#is that a tag I should be using

[chairteeth]

So I did a lil bit of intro writing

For my upcoming contribution to the @magireco-minibang, I've decided to write a couple of introductions so to speak, in each main character's pov. I've been partnered with @karinmisono for this project and I for one am excessively excited about it aaaaa-

Anyway, the girls have grown different from their canon selves to some extent, given the changes in their formative years, but don't worry, being thrown into an eldritch horror gallery will bond anyone most people.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eighteen. The very day Nemu Hiiragi had turned eighteen, she’d stopped going to therapy. Her parents didn’t stop her—didn’t care enough to even find out. What had therapy ever done for her, besides bring to light how miserable her home life truly was?

Her father didn’t give her a break. She was barely listening to him when she walked into the kitchen. Something about a competition. Another competition. What was it going to be this time? Kendo? Karate? Taekwondo would at least be enjoyable.

“Oh, Nemu, there are leftovers in the fridge,” her mother called.

“Thank you, Mom, but I ate lunch before I left Yukuni.”

“I see…”

Before either of her parents could continue talking to her, Nemu left her bag on the counter and headed to her room, registering one last shout from her father to get ready for training. This was why she preferred to be anywhere but the house. She caught sight of her brother glaring at her from the door to his room and politely ignored it.

Once she’d finished counting the books in her room, as she did every time she entered it in hopes that her father wouldn’t have thrown away any of them, she eyed her laptop on her desk. Weekend mornings were the only time her father had been convinced to grant her for classes, prioritizing training his begrudging champion above her studies. She’d used up that day’s morning free time on returning to Kamihama all the way from Yukuni City.

“I suppose my assignments will be feasible to do tonight after dinner… which leaves me stranded here to sleep for the night. Not the worst fate, although unpleasant.”

She left her glasses on her dresser to put in her contacts, seeing as it was preferable to do it at home rather than the dojo. After a few blinks, a glance at her buzzing phone showed her a rare text from the only person she would hesitantly call a friend: Alina Gray. That could not possibly be good news.

“Cherry blossom viewing…? Alina would never suggest this. It must have been her girlfriend who proposed this. In Sankyo Ward as well… I do recall Akira mentioning that there’s a park with beautiful cherry blossoms nearby. While the prospect holds a certain appeal, I cannot extend my acceptance until I’ve formulated a suitable strategy to circumvent Dad’s potential objections.”

Strategizing would not be difficult… so long as she didn’t delude herself with any ideas of her unflinchingly strict father allowing her to skip even a single training session. Her instructors promoted discipline, however they had been willing to cover for her in the past. Once or twice. She hated having to request anything out of anyone.

“But… I would benefit from a small break. A break that does not involve depersonalization of the highest caliber.”

If her therapist had left her with anything, it would be the curse of self-awareness. All she’d wanted to do after leaving the hospital had been to bond with her family and indulge in her passions somewhere that wasn’t a sterile white environment reeking of medication.

Over her summer shirt, Nemu felt her fingertips glide around the contour of the scar beneath her breasts, and she hated the way it made her breath hitch. Breathing, breathing, breathing. Her enemy, it felt like. Or at least, for the longest time, it had been. She had not yet been able to go more than a few days without thinking back to the hospital. To the days of choking on her own mucus, when her limbs felt like lead and her useless, weak, defective lungs were filled with sandpaper, each cough rasping and tearing at her throat. The days of gasping for oxygen in a lonely room as if trying to suck air through a straw, tears streaming down her cheeks and her vision swimming. Those days when she’d both plead for and curse her parents, unable to hear herself above the high-pitched whistle that filled her ears, the constant reminder of the narrowed airways that choked her every breath. The red of her blood had looked beautiful when it stained her sheets—unproductive, the nurses had called it.

A bang on her door snapped her out of her thoughts.

“You’re gonna be late, grab your uniform and get your ass out the door!” her father yelled.

With a sigh, Nemu retrieved her folded up uniform and took her immunosuppressant pills dry. She’d heed her father’s command this once.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Touka never thought she could hate the stars. It wasn’t that she hated them, exactly. Recent events had simply granted her a new perspective.

“Fire requires oxygen and fuel. Fire produces heat and light through a chemical reaction called combustion. Fire releases ash and other byproducts. Stars don’t need oxygen or fuel in the traditional sense. Stars generate light and heat through nuclear fusion, where atoms combine to release enormous amounts of energy. Stars don’t produce ash, but heavier elements.”

She’d been repeating that to herself for months. The incident had left parts of her home in shambles, charred beyond recognition. Other parts had only seen minor damage. Including the particular canvas she’d been staring at. A perfect replica of herself, wearing a different dress and yet the same cursed bright smile she’d been made to sport since her inception. It made her frown to see the scorch marks—they left her figure untouched, consuming everything around her instead.

Touka took a deep breath. She couldn’t spend her day idling and moping. Her siblings were counting on her. They may have been older, but they’d been far more terrified than her when their guests had turned on them and set their home ablaze. It was her job to lead.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. The likelihood of falling was rather high, if her terrible balance since the incident was anything to go by. As if to taunt her, the sensation of burning embers radiated into her back and shoulders, numb yet tingling, icy cold yet searing hot. An ache, a throb she couldn’t escape. The smell of smoke and ash lingered in her nose.

“Like a ship missing its sails…”

With a scowl, she tried to take it one step at a time. And every step felt like descending into Hell itself. The ache radiated from her shoulder blades, down her spine, and into her fingers. Touka kept her eyes glued to the stairs below. Thankfully, there was a railing to hold onto. Unfortunately for her, as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt an itch urging her to scratch at it. She would not be scratching at empty air. For her dignity. She’d grit her teeth, squeeze her eyes shut, and hope it would pass soon. Her hand went to the black rose she wore in her hair.

“I need… to make better defenses. Every visitor that has come to our home has hurt us, only to flee before we can retaliate. I don’t know why I thought it would be different this time. Well, I was right, it was different, just… not in a good way. Of course not.”

Her older sisters had told her once, over tea, that she had no thorns. No matter how hard she tried to keep people away, she’d always end up trusting at the first sign of kindness. They’d tried not to blame her, but she could tell what they were thinking. Why would she want to be close to others when she already had such a large family that adored her?

“They don’t feel trapped here like I do… It hasn’t been the same since Father left. I wish I knew why he abandoned us. It was… little after I was born… Was it something to do with me? Did he not want to look at me?” She lifted up her forearm and stared at the burn scar forever etched into her skin. “Was I… defective?”

Touka slammed her fist into the concrete wall, sending cracks out from the point of impact. She could not afford distractions. She could not afford mourning. She could not afford-

But it ached. It ached and she fell to her knees beside the wall.

No sound. No sun. No wind.

She’d waited so long. First, in silence. Then, making the most noise she could. Trying everything, anything to make him proud. Why had he been so cruel as to abandon all of his children without a word? Her siblings had raised her with stories of their father’s loving soul and his kind hand. She’d never known them herself. What had she done to deserve his scorn? Why was she not worthy of his love as her siblings had been? Why did everyone who met her hate her? Why could she not let go of her sorrows and live happily like the rest of her siblings?

“They call me a genius… Is that why? It hurts… It hurts so much…”

The first sob came without tears.

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[galaxylover06]

Their name is Barry and they can't escape the digital cir

[spacerockband]

Quetzalcoatlus! poised to spear her prey!

[prismsoup]

Watched the horrible minecraft movie trailer </3 My friends and I decided to make this stupid thing while suffering Bingo to find out how bad that movie is actually going to be

@a-witch-in-a-dumpster thank you for half the ideas <3

[anniflamma]

Y'all asked for a part 2 of Odysseus seducing Zeus. This is all you get. .... Part 3

[bixels]

me too, luna.

[egophiliac]

hear me out

silver vanrouge ❌️

silver draconia ✔️

malleus beats lilia to the punch

[keferon]

Don’t mind me I just like to see him go bananas about cartoonish Autobot rules

Maaan…..if Prowl was in tfp he would spontaneously combust at least once a day

[dormatheus]

Later the lamb would just think that the real thing is nicer than the gaunlet idk

I gave up so fast holy shit

-💊

[420technoblazeit]

has anybody else seen the bit in tommy's new video yet. where he asks mumbo jumbo if he can revive technoblade with redstone. bc that actually made my jaw DROP hol yshit. the pause just before he says it. you can hear the gears turning in phil's head as he realizes what tommy's about to say. the immediate psychic damage. truly horrid thank you tommy. ik techno would be losing it over that joke

[stealingyourbones]

Danny’s clockwork emblem gets damaged and causes him to glitch and slip through time (think Loki tv show Time Slipping or Into the Spider-Verse glitching). Lucky for him it’s not too random, his sporadic time jumps and flickering in and out of reality is centered on this vaguely familiar superhero he remembered Clockwork mentioning and he doesn’t quite know why.

[cuppajj]

BAAU Sugarposting from the magma!

Happening later in the timeline, the stress of saving her kingdom weighs too heavily on Princess to bear. Thankfully, someone is there to take it all away, with plans of her own…

[canideformed]

Actually crazy how if you so much as even breathe in the direction of supporting transmascs as a transfem how many people (cis people, transmascs, transfems, literally anybody) will crawl out of the woodworks to scream that you, “will never understand transmisogyny,” are “privileged,” are “being a whiny TME,” are being a “typical man,” are “speaking over women,” etc., without even considering the possibility that you might be transfem.

[alukaforyou]

hes just like a little flower to me🌸

hes like noooo stoppp this is embarrassing ✋✋✋

i cant believe i worked on the face the whole dam day and it looks weird lmaooo kmsss 💀 ig u can look forward to the finished version i'll uhhh keep working on it until it looks right >_<

song i picked to draw to was 'moonflower' by lucia its very historical kdrama ost sounding, very longing yearning pretty lyrics >_<;;

the mv tho lmfaooawofejrkgnnofaeif monster loving??? 👀👀👀

u kno whats f'd up abt drawing sukuna; i still have to sketch out the rest of his face before i put the two eyes over it to check if everything looks right wtf like its gonna be covered anyways but the way i still have... to.. draw it under LOL 👎 im just not confident enough to go straight into it yanno?

i completely failed at going the dilf route cuz i just cant draw that my art skillz are not there yet 👎 so i just went the pretty boi route i always pull up lee soo hyuk face ref pics when drawing my other anime husband madara but i summoned him for sukuna this one time too even tho idt they look alike at all,, it just helps to have his face out tho idk. my fave drawing buddy mr lee :3c ALSO!! my cat decided to take a multi hour long eep on my lap i couldnt move, me legs & back hurt sm 😵‍💫

anyways im gonna take months to finish this pic ^_T i just cant draw as much as i used to.. dam adulting sucks :/ i dont want a job TT I DID finish ONE tho one of the 3 in the set heres a lil preview i felt like such a dam perv drawing this lol 🤪

i was looking at a loooot of body builder ref pics they have sm arm veins???? and on the lower tummy DICK area im crying what the hale🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴😖😖😖😖😖😖😖😖