS for this part. It just seems like any time “future” is added to DLC story titles it ends up not being good. And in this case is just worse. I was hoping.... WISHING that this story would patch stuff up that messed up with Xenoblade 3′s story but it doesn’t and even goes so far to spit in the face of fans. Though how fans can look at this experience and no be pissed off confuses me. It sticks with the “world split in two” even though the last games have nothing that supports this. There is constant talk about how “how if ‘they’ (Pyra and Mythra) where here” which is a question and really points to the flaws of this story. Why are they NOT there!? Pyra and Mythra would have fixed all this no problems but the creators of this game had have them not be involved because they would have easily fix things meaning no bullshit bad guy coming for no reason. What was the reason because they were just in Smash Brothers Ultimate the whole time? We see images of Klaus’s world, which again has ruins of that in the XBC2 world and not the first one. Characters like Shulk and Rex bring up some stuff in relation to their world but sadly it all feels empty and hollow as I would much rather play those games instead and not a game whose story is going to be wiped out like it was Sonic 06. It throws in Alvis as the baddie in this story with no real relation to the events going on. Could have just have Z as the main baddie in the story and it wouldn’t have mattered. Lore for this game just throws everything out the window without caring what came before. Titans have no value other and just to be there an look pretty. Nothing about them informs the world and makes it meaningful. All races are human despite those clearly not being human to the point where you just wonder why they didn’t just call Nopons humans if they cared so little. Characters like Glimmer should have clearly been alive for the events of the main story considering her being part Blade with a crystal that is the same as the Trinity Processor but NOOOOO, that would be logical. Made worse since with the race thing treats the aging process for the other races the game as a human even though they are not. Eunie is part High Entia yet ages like a normal human. Which to inform you there as a pure breed High Entia child that was in the 90s age range. The events that created the worlds of XBC and XBC2 it wasn’t just the Earth, it effected the whole UNIVERSE yet the narrative focuses on their planet exclusively. Then around the end you hear a radio talking and it isn’t lore important. It’s all just references to other things with no solid ground. One reference is the game of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is strange since it feels like they want to forget that game. People claim that this ties X to the other games but not really. From what I looked up people left the planet because of aliens attacking and not just “oh let’s look around and live on other planets just cause”. All it does is share a name and that’s it, since with Klaus’s experiment effecting the universe I’m sure all of the people that left the planet and aliens that are out there all but dead and in ruins making the events of X happening within the 3 XB games unlikely. Same goes for a reference to Xenosaga. Don’t know if it was that game or another Xeno game, but it was just there in name only and that’s it.

At the end of the day I had hopes for this game and while characters are good and gameplay is alright at best, this game along with the DLC disappointed me to no end. The story and lore that was built up so much in the games before really just seemed to be lit on fire without a care, replace it all with trash that we are told is “good”. If Monolith Soft goes on to make another Xenoblade game unless it’s an X remaster to see what that game is like, then I can’t imagine buying any future games of that series. What would they tarnish next in future installments, character’s, gameplay? From XBC2 they could have gone up form there. The Definitive Edition of XBC was just a remaster and the DLC story wasn’t as good as it could have been. And we ended up with Xenoblade Chronicles 3, honestly the worst game in the series and I’m seriously regretting getting the paid DLC for it.

#xenoblade chronicles 3

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jrpneblog · 10 months

Text

Time Gentleman please!

The torture goes on for North End fans with the third defeat in seven days , this time 0-2 at home to lowly QPR. It wasnt the fact that we lost this particular encounter it was the manner in which it was lost. Following on from a horror show on Tees-side on Tuesday evening North End produced another, sideways, backwards, punchless, toothless, couldn't care less and possession without impact shit show. It left those who were inside Deepdale at the final whistle, and there weren't many, pondering at just where we go next with a manager clearly not up to the task of getting the best from his charges. QPR were timid in the first half to be honest but we never looked like scoring and after the break the visitors just stepped up their game and won quite comfortably in the end. North End were appalling once again and after a freezing night at Middlesbrough on Tuesday watching the dross Lowe is serving up it was one step too far to see an almost repeat performance at home in front of the watching nation. It was embarrassing.

Lowe made three changes from the eleven who allegedly played at the Riverside in midweek with Browne, Holmes and Ramsay coming in for Ledson, Best and Potts. In an instantly forgettable first half it took us fifteen minutes to get near goal with Evans effort easily dealt with. Dykes was lucky to stay on the field half way through the first half when an elbow went right into Andrew Hughes mouth but the referee deemed it a yellow when on another day it could have been very different. The visitors had a couple of half chances towards the end of the first period but in all honesty it was one of the biggest forty five minute non-events we have seen at Deepdale for some time. We had plenty of possession in the first stanza but did absolutely nothing with as we looked very much like a side who didn`t believe in the brand of football they had been instructed to play. It was a woeful opening half.

North End introduced Liam Millar after the break but the significant change was the visitors bringing on Ilias Chair who went on to dominate things for the Hoops. Within ten minutes of the restart Chair had set up the opening goal for Rangers as his ball across the goal found Smyth at the back post and he bundled to the ball into the net to give the visitors the lead. Woodman had a couple more good saves to make as Chair and Dozzell tried their luck against a North End side clearly bereft of any ideas on what to do to break the visitors down. With three minutes of normal time remaining QPR closed out the game as Chair sent a ball across again to the back post and Willock made no mistake from close range. It was the cue for a mass exodus from the stands at Deepdale and I would wager there were less than two thousand inside the stadium when the final whistle went. There were not that many boos as, I believe, a majority of people have just given up on the current regime regarding the manager and his ability to get the best from his players and some consistency in their performance.

People who know me and read this blog will know I am not one who calls for the head of the manager after a couple of defeats. Ryan Lowe has given the fans some good days especially on the road but the general manner of the performances and of the managers complete inability to take full personal responsibility leads me, unfortunately, to say I think it is time for a change in the managers office at Deepdale. Not all will agree with that statement and I understand and respect peoples opinions. However, having seen every one of Ryan Lowe`s ninety six competitive games and taking into account we have taken just nine points from the last thirty three on offer, sadly he no longer has my support. Time, Gentlemen please!

PRESTON 0-2 QPR

WOODMAN 6

STOREY 5 LINDSAY 6 HUGHES 5

RAMSAY 5 WHITEMAN 4 BROWNE 5 HOLMES 6

FROKJEAR 5 KEANE 5

EVANS 6

Subs:

MILLAR 6

McCANN 5

STEWART 5

WOODBURN 5

MOTM: Duane Holmes

Attendance 14,280

Preston Fans 13,738 (96.2%).

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astrognossienne · 4 years

Text

the sun’s shadow

Anything which casts “light” such as the sun, also casts a shadow.

The Sun is a star, not a planet, and I see our Sun sign referring to our innate stellar nature. We are all, in potential, stars. But that doesn't mean everyone with a sun sign has the will, imagination and energy to actually become a star.

The sun sign describes our "goal” of "becoming" ourselves. Obviously the Moon and ascendant and everything else is important, but if we "go with" our sun sign, we'll generally be more content as individuals. So a Cancer sun is "supposed" to be somewhat sensitive, tenacious, intuitive, dark horses, pioneers in emotional intelligence, low-key the baddest in the game, etc. The temperament of the sun sign is needed for this incarnation and a Sun in Cancer acting like a Sun in Cancer will be more content, etc. However, a failure to do so, can often lead to a "fall" to the opposite sign in the axis, meaning you act like your opposite sign instead. In order to get the most out of your sun sign you should look to the opposite sign, note the strengths of the sign, try to incorporate them into your mentality and then use that as a foundation to experience and make the most of your sun sign.

If however, you don't “go with” your sun sign (and all other chart factors being equal) then you will fall into the opposite sign and experience and project the “worst” of that sign. I have been thinking a lot about this lately due to my own observations as well as some other opinions/discussions by individuals online (here on tumblr and elsewhere) and have noticed that some of these reactions are, in my opinion, the negative traits of their opposite sun-sign (especially when it comes to certain signs...)

At any rate, this is my theory. Make of it what you will.

Aries - worst of Libra - indecisive, lazy, manipulative “diplomacy”, vain, superficial, too impressionable, craves popularity, lacks a spine, scared of confrontation, a “yes person” Taurus - worst of Scorpio - brutal, dark, self-destructive/destructive in general, obsessive, sexual dependence/vampirism, abusive, sadistic, emotionally demanding, extreme, vengeful Gemini - worst of Sagittarius - naive, gullible, opinions based without fact, unsympathetic, insensitive, dreamer, banal, restless, if you don’t kiss their ass they’re out for blood, has no sense of boundaries, too much emphasis on “brutal honesty” Cancer - worst of Capricorn - greedy, cold, evil, power hungry, brutal, sadistic, misers, manipulative (especially with money), flinty, abusive, robotic, vicious, calculating, selfish, insensitive, egotistical, blackmailing Leo - worst of Aquarius - "everyone MUST be the same", too interested in being “special” or “one of a kind”, cold, arrogant, "uniformity or exclusion!" attitudes, lacks confidence Virgo - worst of Pisces - doormats, whiners, liars, temperamental, substance abuse issues, insecure, overly hypersensitive, doesn’t know the meaning of the word boundaries, tries to be something they’re not, doesn't value/like themselves and projects this negativity onto others by being disrespectful, low self-esteem, martyrdom, oversensitive, vague, wishy-washy, impractical Libra - worst of Aries - rude, abrasive, disrespectful, confrontational, selfish, brash, self-righteous, aggressive, overly and unnecessarily blunt Scorpio - worst of Taurus - possessive, intolerant, over-indulgent, dogmatic, stubborn, lazy, boring, too materialistic Sagittarius - worst of Gemini - cynical, “facts only”, superficial, skeptical, fickle, indecisive, talks too much, spreads themselves too thin, has an inappropriate sense of humour/uses humour at inappropriate times Capricorn - worst of Cancer - emotionally smothering, crybabies, forgettable, passive-aggressive, reactive, manipulative, clips their partners/children’s wings because they “need” them, oversensitive Aquarius - worst of Leo - melodramatic, arrogant, delusions of grandeur, starts shit for no reason, aggressive, condescending, obnoxious, overreacts, selfish, attention seeking, dictatorlike - “I must lead the group, and group must be like me” Pisces - worst of Virgo - an obnoxious “know/seen it all”, compulsive, insecure, too analytical to cover up their sensitive nature, hypercritical, sees world/people in terms of “good” or “bad”, cannot see the forest from the trees, whiners, nitpicky

#sun #astrology #mine

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kuroopaisen · 4 years

Text

12:54 am || kozume kenma

➵ some important introductions are finally made.

wc: 1496

warnings: gn!reader, kenma is a youtube g*mer

a/n: gracie dear, this one is for you! i remember you saying you were looking forward to it. you’re one of the loveliest people i’ve chatted to on here and you have such a kind and gentle heart. thank you for having such an accepting and calming vibe and you’re so so easy to talk to, it’s very relaxing! your blog is such a positive space you and you make me feel the big ❤️ bless your dear heart, and i hope that november is kind to you!

The sun is long gone, the sky above Tokyo draped with velvet midnight. It looks like the kind of night you’d want to go out and experience, to walk around the ever-bustling city centre, to watch the sky in the hope of seeing something that’ll make your heart stutter in your chest.

But you don’t have the energy for that this evening.

Your honours project is sucking all it can out of you. You’re not surprised, of course, but that doesn’t make the experience any less irritating. You’re at that point where you just need to push a little more and polish it off; but as always, that’s the hardest part. Trying to thread together every section into something that’s not only coherent, but also of passable quality is harder than you’d given it credit for.

It’s the time of night when your eyes feel like they’re about to dribble out of their sockets like candle wax, and you’re aware that you’re not going to get anything of substance done now. You sigh, squinting at your laptop screen.

12:54 AM.

You blink your sore eyes rapidly. Was it really that late?

You stretch your arms above your head, feeling the strain in your muscles. You want nothing more than to curl up in bed with your boyfriend, letting the stresses of the day fade away as you run your fingers through his hair. He usually lets you at this hour, melting into your touch in a way he wouldn’t usually during the day.

It’s much too late for you to get anything of worth down for this assignment.

As you stand up, you swear you can hear every bone in your body crack. You don’t just want to go to bed, you need to get some rest.

But there’s no way you’re going alone.

You totter down the hall as quietly as you can, balancing yourself on your tiptoes. Kenma’s gaming room sits at the end of the hall, chosen for its decent acoustics and spaciousness. You tease him for his set up all the time – ‘epic gamer’ is your favourite moniker, and currently crowns your LINE messages.

You and Kuroo had even made him a little sign for his birthday. It’s a plaque stuck to the door that reads, “WARNING! Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my Epic Gamer moment.”

You grin at it as the door creaks open.

Kenma’s clicking away on his computer as he sits at his desk, eyes narrowed and a little pout on his lips. You smile to yourself; he looks so cute like this, so focused and intense. He doesn’t tend to get like this about anything else, but gaming had a way of drawing the intensity out of him.

You can’t help but wonder if he was like this during his volleyball days in high school, analysing the court in the moment. You’ve never seen him play, and you doubt you ever will. He pays Hinata to do that, after all. You’re glad that such a bright boy is part of your boyfriend’s life. Between you, Kuroo, and Hinata, there’s no fear of Kenma going unloved.

You give him a small wave from the door.

Recognition flashes in his eyes as he catches sight of you, the smallest of smiles gracing his face. Someone outside of your relationship might assume that doesn’t count for much; a tiny, forgettable little gesture that isn’t worth taking note of. But you know how to read Kenma.

His gaze flicks back to his screen.

“You all want to know that bad, huh?” He teases, even though his voice is still monotone.

‘Know what?’ you mouth.

“They want to know what made me smile,” Kenma tilts his head at you, and you swear your heart is about to bloom into a kaleidoscope of light.

You nod, tottering over to him as he rolls his chair back. He’s left just enough space for you to sit. You settle yourself down on his lap like it’s second nature, and he loops his arms around your waist. Usually, that wouldn’t make you blush. But, knowing a significant portion of his viewership were watching this happen in real time brings a certain nervousness to mind.

He props his chin on your shoulder, as he always does. For once, he’s more casual than you; he’s in his element, immersed in a game and bolstered by people who adore him. It’s all you could want for him.

“Yeah, this is my partner,” he hums, small smile playing at his lips.

You see the chat rush by on the corner of his screen, but you opt not to look. Doing so would only make you more nervous.

“They want to know how long we’ve been together,” he says, conspicuously dropping the question in your lap.

You grin, fighting the urge to roll your eyes. “Officially, two years,” you smile. “But basically three.”

He chuckles lightly, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. “They also want to know how we met.”

“I was Kuroo’s roommate in university,” you say, well-aware of Kuroo’s much-loved presence on Kenma’s channel. “He decided I’d be a good friend for Kenma so he wrestled me into their little duo. He likes to say that us getting together was part of his plan all along, but I have my doubts.”

In all honesty, you’re surprised by how relaxed your reveal is. You’ve been worried about it for the past year, fearing the backlash that romantic partners of youtubers – especially gaming Youtubers – tend to receive.

Kenma had told you it would be okay, that you won’t have anything to worry about.

It feels nice, just sitting in his lap, getting to be part of this little world of his.

You stay for the next fifteen minutes or so, answering a myriad of questions pinged your way; was Kenma the same as he is in his videos? Does he ever sleep? Do you game with him much? Does he go easy on you in 1-v-1’s or is he ruthless?

“Thanks everyone,” Kenma yawns, propping his chin on your shoulder. “We’ve run over time, but you guys did a great job today.”

You bite back a giggle as you listen to his ‘Youtuber Outro Voice,’ which was just a shade brighter than his normal cadence.

You sit patiently as he wraps up, mentioning something about his next upload and the charity this stream was for. You know it’s got something to do with ensuring that children with disabilities are offered opportunities to take part in sports, and to help schools accommodate for that. You’re pretty sure Kuroo’s the one who linked your boyfriend up with them; you often teased him for ‘exploiting’ kodzuken’s following for charity.

Kenma clicks off the stream, letting out a long sigh as his shoulders deflate.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, nestling his face in the crook of your neck.

You giggle, reaching a hand back to smooth his hair. The angle’s a little awkward and your fingers bump against his headset, but you don’t mind.

“Did you raise a lot of money?” You ask, shifting in his lap so you can see his face.

He nods. “Not as much as the collab with Shouyou and Kuroo, but a fair bit.”

“Good,” you smile. He looks exhausted; he often does after long charity streams. But you know he cares about them – he wouldn’t bother with them otherwise. You gently slip his headset off – you bought them for him as a one-year-anniversary present, a cute, high-tech thing with cat ears – and place it gently on his desk.

You run your fingers through his hair, gently grazing his scalp. He hums in response, letting his eyes flutter shut. It’s like all the tension is melting away under your fingers, as if you’ve brought him a moment of precious reprieve. He never complains about his work – not in any real capacity, anyway – but even he got tired of his job.

As you gaze at his face, you’re content in the knowledge that you don’t need to flit amongst the city or watch the sky to see something that’ll make your heart stutter. He’s right in front of you.

“Hey, Kenma?”

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

The words flutter between you, threading a proper smile across his face. He doesn’t need to say them back to know your feelings are reciprocated; Kenma isn’t a man of many words, and his affection doesn’t tend to come out in grand statements or confessions. His love is in the little gestures; in a gentle kiss to the nose, or his fingers laced through yours, or permission to be part of his little world.

His love is shy, gentle, purposeful. You know he struggles to let people in. To let himself be seen. But he opens his windows for you, lets you filter through like the sunrise.

It’s all he’s capable of giving; but he gives it all with a quiet thoughtfulness.

And that’s more than enough.

#kenma x reader #kozume kenma x reader #kenma x you #kozume kenma x you #haikyuu x reader #fluffvember 2020

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smells-like-mettaton · 3 years

Note

Perhaps #5 (Hold my Hand) with Papyton for the fic ask game if you are still doing it?

(I hope you're okay with me writing this as a sequel to one of my other papyton fics! This could still be read on its own, but it will make more sense if you read the first chapter. If you don't want to, just know that the part in italics at the beginning is from a fanfic that Alphys wrote.)

The Greatest Fanfiction of All: The Sequel

Rating: T Word Count: 1687 Read on AO3: here

---

Papyrus’s hands are warm. Of course they are. Theyre always covered in gloves. Not even Mettaton, his boyfriend of one month and thirteen days, knows what his bony phalanges look like beneath the plush red fabric.

But tonight, that's going to change.

xxx

Exactly one month and thirteen days had passed since Mettaton had read the beginning of Alphys’s “papyton” fanfiction. It also happened to be one month and thirteen days since Papyrus had agreed to be his boyfriend, sending him on a magical journey of love and romance.

That journey had given him plenty of new perspectives and discoveries. Yet the mystery of what lie under Papryus’s gloves was not one of them.

He sat next to Mettaton on their usual bench at the center of the hedge maze. The sky was dark with stormclouds, which kept any stray spectators away from the park. Papyrus was prepared, as usual; a tall MTT-Brand Umbrella leaned against his femur. Nothing and no one would ruin this moment.

Now Mettaton just needed to have the moment. Preferably without resorting to calling Alphys and Frisk again.

“METTATON? IS SOMETHING THE MATTER?” Papyrus asked, his browbone furrowing in concern.

Mettaton’s fingers were already laced through his; Mettaton rubbed his thumb against the back of Papyrus’s glove.

“Well. It is a very special day, darling.” Special enough that Mettaton had worn the outfit Papyrus loved most—a cropped shirt that said COOL ROBOT and galaxy-print leggings that hugged his metallic thighs. Papyrus himself had worn a bright Tetris shirt and shorts that exposed his gleaming femurs.

“IT IS?” Papyrus blinked. “IS THERE A SALE ON RIGATONI? BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT STARTED NEXT WEEK.”

“Hm? Oh—not that I know of, but I will keep that in mind.” He imagined creating a pasta bouquet for Papyrus, and a smile graced his lips. “Today is the one month and thirteen day anniversary of our glamorous romance.”

“WOWIE! TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE DATING A HOT ROBOT!” Papyrus grinned, pressing his teeth to Mettaton’s cheek in a close approximation of a kiss. “HAPPY ONE MONTH AND THIRTEEN DAYS, METTATON! IS THERE A SPECIAL WAY YOU WANT TO CELEBRATE?”

It was perfect. Mettaton couldn’t have set it up better if he tried.

“Actually…” He turned Papyrus’s hand over, examining every seam and stitch in his crimson glove. “I was hoping to see your hands. I know they’re just as handsome as the rest of you.”

He winked, and a light blush spread across Papyrus’s cheekbones.

“MY HANDS? I’D GLOVE TO! BUT, ERM…” His fingers disentangled from Mettatons, instead fidgeting nervously with the hem of his right glove. “I DON’T KNOW THAT YOU WOULD FIND THEM AS UNBEARABLY ATTRACTIVE AS THE REST OF ME.”

Coming from Papyrus, that was practically a statement of self-loathing. Guilt bubbled in Mettaton’s soul-tank.

“Beautiful.” He grasped the top of his boyfriend’s arms and squeezed them gently. “There is not a bone in your body that I would not find attractive. Of course, I will not ask you to perform if you are suffering stage fright, but I do think you shine so much brighter in the light.”

Papyrus smiled a little, though his browbone was still turned upward with worry.

"IF YOU'RE SURE…"

"Positive as my ratings, darling."

Papyrus nodded slowly. "I TRUST YOU, METTATON."

Those words were like ambrosia to Mettaton's soul. He would do anything to remain worthy of his boyfriend's trust.

"PLEASE, JUST… DON'T BE FRIGHTENED, ALRIGHT?"

Mettaton couldn't imagine anything about Papyrus being frightening.

Then, with agonizing care, Papyrus peeled off his gloves. And Mettaton understood.

The bones of his hands were scorched an ashen gray, nearly black. Hairline cracks laced through them like spiderwebs. Mettaton was half afraid that if he touched them, they would crumble to dust.

"I'M FINE, REALLY!" Papyrus must have noticed the look on his face, no matter how quickly Mettaton had schooled his expression. "THESE BURNS ARE SO OLD, I BARELY NOTICE THEY'RE THERE!"

His grin was strained. Mettaton wanted nothing more than to reach out and squeeze his hand, but he didn't dare.

"They don't hurt?" Mettaton asked, then winced. He could've phrased that more tactfully. It was probably better than asking how on earth the injury had happened, at least.

"WELL… THEY ARE A BIT SENSITIVE WITHOUT MY GLOVES. THEY HAVE HEALING MAGIC, YOU SEE." Papyrus held out one of his red gloves, his expression turning to one of pride. "SANS DID THE SEWING, AND I DID THE ENCHANTMENT."

"No wonder you love them so much." Mettaton smiled. It was adorable how much Papyrus loved his brother. Their love had inspired Mettaton to finally patch up his relationship with Blooky and Mew Mew.

Papyrus smiled back, running a charred fingertip fondly over the fabric. "WOULD YOU… LIKE TO TRY ONE ON?"

"Me?" Mettaton blinked.

"OF COURSE! WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO EXPERIENCE THE GREAT PAPYRUS'S LEGENDARY HEALING MAGIC FIRSTHAND?"

Mettaton chuckled at the pun. "How could I possibly refuse?"

He slipped off his white gloves, revealing the unsightly bolts in his own fingers. He hardly felt self-conscious about that after seeing Papyrus's hands, though.

Papyrus's glove fit like a dream. Like holding his hand, only from the inside. Warmth seeped from the fabric into his metal joints, slipping through his cracks like sweet oil.

"This is… quite the enchantment," he breathed.

Papyrus couldn’t be in pain with that much healing magic caressing his bones. But on the other hand, even the constant healing magic had failed to permanently erase the scars. Mettaton still wasn’t too familiar with physical injuries, but surely that wasn’t normal, right?

Papyrus’s wink sounded like magical glitter."WHAT CAN I SAY? I'M VERY ENCHANTING."

He looked just as bright as ever. Just as energetic, as full of life.

Just as beautiful, inside and out.

"That you are, darling." Mettaton kissed his cheek.

Papyrus pulled his left glove back onto his hand, then twined his fingers with Mettaton's. Red on red, warmth on warmth Their hands matched perfectly.

"YOU PROBABLY HAVE SOME QUESTIONS," Papyrus said quietly.

Mettaton's eye flickered to Papyrus's bare right hand before returning to his eyesockets.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't feel comfortable with, darling."

Mettaton was curious of course. If this injury had been caused by another monster, they would face the wrath of a true killer robot. Knowing Papyrus, though, he had probably forgiven whoever was responsible.

"I ALWAYS FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH YOU." He smiled. "AND IT IS… NICE. TO HAVE SOMEONE BESIDES SANS KNOW THIS."

"No one else knows?" Mettaton’s eyes widened. He'd thought Undyne would have found out, whether Papyrus told her on purpose or she burned off his gloves during one of their cooking lessons.

"I AM A SKELETON OF MANY SECRETS." Papyrus winked again. This time it sounded like tinkling bells. "IT HELPS THAT NO ONE ELSE REMEMBERS THE ACCIDENT, THOUGH."

An accident. No one had hurt Papyrus on purpose.

Mettaton sighed in relief, powering down his killer robot protocols.

"I WAS HELPING MY DAD WITH HIS WORK ON THE CORE. I ALWAYS CALIBRATED THE PUZZLES WHILE HE CALIBRATED THE GEOTHERMAL POWER LEVELS."

Papyrus looked down at their tangled hands, his expression distant.

"I STILL DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. ON THE DAYS SANS REMEMBERS, HE PROMISES THAT IT WASN'T MY FAULT. THAT DAD WAS TOO CARELESS. BUT THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION, AND DAD, HE… HE FELL…"

Something in Mettaton crushed as Papyrus's voice cracked.

"I WAS LUCKIER. THE BLAST ONLY GOT MY HANDS." The smile returned.

"Papyrus…"

Mettaton didn't know what to say. What could he say? Ghosts didn't have parents. His cousins were his family, but he couldn't imagine them dying, either. Blooky physically couldn't.

But this wasn't about him! It was about Papyrus, who had lost his father and scarred his hands and still counted himself lucky.

"DON'T BE SAD, METTATON. IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO. LONGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE."

Papyrus looked into his eyes, and for a moment, Mettaton saw something old. Mettaton had been alive—albeit as a ghost—for nearly two centuries. Right now, though, Mettaton wondered if Papyrus was even older than that.

"I suppose so,” he reluctantly admitted. “I don't even remember an explosion at the CORE."

"OH, THAT'S NORMAL. APPARENTLY DAD WAS RATHER FORGETTABLE." His smile was sad. "EVEN SANS DOESN'T ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM. BUT I… WELL."

He closed his blackened fist.

"IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO FORGET."

Mettaton opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Luckily, it didn’t seem like Papyrus was looking for a response.

“WHEW! ALL THIS HONESTY IS EXHAUSTING!!” Sweat beaded on his skull. “DO YOU WANT TO GO GET NICE CREAMS?”

“Of course, darling, but—are you sure that you’re okay?” Mettaton couldn’t help the concern in his voice. It wasn’t every day that he unlocked his boyfriend’s tragic backstory.

And here he’d been so concerned about something as trivial as holding hands. He truly was as selfish as everyone believed.

“PLEASE, DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME,” Papyrus said firmly. His hand gave Mettaton’s a tight squeeze. “I MEANT IT WHEN I SAID IT WAS LONG AGO. PRACTICALLY A DIFFERENT LIFETIME. I ONLY TOLD YOU SO THAT YOU WOULD KNOW HOW MUCH I TRUST YOU.”

Trust. Mettaton trusted Papyrus, too. Trusted that he didn’t need Mettaton to coddle him. Trusted that if he wanted Mettaton’s help, he would ask for it.

“I… thank you, darling.” Ghostly tears welled in his eyes. “Your trust means everything to me.”

“WELL THEN!” Papyrus’s grin turned mischievous. “I TRUST YOU TO KISS ME UNTIL I CAN’T BREATHE!”

Mettaton’s fans whirred and whirred. The sound was quickly drowned out by the raindrops that began to fall and fizzle on his shoulder pads.

“Darling, you’re a skeleton. You don’t have lungs.”

“NEITHER DO YOU.” Papyrus twirled the umbrella before popping it open, protecting Mettaton from the threat of short-circuiting.

(From the rain, at least.)

“You truly know how to give me a challenge, darling.” Mettaton cuddled closer, reaching up to brush his red-gloved hand against Papyrus’s cheekbone.

“ONLY BECAUSE I KNOW YOU’LL RISE TO IT!”

Mettaton grinned back, and that was exactly what he did.

#fic tag #prompt requests #papyton #tali writes #papyrus #mettaton

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whimsicallyreading · 4 years

Text

Dark Roast No Sugar

Chapter Three

Aelin would never admit it out loud, but a day off was just what she needed. She spent the morning napping, snacking, and reading. Her stomach settled, and when she took off her shoes, her feet didn't look like they belonged to a bloated cadaver.

Spending that time with Aedion was also refreshing. He kept the conversations light. Telling her about the antics between hostesses at The Pits, a run-in between Ren and the police. A story about the drug dealer they'd roughed up and how he'd pissed his pant when he saw Aedion and the stray puppy Kyllian had snuck into The Den.

When they got hungry, Aedion offered to make them a late lunch. Her mouth watered at the prospect of his famous grilled cheese with two kinds of cheeses and ketchup.

Lysandra came up to join them for lunch and her nose wrinkled at the sight of them dragging the cheesy goodness through globs of red sauce. "By the dark god, you two. That's disgusting."

Aedion grins, a dot of ketchup on his chin, "You haven't even tried it yet. This meal is a riot with the guys and saved my ass with foster siblings." He wiped his face on his sleeve and leaned back in his chair. "You don't shit on the kid who can actually make edible food."

Aelin laughs and dusts her hands off like a lady. "Actually, you don't shit on the kid who looks like he started doping at eleven. But yeah, I'm sure it was your budget lunches that saved you."

"Shut up, you love it when I cook," Aedion collected their plates.

Lysandra pulls up the chair next to Aelin's at their tiny, rickety table. She set down her container of salad, looking classier with her more mature pallet. Aelin swiped a cucumber from the top and chewed into the seasoned veggie. "Your food is nostalgic. What can I say?"

Aedion's playful demeanor seemed to deflate suddenly, a furrow creasing his brow. "I suppose why I have you two together, we should talk some business."

"Uh oh, that doesn't sound good." Lysandra tensed up, shooting a worried look at Aelin.

"Is it the bidding for this month? I told you I could get at least an extra hundred dollars to you by the end of the month. If you need more, I could-"

Aedion cut off Aelin's rambling with a raised hand. "It's not the bidding. Elias pulled enough to cover our bets for the month." Relief flooded through her, and she breathed out a sigh of relief.

The underground fighting game in Orynth was wildly exclusive. To get a spot during prime hours when tickets were hot and the betting pool was hotter, the local gangs had to participate in an auction. It was pricey, but the cuts you got from winning a fight made up for it big time.

Unfortunately, the Bane was not a wealthy group of men. A lot of them had families or relatives they were supporting. They usually scavenged up enough money to get two or three guys into the fights, and those funds were just enough to pull them through to the next month.

Like Aelin, those families did what they could to fund money towards the bidding. Initially, she was going to volunteer as a fighter, but she found out about the baby, and they all agreed it was too risky for her to get in the ring. As soon as she was cleared, she still intended to participate in the fights to Aedion's chagrin.

Between the extra patrols of her street and snuffing the rumors of her existence in the city, it took a chunk of the Bane's recourses and time. Aedion assured her that the guys understood her circumstances, but she contributed as much as she could monetarily until she could contribute physically as well. "What's going on then?"

"Rolf took a beating in the ring last night. He's going to be out of commission for a while, but we didn't lose any money. He managed to bust the guy's head at the last moment and pulled through." He paused.

Aelin was confused, though. It wasn't uncommon for one of the guys to get roughed up a bit, so long as they didn't lose, there wasn't an issue. "That's too bad about Rolf, but I don't see the problem?" she pushed him to continue.

"He swears the guy was tripping on Synth," Aedion breathes out, pained.

Oh.

"Shit," Lysandra swears and stands up. "Is he sure it was Synth?"

"It's kinda hard to rutting mistake, Lysandra," Aedion snapped. He was right, though. The Pits had rules against cheating, but they were followed loosely. If they couldn't see a knife being pulled, the fight wouldn't be called. Some of the Bane even doped before a match just so they wouldn't get caught at a disadvantage.

Synth had a lot of physical effects. Adrenalin coursed through the user at such high rates it was practically superhuman. It gave them crazy speed, strength, and heightened focus. On the flip side, it also caused fever, bulged veins, twitching, bloodshot eyes, and uncontrollable rage as you came down. It would be hard to mistake it for any other street drug. Aelin had taken Synth once before, and it wasn't an easily forgettable experience.

The detail they were glossing over was that only one person was currently capable of leaking a drug like Synth on the streets.

Arobynn Hammel

"So," Aelin finally said, breaking up the heated glares they were sharing. "He's making his presence in Orynth known."

Quiet.

"We can't know it for sure," Aedion looked at her with a sickening amount of pity. Aelin didn't want sympathy or comforting falsities. She wanted the truth.

"Bullshit," Aelin declared, making Aedion wince at the sudden sharpness. "We've had sightings of Tern and Mulligan already. We knew he was sending eyes out. They must have seen us."

Lysandra sunk back into her chair and rested her head in her hands. "I thought we made it?" her voice sounded extraordinarily young, feeble. Not at all like the vivacious woman they were used to seeing.

"Lys," it was Aelin's turn to rest a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder.

Her eyes were glassy and hollow when she looked up. "I really had myself believing we made it."

Aelin's heart broke for her.

Arobynn was a sick son of a bitch. She, Lysandra, and Sam had all come into his care at different times and served various functions within the Manor. One thing was the same though, they were all children.

They were all coerced into doing grotesque things for Arobynn's sake. Things that they should, in all honesty, spend years in therapy to recover from. Yet, some horrors were too big for even Aelin to pretend to understand.

Horrors that Lysandra was forced to live with every day.

Arobynn's unofficial mistress.

Aedion's fist slamming against the table startled them both and snapped Aelin from her thoughts. Lysandra flinched and leaned closer to Aelin. "It doesn't matter."

He pointed his finger at them and then stabbed it into the table. "It. Does. Not. Matter. Where that piece of shit is. Rifthold? Wendelyn? He can be an hour away or watering the rutting flowers next door, but he will never have either of you ever again." The golden core in Aedion's eyes was molten.

The excitement was too much for Lysandra, and the dam behind her eyes broke. Deep, heavy sobs ripped from her chest, and her body wilted forward like a wind-whipped flower.

They moved at the same time, but Aedion was faster. He pulled Lysandra from her seat and gathered her against his chest, shushing her and whispering sweet nothings into her hair.

The bells rang downstairs.

Aedion looked up helplessly, but Aelin raised a hand and mouthed, "It's fine."

None of them wanted Lysandra to be alone right now.

Aelin slipped her shoes back on and hopped down the stairs quickly. Hopefully, they wouldn't be too pissed no one was behind the counter when they walked in, she mused to herself. It only took her half-a-minute to get downstairs, but it was amazing the things people got outraged over.

Mala forgive that the coffee gets in their hand a second later than usual.

"Do my eyes deceive me, or was Aelin Galathynius taking a break?" Dorian Havilliard's greeted her with a bright smile and upraised hands. No trace of agitation at all.

Chaol Westfall stood behind him and meekly tilted his chin. "Hello, Aelin."

"Hello, Chaol." She greets him with a smile and walks into Dorian's outstretched arms. Aelin wasn't a hugger, but Dorian's hugs had a magic to them.

"Where did you go?" Dorian asked without breaking his grasp. "I never thought I'd see the day you weren't slaving away behind the counter grinding beans."

"We weren't super busy today, and I wasn't feeling the best," Aelin admitted.

Dorian pulled away slightly to look down at her in concern. His dark, thick-framed blue light glasses slipping down his nose.

"It's just the baby," she assures him. "Not the flu or anything. You don't have the right parts to catch what I've got."

Chaol snickered, but Dorian's concern only worsened. "In all seriousness, you aren't working yourself too hard?"

Aelin rolled her eyes. If one more person asked her that-

"I'm fine, Dor. It was just some morning sickness and a stressful customer that came through. No big deal."

His shoulders relax, and he releases her from his arms. "I believe you. Just-" he fumbles for the words to say, "If you have troublesome people coming in here and bothering you, let me know? Chaol can come over and hang out for the day. He has a friend, Nesryn. If it gets bad, I am more than willing to hire her-"

Aelin smiled at him and waved at him. "No need for bodyguards. People are rude. It happens. Now, what can I get for the both of you?"

Dorian was the son of the esteemed son of Dorian Sr. The owner of Adarlan Vaults, the most extensive banking chain across Erilea. It was a total accident that they stumbled into each other when Aelin went in looking for a loan to start The Stag with.

At first, he was a bit of a flirt with her. When Aelin made it clear that she wasn't interested in his advances, Dorian backed off right away and fell into the role of the supportive friend. He and Chaol had been the first patrons of the shop when the doors opened.

Chaol was technically his hired protection, but he and Dorain were life long friends bound by something more powerful than money. She never saw the two of them apart. While he appeared to be a quiet sort, he had a sharp mind and fierce loyalty that Aelin admired.

"Two iced girl scout americano's," Dorian pulled out his wallet and handed her a twenty. "Large, please."

Aelin accepted the cash and started filling cups as the two took their standard seats. She just got the espresso machine heated when a set of hands pushed her's aside and began flipping the switches for her.

"Aedion," she groaned as his hip bumped her to the side, and he took over her tasks. "Seriously?"

"You are supposed to be taking the day off," he looks at her pointedly. "Go sit with your friends. I've got this."

"Do you have this?" Aelin set a hand on her hip. "You haven't used these machines before."

Aedion scoffed, "It cannot be that complicated. Now go. Before Lysandra comes back down and wipes the floor with both of our asses." He pulls out two large mugs and grabs out a bottle of coconut flavoring. "Baby A is shielding you for now, but that woman has the memory of a rutting elephant. Don't think you can hide behind my niece or nephew forever." He's more talking to himself by the end as he starts over pouring syrups into cups. Did he even know what he was making? Aelin winced.

She might have to return the twenty to Dorian.

Aelin walks away reluctantly, "Mind if I sit here for a minute, boys?"

Chaol stands up and pulls a chair out for her, "Not at all."

He holds out a hand to help her sit, but she waves it away. She wasn't that pregnant yet.

Dorian has a hardbound book sitting in front of him, the face of his expensive watch catching the light as he turns the page. "I haven't seen you by the bank this week," he says without looking up from the page.

"We've been enjoying the peace," Chaol sits back in his own seat and flashes her a grin. "That's a joke, of course. It's been horribly boring."

"It's been a busy week. I haven't had a chance to drop my deposit off yet." Aelin typically made an excuse to visit the bank at least once a week. Dorian would kindly excuse whatever teller was working to take a break and promptly close the register so they could sit in the break room and talk over cookies and drip coffee.

She was planning on going yesterday, but her feathers were too ruffled after the incident.

"I suppose I can live without that excuse since I've taken it upon myself to visit you at work." He pulls a plastic bag filled with assorted chocolates and places it on the table between them. "If you need to drop off a deposit, I can take it back with me?"

Aelin's hand darts to the bag of sweets and pulls out a dark, salty square. "Have I mentioned you are the most attractive man I've ever met?"

They hear a loud scoff from the kitchen.

"You've mentioned it a few times." He glances up from his book long enough to wink at her. "What about that deposit?"

"I don't think I will have a big enough deposit to warrant the trip this week," the excuse isn't well-formed, and she hears it when the lie falls from her lips.

"You said you had a busy week?" Dorian frowns.

I did, but I'm putting aside extra money to fund my cousin's gang because my former foster father has a hit out on me.

"The tips have been bad" not a total lie. "Maybe it will pick up again over the weekend," Aelin shrugs nonchalantly.

Aedion walks over with two cups of coffee and a mug of tea. He lets Dorian's drink slosh over the side as he sets it down. Dorian lifts his book away from the mess and glares.

She wasn't sure what went down between Dorian and Aedion that made them hate each other. Chaol and Aedion had no qualms. They were even drinking buddies on the weekend, but Aedion had a bone to pick with Dorian long before she'd arrived back in Orynth.

Aelin half-heartedly scolded Aedion as she accepted her drink. Taking a deep drink from the mug, she was surprised to find that it was made exactly as she liked.

Chaol sipped his coffee, and Aelin watched as he barely held back a grimace. Dorian reached for his own cup, but Chaol discretely pulled it away before he could drink. Aelin caught the motion, but thankfully Aedion was already back in the kitchen and hadn't noticed.

"I will remake those for you before you leave," Aelin assured them.

"It's alright. As much as I love coffee, I really came by to spill tea," Dorian took his glasses off and leaned back in his chair.

"Gossip," Chaol translated. "He means gossip."

Dorian rolls his eyes, "That's what tea means, Chaol." Leaning forward with his elbows on the table, "A company called Wendlyn Ops. bought out The Pits."

"What?" Aelin shouts a little too loudly. Dorian shushes her, and Aedion peers out from the kitchen with worried eyes. She waves him away and whispers in a quieter tone. "What do you mean The Pits have been bought out? What for?"

"I didn't realize you would care this much about the seediest bar in town," Dorian laughed. "It's not like you can drink."

"You aren't drinking, right?" Chaol scowls.

Aelin reins back her emotions. She was definitely losing her tack being off the job for several months, but the secret basement underneath The Pits was where the fights were usually held. Iona Jayne would never sell the property when it brought in so much money.

He either owed someone a rutting ton of money, he was being blackmailed, or the most likely option.

Iona Jayne was dead.

Aelin flipped Chaol off, "Of course I'm not drinking. No promises on that in about five months... Just, who would want The Pits? Are they repurposing it?" She can already feel a headache forming behind her eyes.

"That's the interesting part," Chaol murmured. "The title for The Pits was transferred to a new owner just a few days before it was sold for triple its market value."

Dorian's grin became mischievous, "Shady deals are going on, and I'm determined to find out what."

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Aelin forced a matching smile on her, "Well, this sounds like the making of an adventure."

Aedion was deeply involved with all the goings-on at The Pits. If Dorian managed to learn too much and expose them, he would go down hard. She wasn't directly implicated in anything beyond a little racketeering, but one prolonged look at her record would raise some eyebrows. Which could tie her back to Rifthold and numerous murders. A lot of murder. Thievery. Hired assassinations.

They would be screwed, essentially.

Damn it all to hellas, she needed to talk to Aedion. Aelin understood why Dorian was interested in this. His father was involved with so many corrupt dealings they followed him like a shadow. She knew he was socially isolated beyond herself and Chaol. No one dared to associate with the son of Dorian Sr.

Unveiling a corrupt business dealing and aiding the community could help separate his image from his father's. Rectify some of the wrongs his family has committed. Give him a chance at making a future for himself out from Dorian Sr.'s thumb.

Aelin just wished he knew the depth of the task he was taking. How deep, dark, and dangerous this viper's den was. Sweet, sheltered Dorian Jr. would be eaten alive. A blue-eyed pup, trapped in the jaws of an adder.

Little did he know that Aelin was a wolf herself, and she would not stand for that breaking.

Aelin directed the conversation to safer grounds following the bomb he dropped. They discussed the book he was reading, the litter of pups his dog was expecting, his disgusting little brother. Chaol seemed to sour at the mention of Holland.

Soon they were provided with fresh drinks, and Aelin ushered them out under the pretense of needing a nap. Definitely not a lie. Her stomach was rolling again, and that blooming headache was now a whole damn rosebush in her brain.

Rubbing the knot between her eyes, she made the difficult decision of closing for the day. Business was slow. Lysandra hadn't come back downstairs. Aelin wasn't feeling well, and there was no chance she was letting Aedion use her precious machines again.

Aelin looked outside the window. It was grey and dreary outside. Perfect conditions for the three of them to order pizza, rent a movie and just put this day behind them.

"Aedion, I'm closing up." She didn't hear a reply. Aelin shrugged it off. He'd probably gone back up to sit with Lysandra.

She opened a can of coffee grounds and inhaled wistfully. What she wouldn't give for a cup of straight caffeine. With one last longing sniff, Aelin refilled canisters for tomorrow and got to cleaning up the machines.

All that was left was to close up the registers.

She'd just unlocked the drawer when the ring of the shop bells went off.

"Sorry, we're closed," Aelin said without looking away from the task at hand. She would have to remember to lock the doors first next time.

Heavy boots thudded against her wooden floors as whoever it was approached the counter. Her irritation peeked. What was with the influx of entitled assholes lately?

"We are close-" Aelin's stopped and her eyes narrowed at the gun barrel aimed at the center of her forehead.

I’m figuring out how the tagging list thing works- ☺️

If you would like me to add or take your name off the list for future updates let me know~

@thisismylibrary

@highladywhitethrone

@bee55

@royalsqueeze

@rowaelin-cressworth

@sjmships

#aelinandrowan #poorlysandra #sexyapronaedion #aelinneedsadamnnap #coffeeshopau #fanfic #suspenseintensifies

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renarinkholin · 4 years

Text

Let’s Talk About “The Young Wolf”

So the Destiny fandom as a whole has really latched on to “The Young Wolf” when referring to the player character Guardian, and this is a little strange to me. Not that people like the title (I don’t care for it much, but that’s a difference of taste thing) but that the fandom treats it as The One True Title/Name for our Guardians, as declared by lore.

I wrote up a meta response to a post about a week ago, and just used “our Guardian” throughout, then mentioned in the tags that I don’t care to use “The Young Wolf” because I don’t really like it. I got a response that basically said, “I agree with your meta but people use The Young Wolf as their title because it’s canon and using ‘the Guardian’ is confusing and terrible.”

But is it really canon that this title is the main title amongst the many, many titles and accomplishments our Guardians have picked up? I decided to do some searching and my conclusion: It really isn’t.

Lore Check

NPCs and lore call our Guardian “Young Wolf” only 17 times in Ishtar Collective, which searches through lore books, dialogue transcripts, item descriptions, etc throughout Destiny and Destiny 2. The use of this title happens in three different cases: 1) used in the context of the Iron Lords/by Saladin directly, 2) used in a list of titles and accomplishments, as one of many, 3) used by non-Iron Lord characters in a general sense.

Saladin and the Iron Lords The first usage accounts for the majority of the title’s appearances, 10 of them total. Of these, 7 are said by Saladin, who gave our Guardians this nickname, 2 are by Tyra Karn (one of which she uses “A Young Wolf of the Iron Lords”) and 1 is when Shaxx calls you “Saladin’s Young Wolf” in the Homecoming opening mission of D2. I’m not going to screenshot all of these, but feel free to look them up if you want.

One Title Amongst Many The second usage, when it appears amongst many other titles, happens 4 times across the games: two times in Calus’ prophecy fanfic about us, once in Saint-14’s eulogy in the Corridors of Time, and once in Phylaks’ dialogue during her Empire Hunt.

Other Cases There are only 3 times where NPCs use “The Young Wolf” as a general title to refer to our Guardians. Vyhar calls us this in that his Ghost’s Fragment, Osiris calls us this in the Season of the Hunt’s transmission from him, and Saint-14 calls us this once while talking to Ikora.

Conclusions

The fact that the overwhelming majority of times we hear someone in-game or in-lore call our Guardians “The Young Wolf” it’s either Saladin using his personal nickname for us, someone referring to our status among the Iron Lords, or someone listing off a bunch of our titles and accomplishments. The fact that there’s only 3 times ever that it has been used in a general context, and two of them showed up this season means that I really can’t take at face value the notion that the “Young Wolf” is our main, general title. If the fandom wanted to just pick a title out of a hat at random amongst the many we’ve picked up, sure, it works. It is a title our Guardians have. It’s nowhere close to being the title for our Guardians.

In the grand scheme of things? It’s a pretty minor title. In fact, it’s mostly one character’s nickname for us. What’s the accomplishment here: “played Rise of Iron’s story campaign”? That’s the accomplishment the fandom has decided to define our player characters by? It’s baffling to me.

After all, Emperor Calus decided to call us the Shadow of Earth, and that shows up in lore far more times numerically than “the Young Wolf.” Drifter calls my Warlock “Snitch” every time she plays Gambit because she didn’t side with him. I don’t see why either of those would be any more valid as a general title in the same way Saladin’s nickname, “Young Wolf” has become.

There’s better general titles out there. A whole bunch of characters refer to our character as “The Hero of the Red War,” including Asher, Saint-14, the Drifter, the Spider, Aunor, even a random Titan named Joxer. In lore, that seems to be more of the go-to “general” title for our Guardian in D2. And that makes sense, if we’re talking about our Guardian in the context of Destiny 2, it would make more sense to use their title that refers to them completing the vanilla campaign, not a random D1 expansion that, lore-wise, is pretty forgettable.

There’s a whole handful of titles we’ve got as a result of killing Oryx: Kingslayer, Destroyer of Oryx, Slayer of Oryx. In terms of importance, that’s a way bigger deal than finding and containing SIVA. Or “Crota’s End” for killing Crota.

All in all, I think if we’re being honest, the devs try pretty hard to avoid giving our player characters any kind of name or main title in-universe. It’s tricky to write dialogue that way, but they do a pretty good job of it. Most of the time people refer to us, we’re just “the Guardian.” Or vendors will refer to you by your class as a title. Or a specific character will choose to give us a nickname and that specific character calls us that, which is what happened with Saladin. The few times where the writers are narratively written into a corner and they need someone to use a general title for us? They just pick one at random, it seems.

Anyway, this is a long post that probably will not really have an impact on anything. And in all honesty, I’m not trying to tell people that they should stop referring to the Guardian generally as “The Young Wolf” or that it’s bad or something. I just find it weird that this one got stuck in the fandom’s brain like this, and it’s one that you won’t see me personally using in a general sense because I find it to be kind of lame and I don’t think Rise of Iron was all that narratively important. I don’t really care about Saladin and I don’t see why I should pretend like his nickname is my Guardian’s general name in fandom spaces.

When I write meta, you’re going to see me using “our Guardian” or “the Guardian,” because that’s the general name the game gives. I don’t think of my Guardians as “the Young Wolf” any more than I consistently think about them as “Crota’s End” or “Shadow of Earth” or any of the other multitudinous titles we’ve accumulated over the years. They’ve done lots of things and they’re all of those titles technically. They’re just my Guardians though.

People can refer to their Guardians however they want, and I’m sure “the Young Wolf” is sticky enough at this point that people are probably just going to keep using it in the general sense. But I take issue with assertions that it’s the game’s canon main title for us, or that it’s the objectively correct thing to call our Guardians. It’s not, it’s a minor title among many, and I personally am not interested in doing it.

PS: If you read this whole post, you deserve a bowl of spicy ramen, on me! Have a coupon for it.

#the young wolf #destiny 2 #destiny the game #destiny meta #destiny #tbh i find the title just kind of boring #but every time i see a general destiny post use it as The Name For Your Guardian i just squint and go 'why tho'#there's better titles or also you could just call them The Guardian #why'd we pick salad man's weird nickname for playing a pretty forgettable d1 expansion as The Main One #i definitely do not consider my guardians 'the young wolf' any more than they're like any of the other nicknames npcs have given them #its like if i started writing general meta about how The Shadow of Earth killed Uldren Sov in Forsaken #like lol that title has nothing to do with them at all #anyway this was mostly pointless but i HAD FEELINGS so y'all get a long post about it #i put it under a cut at least

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

Cats has been a divisive show ever since it opened in 1981. Some people hate it for being a plotless spectacle that focuses more on the visuals than on music and story, while others love it for those same reasons, as well as for being utterly campy and fun. I’m firmly in the latter category, to the point I can’t really comprehend the opposition to the film. Stuff like the jab at this film in The Critic or the mockery of it in Hey Arnold just seem weird to me; what is it about this fun, silly musical about cats that makes people’s blood boil so much?

Perhaps all these people saw into the future where the film was released.

Cats had a long, troubled history getting from stage to screen. In the 90s, Amblimation was set to make an animated version of the movie, set during the Blitz of WWII. Unfortunately, the inability of writers to find a way to turn this episodic showcase of random singing cats into a cohesive narrative combined with the failure of Amblimations films caused the project to dissolve, leaving behind nothing but some really cool concept art.

But see, this perfectly demonstrates the problem with adapting Cats: the musical is a spectacle, a showcase, it’s all about the dancing, costumes, and the songs. It doesn’t have a story to speak of, instead contenting itself with showing us a bunch of different cats and having them sing about themselves for a bit before moving on to the next cat. Sure, there’s a bit of continuity and whatnot, but this really isn’t the sort of show that’s trying to deliver a deep narrative. It just wants you to have a good time, nothing more, nothing less.

No one told any of this to Tom Hooper, apparently. This director of the grounded, gritty, realistic adaptation of Les Mis was tapped to utilize this same style in a musical about magical singing cats, all while not even knowing what catnip is or how animation works. Hooper was apparently constantly butting heads with the VFX team due to his lack of understanding of how animating works. He tried to get the team to watch videos of cats performaing the stuff he wanted and forced them to give 90 hour work weeks, cementing Tom Hooprt as one of the biggest douchebags imaginable. On top of all this, the guy tried to weave this plotless showcase of felines into a cohesive narrative, and tapped a bunch of talent of various degrees of questionability to play parts. And what was the result?

An absolute disaster. The film was savaged by critics, with most positives being that the film was so bad it’s good. The film (of course) won a bunch of Razzies, and was the subject of mockery and memes before, after, and during its run in theaters. Hell, as soon as the trailer dropped, the film was mocked to death. Not helping was the rushed VFX which, again, was due to the team being under pressure from a draconian idiot who had no idea what he was doing. The film received an unprecedented bug fix, so to speak, in the form of an updated version with slightly better VFX that was shipped to theaters after the initial negative reaction. This obviously did nothing to help the movie’s reputation, of course. Hell, even in my initial review, I wasn’t super keen on the film. Most damning of all, though, was Andrew Lloyd Webber himself calling the film ridiculous, and even said "The problem with the film was that Tom Hooper decided that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show."

But after ruminating on it, and after watching the film once more, I’ve decided to ask the usual question: Is it really that bad? It’s weird to ask this about a film that’s so new; I usually wait for hindsight to kick in, and look at older films considered bad. But even now, Cats is building up a reputation as a campy cult classic, with such figures as Martin “LittleKuriboh” Billamy watching the film with alarming frequency. And after reading the nightmarish behind the scenes and considering everything… yeah, I think this film deserves a re-evaluation.

This is going to be a little different, though: I’m sort of going to go through the film part by part, since this film has an interesting issue where, generally speaking, the first half is where the worst problems are, and the second half is where things start to pick up. So let’s get the bad out of the way first, then move onto the good.

THE BAD

So, I’m actually not going to pick on the VFX too much, and not just because of the horrible treatment of the VFX artists. In all honesty, the weird human/cat people, while not even remotely as cool as the insane costumes of the stage show, eventually stop being super distracting and kind of just become something you accept. Like, I’m not gonna pretend like this work is amazing, but I dunno, I think it gets harped on too much. There is some stuff that stands out as noticeably bad, though, and we’ll get to that.

A consistent problem with the film that I can’t even try to defend is the problem with the scaling. It’s seriously hard to tell how big these cats are supposed to be in relation to anything else. They honestly seem to change size from scene to scene. It’s seriously weird and baffling and there’s never any way to get a good sense of scale. Even when the cats are alongside mice and roaches, it just boggles the mind what size anything is actually supposed to be.

Mr. Mistoffelees, one of the most flamboyant and enjoyable characters of the stage show, is one of the biggest character issues with the film. Gone is the tricky, confident magician who prances and dances, and here is a meek, sniveling twerp who can barely do anything without tripping over himself. This is because the actor who plays him had a terrible audition that left him miserable due to a lack of singing and dance background. So, rather than find someone who could, you know, sing and dance, they decided to rewrite Mr. Mistoffelees into comic relief, which is just an insulting slap in the face. The cherry on top of course is how they straightwash the character and excise his homoerotic tension with Rum Tum Tugger, instead making him completely and totally straight and giving him a thing for Victoria. Out of everyone in the entire film, they did Mr. Mistoffelees the dirtiest.

Now, let’s get onto the actual “plot.” The film actually starts out fairly well, with some cool shots, good dancing, and some setup for Macavity, whose intro has a neat little nod to the fact he’s based on Moriarty. The issues don’t really start showing up until we reach the first of the Jellicle choices… Jennyanydots.

Jennyanydots is portrayed by Rebel Wilson, which is the first issue. Rebel Wilson is probably one of the worst actresses ever. She is just a horrendously, relentlessly unfunny human being, and she brings that exact quality to her role here. For her song, the vocal talent is secondary to the cringeworthy comedy Wilson puts on display. And yet, somehow, Wilson isn’t the worst part of the scene. No, that would be the horrendous CGI human-faced mice and roaches, which look like they came out of a PS3 game.

This horrendous spectacle is followed up with the appearance of Rum Tum Tugger, portrayed by Jason Derulo. I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I do think Derulo has the necessary egotistical celebrity swagger to play Rum Tum Tugger (especially when you consider he responded to negative criticisms of the film by calling the movie “one of the greatest pieces of art ever made”) and his design is actually one of the better ones in the film, but on the other hand, his singing and the musical choice for his song are not very impressive and really just doesn’t work all too well. It’s at least something of a step up from Rebel Wilson and her CGI abominations, but that’s not really saying much, is it?

Next up we have Bustopher Jones, played by James Corden and, if I’m being totally honest… he’s not quite as awful as he could be. Corden is basically the male equivalent to Rebel Wilson, but at least while he’s singing he manages to be somewhat amusing, whimsical, and enjoyable even. The problem comes when he throws in jokes, including one where he claims to be self-conscious about his weight… a joke that occurs in the middle of his song where he is bragging about how fat he is. Talk about sending mixed messages. I wish I didn’t have to be so harsh on Bustopher, but sadly he is bogged down by really bad shtick.

Bustopher Jones also highlights a problem with the cats in this first half. These minor roles – Jennyanydots, Rum Tum Tugger, and Bustopher Jones – are all being played by relatively big celebrities, and as such they’re going to want a lot of time to sing. As a result, songs that were ensemble numbers on stage become more one-man songs here, with Bustopher Jones being the most egregious example, turning this positive fat character into a walking James Corden fat joke as he sings his own praises rather than having his praises sung.

Following him up we have Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, who are usually fun characters with a fun little pseudo-villain song, but alas, they manage to screw that up by using a slow, jazzy version of the song originally used in earlier London productions rather than the more up-tempo version from later productions, making the song sound awkward and forgettable. Topping it all off is the bargain bin Mr. M popping in at the end for some wacky shenanigans, but at this point, the movie takes a turn towards…

THE GOOD

So as soon as Dame Judi Dench shows up as Old Deuteronomy, the film gets a sort of inverse of what happened at the start. Where the film starts somewhat awkward and promising, it slowly gets stupider and stupider when Rebel Wilson, Jason Derulo, and James Corden botch their scenes in the ways described above. Here, things start a bit shaky and unsure, but Dench is a sign things are about to pick up. What makes her so enjoyable is how, despite how utterly silly things are, she treats her role with the dignity and gravitas of something out of Shakespeare. The only thing as good as an actor in a silly movie like this going full-on ham and cheese is an actor treating their role dead serious and injecting it with such class and dignity you can’t help but enjoy it. Thankfully, Dench isn’t the only person to take her role seriously.

Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella technically appears briefly in the earlier portions of the film, but here we get to hear her belt out “Memory,” and by god does she do a fantastic job. The raw emotion and passion she injects into Grizabella is phenomenal, and it’s even more powerful when it comes back for its reprise in the finale. Victoria gets a sort of response song to “Memory,” called “Beautiful Ghosts,” and it’s a decent song in its own right, but you can tell it was a more modern composition and it just doesn’t gel super well with the rest of the songs. Still, all this is good stuff, and the “Memory”/”Beautiful Ghosts” scene is a nice, refreshing bit of emotion after the incredibly weird and silly extended dance number that is the Jellicle Ball.

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The movie doesn’t stop pulling punches; shortly after Grizabella we are given Gus the theater cat, an elderly actor whose number is all about reminiscing of the old days of theater and his many stellar roles from days gone by. Naturally, the only actor who could possibly perform this role properly is Sir Ian McKellan. I am completely unironic when I say this: This is to McKellan what Patrick Stewart’s performance of Xavier in Logan is. This sounds ridiculous, but think of it: Gus is an aging thespian, clearly a bit senile and desiring to be reborn because he has reached the end of the line, and McKellan fills him with this genuine, incredibly honest performance that really makes you feel emotional. It’s powerful. It feels so personal and resonant, like McKellan has inserted some of his own feelings into his performance, which may very well be the case. Oh, and after his song Macavity kidnaps him with a big autograph book and apparates away while saying his name, which gets me every time.

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And now, my friends, the lord and savior arrives: Skimbleshanks.

This is, hands down, the best scene in the entire film. Everything comes together here: the music is absolutely fantastic, the dancing is choreographed extremely well, and it’s clear that everyone involved is having a blast. This is a concentrated essence of what Cats should be, and it’s really a shame Hooper didn’t understand that this is the energy needed for the entire production. The most crucial element, of course, is Steven McRae, who not only has a lovely singing voice and looks dapper as all hell in his red suspenders, but is a tap dancing maniac. This man has feet of fire, and his tapping adds a whole new layer of fun to the song. Overall, this is a perfect scene, and probably one of my favorite scenes in any film ever. For a brief four minutes, everything about this film works. I literally have no idea why this cat wants to be reincarnated, he is straight balling in this life.

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But the hits don’t stop! Right after this song, Taylor Swift descends from the ceiling, and we get “Macavity.” In the stage productions, this is a song sung by Bombalurina to describe how nasty Macavity is, since she’s traditionally a good cat; here, she’s reimagined as a villain, and so this song is basically her acting as Macavity’s hype man, singing his dastardly praises, and best of all, Macavity joins in at the end! I’m certainly not a Taylor Swift fan, but she really kills it here, and definitely makes this one of the best songs in the movie with her hilariously forced accent and insane energy. It’s just a shame that from here on out Macavity ditches his villainous pimp coat and is now a nude Idris Elba, but I suppose this is equivalent exchange for Skimbleshanks being so amazing.

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While not as incredible as the previous two songs and not quite as good as the stage version due to the removal of the latent homoeroticism, Mr. Mistoffelees’s song is actually okay. It’s nice that he gets to sing his own praises here, but it’s just nothing compared to the stage version, even if it has a fun little finale and it actually is genuinely heartwarming when Old Deuteronomy returns and sings along. It’s a sweet moment that almost makes up for how much Mr. M has sucked the whole movie. Oh, also, all of the Jellicle choices Macavity kidnapped fight back against their captor Growltiger, with Skimbleshanks aggressively tapdancing at him and Gus using his acting skills to make him fall into the Thames. This is so goofy that it wraps back around to being awesome.

The movie winds down in the goofiest way possible after the gorgeous reprise of “Memory,” with Macavity being caught on a big sculpture and apparently running out of magic, leaving him stranded like a regular cat. Then we get one final fourth-wall breaking song where Judi Dench directly addresses the camera that has the music swell up to the point where it seems like the song is ending numerous times without actually ending, and each time is funnier than the last. Really, what better way could you end such a silly film than with this?

Now, a general thing that’s great about the film is the choreography. The dancing in the movie is spectacular. I don’t really have a bad thing to say about it. And, in a broad sense, the music is good too, even if the singers aren’t always perfect, the backing tracks are great, and there’s a lot of fun in the tracks in the latter half of the movie. McRae and Taylor Swift’s contributions in particular are great, and Hudson’s version of “Memory” is incredibly powerful, as is McKellan’s take on Gus’ song.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

No.

Look, it’s hard to be like “Wow this is a fantastic masterpiece of film” or anything like that, because the movie has blatant and evident problems. But this is literally the reason I made this review series; I’m asking if the movie is really as bad as people say, and in this case, no, there’s too much genuinely enjoyable in the film for me to say it’s deserving of several Razzies and a spot on the Bottom 100 of IMDB that places it above Master of Disguise and The Emoji Movie. Like, seriously? This is worse than the 90 minute commercial starring the abusive dick who called a bomb threat on his girlfriend? Hell, this movie is rated worse than Artemis Fowl, which is definitely a contender for the worst film ever made (and amusingly enough also features Judi Dench in it). Artemis Fowl has next to no redeeming qualities in it, and it certainly doesn’t have Skimbleshanks, whereas Cats has several fun scenes and also has Skimbleshanks.

I definitely think there’s more of an argument for this film being so bad it’s good or camp at best, but it’s definitely more enjoyable than you’d think it would be. If you can learn to live with the weird CGI, it’s a fun, goofy romp that you might find yourself feeling for at times. After my second watch, I have to say… I’ve started to unironically enjoy this movie. It might even be one of my favorites of all time. I can’t even deny that it has a lot of stuff I don’t like, and it falls flat in a lot of ways the 1998 film soars, and it screwed up some of my favorite characters… but there are so many moments where the fun and heart of Cats shines through brighter than it has any right to, and all the failures of Hooper and Universal seem distant for a just a few minutes.

So yeah, is this movie good all around? No way. But is it fun, does it have value, and is there more redeeming qualities than the critics let on? Oh yes there is.

#Is it really that bad #IIRTB #review #movie review #Cats #Cats 2019 #Andrew Lloyd Webber #musical #so bad it's good #Tom Hooper #Judi Dench #Rebel Wilson #James Corden #Jason Derulo #Taylor Swift #Idris Elba #Sir Ian McKellan #Steven McRae

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faerietalesims · 4 years

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The Sims 4: Nifty Knitting 🧶

okay I know this post looks so bland but tbh that’s just a reflection of the pack ☕

Honestly, I really don’t have many thoughts about this pack. Is it worth it? In my opinion, no.

There are maybe 3 items I see myself using regularly & the only item I am particularly excited about is that fact that we finally received a normal looking pair of male jeans (which also double up as female jeans lmao shocked face). The rest of CAS is forgettable & honestly kinda ugly in my opinion. Same goes for the Build/Buy content. There are a few items I could see myself reaching for now and then, but definitely not enough to qualify making the pack worth it.

Gameplay wise, there’s about as much as you would expect. Knitting.

For me, this pack falls towards the bottom of my list of stuff packs that I find myself using. I’m happy to finally have an activity for my elderly sims to do, and rocking chairs for them to sit in, but do i honestly think this stuff pack is worth the price? Absolutely not. I would recommend almost any other stuff pack over this one in all honesty.

So yeah, that’s the extent of my thoughts on Nifty Knitting. Hope it was somewhat helpful but sorry I can’t make content if the pack in question barely has any itself. 🤷‍♀️

disclaimer: this early access content is made possible by the EA Game Changers programme!

#ts4 nifty knitting #eagamechangers #earlyaccess #sp17 #ad

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sonicfanj · 4 years

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Why do you prefer Amy over Sally?

I’ve taken to long to answer this question and would like to first thank you for your patience Anon.

So, I suppose a bit of an explanation for why I took so long is due as well. Mostly, it was a lack of time but also trying to find a way to define ‘why’. There are an awful lot of ways I could go about it as I am the type of person who is heavily invested in the details. Unfortunately the more I thought about it the harder it was going to get for me to really actually break it down. Fortunately, something recently reminded me of the role the Uncle Chuck plays in it and I can fortunately use him to transition into my history with the characters.

Now, I’ve been a Sonic fan for a long time, all the way back to 1991 actually with the original. As a US citizen naturally I saw SatAM and AoStH on TV as well. Where I get strange from what I see though is that I was quite the picky kid. I couldn’t understand why Sonic did not match his in game design, and had no idea what was wrong with Eggman. And yes, even back in the early 90s I was one of the few kids who knew the Japanese name was his original name, though I used them interchangeably back then. The thing is though, neither show ever looked like the games and that bothered me to no end. I recall that my older siblings and I preferred SatAM to AoStH for the more serious story and atmosphere, even likening it to the bad futures of Sonic CD. There in though is where the divide begins.

I was one of the very few kids who played Sonic CD back in 1993 and to this day it is still my favorite Sonic game, no less video game of all time. I actually did not play the higher praised by the fanbase Death Egg Saga games until Sonic Jam on the SEGA Saturn and that little collection did something for me that Sonic CD had also done. They showed me with the OVA trailer that Sonic and Eggman could be drawn properly. It showed me that Tails could be colored properly. They showed me that the wonder of the games could be captured in animation. It was glorious and to this day still leaves me yearning for a Sonic anime that actually captures it. Sonic CD on it’s own though was already killing SatAM for me.

A lot of people praise the Freedom Fighters. That quirky crew of rebels has brought so many people so much joy and I have nothing but respect for them for that. The thing is though, they were forgettable to me. When I turned my back on pretty much anything that was not the games that I knew I completely forgot about them until I finally got involved in the fanbase after Sonic Generations was announced and I had to do some major research to know what anyone was talking about. A game centric upbringing with only really main games as those I played will do that.

Amy meanwhile, despite CD being the only game I played that she was in until Adventure just struck me right. Her design, her on screen personality. These things just filled me with joy and it was very rare that I would not interreact with her in Palm Tree Panic as much as I could. I was actually so disappointed her design was changed for Adventure but her personality was exactly what I was expecting; a sweet bubbly girl with a lot of spunk and a love for Sonic.

So at this point I should come back around to Uncle Chuck as he will be necessary to explain why it took so long for me to even find anything in Sally worth enjoying, no less actually liking her come the 252 reboot. As I mentioned above, Sonic CD is my favorite game all time, but for as much as I loved Amy even back in 1993, Metal Sonic was my favorite character. Getting to Stardust Speedway and spending hours trying to beat him were the highlights with my playing back the until I finally beat him and cleared the game. That difficulty endeared Metal Sonic to me and left a very strong impression on me that still persists to this day. The thing is, Metal Sonic was my childhood and Uncle Chuck was a slap in the face.

You may recall that back in SatAM and a lot of early Archie, Uncle Chuck spent a lot of time roboticized. Now I know I did not see SatAM regularly because TV stations are questionable in their practices and I have parents who wanted the TV for their own shows. As a result I was unprepared for his introduction and in the cliffhanger where they simply showed a pair of red glowing eyes, little Metal Sonic fan that I was thought they were introducing Metal Sonic. When the next episode revealed it was a roboticized Uncle Chuck and not Metal Sonic, it was the last straw for the kid that was into Sonic for the games, and I only had access to two of them. Yet I turned my back on SatAM and everything made in the US that was not directly related to the games.

So because of Uncle Chuck my primary exposure to the cast were the main games and Sonic CD. Adventure finally let me play as Amy and the Freedom Fighters were a shoved aside memory from a wasted opportunity who never impressed themselves onto me. All of that changed come Generations as X showed me that even the Japanese could butcher the games I love and not draw Sonic right and as I joined the fandom through the US Sally should have had the chance to impress herself upon me. Unfortunately she was not given that opportunity because of her fans.

As is obvious, I’m an Amy fan. When I joined the fandom being an Amy fan in the US was not seen as a good thing and the war of hatred between Sally fans and Amy fans still has scars left over today throughout the Sonic community. When presented with Sally through the fans I interacted with, Sally was simply perfection incarnate and Amy should die in a fire while Sonic worships her for killing the hellspawn. It was not a good experience and offered no support for the games and the adventures I enjoyed and came to Sonic for. I also for a time came to despise the character solely for her fans which happened to me in recent years with the Tales of Franchise and the character Alisha. Unpleasant fans make it difficult to enjoy a character or even come to at least understand them. Fortunately I was willing to do some research of my own because I still felt like I needed the knowledge, and maybe the character could speak for herself. I was in for quite a bit of disappointment.

What my research turned up at the time was a character who was simultaneously useless, nothing more but an object of power for Sonic to worship like an indoctrinated thrall, and managed to match Tails in point of view at the time of dumbing Sonic down to where I felt in their presences he couldn’t figure out he was supposed to open his own mouth to eat if they weren’t there. This may be hard to believe but I actually disliked Tails quite a bit for several years as Sonic seemed to be constantly dumbed down so Tails could be useful rather than the kid who could keep up if he gave his all. Yet the OVA (subbed) saved Tails for me. Sally meanwhile continued to undermine Sonic with the Genesis Story during the events of Sonic 1 via the first Genesis Wave where she “helped” Sonic find the courage to enter the water in Labyrinth Zone and he found it not so bad because of her. It was one of the few times I found why people called her a Mary Sue.

What finally saved Sally for me was actually Amy. Though I never liked how aggressive and violent Amy had become compared to playful and mischievous from Sonic X on, and a coming reexamination of her character after learning she addressed Sonic a certain way in the Japanese manuals leading me to fully fall for Kazuyuki Hoshino’s vision of her, her conversations with Mecha Sally would turn the tide for Sally. Amy being Amy spoke of friendship and the friendship they had. While I never read the comics and could not examine their relationship, come the reboot in 252, from the get go the two were shown as good friends and I could finally see Sally’s character. She was wise tactically and cared for her friends, bit was also highly responsible and took her duties seriously. In Amy and her friends she found the comfort to unwind and just be another person no matter what was going on. Her and Amy’s chats while going around the world during the lead up to and during the Unleashed adaption made her fun and enjoyable, no less relatable. She was finally a character, a person, and not just an object that Sonic was chained to like a slobbering cartoon dog with their bone. It was refreshing and I enjoy the friendship between Sally and Amy so much that I still feel if the Freedom Fighters were to have been adapted to IDW for just a cameo that Sally would have been the perfect friend to hand the Restoration off to as she finally returned to her own adventuring ways. And that right there is the big difference point.

I come to Sonic for adventure, whimsy, and wonder. The sense of discover of meeting new people and seeing wonderous new locations. I love characters full of life and the love for adventure. Sally, unfortunately for her, does not represent that. Her role for years kept Sonic away from those adventures. Instead of supporting whimsy and constant new discovery, she supported stability and staying forever at home. By the nature of her role as a character and in universe, she just can’t be that type of character and that is not her fault. Amy meanwhile is a character designed to follow Sonic no matter where he goes. That she also is a girly-tomboy, one of my favorite character archetypes, but also bubbly and silly, playful and mischievous, and generally full of good cheer and limitless positivity (or used to be at lease) just always entertains me. That she also has the courage to open wear and express her emotions, including her love, is both entertaining on one hand, but also inspiring on another when you are raised in a society that hates honesty, emotions, and expressing that you love someone. Amy was refreshing, whereas Sally when I first looked into her, and her fans that I interacted with, represented oppression and that being you was the worst thing that could ever happen to the human race, something that Sonic and Amy both stand against. Fortunately Amy showed me there is plenty to like with Sally, and it’s a real shame her character was vaulted before that potential could finally be perceived. And yet, in the end, as I grew up on the main games and had my expectations born of them and further refined as I learned more and more of the Japanese lore for the games, Sally and the role she has could never provide me with what I come to Sonic for. Adventure, the whimsy that gives rise to it, the discovers that come from it, and the heroics at it’s climax. Sally by nature is not a whimsical character, nor should she be. It isn’t who she is and she deserves to be respected for that. And it’s thanks to her friendship with Amy that I finally saw that and can enjoy her character. But like Amy, I want to follow Sonic on his adventures, and her bubbly, playful, cheerful, optimistic, and mischievous personality makes following Sonic that much more enjoyable to me.

To simplify it here at the end, my love of Metal Sonic and Uncle Chuck prevented me from ever learning who Sally was. It was Amy’s friendship with her that finally changed that and I found a character who has a lot of potential and is quite enjoyable on her own. But Amy’s personality, whimsy, and propensity for adventure, or the the trouble that will take her on one, makes her the more enjoyable character for me. I know the whole explanation was a little long, but I hope it helps explains my preference for you Anon. Thanks for asking.

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