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i tried to make an april fools with my friend saying i was dropping out but now she's genuinely concerned and now i feel bad
#tbh ive been going through it and made that clear#but i would never drop out#my anxiety wouldnt let me#i feel bad though#im gonna tell her i was kidding
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how i got rid of my body acne and achieved the smoothest skin ever and also plan on keeping it hydrated during the colder months 🫧🧼🧴🚿
i absolutely love and adore the naturium brand it really has transformed my skin and helped it so much ive used each product separately but get the best results using them together.
THESE TWO BODY WASHES RIGHT HERE! ive had body acne for as long as i can remember and these two washes have magically made them go away. i notice when i use other body washes my skin tends to revert back into breaking out but these body washes help my skin so much and clear up my skin so well. i still am left with the scarring but they also have a vitamin c body wash for skin brightening that also exfoliates that i want to try out for my scars.
ROUTINE FOR SMOOTH HYDRATED SKIN:
1. the first thing i do is dry brush, you might not be able to tell the difference in the beginning but you will after and especially after consistent use.
2. the next thing i do is shower like normal and use shower tools to really help clean my skin whether it’s an exfoliating glove, wash cloth, loofah, exfoliating wash net,etc…(i recommend an exfoliating glove and wash net for a deeper wash and for extra smooth skin as well you will definitely notice a difference in the texture of your skin after!) i also of course use the two body washes i listed above, the salicylic acid one first then the multi-oil body wash after.
3. the thing that seals the deal…a body oil! yes you are going to use it right after you shower with water still dripping on your skin! (i pat very little water off my body so im not sopping wet reaching over for my body oil) but the water is the key into locking in the moisture when you rub the body oil in the water will be absorbed into your skin and you will not be soaking wet anymore, and the way your skin will feel after? SOOOO SMOOTH!!
after this i like to still layer on my smells through body lotions, body mists and perfumes because these have zero to little fragrance to them
the body oil i use is the palmers coconut body oil which is very affordable going under $10 i believe and this brand has been very good to my skin as well i love their coconut line. and another affordable drug-store body oil is the neutrogena one both unscented and scented i don’t have it personally (which will probably change soon tbh) but ive smelled and felt it in person before and loved it.
this routine gets my skin nice and smooth every time im soo obsessed, i hope this helps! ♡
xo
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i cant watch the tsunami eps 😭 ive only watched it once and then skipped one or both eps on the 2nd rewatch. it was so stressful!!!! i knew christopher was gonna be ok - the joys of watching the whole show years after the air dates - but it was still so fucking stressful!
however in revisiting the source material (3x01):
i literally *just* realised bobby was lying through his teeth telling buck that "chief alonso" and "the department" are concerned about "liability issues" - not that he was wrong to be worried because buck was cleared and recertified and then he coughed up blood and passed out and what he said that the doctors don't know what's causing the clots + buck being on blood thinners = yeah, you shouldn't be putting yourself in risky situations. which. is the whole job.
and i also just realised buck quit because bobby said he would only ever be cleared for light duty. i honestly thought buck was wrong to quit instead of waiting until his health issues got sorted. even if it had already been 5 months since has was on medical leave. see aforementioned coughing up blood and passing out. but bobby wanting to bench him FOREVER? because of *his* own personal issues? real "i made a mistake so im putting my kid under lock and key so they dont make the mistake" energy of overprotective parents.
and you know what you could do if you believe your subordinate and/or "son" is putting too much focus on his job and not enough on outside-of-work life? send him to ✨ counselling ✨ (hey, he has the authority to issue department mandated therapy like he did for eddie in s5, no?) go learn all about work life balance, buck. so. big L for bobby, tbh. maybe he should go to some self-mandated counselling too, huh?
AND THEN. BUCK SURVIVES A WHOLE ASS TSUNAMI. SAVES HIMSELF + KEEPS CHRISTOPHER SAFE (before the second wave hits iirc?) + SAVES A BUNCH OF OTHER PEOPLE. and bobby sees all that and still doesn't budge? like. he's clearly alright.
speaking of people too lost in their own issues to sympathise with buck who's going through a fucking rough period: *side eyes eddie* (even though dragging buck out of bed and sending him off with christopher is one of the most genius moves. need me a freak like that when im in the depression pit 😔) (but then saying "[christopher] never feels sorry for himself" eddie im gonna bonk you on the head with a newspaper)
i don't understand how i missed a lot of these little details. i feel like i definitely sympathise with buck a lot more now. he was basically told that his options are desk duty or nothing? instead of "desk duty until you are cleared by the doctors" which is obviously necessary for new symptoms. and the fact that someone he trusts so much was responsible for the fact that he lost his job. that would have hurt.
#send post#your leg gets crushed under a fire engine and then your girlfriend dumps you and then you lose your job#yeah i would have microwaved forks and knives too tbh#evan buckley#my beloved 🥺#my meta
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//just me venting about sukuna haters sorry
Not me seeing so much discourse about whether sukuna is a well written villain or not... he essentially has no backstory shown as of yet and we barely know anything about him but he is still one of the most naturally interesting and compelling characters in the whole damn series bro 💀 buckle up bc its about to get lengthy (im just glazing sukuna in this post ngl so 🧎♀️)
so many whiny ass mfs are weeping about how he "doesn't have any personal goals or a proper reason to be a villain" when that is the whole point???? He lives on his own desires and satisfactions and does whatever he wants to, because he is capable enough to do that. Mfs want "real villains" but cant even handle sukuna 💀 ive seen too many shit ass threads and poorly articulated "critiques" on his character that dont make any valid points. If you can't even separate your personal dislike of a character from your analysis of their writing, dont even bother posting that shit please 😭😭😭 the fact that we haven't even gotten any information about his background yet and people are jumping the gun about him being "poorly written" is already saying a lot 🤨
The fact that yall are so bitter and angry about him that you can write 500+ words about how oh-so-terrible of a villain he is kinda proves that he's doing his job well tbh 💁♀️
What also bothers me to no END is how people compare him with villains of other series, who had compelling sob stories that made people empathise with them. Thats nice and all but why should all villains have grand ideals and be subject to feelings of empathy/sympathy from their audience?
Part of what makes sukuna so interesting is how he's not tied down by morals, rules or long term goals in life. He doesn't limit himself, which is what makes him an unpredictable character. He's completely left behind what it means to be human in many ways, and he's clearly not a character written to be empathised with. He is very purposefully inhumane and distant from everyone else, and that feeling transcends from within the series to real life as well. There is a clear lack of understanding bc most of us can't comprehend what its like to just live without being goal-oriented.
Sukuna is a true anomaly in the sense that he doesnt really fit in any kind of box within the series. He's born from man, but its clear that he separates himself from humans (and nobody else considers him human, either). He's not a cursed spirit. He hovers between life and death. The narrator referred to him as the honoured one, whilst angel referred to him as the disgraced one.
These little contradictions in his character make him all the more complicated and interesting to think about. And even recently, he's been shown to waver a little bit momentarily in the manga, questioning his own irritation at yuuji. He's capable of self reflection, and though sukuna does whatever he wants for the most part, he doesn't blindly go into things without some thought first, he's a constant thinker and analyser, and an intelligent one at that.
And honestly, he is always such a joy to watch and read, his personality is so flavourful, and the way he carries himself is very attractive. He's not afraid to get messy or of getting hurt, theres so much chaos in the way he does things and yet he also has a huge element of gracefulness to him, which shines through the poetic way he speaks. Its undeniable that sukuna simply oozes charisma...
And this isnt talked about enough but this man is genuinely so effortlessly funny (in a kind of sinister way i guess?) Like yes he is an old ass man having real beef with one FIFTEEN YEAR OLD for very little reason, he accidentally healed yuujis arm and somehow expected him to be grateful for it despite how he literally ripped his heart out afterwards, then he proceeded to sit on him after kicking him down likeeee 😭 what kind of behaviour is this sir
His facial expressions at yorozus yapping 💀 THE WAY HE COMPARED YUUJIS FACE OF DESPAIR TO THE HARIMA STATUE 😭😭😭💀😭💀💀😭 omg that was so foul but i was fucking losing it ngl
How he randomly compared gojo to a fish and started talking abt his scales... thats a very unique and descriptive comparison, isnt it? Even in the recent leaks, he was 100% ready and squaring up to a literal child talking abt "youre starting to get annoying" LIKE HELPPP 😭 HE FR SAID "fuck them kids and fuck you too"
I saw someone saying that sukuna has no passion, like are we talking about the same character....? This man is a literal jujutsu NERD 💀💀 he truly recognises talented sorcerers and the only time hes seen to be having genuine fun is when hes fighting a mf... is that not passion? This is literally sukuna when it comes to jujutsu: 🤓
Anyway im done here now, im pretty sure i missed a lot of things i couldve talked about as well but ive done enough yapping
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the dawn knight in place of yuu
MAJOR JP BOOK 7 SPOILERS
(anyway i like calling him the knight of dawn but also thats too many words for a name im going to be repeating a lot throughout this post so dawn knight)
okay so. i was thinking about a fic to write where a character had a part of themselves appear somewhere else? like ive been getting into omniscient reader but i have a diff story im trying to commit to rn so i cant really write something with it when i dont really know shit that happens besides like end game spoilers lOl
but i find the idea of like the 49/51 (?) interesting? i think thats the right numbers. no context to people who dont know what that means but that part broke me even though all i know about omniscient reader is by reading a shit ton of orv fanfiction. my heart man... sob.
but so anyways my mind wandered to the dawn knight
kudos to that like one fic where the dawn knight's soul appeared and attached itself to yuu except i read it when i didnt even know who he was but i thought maybe he was a buddy of lilia so im just reading and getting confused on like no why you no like lilia what (also he doesnt remember iirc and i think that was just like a instinctual feeling cause yknow humans vs fae??) but uh i know context now lMFAO
but like
just imagine this person who looks like silver but blonde. who doesnt remember who he is (as hes kind of more of just a fragment of his soul? but like he appears in NRC and not RSA because he still has a lingering attachment towards silver. wanting to see him grow because he never got the chance to)
who worries over silver
is a little nervous around fae, but maybe this is ooc but like without all the pressure from what the fuck was his name henrik(??) and like the people around him who are all anti-fae, cause he wouldve liked it if they couldve been in peace and stuff yknow? and also without those memories so its not too difficult for him to get past that and see them as people who will probably not harm others (LOOK i just want twst characters to be happy man cause everything is so sad :((( )
anyway lilia has grown since then and doesnt hate humans. maybe he doesnt exactly know how to feel about the dawn knight (UM like cause meleanor. or is it maleanor? i think thats EN spelling but tbh if not for en i wouldnt know how tf to spell it. but uh ykNOW.. he kinda. uh. still killed.)
but then maybe it becomes clear that this dawn knight (who needs an actual name. dawn sounds too on the nose and i dont think lilia associates dawn with positive feelings considering when maleanor died didnt it turn dawn or something. and then they broke down because shes DEAD.???)
is not the same dawn knight he met so long ago.
like
idk
think about it in like a. okay im pulling out honkai star rail examples now. but think of it maybe like dan feng and dan heng where they're like reincarnations of each other? but not the same person? (some people think of them as still the same considering i think(? its been a hot minute since i went through story) those memories of those reincarnations are then shared to other incarnations to help them in high elder duty thingy whatever its called but i think of them as entirely different people who happen to look similar)
i guess you could view it as a 'i once was [this], but now im this and im not the same person who did all those things'
EDIT: I AM WRONG. 2.5 spoilers but its mentioned that someone made dan heng remember his past life so its NOT canon that they remember their past life. "...led her to perform certain healing arts on Dan Heng, who had just finished his hatching rebirth, so that he would regain the memories of his past life?" but anyway thats how it turned out so uh just pretend that i mean reincarnating/past life type deal but stlil having some of those memories of the former life
idk maybe theres some lilia treating him as another son since like. all three of them are orphans who were taken in???? like its implied parallel of lilia being taken in by the mal... dRACONIA family sorry i forgot the last name om. and the dawn knight being taken in by the whoever is in charge. like the dad of henrik(?) and that person whose name i cant remember i think it was leah who the dawn knight liked and married? but so anyway they both got taken in by a family and owe them a debt and fight for them (and care for them. although idk about henrik ew, but he was also like. wanting princess glow(???) which could supposedly grant wishes i think to like cure their ill father, and saying that the dawn knight should do it for leah or something? i cant remember but he convinced him with something something leah)
i dont know where im going with this thought but like. i remember the dawn knight said something like. if things could be different? but like it cant be because they've gone too far now to forgive each other? but like he wanted there to be peace.
i remember thinking about lilia's wish in the wish upon a star event, maybe it was similar i cant recall exactly
Lilia: My wish is... ...for humans, fae, and all other species to live in harmony. [Img of the wishing star] Trey: Haha, wow. That's a pretty ambitious wish. Lilia: To join joyous hands with one another is no simple feat, even for those among the same species... To say nothing of the difficulties across species divides. You've learned about our history, have you not? All the countless tales of our failure to compromise, and the resulting conflicts? I have no desire to see such history repeated. So I make the same wish every Starsending.
like the dawn knight expressed regret that it had to be this way and wanted things to change but it was far too late. but like. he never did that stuff now (well lilia will remember so poor grandpa but. he's also been really forgiving towards humans when doing it for someone? like he endures it? like when he was searching for a way to hatch malleus and these people were really against lilia for being fae when he just existed, and he didnt fight back because it would paint a bad picture for the draconias? there was another example related to silevr but i cant remember it im. not what i was thinking about but theres also when he contemplated killing baby silver but changed his mind because he'd been trying to teach malleus to like. 'walk in time with his neighbor' and so and so and i forgot what he said but that how could he do that when he should be like setting an example for malleus or something right?)
also silver learning who his parents are in a maybe less traumatic way (like NOT running away knowing malleus' mom might die and then oh shit the ceiling collapsed and IS THAT THE ENEMY oh god please dont let malleus' egg be hurt and then he shares the same face as me? and that ring-- cue silver hating himself and being dragged in by darkness and i am just sobbing my eyes out like no silver he loved you so much :((( )
and even if lilia still holds anything against the dawn knight. still has lingering feelings even towards this not-dawn knight. that he wouldnt want to condemn the dawn knight, and then have silver condemn himself for being of that blood even though he didnt even do anything yknow?
and then when lilia dies he can meet up with the ghosts of maleanor and raverne (is that spelled right? i genuinely cant remember the EN spelling but it was something like that. uhh.??) and i know thats sad but i want lilia to be able to spend more time with maleanor and raverne too yknow? but im not sure how to do that
maybe. like the. the the . council? i cant remember its name fshuidfh but those assholes who appeared when we made it to. blackscale(?) castle... ? i. forgor. maleficia(THATS GRANDMA RIGHT?? i get so confused by who is who in draconia) castle??
but like when we get there with malleus' egg and then maleanor dies
and theres just these voices of long dead old geezers who are bitches to lilia and i hate them and i dont know how they're still there and can talk but i dont want maleanor there because they're horrible. also they literally said her sacrifice was like noble or some shit like that and im just like BITCH- (also lilia is banned from the capital or something isnt he?? like i mean he can still visit the castle. but secretly. but still :( )
so i just think.
fully getting over stuff. heart demons. talking things out. lilia gets to talk about stuff for the first time in awhile (remember when like literally no one talked about the circumstances regarding malleus' birth or something so silver and sebek just had no idea what they were getting into??? and like i guess he could talk to baul? baur? idk which one is the one on EN i forgor. but idk man.)
not-dawn knight being a really good listener. being understanding, sharing his input where appropriate. and like he also gets some of his memories which put a lot of things into proper context. and so sharing thoughts of so and so. and just. basically this talk that spirals into moving on.
sharing frustrations, sharing things that never really got to be known.? like regrets, etc etc
since i think the last time they met was when silver father reveal, and time passed and he died so its just all these lingering things that never got to be said out loud for various reasons. like maybe because company is against so and so so to say something would be like idk maybe traitorous? i dont think thats the right word but words are hard and i keep forgetting words the moment i need them
its like. the unique point of view of talking about things between former enemies. like how they viewed things, etc etc
and then when lilias lived a full life, no regrets, he meets maleanor and raverne in the afterlife.
oh yeah also about his dorm i have no fucking idea. i honestly mostly forgot what each dorm represents but either ramshackle or diasomnia, which i know is like nobility or something? but anyway dawn knight married a princess, also i associate diasomnia with fae / briar valley which is related considering hes book 7 stuff so im pushing him there anyway
or maybe the mirror cant read him because his soul is fragmented. or maybe retcon and his soul isnt like that? idk but i like to think the other part of his soul is in the afterlife with his wife yknow? and eventually silver will be there and able to meet his mom and huggies, and acknowledging that these are who his parents are, but also that lilia is also his parent and the one who raised him yknow? there can be more than two parents in my eyes.
its just that his soul is like in half because of the part of him that wants to have seen silver grown. i think i said this earlier in the post but that since the last time he saw silver was as an infant (also he had blonde hair so-)
also wasnt infant silver asleep for like hundreds of years until it was either because someone who loved him came by (lilia) or because the spell finally wore off (which is what lilia thinks. i dont know where to put my two cents at tbh of which i think is right)
so dawn knight just sitting there in the afterlife like. ..man. my childs still not here. i mean. thats a good thing that they're not dead but like. i kinda wanna see them.
or well silvers the only one so i should be saying he but gidfhuj
also it was either leah or leia i am a dumbass? maybe leah was the EN one. idk i forgot.
anyway thats enough yapping for me
#thoughts#writing ideas#fic ideas#twst#twisted wonderland#twst wonderalnd#silver vanrouge#twst silver#silver twst#diasomnia#silver twisted wonderland#lilia vanrouge#the knight of dawn#the dawn knight#idk if thats an actual tag but im making it one#twst jp spoilers#twst book 7 spoilers#twst spoilers#twisted wonderland spoilers#twst book 7#twst jp book 7 spoilers
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Gray, Lyon and Ultear family ideas? I like to imagine Gray tells them about one of fairy tail’s exploits and they get concerned about his well-being. Mandatory family trips thatGray definitely doesn’t try to avoid (Lyon and Ultear have learnt to alert the guild when they’re coming so Gray can’t escape).
And if you don’t mind, Gray and Loke being BFFs?
Thanks! This blog makes me happy
im so happy you enjoy my blog!! i enjoy it too ;D
i’ve actually made a post similar to this before, but heres more
ty for the ask and sorry this took a while, ive been busy
Once a month (at least) family trip are a must, It started with Ultear dragging Lyon places during the 7 year gap but it started being a more regular thing when Gray turned back up
the first couple time they tried to do things together, it was a disaster
they werent familiar with each other and were hella awkward
Also, when Lyon & Ultear would mention to Gray they were coming into town, he would try to convince the team to go on an impromptu job
they’ve since learned to warn Erza of their arrival so he cant leave
‘abt to come into town, do not let that mf leave’
‘Guarding the doors & windows rn’
Grays probably walked into the guild to see one or both of them and turned right back around
The first time the showed up when Gray wasnt around they got a shovel-esque talk
it was terrifying and also confusing considering they think of themselves as his siblings so shouldnt they be giving those talks?
Ultear really embraces her oldest sibling role and pays for practically everything they do together
While Gray will try to avoid in person outings, he will blow up their phones (lacrima devices, whatever) at all hours of the night
Lyon probably has a 16 step skin care routine that he tries to nag the other two into trying it
its a fools quest tbh
They argue. so much. cannot do anything together without a disagreement. they probably have fist fought each other too
They are fiercely protective of one another, they can be pretty subtle about it but its clear as day to anyone who even slightly crosses them
They as a whole have a gambling/betting problem
They have run their pockets dry with it
They have been kicked out of multiple restaurants for being too loud
Gray tells them off-handedly abt the jobs and events he went through while growing up in Fairy Tail and they just sit back and listen in horrified fascination
they have absolutely no planned photos of them, they just never got around to it (*coughcough* grayrefusedtobeinone *coughcough*)
however! they have soooo many candid ones, Gray glared and complained when he found out (but he has half of them framed or saved on his phone)
Ultear and Lyon got pretty close duriny the 7 year gap and while Gray swears hes not jealous of it he totally is
Ultear, Lyon, & Gray; Guilt Complex Extraordinaires
Loke & Gray things :D
Nobody knows if Loke had a house, he always crashed on Grays couch
They are the reason for the sassy man apocalypse
When Lucy lets him have a day off his first stop tends to be Gray
Loke taught Gray how to cook
If Gray gets mad at him, Loke will attempt to deescalate it by flirting
Grayll be scolding him and Loke will stare at him and say smth like “are we about to kiss right now🥰”
it only serves to make Gray more angry
Orange cat friend + Black cat friend
Theyre the type to know in detail each others existential crisis’s but not each others favorite color
they do not have blackmail on each other. none. because they know if they ever did and actually released it the other would post absolutely every single humiliating thing they’ve done ever
There is no such thing as a judgement free zone with them
Their tastes are so different that when they have to get gifts for each other that if they look at smth and think “wow this is so ugly” they know its the right one
they probably hooked up at some point but thats neither here nor there
Loke, Gray and Cana were kinda like the mean girls of young fairy tail
They had a dont ask dont tell policy on their pasts, however every other personal detail abt each other was free reign
A lot of their conversations have left them with a sense of dread, confusion and hysteria
Lokes the type to walk into ppls houses like its his own, his most common victim is Gray
Loke, pulling the shower curtain back: Were out of ch— stop screaming
Gray, still screaming: HOW DID YOU GET IN MY HOUSE???
Loke, nonplussed: You left the kitchen window unlocked, also we’re out of chips
SORRY ITS SHORT!!
#fairy tail#gray fullbuster#ultear milkovich#lyon vastia#ft loke#loke fairy tail#sun strickens ft#fairy tail headcanons#sun stricken answers#im having writers block with my foc and apparently that extends to hcs#so sorry
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well hi :3 welcome to deja’s skinblending guide. this is my first full written tutorial so excuse me if its not very good LAWL before we get started, here's the tools i'll be using
sims4studio
tray importer
photoshop 2022 (theres cracked version everywhere on tumblr)
blender 4.1
sims 4 ripper
blender + the ripper aren't required to make skins, plenty of people don't go that extra step, but i love using it for placement help
okay lets fuckin go gamers heres my very in depth process for making my ocs skins
miss dolly is gonna be our model today. she already has a skin but im gonna add some little details for the sake of example + some tats cause ive been meaning to anyway.
so when i first get started on making someone a skin, ill find a good base to use and then add details from other categories like nosemasks, eyebags, contours, etc.
my fav skin creators are @sims3melancholic and @thisisthem. my bases are usually thisisthem, and then i'll pick through a couple s3m skins and make notes on my phone about what parts i wanna take off of them (like, say, i like how a certain s3m skin's nose looks. i'll use that instead of a nosemask)
my goal when im gathering things i wanna add is to free up as many slots as i can. id rather add cheshire's freckles onto her skin than use up the freckle slot in skin details that i could use for something else, yknow?
ill repeat this process for makeup next. obviously im not giving my ocs permanent full glam, but some lipsticks can add better texture, you can get highlights/blush from........the blush section LOL and i love using this obscurus eyeliner at a low-ish opacity
just adds an extra level of detail i love. i think what keeps my sims looking consistent next to each other is that i tend to use some of the same details all across the board
make sure for all makeup/skin detail/tattoo category swatches you use, you make note of what swatch it exactly is. when you go into s4s to export the file, you're gonna have to manually select it and if u cant remember what skintone u chose out it can be annoying :/
note that she is completely nakey aside from her piercings while i pick what im gonna use for her skin! no clothing but u can keep on their hair. this is so we have a clear view of everything (and i mean EVERYTHING) for blender.
after you make sure u save the sim/household to ur gallery, you can close out of cas and save ur game! i forgot to do this bc im a fucking idiot but its okay bc you will not. its not REALLY necessary to do this as long as you know exactly what packages you need to locate for texture exporting
step one is done!!!! close out ur game
i have a million fucking characters so i made a deja senti skinblending folder to keep it all organized :-)
this is what it looks like inside. gives u a pretty good overview of what ur gonna be doing tbh. the 't' folder is all the textures we're about to export
thankfully i do have a version of dahlia saved in my gallery so even tho i didnt go it before i closed my game i can still show u what to do in tray importer lol. i have multiple sims in one household, so i narrowed it down by going up top and selecting dahlia / human / and her everyday outfit.
since im gonna give her this blush, i right click and hit open w package viewer so itll find it and open s4s for me
anime wow sound. im gonna change the color manually in photoshop so it doesnt matter to me what swatch i export. hit that green export button under the list of diffuse/shadow/etc (u dont need to worry about all those options, just diffuse) and save it to ur folder!
once ur done gathering ur textures ur good to close out of tray importer and s4s(we'll come back to s4s later tho)
thats step two! the quickest step lawl
this is where i start being a little extra. u dont have to rip ur sim and use blender if u dont want to, but i think it can rly help bc the default sim in s4s doesn't have ur sims facial features and can make ur skins look wonky/wont give an accurate representation of how itll look in game. this cuts out having to go in game/out of game over and over to check
so in simripper once u load up ur sim, the important part is to make sure u have it set to export the dae with separate meshes. once thats done u can import it into blender and there's plenty of other tutorials out there how to use simripper n all that.
so once u get the dae loaded into blender im gonna send u on a little side quest over to this ask i answered where i explain how i separate eyes from the head mesh. next thing ur gonna open is photoshop! or whatever u have thats similar
say hi to flat dahlia. u should have ur own guy but flat open now too :-) along with everything else ur gonna combine. in my case its blush and a titty mask. im gonna start w the blush so i zoomed into her face in blender. i went into the blush file and copied, then back into my base skin file and pasted into place with crtl+shift+v
please do not be like me. make sure u rename ur layers as you copy and paste them into the main skin file. do this because it DOES matter what order ur layers are in. u dont want to put ur highlight under ur nose mask cause the nose mask will just cover the highlight etc etc. i already lost what layer the new blush i added is. what is wrong w me
so when u have ur first detail pasted on and in place, ur gonna save the base skin file as a psd. then go into blender, and in the little textures window ur gonna replace the diffuse file ur dae came loaded with with ur new psd file
u should see the change u made but mine was super subtle so im gonna show it to u when i put on the cleavage overlay
when it comes to stuff like this, ur obviously gonna want to pick the closest to ur skintone swatch as u can. i did not do this, because again, im an idiot
mine is way too pale LAWL whoops. we can fix this tho
i add a hue/saturation adjustment and make it a clipping mask using that square w the arrow so the adjustment will ONLY affect the mask
from there i just make little adjustments until the color match up is as perfect as i can make it. for example for this, ik that it needs to be a little warmer and a little more saturated, so im gonna bump the hue and saturation sliders to the right and it was pretty much perfect
tiddies with no mask > with mask no adjustments > with mask and adjustments
and ur gonna go ahead and repeat that process with every single thing u wanna add to ur skin.
so as for tattoos! this is another thing ur gonna wanna rename the layers for because depending on how heavily ur sims can be tatted it can get A LOT
here's psyche's neat little tattoo folder. its separated into where the tattoo is and then
what it is
i find all my tattoo inspo on pinterest using flash sheets/keywords in the search. my ocs usually have sub-boards that i hoard inspo in for them specifically. dahlia doesnt have one bc ive never seen her as the most tattooed person, but i think she'd have some at least
this process is pretty much the same as putting on skin details! its all about adjusting to what u like. for example, i like when my sims tattoos are a little faded and a bit blurred at the edges cause it looks a little more real
when it comes to images i find on pinterest, ill save the image and first try to make it as clean as i can
for example, this lil guy
a curve mask made the whites brighter and the blacks darker as u can see. then ill go into filter > reduce noise to soften the harsh edges
then i flatten it, copy and paste to the skin file, n place it wherever i want it to go :-)
louder anime wow!!!
okay so now ur gonna want to make sure u .psd file is saved (it should be bc we've been checking our progress w blender) and then merge the visible layers (NOT flatten, merge visible. we need the transparency around the skin to be in tact)
ur done in photoshop and blender!!! good job :-)
step whatever number we're on. back into s4s!
ur focus is over here. make sure the option filled is the top one, and then hit the cas button
this menu will open, ur gonna go up to part type and find the option skin details, forehead. pick the first forehead wrinkle option that appears and hit 'next.' itll prompt you to save ur new file n give it a name, i usually just make it my sim's name cause i have a folder in my mods folder for specifically my cc
remember wayyyy back when we were exporting the skin details? ur gonna go back to that same section and hit 'import' instead of export. select ur skin's .png file, and poof !
ur skin :DD it looks great man good job
this part is EXTREMELY important. go up to the warehouse tab
in the 'data' section ur gonna see a box at the top labeled 'filter.' thats where i typed in 'compos' just so it would show me JUST the compositionmethod section since theres a lot of shit in there lawl. yours is initially gonna say '3,' but we're gonna change it to '0' mind you, this is because MY skins are all alpha. maxis match overlays do not show up on my skins because my comp method is set to 0, meaning it has top priority essentially.
after you do that, you can hit save and place that .package file you created into your mods folder!!! and GUESS WHAT BESTIE UR DONE!!!!! U DID IT :DDDD
of course, as always, you can always dm me if youre stuck on anything or need any more clarification. i am always open to help as much as i can. i rly hope this helped :-)
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When I saw the first guardians film in middle school, my love of our favorite raccoon began. Finding a community of Rocket lovers after keeping it silently inside for so long is special (in a way I can't articulate without sounding goofy bc it's an anthropomorphic raccoon we're talking about here). I graduate from college this weekend and want to thank you for your stories getting me through hard times and motivationless days. It's given me a knew way to enjoy the movies I've watched so many times :) What was the media that got you super into Rocket and inspired your fiction writing? Much love!!
first and foremost, i want to congratulate you. school is not easy, and i swear it gets harder and feels more high-pressure/high-stakes every year. i hope that your time at college has given you more learning experiences than all-nighters, more opportunities than stressors, and more joy than hardship. and i hope that you are able to take everything you’ve earned and enjoy your freedom from university surrounded by good people, with plenty of time and resources to do the things you love. if you haven’t yet, please take time to sit and breathe and really soak up the fact that you did this. be proud of yourself. you fucken deserve it.
secondly, i read this while walking to the parking garage at 11pm after helping at an event for my college students (i work at a university) and i had to sit in my car and wait till i stopped tearing up so i could drive home. this truly made me so happy and im so glad my silly stories made things even just a little easier for you. ♡
so, my falling in love with rocket was a process. (cue me narrating this for three paragraphs like a schoolgirl with her first crush)
when we first saw rocket’s back in gotg1 i was like, oh. he’s in so much pain. between that + his fucken sarcasm, i complained afterward that the movie would’ve been so much better if he was the main character (lol). i started lazily dabbling in comics content then. i hadn’t been big into marvel comics before (more of a dc/image comics kid) but rocket and groot were becoming my faves. i loved gotg2. so much more focus on rocket, and yondu’s arc had me bawling like a baby. gotg2 made me like gotg1 more, which is part of how i judge the quality of a narrative series tbh (and why i think series are so hard to make). when the first gotg3 trailer came out and it was clear this was rocket’s story, i was obsessed. i didnt watch any additional trailers or read any more comics — rare for me. i wanted to go in completely blank. then i went back to the theatre to rewatch it three additional times (i have never before gone to see a movie more than once in the theatre). i was like… almost bursting with love for this stupid raccoon at this point.
then i got around to reading his grounded comic arc, and it was like — the dam burst. i hadn’t written fanfiction since 2017ish, and hadn’t been on tumblr since 2016, but i was like — i have to write about this fucken raccoon. i need to take care of him lol.
so when you ask what media - i guess all of it? in increments? because of course now ive watched most of his various cartoon incarnations, read probably 70% of the comics content, halfway through a stream of the 2021 game, have one of the novels (sitting on the tbr pile) and frankly the love just continues to grow.
now that ive taken up thirty-two years of your life, i just want to say im so glad you found this fandom and this community. he may be an anthropomorphic raccoon but he’s meaningful to people, in so many ways. im so very very glad that he could be that for you, and that you’re here.
congrats again, nonnie. i hope post-graduation life rewards you with supportive people who love and understand you, with joyful new experiences, good health, and everything you need to live happily and fully.
#not me crying in my car on a thursday night or whatever#nonnie#rfh asks#thank you#you’re so sweet#rocket raccoon#guardians of the galaxy#about me
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OH uve been playing as long as I gave so u shod be somewhere close to the 300 standard banner pulls. If u havent gotten it already. Which 5* do u think u'll choose? I was originally gonna go with yanqing since a 5* jce dps wld be rlly good, but I think I might go with Bailu instead bcs her ability to revive is SOOOO helpful. I never geg 3 stars in the forgotten hall bcs I ways gef One Character to die ToT
i think im at 285 rn so I shld be getting it rlly soon ^.^ yippee
AKDHAJDH IVE ALREADY GOTTEN IT HAHA, i got Himeko from it yippee ^u^ no regrets too she slays and carries through pure fiction (w/ herta especially) even if her traces are underleveled
I think bailu for revive if u rlly need that healer qould be pretty great 👍 personally for forgotten hall/MOC i usually go luocha in one half and fu xuan in the other half for sustain but tbh i tried doing no sustain once and i actually got a faster clear )#!$)#($! which is crazy to me but i guess since i used the last slot for another buffer support it made the dps's kill faster
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Just a thought;
Marco had known for a long time, his fruit was.. different. To be blunt there was a phoenix inside of him, a real phoenix. Marco was no more than a vessel, container. A puppet made of flesh in hopes of controlling the god. He had only spoken to it once, when the wretched fruit had been swallowed and his body destroyed itself from the inside out in as the phoenix made him into its new container. Every once in a while the phoenix would take over; during one of these episodes It had become very fond of Pops. Marco never asked what had happened. Usually when the phoenix would come out as it were, Marco or rather his subconscious would go into a sleeping state or black out as he was booted out of the drivers seat. Most knew to stay away when Marcos eyes changed from indigo to the colour of his flames (the only physical indication the phoenix was in charge).
Marco hadn’t been thinking, well he had but how he was supposed to predict this outcome he had no idea. He had been on deck when Ace started showing off with his fire; less attacks and more parlour tricks for the crew. Marco didn’t know what happened only that the fire had caught his eye, there was the strangest sensation of déjà vu and then he was moving without his permission. He stalked towards Ace a hunger roiling in his gut that he was almost certain was not his own. Ace had dropped his flames and was opening his mouth in greeting. When Marco pulled him into a deep kiss, well to be more exact Marcos body pulled him into a kiss. Marco himself was screaming (internally that is) because what the hell!?! Letting go, but keeping his hands on the younger man, a thumb stroking Aces cheek in a reverent manner. Marco spoke in something that could hardly constitute as his voice.
The phoenix purred, even as several tears escaped its eye. “I found you, My Eclipse.” Ace felt bamboozled a little turned on and for some reason sad. “Wha- who?” His flames roared through his body. Marco, or at least the man who looked like Marco; save the eyes gave a heartbreaking smile. Still stroking his cheek, “my love.” He murmured, “My Wild.”
Mera Mera; (eclipse) god of the wild, unrest and salvation.
Tori Tori; (phoenix) god of martyrs, eternal life and death
Idk I’ve had this in my head for like a week so I thought I’d share it and make it someone else’s problem.
Oh ill gladly take on this problem of yours
Its fucking beautiful, your imagery with words is so clear and strong and easy to envision
An eclipse, Ace being Marco’s—no the phoenix’s wild beloved its gorgeous
Ive been looking at alot of creature videos lately alot of raptors walking stalking, felines prowling and ive been thinking alot about Marco in association to these creatures, its perfect tbh
The “hunger roiling in his gut” i loveee this line so much the deep kiss, Ace more bewildered at how Marco hs addressed him more than the kiss
Marcos voice taking on a more ancient quality, something eerie and inhuman, but still coherent
And the colour of his eyes changing im such a slut for shit like this god
Ive got brainrot for days now bc of this thank you 🙏🏽
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for those of you playing along at home, i made it through the funeral/memorial/whatever. honestly could’ve been worse.
this is long and probably tmi but im processing out loud ig. probably should just keep a journal instead but here we are.
yesterday sucked ass mostly because like. at some point in the last two years since i started law school/moved to canada my father sent me some package at my grandmother’s house. yes this is after i made it very clear i did not want to see or hear from him. years after i made that clear. he did this fairly regularly - tried to give me things or pass messages through my sister or my mother or grandmother. anyway she asked if i wanted it, i was like. uh. No. and i guess she kept it for Some Reason because when i was very briefly at her house before heading to where the memorial happened today she pointed me at a pile of my things she wanted me to look at and there was a package. and on autopilot or something because ive been completely f r i e d out of my gourd this weekend i made the mistake i havent made in YEARS and opened it.
and i gotta say if i were going to ignore my daughter’s very clearly communicated boundaries and attempt to get in touch with her after she made it extremely clear she did not want me to do that SIX YEARS AGO at the time my go-to method of somehow persuading her to drop her decision to go no-contact wouldn’t involve [checks notes] a pearl necklace and a three-plus page letter about how nothing was ever my fault.
threeeeeee and then some pages of self-pitying guilt trip about how everyone turned their backs on him and other people kept us apart (as if that was the problem, the years of his absence rather than the years of his abuse) and how he knows the alcohol was bad but he’s off it now! he’s had such a hard life! i should stop punishing myself and other people! he won’t be around forever! (ISNT THAT IRONIC. LMAO.) after finishing this letter he TWICE decided he needed to add extra bits about how things don’t have to be like this, they can be better, and how im making “uninformed decisions” about him without knowing “the whole story.”
yikes.
anyways. that sucked and fucked me up real bad but my fiancé and i burned it last night on the beach and i threw the pearls (pearls? really? PEARLS?????) into the pacific.
then today. it was honestly fine. none of his friends seemed to even know i refused to speak to him, as they talked to me like they were assuming i was around all the time and super involved in his life. not sure what to make of that but it made it very easy to smile and nod and thank them for coming and not worry about anything further than that. he knew some cool people honestly. they were pretty neat, and his partner of 11 years, effectively my stepmom, is kind of awesome tbh. no idea what she was doing with him. and also my sister only yelled at me in front of some 50+ people once. for my sister this was a win.
and my brother came.
that was….. shocking. i had been in contact with his mom on and off about this but it was NOT clear at all if he was gonna show up. i figured not, honestly, because he’s so hard to get ahold of and none of us have seen him since 2016. but he came. and he brought his kids. my nephew is going into fifth grade and my niece is starting second and oh my gd they’re great. they’re adorable and funny and such sweet kids and i hand to gd thought id never see them again. now it looks like they’re going to come to my wedding reception when we have one out here so my family can attend something. it’s…. i didnt think id ever see or speak to him again and definitely not the kids. but there they were. i stood next to my brother with his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist while my mom gave a little speech to everyone who was there thanking them for coming and felt him breathing and couldn’t believe it was real. i dug around in the sand with my niece and my nephew must have hugged me about a half-dozen times. they’re good, sweet kids and my brother is a kind, patient father.
tomorrow’s gonna suck, taking a redeye home, gonna land at like 5 am tuesday and then have to cross my fingers and hope border control is chill with me, this whole situation has been a complete nightmare (except for my wife being there, thank gd) but today was as good as it possibly could’ve been. it’s probably gonna take me a while to really like….. even out from this, i think, but it’s almost over and then i get to live the rest of my life without worrying about ever seeing that man again.
what he did to me is going to follow me the rest of my life but HE won’t because he’s fucking dead and im alive and that means i won.
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Can you do more hcs of Lily? Ive recently read Falls the Shadows and its amazing so far.
omg thank you so much and also good timing! I was already thinking of posting some. this is long but here you go:
let me start by saying lily wasn’t perfect. she was often insecure, stubborn (VERY stubborn), weepy, immature, wore her heart on her sleeve
i also want to say that while I don’t like the “self righteous law abiding bookworm” characterisation of lily that we used to see all the time, I actually do think she had a certain self-righteous streak but it was less hermioneish in nature and more that she was quick to leap to the defence of others. more harryish 🥲
she’s sort of similar to james in that her morals were CRYSTAL CLEAR and she’d stand by them to the death
as lily got older and more self-assured her self-righteous streak took a bit of a twist from lawful/neutral good to chaotic good in that she became much more willing to pick a fight
actually, she had a bit of a temper. Harry’s anger issues definitely came from her, as she would absolutely have blown up her sister-in-law Marge had she overheard her bullying her son. Not that James wouldn’t have been angry, but I think he would have resorted to tearing Marge down psychologically rather than a spur of a moment reaction of the sort Lily and Harry would have
lily was popular, especially with boys, but didn’t always realise it. People just liked her, as she was funny, pretty, and unfailingly kind. However, Lily had a core little group of girls that she stuck by through her years at Hogwarts. Eventually, through dating James she became good friends with the Marauders too, particularly Sirius.
During their seventh year is when Lily and Sirius developed a close bond, he was the Marauder she was closest to apart from (obviously) James. Despite their previously antagonistic relationship, they discovered that they actually had a lot in common— particularly a certain impulsiveness. He was also very brutally honest about pureblood society and how muggleborns were perceived, which Lily actually appreciated bc most people weren't
While she was initially warmer to Remus than the others, I differ from fanon in that, upon discovering Remus was a werewolf, Lily did not immediately understand it. Her view of the wizarding world was shaped by what she had been taught, and they’d been taught in DADA that werewolves were dark creatures that had to be fought. Obviously she felt really guilty when she discovered the whole truth, but this was a big learning moment for her, as well as a key shift in how she thought about the rest of the Marauders. I just don't think, particularly at that time, that those kinds of prejudices would be so easily cast off. And it's interesting to have Lily go through a bit of development of her own, like James
She was empathetic to a fault. Although she never forgave Severus, years later she still felt sorry for him, and struggled with feelings of guilt over ending the friendship. Lily attended Tobias Snape’s funeral, and that was the last time she and Severus ever saw each other.
She actually felt attracted to James for many years before they got together, though she wasn’t really aware of it, she just had a strange whirl of hormones and anger in there than made her interpret her feelings as simply very strong hatred towards him. JKR basically confirmed this in an interview once but still. Like she (correctly) thought he was a dick but somehow like… she was a little too into arguing with him tbh
the class differences between lily and james were definitely somewhat of an issue at first. My fic absolutely will go into this but but lily, being from a humble, lower middle class Muggle family felt like a fish out of water when she first stepped into James's world
her friendship with Severus had, unfortunately, impacted her self-worth as a Muggle-born over the years. She had always viewed Sev as inherently more talented than she was, which simply wasn't true. I mean this also had something to do with her being a girl, it was both things and Sev (without meaning to) fed into this because he ultimately believed it too
but gradually she started gaining belief in her own abilities and pride in her muggle heritage rather than shame.
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started watching the his dark materials tv adaptation earlier this week- something that i had meant to do back in 2019 when it began and never quite got around to. started s3 yesterday so i should get the remaining 7 episodes under my belt within the next few days genuinely it is fascinating to watch an adaptation of a series that i read only once, when i was ten years old, but which left such a profound impression on me that i have consistently cycled back to it for years and years (esp when its such a complex, sprawling fantasy world-or several worlds, really- that its adapting)
as ive mentioned Several times over the years- maybe not on this particular account though-, i was gifted an omnibus copy of all three books in one by my older brother, either for christmas or my birthday i cant remember, sometime before the 2007 movie came out (meaning i had to have been 10 at the absolute oldest when i started reading them, though maybe 11 by the time i finished?). i also very clearly remember The Controversy surrounding them among christians, mainly because of a few comments by classmates but more importantly because my (fourth grade, iirc?) teacher pulled me out of class one day to tell me the book i was reading was sinful and atheist and against god and etc (which made me cry very hard </3 even though she told me i could still read it. this was back when my dad still took me to (catholic) church on a semi-regular basis to appease my grandmother as well as sunday school (run by my older cousins) and at least a year or so before i started to develop a modicum of critical thought towards deep south church teachings. i was petrified of the idea of going to hell and scared to do anything whatsoever to jeopardize my chances) (this did not stop me from reading the book however, because i enjoyed it too much. but i also have a clear memory of reading the book every chance i got w/o paying much attention to what was happening around me and one day realizing that i was reading it while at church service and mentally freaking out that i was doing something sacrilegious and trying to force myself to stop reading. i think i spent about 10 minutes bored out of my mind before i, internally apologetic, went back to reading) luckily my parents seemed unaware or unphased by the fearmongering- i assume my mother never noticed, or this was before she started to become insane from fox news poisoning; my dad i think brought it up briefly because of a flyer he saw but wasnt overly worried about it- because i saw the movie in theaters (i liked it ok; have never seen it since, i want to now though) and also acquired the ds game (tbh i enjoyed it despite it being tie-in garbage and me being v bad at video games as a kid; i never managed to beat it though) and later the wii game (bad </3 never got far into it)
Anywayyyy. again i have never since reread any of the books or read any of the other novellas and the like philip pullman has written set in the same world, though im itching to do that now; and ofc while ive skimmed through wiki articles and the like to refresh my memory on things, my memory of most of the plot points in the books are heavily based on My Perspective As A Ten Year Old Child. i remember the first book the best, a decent amount of subtle knife, and can only recall a few specifics of amber spyglass, and its only now while revisiting the world by watching the tv show that im getting a proper, more well-rounded view of the symbolism and messaging and Authorial Intent(tm) behind the series, because of course a lot of this shit flew right over my stupid little child brain as a kid. once i got to the third book i started to understand, vaguely, why my teacher didnt want me reading this book and why there was a backlash against the movie, but a lot of things that are obvious to me now (and would have been obvious if i read the series just a few years later, really) just did not compute for a 10 y/o. which ofc does not mean that i think its a Bad thing i read them that young but all of ^ that turns watching this series into a mix of "oh i remember that" "oh i know whats coming up" "oh my god i forgot that this is from HDM, this has influenced so many creative projects over the years w/o me even realizing it" "oh they skipped over it but i know in the books there was a scene here that i loved and that has stuck with me forever" "i dont remember this from the books but it extrapolates perfectly from what i remember about these characters" "oh my god was the symbolism here really that obvious and i still didnt pick up on it" etc etc etc ANYWAYYYY. my actual review of the tv series so far: -season 1 in particular is sorely lacking in how it portrays daemons and it made me increasingly sad. daemons were without a doubt my favorite thing from these books and one of my favorite things in a work of fantasy Ever to the point where over the years i have Repeatedly decided to sit down and spend a ridiculous amount of time painstakingly plotting out what daemon i think (x) character from (x) piece of media i enjoy, would have. many of which are still committed to memory. i fucking love daemons as a concept and i wish this shit was public domain so any piece of fiction i write could utilize them forever. i get budget issues exist or w/e but whyyyy would you adapt a series where every character in a world would have a cgi animal with them at all times if you couldnt actually show those cgi animals in more than a handful of scenes per episode and only for (some) major characters and only if they had a speaking role in that scene and also occasionally just have them teleport instead of showing them walking from one room to the next and also crowd shots are fucking barren. its like watching a live action pkmn tv show where pokemon are onscreen for a combined 5-10 minutes out of 60 minute episodes. s2 is a bit better about it but it also spends significantly more time in other worlds where daemons arent visible so ig its easier to budget in more daemons in scenes that take place in lyras world. no idea about s3 yet though ofc the mulefa are coming so We'll See how they handle the cg there
-i do think the cg animal animation looks good though. like its not "i believe there is an actual snow leopard in the room" photorealism but not only is that something i do not particularly care about, i think daemons looking a little unreal is actually perfect. they are physical manifestation of human souls and are in-universe immediately distinguishable from identical animals of the same species... it works
-s2 in general is a significant improvement on s1 not just in the daemons but in the overall pacing and character exploration imo; which is surprising considering its the season cut short from covid lockdown; and also a bit sad since, again, most of what i remember is from the first book and thus many of my fondest memories of the books were things that were either skimmed over in the first season or cut out entirely </3 ALAS.
-iorek and iofurs fight didnt go as hard as it shouldve </3 they didnt even show iorek ripping iofur's jaw off... he was killed in the blurry bg behind lyra. how are you gonna let the 2007 pg-13 movie kick more ass at talking armored polar bears fighting to the death
-am i crazy or is the alethiometer just not used much in the tv series compared to the book... maybe the movie+games clouded my memory, or maybe its the fact that in the show there's rarely any elaboration as to what the symbols could mean or which symbols lyra is using for her questions/what she's interpreting. almost every scene of it being used blurs together and i wouldnt be shocked if some show-only fans think its a stupid plot device with no rhyme or reason behind the symbols, when imo i think you can at least roughly intuit many of the meanings, though obviously not to the extent that a reader could interpret full accurate sentences
-some really really strong casting for like 99% of the roles in this show, i love most of the changes theyve made from the books wrt to casting decisions, my only significant gripe is of course. why did you have to do lee scorseby like that. i loved lee a lot. i remembered him so fondly. why'd you have to give lin manuel miranda that one. just absolutely devastating to me personally (though the choice to have andrew scott as will's father was v funny to me because lin manuel miranda and moriarty from bbc sherlock hanging out together for a huge chunk of s2 has to have appealed massively to a very particular subset of tumblrina)
-again i read these books when i was 10 so the concept of "characters can be bad people but also really well written and enjoyable to spectate" hadnt really settled in my mind yet so i really have no idea if this fully applies to the book version of her but oh my godddd i love mrs coulter in this series. yes she kidnaps children and rips their souls apart from them yes she drugs her own daughter and holds her captive yes she murders people indiscriminately without remorse etc. and she rules <3
-similarly the changes theyve made to the golden monkey are Fascinating...
-i loved lyra and pan with my whole heart when i was her age and it is really :,) to now be fully an adult and see her again. waughh. i love how almost everyone she meets loves her too (i will not stand for ppl watering it down to found family fanfiction tropes. but She Is So Loved.)
-i think its cool that boreal went from being a fairly minor character in the books to one of the main antagonists for a hot minute. he was fun :)
-i dont remember having strong feelings about mary malone as a kid but i really like her here. i havent gotten to this point in the show yet but im aware they tweaked her backstory to make her a lesbian as well, which is just delightful to me
-will's relationship w/ his mother and particularly the way the book describes her mental illness from will's perspective was so, So important to me as a kid and the thing i remembered best from subtle knife, and i wish the show had dwelled on it a liiiittle more? in particular, the bit where will thinks about when he first realized something was up and his mother wasnt just playing a "game" with him and was actually terrified of a nonexistent threat, when he was seven and they were shopping for groceries, and how he realized then and there that he needed to take care of her and protect her- that stuck w/ me very strongly as a kid and i wish the show had found a way for will to talk about it with lyra, there were a couple points where i thought he was going to bring it up. maybe this season??
fun fact i started writing this post at like 10 last night. i gotta put a stop this rn
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i was entirely unproductive for four hours in the middle of the day and let me tell you why.
i woke up at 5 ish. some fuck head set off their car alarm. made coffee. ate breakfast. waited. it's almost seven. finally i pee and poop and i think we're all good. it rained overnight but according to the weather we're in the all clear until mid afternoon. i haul my bike down the stairs and bike the five miles to the state park. it's misty muggy foggy but i chalk it up to being on an island. take off on lap one. the trail around the island is either 1.25 or 1.5 miles, we'll feel it out as we go. the plan is to do five laps. halfway through the first lap and i realize my poop at home was not enough. not to worry. there's a port a potty close to the trailhead. poop pause number one. twelve minutes for the first lap. a little slow if it's 1.25 miles, a little fast for 1.5, im assuming I'm going to be slower than usual because typically i run on pavement, and i realized by the end of the loop that taking the trail in the direction ive chosen has steeper uphills than if id gone the opposite direction. makes sense why everyone im encountering is going the opposite direction. middle of lap two. it is distinctly damp out, and i can feel that burning poop feeling. again. pause for poop number two. at this point it is maybe 9am and i have pooped three times. stand outside the port a potty, contemplating my existence, not feeling great, but i got up and biked all the way here, so i take off on loop three. passed some people i passed on loop two, which made me feel like a Real Runner. i could honestly poop again but it's getting closer and closer to real rain. finish lap three with a total time under 38 minutes for what i decided to average out to 4.2 miles (three 1.4 mile laps). stop to stretch a bit and it is truly raining now. im so glad i put a garbage bag over my bike basket. bike home on the sidewalks, because my glasses have rain drops all over them and i can't really see, and tbh i was tired enough i didn't want to cross the busy intersection to be on the side of the road i should have been on. i stop at the store because i know when i get home im not going to want to come back out. i've been out of hot water for the past two days and im mentally drafting an email to my landlord. there is not a single dry article of clothing on me to wipe my glasses on. i have trail and road flecks all over. oh well. i get home and carry my bike back up the flights of stairs. i flip on the shower because even if it doesn't warm up i am filthy. i think i almost cried when the water warmed up. i partially thawed out in the shower. made food, because ive biked ten miles and ran four and pooped three times. crawled back into bed to thaw some more. what a morning.
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MY HEARTTTTT OH MY GOD this chapter was so much fun to read!! it was hilarious and almost pitiful to read Gojo’s passage and how he had do deep clean himself and his room 😭😭😭 smelling like dick is CRAZY
that part where you mentioned that Gojo knew about the reader even before Shoko knew the reader?? when did Shoko and the reader move in with each other? i vaguely recall the mention of Gojo talking about the reader nonstop for the past 3 years, but then at what point did the reader and Shoko meet and decide to move in?
also i was that anon that suggested the theory that Gojo might have “hurt” people before to isolate the reader (https://www.tumblr.com/kamiversee/745973714738397184/ive-always-wondered-why-the-reader-has-been-so), but now i can’t help but wonder if he even went as far as making sure that Shoko and the reader moved in with each other so he’d have more opportunities to see and talk to the reader… 🤔 it’s a really far fetched theory but it would make a lot of sense for his obsession
… unless the obsession on really started once Satoru started blackmailing the reader? but that makes things even more confusing 🥲 FUCK, KAMI
but that cut to the reader getting ready for her date with Shoko was so cute. i love that Shoko’s quick to show her bias towards Satoru, it’s so cute 🥹 throughout this story i’ve always wondered about what Shoko would think about this whole situation, how she’d react knowing that one of her best friends made her roommate go through horrible things. she’s so cute dude UGH SHOKO ENDGAME!!!
that part where Shoko’s talking about how love is powerful enough to make people do crazy things is feels like it’s going to be a recall moment for Choso to think back on once some crazy shit does happen 😔 i’m detecting angst in our future soon 🫣 Kami i’m not ready
i really hope this date goes well 😭😭😭 my anxious brain’s like “someone’s gonna crash it and ruin everything” but i’m hoping to god it’s not true. i need the reader and Choso to have ONE happy moment 😭😭😭😭😭 ONE ☝️‼️‼️‼️ THEY’RE SO CUTE TOGETHER OMFG PLEEEEAAAASE
-☃️
Slight yap:
Ayy I’m glad this recent chap was fun & enjoyable tbh, it felt like sm of a filler episode ngl😭
Reader & Shoko moved in with each other during early summertime (so around June the year prior to the current year, HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE TnT)
Ofc tht theory was you, it’s always you cooking these masterpieces up😭🙏
Aaaand uhh, I CANT ASNWER ANYTHING !! 😛
Anywho, I’m glad the development between Shoko & the reader is clear because in the beginning I believe it is explained that they talked ofc but not as much so I’m glad I was able to show some form of growth !!
Also guys no angst is comingggg 😹 I think…
GLAD U ENJOYED THO !! Im excited to write Choso & the reader’s date ^.^
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Watching
This is entirely based on the fact that I firmly believe all of Hotch and Prentiss’ friendship comes from what happened with Foyet. Here it’s trauma bonding (and honestly, same thing in the show tbh) but still
word count: 8,ooo
no pairings, no warnings – just foyet and shit
----
With tears in my eyes, I begged you to stay.
You said, "hey man I love you, but no fucking way".
“Foyet went septic,” Emily whispers. She’s not brave enough to say it any louder, to speak his name into the dark corners of the room when she already feels him looming in every doorway. Taunting. It’s in her head. The fear builds on itself. And all she has is time to unwrap each layer. To sit and question – who will Foyet go for next? If it were Emily, if there was a gun to her head, a knife in her chest, could she make it? Before she thought she could. Emily is a decorated agent, she’s strong and more importantly, she’s smart. But… Hotch has been torn apart, trained professionals aren’t sure how to even put him back together. Could she do that? Would she even want to live through that?
Rossi doesn’t respond to her question, he’s standing in the doorway watching the nurse take Hotch’s temperature again. There is early, precautionary conversation being had about ventilation, threatening the words respiratory distress. But Rossi’s seen Foyet’s medical files, the chest x-rays lit up with the damage from the sepsis. Honestly, he doesn’t say anything to Emily because he doesn’t know what to say.
The nurse stops to whisper to Rossi and Emily stands up, interested in whatever couldn’t just be said out loud. “What?” she asks as soon as the nurse steps away. “What is it?”
Rossi shakes his head. “I need to talk to him for a second,” he says.
Emily staying with Hotch tonight, it’s already been decided. No security detail for Hotch will be arriving, likely, anytime soon. And none of those agents will be coming within the hospital, so they’ll do it themselves. She’s already been here the longest and made her peace sitting in that visitor’s chair. Derek will be by when he gets off with Emily’s go-bag, a change of clothes more suitable for hospital sitting.
Rossi won’t tell Emily what the nurse told him.
Derek doesn’t come up to Hotch’s room, he stands outside the hall’s doors and waits for Emily in the waiting room. He’s been back once and that’s enough for him, for there are other things that he has to do right now. Pressure is already coming from above to keep things on their feet, to make sure no one can be distracted. Derek can’t spend another second in that room and risk getting distracted. He just can’t think about this right now. There’s work to be done. Intense demands and someone has to do them. Somehow that’s him.
Emily feels for him but she doesn’t like it.
There’s absolutely nothing to do in the hospital. Hotch sleeps and Emily doesn’t disturb him, even though she’s certain he’s faking. She won’t bother him with any more questions, the best thing that can happen today is for it to end. And Emily doesn’t know what to say. She’s his friend, she thinks, but Emily is also quite certain Hotch needs to be left alone. He needs to sleep, even if it’s just faking sleep.
Emily takes a nap and sleeps through JJ’s text, visitor’s hours long over. By the time Emily responds, JJ’s asleep. Emily doesn’t need anything but does ask about Reid, knowing she won’t get a reply until morning.
Midnight passes with a nurse sweeping through the room in the darkness. Hotch doesn’t move as she adjusts the oxygen canal under his nose and waits for the blood pressure cuff on his legs to inflate. Medications are swapped and Emily sits up a little, watching doses being swapped, and empty bags being replaced by new, full ones. Emily watches the valve open, clear liquids spiraling back through the IV. Hotch’s breathing hitches a moment later and Emily watches him slowly blink his eyes open.
“Hi, Agent Hotchner,” the nurse greets. “I’m Beth, I’m gonna check your head a little bit, okay?” She inspects the bruise on his head first. There’s dried blood over the skin, a thin layer just faintly discoloring the already sickly green bruise. Hotch gives a breathy whine, trying to turn his head from her fingers and she apologizes, eyeing Emily as she sits forward, watching them both. “Just a little light,” she warns and Hotch groans again. “I’m sorry, I just need to see for a second.” She’s quick but it’s hard, Hotch is tired, too tired to be orderly. “Alright,” she clicks the pen off and Emily perks up, waiting. The nurse pulls Hotch’s blanket back up to his chest, tucking the canal back behind his head when he eases back into the pillows.
“He’s doing good,” the nurse says softly. She’d come around the side of the bed, whispering from the door so she doesn't disturb Hotch anymore. “I’ll be back in a few hours, let me know if you need anything.”
Hotch sleeps.
Emily can’t.
It’s not terrible being awake at this hour, sitting in the room half-lit by machines, Emily just sits back. She just waits. Except it’s entirely too much time to be in her head. Around three a.m. Emily is reminded of what will happen again in the short hours to come. Once already, Emily had been witness to the bandage changes. No blood had touched her but Emily could feel it. The sticky wet of half-dried blood crusted to the gauze. She could smell it, she could taste the bitter metallic taste on her tongue. Every time Emily closed her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to force her mind from it, she could see the glue of the bandage peeling off Hotch’s skin, lifting off wet, angry wounds.
Hotch is asleep, so Emily steps out into the hall. She goes all the way to the waiting room. Hotch was asleep but he could be sneaky, and Emily didn’t want him to hear her calling Rossi. It was cowardly just calling Rossi but she couldn’t do it anymore. Emily needed a break from the blood, pained breaths, and twitches. She goes to the waiting room and prays that Rossi’s insomnia has left him restless, too anxious to sleep.
There’s a knife to his throat when Hotch wakes up, he can feel the burn and the obstruction of the blade pressing into his airway. Making each breath harder to get than the last. He’s on the living room floor again, his fingers twisted up in the rough carpet strands. Each breath seems to expand a hole in his lungs. The air must be escaping. It must be going somewhere else because it’s not going in.
“Agent Hotchner?” A nurse attempts and fails to gain his attention. His eyes are glassy slivers, unfocused as he wheezes on. “You’re having some trouble breathing–”
It’s as if her speaking the word ceases his ability to do it. He turns his head to the left but no air can come into his lungs, just keeps pressing underneath his nose. His ears ring as his face gets hot, as his body cramps up. Morphine doesn’t begin to touch the nerves that come alive. His chest is a massive ball of fire, surface wounds, and deep burns. Inside and out.
The bed is laid back further but Hotch is not aware of the sudden panic happening around him. His vision spots, his thoughts getting a little more out of his reach, as his body is moved against his will. A thumb pushes his chin down and cold metal touches the back of his throat.
“Agent Hotchner just stay with us.”
Hands rip at his blankets, exposing him to the cold air of the sterile room. A mint-colored glove grabs his hand, stops what little fight he has to protect himself. His entire body is lit up by pain and disorientation. He wants to move to stop it, to fight them off, but he can’t. He can’t move. He can’t think. He can’t breathe.
“I’m getting no breath sounds on the left side.”
“Still no kidney output.”
Hotch has read Foyet’s file front to back. He knows every detail. He read the hospital reports, searching for hours and hours for that one little thing. He knew it was there, and it was, but he couldn’t find it. What he did find were medical reports. Infinite details on how and when Foyet’s kidney’s shut down. Foyet was heavily guarded, an officer was present outside his hospital room as he lay in a coma. He had several months of dialysis and now has a permanent script for vasopressors. CTs still show scarring in his lungs from the sepsis.
On particularly long nights, only the scent of coffee in the air and an empty pot in the machine, Hotch had traced those scars onto his own body. Something about the late hour and the emotional turmoil that case brought him caused such questionable behavior. But he was alone, living in an apartment out of boxes he hadn’t unpacked. The insanity of those days knew no bounds.
He’d taken a kitchen knife in his hands and tried to figure out how. Nine. He couldn’t imagine how there was that much room on one human body. Enough space for nine stab wounds. He walked himself through Foyet’s description of the attack. Tried to conceive his own reaction.
He doesn’t have to guess anymore.
—-----------------
Emily comes straight from the hospital to work. She changes in the car and ties her hair up, preparing herself for what she might face once she gets inside. But there’s just Derek. The entire office is silent, it’s just the two of them in here. Derek is working at his desk, the sound of his rapid typing drowned out by how loud his music is playing in his headphones. He’s in the zone, typing at a furious pace that Emily doesn’t dare interfere with. Which leaves Hotch’s office empty. JJ is with Reid, Reid is in the hospital. Garcia is… well with Garcia, keeping tabs on her direct location is just never a good idea. It’s better not to know.
Hotch’s office is… fine. Emily expects it to be something else, to be hit with some strange wave of emotion but it doesn’t happen. The place could use an air freshener but it’s not bad, a little cold. Emily feels vaguely like royalty, Hotch’s desk chair is way better than hers and it’s nice. Not to mention the couch.
Emily makes it to ten, in the morning, before she caves. Her brain is rather dead, it’s done. Emily tries to sleep on the couch. It’s comfortable but she can’t think of anything good. She remembers walking back into Hotch’s room last night.
She can only think of last night.
“– rising again, got a temp of one o’ four.”
“Blood pressure is tanked, eighty-nine over–”
“Still no urine output–”
And as she stepped into the room no one noticed her. A man was climbing up over the stretcher, placing his hand over bandages on Hotch’s sternum. His fingers getting covered in the iodine still slathered across Hotch’s skin. It wasn’t even Hotch’s bare chest they were working with, they were doing compressions over bandages. Pressing down on wounds that were already just barely held together.
1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6..
Deeper compressions.
Breath.
16.. 17.. 18..
Breath.
Deeper compressions please.
Looking for a shockable rhythm.
Breath.
Stop.
That shockable?
Back on.
Breath.
1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6..
Breath.
Keep your compressions.
Breath.
13.. 14.. 15..
Stop. Shock.
Back on.
1.. 2.. 3..
Emily left her post. She can’t forgive herself even if she knows it’s not her fault. But it’s all just too much. Logic isn’t working its way around this one and all Emily has are emotions. Guilt. Guilt on top of guilt. Just guilt.
The couch eventually works its magic. She’s had one rather sleepless night already, once she finds Hotch’s hidden blanket Emily sleeps hard and long on the couch.
Guilt is exhausting.
On the left side of Hotch’s desk are large drawers – the entire desk was large, it had to be – Emily couldn’t help getting bored and snooping through them. She’d already seen most of the contents of the first drawer. It was the smallest and Hotch “uses it to store pens” but there are more types of candy in that drawer than all the pens combined. Even fewer of those pens work. The second drawer has a few files in it, hidden underneath a thin law book, and a few things purposefully hiding them underneath. She knows most of the cases: Katie Jacob’s uncle, Karl Arnold, Adrian Bale, Vincent Perotta, but too many were unsolved, too many she didn’t know at all. He was just sitting up here torturing himself with these, looking back and forth trying to figure out how they could have been quicker.
The last drawer was the magic. A quilt. It was giant, truly the proper size, she imagined, that a blanket might need to be if one were a giant. She raised it up over her head and still the ends did not come up from the floor. Magic indeed it was. Cocooned by his stolen blanket, Hotch’s office couch was all Emily needed.
Derek knocks on the door a few hours later, just as Emily successfully managed to be awake. There are tears in his eyes. He tells her about the carpet. Emily wishes he wouldn’t but Derek keeps speaking, telling her how he’d lifted the cut section of the carpet and the wood beneath was stained. Bleach had brought up some of the staining but it left Derek covered in bleachy blood. It was nearly impossible to cut through the thick fabric, hardened stiff by the amount of blood that had dried and hardened within.
Derek tried to smile as he spoke about it, to try and excuse the tears in his eyes. He’d thrown up, eyes stinging from the bleach, he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. Hotch’s blood.
It just… he couldn’t make sense of it.
Emily doesn’t tell him about the hospital.
Shee gets by with hiding in Hotch’s office for three days. Just when she’s starting to think she’s gotten away from it, that she’s been freed from the expectation of going to the hospital anymore, Dave calls her. She’s expecting a lecture, some disapproval but he wants breakfast. Something warm and something good, he meets her down in the lobby.
“Oh, you’re such a dear.” This is why Emily is his favorite. He didn’t even think to ask for coffee and she’d brought him some, mixed so perfectly. “Thank you.”
Emily has no idea what’s happening until it’s too late. And then she’s trapped at the hospital all over again. It’s the lack of sleep. It’s made Rossi malicious, uncaring, and entirely willing to just desert Emily at the hospital. And Emily’s too damn tired to realize it’s happening.
She’s afraid to see Hotch but it’s entirely anti-clamatic. He’s asleep, like Dave already told he’d be – like he has been, that’s all Hotch really does. Emily sits down in the visitor’s chair, watching Hotch carefully to see if he wakes up. He doesn’t. Occasionally, the heart monitors spikes and Hotch will shift, fitfully. Soft noises leave his chapped, parted lips. Pained, Emily decided to believe they are, because it’s easier to sit with than fearful. Pain is what gets him going, he’s held down by all the drugs, too much to wake up but not enough to escape the pain. He cries in his sleep and that’s the worst part.
Emily comes up with a lot of ways to ignore him, to hear things other than him. So Emily doesn't hear what it is that he says when he finally manages to wake up. It feels like a miracle, or at least impossible really, that Hotch is looking back at her right now. That he’s there, she recognizes him, even with his pale face and bloodshot eyes. “Hotch?” Emily asks, leaning closer to him. His voice had been paper-thin, she thought she’d heard him ask for Dave, but she approaches with frail hope.
He turns his head away from her and Emily feels the sting of the rejection, sobering for both of them. The pain doesn’t abate, it doesn’t stop clouding Hotch's mind but he feels more grounded, suddenly brought back to the front of himself. Living in his body, not thrown feet from it, like an oversized helmet. He struggles to catch his words, fighting momentarily against the assault of air coming from the canal in his nose. But it is easier, it’s enough air. “You shouldn’t be –” Hotch closes his eyes as he takes another deep breath, struggling for enough to speak. “– to be here, the hospital is–”
It’s frustrating. He knows what he means to say. It’s all in his head, it makes sense there, but his mouth is going off on its own. Unscripted.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Emily huffs. Hotch looks over at her, watching her smile and shake her head. Her arms are crossed, she’s giving him a look – he knows what it means but he couldn’t explain it right now. He can’t understand right now those subtle gestures, he’s too stripped down. It’s a new low, for Hotch. He feels suddenly weaker, a new weak: true vulnerability. Foyet pinning him down with a knife was life and death, survivable. This is being thrown in the ocean with weights tied to his ankles, he’s out in the deep end with no idea how to swim.
She’s sure he meant that as an order. “Well, I am.” Emily says, and what’s he going to do about? “Orders from above, gotta keep my eye on this real pain in the ass. Boss said I had to.”
Hotch felt like he’d spent years in the hospital already, just staring at nothing for hours until the exertion of simply being awake took its toll. His head felt heavy and dense, thoughts come slowly, malleable, and often paranoid. He spends hours doing nothing and as if for the kick, he’s suddenly reminded what it feels like to have a knife knick his ribs, and all he can do is lay paralyzed by pain that the morphine is trying so hard to convince his brain isn’t there. In all that time, he hadn’t actually thought about the BAU. Not as in the present tense, not as in what must be happening there if he is here.
Hotch hopes it’s Derek, anyone with any sense would know Derek is who the team needs.
“It’s –” Hotch grunts irritably as he pauses for another breath. He needs three before he attempts to speak again, rubbing his dry tongue across his lips. “You’re a week behind – your paperwork…” He’d seen it only a day ago, no matter how long ago that already seemed. Emily was behind and he’d never known her to be on top of paperwork, not without him reminding her.
Emily smiles, “so? It’s not your problem right now. Strauss orders are 24-hour protection, I’m doing my job.”
24-hour protection? It’s noble but Hotch doesn’t think Foyet is coming back. He’s paranoid that Foyet will, he feels Foyet is here, but he won’t be back. This isn’t cat and mouse, Foyet isn’t going to keep playing with him. He’s too smart to come back now. Foyet knows, as Hotch knows, that if he comes back, it will kill Hotch. It won’t matter what Foyet does, Hotch’s heart can’t handle it. That’s not something Foyet would risk, he wouldn’t end the game so soon, not so easily.
Hotch looks over at her with dead, bloodshot eyes. “Seems excessive,” he rasps, dry and flat.
Emily smiles, shaking her head. “Evidently, you’re worth it.” She shrugs a little, “I’m here aren’t I?” Emily feels suddenly shy, “you want some water?” The pink pitcher on the tray is half-full and lukewarm, it’s nothing special, but he hasn’t had much to drink. He doesn’t need it, Emily understands that, but maybe a little would be nice. She’s already standing, he’s getting the water whether he wants it or not, Emily’s far too nervous now to sit still.
Emily pours the water carefully, her hand trembling and making it harder to pour the water into the tiny cup. Equally distracting, Hotch has closed his eyes again, shut tight. It hadn’t been better to watch him cry in pain in his sleep but it hurts exceptionally more for Emily to watch Hotch try and keep stoic when she already knows how bad it must be. She’s heard him whimpering in his sleep, crying and distressed. And even now, he can’t hide it.
“Here.” Emily holds herself stiff, bent awkwardly so she can hold the cup out for him. She has to hold the straw still and she watches it carefully, painstakingly distracted by their proximity. Counting the seconds in her head as they pass, waiting for each slow second to tic by until she can move back away. Put some reasonable distance between them and try to distract herself from the hospital part.
“Who?” Hotch asks. He’s thought about it so long now that by the time he finds the words to ask Emily, he’s forgotten what he needed to say. Emily looks at him but not as if he’s grown a third head, this look he recognizes. The face she reserves for Reid, it’s something like compassion, something like maternal instinct. Logically, Hotch doesn’t think she wants to be here. That’s what she’d said, afterall, he’s a ‘pain in her ass’. Hotch feels bad that she has to be here. “Who did Strauss give the position to?”
Emily frowns, “Unit Chief? I don’t think Strauss is giving it to anyone. Morgan is waiting on your say-so but Dave is preparing the transition, it’ll be Morgan if you choose Morgan.” She crosses her arms eyeing Hotch. She’s not stupid, the position. His words might be neutral but she knows the intention behind them, Emily knows him better than she realizes. “Are you going to choose Morgan?”
Hotch looks away from her, shutting his eyes for a moment, and when they open he looks at the wall. “Derek is an exceptional agent, the BAU will benefit from his leadership.”
Emily hums, “he is, good.”
Hotch glances at her and then away again.
“But you know… Morgan isn’t going to want the job forever.” Emily sits back down in the visitors’ chair, “and I don’t think he’s the only person who agrees that what the BAU will really benefit from is having you back.”
Hotch closes his eyes.
––––––––––––––––––––––
“Love,” Emily repeats incredulously back to Rossi, “Love! I don’t even like the guy!”
Rossi ignores Emily’s anxious rambling, instead watching the nurse prepare the supplies. He didn’t know she was afraid of needles, it seemed a rather silly thing to fear in comparison to the things they do daily for work. Rossi knows Emily doesn’t mean it. She’s already more than proven herself wrong.
“Dave, please, I learned my lesson,” anger has melted to bargaining. What lesson she’s talking about… Rossi doesn’t know. “Please, please you’re just joking, right? Someone else has to be able to do it too. Right?” The size of her actual fear of needles has increased tenfold as her anxiety is pressured by the time constraint being presented to Emily.
“Emily,” Rossi tries to remain calm despite the way she’s holding his hand – crushing the small bones in his hand into one another. “It’s a pint of blood.”
Sepsis was the scary word that Emily was worried about. She felt pretty relieved today thinking they were another day in the clear, one more in the bag, and things might just be alright. And then blood transfusion had come into play. Emily hadn’t even considered that. She didn’t even know Hotch’s blood type.
Emily had accepted she might have to give blood, but she didn’t think she’d really have to. Surely, between the whole group of them, one of the others had to be O negative like Hotch. Surely. But noooo. Just her. What luck. What fucking luck. And Dave has been rambling about this love business. Emily doesn’t love Hotch, she can hardly stand him. No, she really doesn’t want him to die, but shit, she doesn’t want to get stabbed by a needle for him either.
Emily’s hand tightens around Dave’s as the needle gets closer, and her socks slide against the slick plastic covering the chair beneath her. “Wait, wait–” she says, quickly, “Why can’t we wait!?” The nurse pauses, glancing at Dave as Emily keeps her eyes pinched shut tight, her whole body turned as much as she can away from the needle. Dave gives the nurse a nod, Emily’s a trooper. She’ll be fine.
“Oh–” Emily breathes out, “oh fuck, you’re not putting that in my–” Emily holds her breath as the needle pierces her skin. It’s nothing. A pinprick. It doesn’t hurt, it hardly registers enough to hurt. “What’re you doing with this stuff?” Emily asks, nervously. She feels like she can feel the blood coming out like it’s leaving her cold already. “Does it go right in the bags? Do you have to do anything to it or can it just go like right in Hotch? How does that even work if it’s my blood, you know? It’s mine, not his, won’t his body know? What happens if–”
“If you’ll just sit for a moment,” the nurse interrupts patiently, “it shouldn’t take long. Let me know if you need anything, I'll be back in a second with a snack and a drink.”
Emily nods, leaning back in the chair and blowing a slow, big breath out of her mouth.
“You’re a good friend,” Dave offers, in the silence, watching Emily shift uncomfortably with her left arm stiff and straight.
Emily huffs, rolling her eyes. “I hate him.”
Anger is a simple emotion. Clear, easy. Emily leans into it, pushing herself into the farest corner in Hotch’s hospital room. She crosses her arms tight to her chest, refusing to look anywhere near Hotch.
Rossi leaves her to pouting, there’s only so much he can do at once. And right now, all of his attention is on Hotch. Watching his weak gasps fog the oxygen mask, Rossi had expected a stronger reaction. He’d watched the dark blood snake through the IV, the anticipation killing him, and there was nothing.
Nothing eased. Hotch remained gasping, laying unresponsive.
The first twenty minutes Rossi had been warned were all they had to worry about. If something were going to happen, it would happen then.
Emily’s waiting for it too. Tense, her eyes can’t leave the lock. What if there’s something wrong with her blood? If it’s not normal and his body rejects it, it’ll kill him. That’d be her fault. No way to say it other than that.
Twenty minutes comes and goes, nothing happens.
Hotch’s temperature goes up, sitting at a hot one hundred and one degrees. Enough to pull him from his slumber, frustrated and hot, trying to fight his way out of his blankets but unable to call his limbs into action.
Rossi stands and gently redirect’s Hotch’s agitated hand, holding it up and away from him. Preventing Hotch from making another sloppy failed attempted at grabbing his blankets – instead just repeatedly getting the wires attached to him tangled around his hand and jabbing blindly at his bandaged side. He might not feel it now, but Rossi couldn’t imagine that even if the abuse was unfelt that it should happen.
“What is it?” Rossi asks, giving Hotch’s hand a squeeze. He has to bend closer, put himself in Hotch’s line of sight before Hotch’s focuses on him. “What do you want, Aaron?”
Hotch looks away from Rossi again, whimpering before he shuts his eyes.
Emily swallows thickly, looking away from them.
“Aaron?”
Emily pushes herself off of the wall, sniffling as she comes up on the other side of the bed. “He’s hot,” she says, simply, pulling at the first blanket overtop Hotch. When she goes for the second, Hotch opens his eyes. Unfocused, glossy but right at her. She looks away, focusing on the blankets. Emily turns her back the moment she can, blinking tears away fiercely as she folds the blankets over one another.
When she turns again, Hotch’s eyes are closed. His head still turned in her direction.
––––––––––––––––
Time is the ultimate illusion, at least that’s what Hotch’s drug-addled mind feeds him as he finds himself standing in front of his apartment door. The hospital was at least a few hours ago, he can’t keep days and hours separate. They blend together like rice he’s trying to decipher in the palms of his hands, outstretched and sticky with dried blood. It slips between the cracks in his fingers, spills down onto the ground, and scatters out across the floor.
He knows Derek brought him back to his apartment, and offered to stay but Hotch refused. There was work that needed catching up at the office and then it was Derek’s turn to scoff, “I’m not bringing you paperwork, man.” But he’d been on the couch then. Only the vaguest memory of blurrily scowling at Derek as he left, feeling the weight of a blanket covering him. “Take it easy,” Derek whispered, and then Hotch was laying down. He can’t remember how he got that way.
There’s another knock at the door and he startles and flinches in a way that makes his chest light up. Moving his arm makes him aware of every stitch on his bicep, every sharp tug of the skin trying so desperately to remain held together. Somewhere, a phone starts to ring and he’s aware it has to be his but it’s god only knows where. He’s surprised the ringer is even on. JJ had it while he was in the hospital, and turned it over to Derek. He’d find, once he’s curious enough to go look for it, that she’d sent out a flurry of emails making sure everyone knew to contact her with any new emergencies, not him.
“Christ,” Emily swears as he finally manages to get the door open. “I know you’re doing the stoic thing but for fuck sake answer the phone when I call!” The last time she was on this side of his door getting nothing back but the sound of his phone echoing through his apartment all she found was a pool of blood. She doubts that’s a sound she’ll ever recover from hearing. And the longer it went on, the more her anxiety climbed. It’d been only four days since the last time. She’s not recovered from this particular trauma enough to face it without assuming the worst.
He stares at her. Too many words. She’s saying so much.
“Listen,” she says, lifting up her duffle bag. “My pipes are trashed.” She motions with her other hand to her hair, pulled up in a mess at the top of her head in what he recognizes was once a bun. “I haven’t showered in two days. I stink, I can’t even sleep.” Partial truths, most lies have them. “Let me use your shower?”
He gives one slow blink, starts to lean a little to the left, and straightens himself back up.
“I’m taking that as a yes.”
Her pipes are fine. Her apartment is fine. She really hasn’t showered in two days but it’s been chaotic, and she’s been spending all her time between the hospital and work, trying to get paperwork down. By just being around him, she’s aware of how stressful this job is for him. The bending over backward that he does for them but she’d never seen it like this. She’s never had that stress put in front of her, demanding her attention for hours at a time.
“This place is a shithole,” Emily mumbles, tossing her bag on the table. Hotch is already walking away from her – “walking”, he uses the couch to guide himself, moving his weight to his left arm and using the couch as a crutch. His left hip is still tight, the stitches too painful, and he can’t put all his weight down. Anything to keep his abdomen from taking any more weight than he has to put on it. He’s not even standing, he walks so hunched into himself Emily can look right into his eyes. He’s lost half a foot curled in on himself, holding his right arm around over his chest.
And then, of course, he also looks like hell.
“When was the last time you showered?” Emily asks. He smells like blood, metallic and sweaty.
Hotch hasn’t showered in at least a week but he can remember, explicitly and graphically, every second of the three sponge baths he’d received. Hotch ignores Emily, instead curling up on the couch. Sleeping on his right side hurts the least, so long as he lays the right way. There are pillows, balled into shape by the hours he’s already spent laying across them, perfectly molded. Hotch returns to his nest, slipping back underneath his blankets and closing his eyes.
“Dick,” Emily whispers, rolling her eyes. She gets her bag and goes back to his bathroom. She’s familiar with the layout of his apartment, she’s hauled his drunk-ass home multiple times. Honestly, more often than drunk, concussed. But, behaviorally, it’s pretty similar for him.
He’s asleep when Emily comes back out of the shower, her hair still in a towel but her clothes changed. She just leans out into the living room to see how aware he is, but he’s snoring, so Emily sneaks back to his room. His apartment is freezing, she needs socks and sweatshirt – she’s sure he has plenty. He won’t even notice.
He doesn’t, for a while.
Hotch wakes up with no memory of the previous few hours. “Where’s Jess?” He asks, just the tip of his nose and eyes peaking out from his blanket. He’s still got his hands twisted up in the fabric, pulling it to his face, and muffling his voice. But Emily’s sitting right beside him, managed to scoot down on the couch underneath his legs. Effectively burrowed in beside his nest of pillows and blankets.
Emily pops a handful of snack-mix into her mouth, “huh?” She hadn’t realized he’d stopped snoring. “Jessica’s at work.” Work is everyone’s preference these days. It’s nothing at all against Hotch in all honestly. It’s not that he’s a bad patient, even though he really is, it’s just hard. It might be selfish but if Hotch could get away with it, he would too.
He says something else but it’s lost to the blankets.
“If you wanna talk, you gotta move the blanket from your face.” Emily says, reaching over and giving his blanket a little tug. His response is to poke back out of it’s cover a little, all furrowed dark brows before he pulls the blanket back, a sharp pull. Emily laughs. “Alright,” she smiles and for good measure she pokes him again. Just for fun. He kicks her. It’s hardly a kick, he can’t move well, but his leg is already across her lap so all he has to do is bend his knee – nudge her with his heel. “Hey,” she grumbles, pushing his heel back. He laughs. It comes from underneath the blankets, only a breathy chuckle but Emily hears it.
“Bastard,” she accuses underneath her breath, though she’s smiling. Emily turns her attention back to the movie but all she can think about is the fact that he laughed. She couldn’t really remember the last time she’d seen him smile in a while. Things certainly hadn’t been good recently.
Hotch starts shifting. It’s slow, careful, like he’s testing each ligament and muscles. This is where the hospital had been far more helpful. Doped up and swimming between hazy reality and agony, Hotch hadn’t had a concern in the world about a catheter. He couldn’t think. He wasn’t worried about the bathroom. But out of the hospital… things are a nightmare.
Emily sees exactly why it had taken him so long to answer her at the door earlier. Getting Hotch standing is a battle, one Emily hadn’t really expected, but Emily pushes her way in, because that’s what she’s good at. Emily just forces Hotch to let her help, giving him no choice but to use her proximity.
“Oh–” Emily bites her tongue, holding back the flurry of stupidity trying to fly out of her mouth. He’s always heavier than Emily is expecting. Hotch looks like he’s going to be light, especially now, as the hospital has melted him down. As his body drains itself to keep him alive. But he’s a big guy, she’s just not sure where he’s hiding it.
The last steps to the bathroom Hotch takes by himself, dragging his left leg on the carpet as his hip remains stiff and immobile. He holds himself up on the frame of the bathroom door, glancing back as Emily takes two nervous steps back from him. She looks quickly between him and the bathroom, “I’m not going in there with you.”
Fine by him. Hotch hasn’t been in the bathroom unmonitored in days. This will be the first pee he’s had without an audience in too long of a while. He leans his weight onto his arm, using the counter, and he feels more whole. Something so simple, he’d taken it for granted. Standing to pee and breathing through his nose… the small joys of life.
He has to sit, before he can wash his hands, catching his breath and waiting for his hands to stop trembling. Emily knocks on the door and he’s just aware of her enough to grunt back, not really an answer to her question but he’s still breathing so Emily considers that good enough.
She’d been waiteing nervously, he realizes when he opens the door and she’s standing right outside it. “All good?” Emily asks, and Hotch ignores her. He takes a shaky step on his own, and scowls as Emily slips in underneath his other arm, leaving the one on the wall free. “If you want to sleep in your bed, we should probably get the pillows from the living room.”
Hotch drags his palm against the wall as he walks.
“Are you… ignoring me?”
Hotch stops, catching his breath for a moment before he looks up at Emily. “No,” he exhales, lifting his head as he takes another large breath. “Walking… talking… can’t do it, at the same time.” His shoulders try to lift with the next breath, winded, but fall quickly as his side tugs painfully. Stitches pull taunt in his skin, all his self-control goes to holding his breath through the pain, stopping any sounds from escaping. It’s sharp, smart pain, distracting, and it’s not until the pain begins to fade that Hotch realizes how stiff he is, that he’s stumbled back against the wall, using it to hold himself up while his hand presses urgently to suppress the pain.
“Sorry,” he whispers, forcing his hand back to the wall. “I’m fine.”
Emily raises her eyebrows and nods, “alright.” He always says the strangest things. But he’s a strange man.
Other than nabbing his clothes a few hours ago, Emily really hadn’t spent that much time in Hotch’s room. It looked about how she expected. Tidy, bland, simple. There were still things on the floor – a tie thrown over his bedside lamp, pants in a puddle kicked off at the closet door, a few socks bunched up and forgotten.
Hotch finds his strength once they get close, weak legs moving him steadily on toward the familiarity of safety.
He doesn’t care about anything else.
Emily leaves him to get comfortable, she doesn’t really feel the desire to watch him shuffle any more than she has to. It’s not something she enjoys. When she comes back to his room with all the blankets and pillows she could grab from the couch, she has to poke around his blankets to find him again.
“Are you–” Emily isn’t even sure how many blankets she’s pulling back before she finds his head. Black hair is an easy find, at least, underneath mountains of colorful blankets. “Are you good in there?”
It takes him three owlish blinks before his eyes focus on her. “ ‘m okay.”
“Uh-huh.” Emily nods, and looks over the door, making up her mind on the assumption that Hotch would asleep by the time she began to move.
“Are you leaving?”
Emily stops. She’s at the end of his bed, fully intending to go but now she can't. “Do you… do you want me to?”
“No.”
They’ve watched sexual harassment seminars about this kind of stuff. Emily never thought that could be her, but if Erin Strauss walked in here right now, there’s no way they would keep their jobs. There were definitely rules about sleeping with your boss. But they didn’t really cover how pathetic and sad those men would be – no one told her he would be her friend, that she’d want to stay, that he might be important. Emily wasn’t prepared for this.
She’s stiff, a little uncomfortable as she sits down on the edge of the bed. Emily’s on the entire other side of the bed, away from Hotch, and she’s having to psych herself up to get closer. Silly, all things considered. This was where the line was supposed to be drawn? Not at blood transfusions? Calls to the Vatican? Not at quitting her job?
He gives her a blanket. He peels it off from the top layer of his blanket mound when she’s not looking, it’s already waiting for her when she gets the nerve to sit back.
It’s probably the nicest thing any has ever done for her. And, yeah, she has to blink tears out of her eyes but she hasn’t been sleeping well and that can cause people to act crazy. That’s all.
It’s not that bad. Emily had shared beds with Derek too, a wall of pillows between them. It happened enough that they’d lost the pillow wall after a while and it waslike sharing a bed with her cousins. All night long all they did was elbow one another back and forth, lots of blanket yanking, and kicking.
Hotch doesn't move.
Emily tries to sleep but it doesn’t come as quickly for her as it does Hotch. She can hear the difference in his breathing, it takes him only a few minutes. Not that long after she’d settled, his breathing evened out, and she could hear his soft, breathy snores.
Emily moves slowly, careful not to wake him as she turns over on her side closer to him. The room is bright, it’s still pretty early in the day, and so she just lays there. The bed is soft, she’s very comfortable but she can’t sleep. Besides, she’s never been this close to him before. And he’s always been interesting to her, like a bug she can’t catch. And here he is, trapped, and she can see him, observe him. What she’s seeing is his need for a shave and a hair-cut.
He just doesn’t seem real. There’s gotta be a trick, some sort of set-up happening right in front of her. Rather elaborate but certainly a trap. Her emotions will inevitably used against her and this is simply the gathering, a knife that will turn and turn buried to it’s hilt in her chest.
“Are you okay?”
Emily jumps, hand flying to her chest. “Jesus,” she whispers, palm against her pounding heart. “I thought you were asleep.” Emily should have known better. Hotch never sleeps and when he is, he’s just faking it.
Knife. Chest.
Her guard is too far down.
When she looks back at him, Hotch is still looking at her. He looks ridiculous. His blankets are tucked under his chin, giving him the mobility to turn his head and look over at her but he looks like a child’s cherished stuffed bear – dirty hair sticking up on his head and dark, glassy eyes were doing him no favors. But Emily knows better than to be fooled. She folds her arms back against her chest, “what?”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
Emily props herself up on her elbow. Her first instinct is to fight but he’s so damn pathetic… The bruise only adds to his natural pout, the dark circles under his eyes takes her out. She can't even be mad, not enough to be properly defensive. Stupid idiot. So Emily smiles, “you first.”
Hotch puffs, turning away. He’s tired, too tired to be keeping his eyes open and fighting off unwanted conversations. So taxing. Why must she be this way? “I asked first,” he answers, a moment later. It’s hard to be clever these days, Exhausting stuff.
Emily squints at him, “technically I asked you first. Days ago.” He doesn’t remember but he believes her. He’d lost count of who had asked. “I’ll talk when you talk.”
“Mm,” Hotch closes his eyes. Fine by him, he doesn’t want to talk anyhow. Not about anything, really, but certainly not about this.
Emily falls back on the bed with a huff, crossing her arms. Staring at the ceiling doesn’t get her anywhere. Just stuck in her head. “It–” Emily closes her eyes, she can hear Hotch turn his head against on the pillow, looking over at her. “It would have really sucked if you’d died.”
Hotch smirks – he’s got no control of himself under these drugs, crying and smiling seem to be the things he can no longer control. He repeats sucked to himself with a little chuckle, nothing that comes from the depths of anywhere. He can’t even think about his core muscles without feeling the extent to which they had been destroyed. Sometimes, when the pain was it’s clearest, Hotch felt as if he could feel the holes in his body. Burrows from the depths the knife had plunged. “Very articulate.”
Emily rolls her eyes, but she can’t help but smile too. She looks over at him, anticipating the look she knows she’s getting right now. It’s that much harder to be mad, to be annoyed, when he’s there. Emily had spent days in the hospital waiting for him and here he was. The Hotch she knew – the smartass she hates. “Well,” Emily says, “I’d get over it. It’s just be inconvenient.”
“Mm,” Hotch grunts.
He hadn’t even died and inconvenient was putting it mildly.
“Garica wouldn’t,” Emily says after a long moment of silence. All she’s done is turn over her last reply in her head, thinking about all the things that it could communicate. All the ways his stupid head would break it apart until it was something worse, something it wasn’t – that she didn’t care at all. And that just isn’t true. “She adores you.”
Hotch pries his eyes open. He thought they weren’t going to talk about this? “Only one out of six,” Hotch mumbles, “but my performance reviews are always so good.”
Emily laughs and Hotch smirks again, but she can see he’s pushing himself. His eyes are hardly open and his responses are getting slower and slower. “We don’t want to hurt your feelings,” she offers, mocking sympathy. “I know you’re sensitive under all that grumpiness.”
Hotch’s eyes are closed but he gives a sleepy grunt, “ ‘m not grumpy.”
“You just keep telling yourself that.”
#criminal minds#criminal minds fanfiction#Aaron Hotchner#emily prentiss#david rossi#derek morgan#spencer reid#jennifer jareau#penelope garcia#George foyet
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