#this show should come with a surgeon general's warning

[coquelicoq]

natsume's book of friends is the hurt/comfort show of all time. not necessarily for the characters, but for me as a viewer. it hurts me, deeply, emotionally, spiritually, and then it heals me, often in the exact same instant. not in the way where they cancel each other out, but in that way where you remain forever the person who was hurt and the person who was loved through the hurt. like okay. i am literally just Sitting Here. what the fuck. who came up with this. is that allowed

[endless-ineffabilities]

Maroon (part six)

modern!Aemond Targaryen x f!reader

themes/warnings: angst, depiction of trauma/injury, mutual pining, language, avoidant Aemond

word count: 3.9k

series masterlist ▪︎ main masterlist

The Dragonstone ball came and went. Aemond and the reader are no closer to reconciling. Aemond's personal battles threaten to get the best of him, and there is only one person he thinks of turning to.

Aemond had begun to severely dislike his weekends. 

His stomach churns as he lies motionless under the sterile white hospital lights, feeling more like a lab experiment than a person. The surgeon, a man who face Aemond could now recognise in his nightmares, hovers over him again, poking and prodding as if inspecting a faulty machine.

After four months, the process was routine, almost mechanical. Aemond hated every second of it. 

No matter how many times they examined his injuries, one thing remained glaringly clear – he would never be as he once was. The cold, clinical truth he had been avoiding finally settled like a dead weight on his chest. He would never regain sight in his left eye. Ever.

Aemond’s stitches had been removed earlier than expected, the result of the extensive, borderline-experimental treatments his mother had ensured that he underwent. Her desperation to fix him bordered on obsession – nothing but the best surgeons, the most cutting-edge procedures, were made available to her son. ‘Nothing but the best for the Prince of the City’, they would say. And Aemond knew it wasn’t really for his sake. He had to be perfect. He had to be fixed.

A Targaryen heir couldn’t walk around looking all deformed, not in this family, not in this city. Yet no amount of money or prestige could make him whole again. The best the world had to offer still wasn’t enough.

He clenches his jaw, his body completely tense under the surgeon’s touch. The treatment felt less like healing and more like a futile attempt to erase the ugly truth. He felt wronged, betrayed even. He was so used to being in control, or at least, having some semblance of it. It was the only way he could bury the darkness within – the bitterness, the anger. But he has no control left. Now he is the one who bends to everyone’s will.

His mother demanded justice for him. She wanted Luke relieved of his seat at Dragonstone, and inheritance of Driftmark. At the very least, she argued, the boy should be demoted for a time or sent away to learn the error of his ways. Viserys would have none of it. According to him, both Aemond and Lucerys were equally at fault. Just boys being boys. Yet, nine times out of ten in the weeks following the accident, Viserys frequented Lucerys’ hospital suite accompanied by his precious firstborn Rhaenyra. 

Aemond barely saw him. He normally wouldn’t care; he trained himself not to. But nothing was right. He didn’t deserve any of this. Luke would limp for months, and that’s it, but Aemond lost his fucking eye. He felt that childish angst resurging inside him, and he knew he was no longer in control.

He recalls the Dragonstone Ball, the night from a week prior when he’d finally emerged after months of hiding, his public reappearance carefully orchestrated to show that Aemond Targaryen was still here, still powerful, still beautiful. He tried to convince himself that he had come to terms with everything – a plain-faced lie. The crowd, the so-called elite of society, had clamoured at the sight of him. They had been shocked, though not in the way he’d expected. They hadn’t recoiled at his injuries. Some had barely seemed to notice. 

It wasn’t as bad as they thought.

That had been the general statement. Whispers circulating the Valyrian hall, their astonishment turning to confusion. Why had he stayed away for months? Why all the secrecy? He looks fine, he heard them murmur, their eyes barely lingering on the faint scar on the side of his face. 

Some even saw his appearance in a twisted light, and deemed it as an enhancement to his aura. But they didn’t care about him, not really. They saw a carefully curated image, a version of Aemond that fit neatly into the narrative of a rebellious, aristocratic heir who felt the need to challenge his younger nephew into a game of chicken, only to pay for it dearly. Some had even dared to call him The Dark Prince of the City, a new title he loathed. 

What a relief it must be for everyone that he was only a little bit fucked up. How fucking fantastic. To them, his injury was cosmetic, an insignificant blemish on a life still dripping with wealth, status, and power. It doesn’t matter that there is an aching emptiness inside of him, a sense of loss and injustice that stretches far beyond the physical damage. It doesn’t matter that he can barely look at himself in the mirror. It doesn’t matter that he can’t allow himself to be with you.

But it does. It all does. 

He closes his eye, his mind drifting back to the night of the ball, when he last held you in his arms. When he last tasted you. Oh sweet seven hells, the way you melted unto him. The way you felt… 

I can wait, you promised. But how is that fair? Is there even anything left of him for you to keep waiting for?

“It’s almost time for us to have an ocular prosthesis put in,” the surgeon says casually, as if making small talk about the fucking weather. “Your mother has already vetted some top-of-the-line models, I’m sure you’d be pleased – ”

Oh, will he? The best prosthetic eye, was it? Gods, this must be what winning the lottery must be like.

“ – or she also mentioned that we could go about the traditional route? Apparently, it had been custom to have gemstones installed in place of – ” 

"I don't care," Aemond snaps, cutting the surgeon off mid-sentence. Without waiting for a response, he pushes himself up from the reclined seat. He knows the surgeon’s sudden shift to small talk signals the end of the session. It always does.

"We're finished?" he says, not bothering to hide the bite in his tone. "Good. Cheers, doc."

“Wait, Aemond, remember to regularly apply the ointment – ” 

“Yes, yes, I know,” Aemond says rushedly, barely glancing at the surgeon as he walks to the door. “Oh, and that’s Sir Aemond to you. We’re not friends.”

In the week following the ball, you find yourself slipping back into the familiarity of your routine. Hours spent poring over your dissertation with your supervisor, extra shifts at the bookstore, and meetups with Jace that often blurred into late-night conversations over coffee. You threw yourself into distractions, eager to escape the lingering effects of that eventful night, but the high was hard to shake off.

For a night, you felt like you were floating on clouds. Everything had aligned so perfectly – Jace had been the ideal partner, Baela’s custom gown made you feel like royalty, and the ball itself was something from another world entirely. Things couldn’t have gone better. 

You could have gone with Aemond. But that doesn’t matter now. 

He made his choice – one that had been crystal clear until it wasn’t. Until he’d pulled you out of the ball, and kissed you with such fierce intensity that your legs nearly gave out beneath you. 

He avoided you, but also stalked you. Dropped you as his partner to the ball, but sought you out during it with an emotion in his eyes you couldn’t fully decipher. 

Is that emotion the very same that you feel? Perhaps it was only momentary, and the next time you see him, his gaze will display cold indifference. Aemond is fire, and then he’s ice, keeping you in a state of uncertainty. What you have with him is suspended in limbo – you told him you would wait, and you plan to make good on your word. 

It’s because of him that you refused Cregan when he texted you – your number practically offered up to him on a  silver platter by Jace – and asked if you wanted to ‘have dinner some time’. You said you were having a particularly busy week, so maybe a rain check? You weren’t exactly lying. You did keep very busy – intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter. But as you sit on your worn-out couch, research papers strewn on the coffee table after hours of struggling to break ground on your dissertation, the idea of having dinner with the handsome Stark seemed all the more tempting.

That when you hear it – a faint knock at your door. 

Living alone has never given you much anxiety before, and you didn’t think it would start tonight. But who could be knocking at your door past midnight, when you hadn’t buzzed anyone in? You were never on close terms with your neighbours, either. 

You sit on your couch looking like a deer in headlights, staring at the door like it’s supposed to silence the knocking.

When did you get so wary? It could be Jace. Maybe Helaena. But then again, they’re not the type to show up unannounced. And besides, if it were them, you’d have already – 

Aemond’s voice calls out your name, partially calming your racing mind. 

You sense hesitance in his tone. Almost embarrassed. Like he knows he shouldn’t be here. 

“Aemond?” You find your voice, and move quickly to the door. As you open it, the question is on the tip of your tongue – What the hell are you doing here? – but the words stick in your throat.

“Hi, darling,” he says weakly, exhaustion etched in his voice. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Something resembling a gasp escapes your lips when he turns his head slightly, revealing the fresh bruise blossoming beneath his right eye, a vicious mix of maroon and violet. The skin is split, blood dried along the cut, though his eye itself looks unharmed. 

“Aemond, what – ”

“Can I come in?” he interrupts, his voice barely a whisper. “Please.”

He walks past you as you step aside, his eye trained on you the whole time. A newly-arrived guest in your home and he has already claimed the space, his presence intoxicating. The air feels heavier, as if your modest apartment has shifted to accommodate someone like him. Or maybe it was just the effect he has on you, what do you know?

You gesture for him to take a seat, anywhere he’d like, and he waits until you settle right next to him before he visibly relaxes. The tension in his body eases, and his shoulders drop as he glances down. It becomes apparent to him how battered he must look. 

He starts to say, “I’m sorry for coming over unannounced – ”

“What the fuck happened, Aemond?” you cut him off, your sharp tone making him flinch. He swallows nervously, eyes darting away before he responds. 

“I got into… an altercation. Nothing to worry about, really – ”

His nonchalance is grating to you, frustrating you to no end. How can he say that, when the skin below his good eye is an angry colour it should never be in? “Nothing to worry about? Look at you! Gods, why am I just sitting here… I have to get the first-aid kit – ”

You start to stand, but his hand shoots out, grabbing yours with surprising gentleness. “It’s fine. Just... sit with me?”

He’s not being fair, using that tone with you. His question reminds you of the first time Helaena brought you to their penthouse. She needed to pick something up from downstairs, when Aemond had wandered into the living room, a book tucked under his arm. “This is my brother Aemond!” she exclaimed at the sight of him. “Aemond, this is my new official best friend. Don’t scare her off! I’ll only be a minute.”

You’d stood awkwardly, watching Helaena leave, and when you finally turned back to Aemond, he was already lounging in a plush chair, a knowing smirk playing on his lips.

“You know you can sit with me, if you’d like,” he had called out. “Promise I don’t bite.”

He had kept that promise – literally, at least. His bite stung far more – he drew you in, made you fall for him, and just when you thought things seemed too good to be true, he ices you out and avoids you for months. 

But sure, Aemond didn’t bite. 

You ignore his plea, pulling your hand from his. The expression on his face morphs into disappointment, but you force yourself not to dwell on it. If he’s offended, it can most certainly wait until his injury is dealt with. 

“I’m getting the first aid kit,” you say firmly, before disappearing into the bathroom. When you return, he is leaning forward, head held in both hands like he’s burdened by a migraine.

A fresh surge of panic rises in your chest. You sit next to him, clutching the small first-aid kit, suddenly feeling like it’s far from enough. “Aemond, you should probably go to a hospital. You might have a concussion or something – ”

“I don’t,” he says flatly.

“How can you be sure?” You reach for his face, gently turning it toward you. Pulling out a disinfectant wipe, you start dabbing at the bruise. He tries to hold still, but every wince betrays the pain he’s trying so hard to hide. 

“Got hit in the face, not in the head,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Okay, smartass.” you reply, still unconvinced. Your nose scrunches at his tone, and his lips tug at the sight. He’s grateful that at least his lip wasn’t split – he knows you’d make things far more difficult for him if he had to resist the urge to kiss you. Especially with the way your reactions are always so damn adorable.

You apprehensively apply antiseptic to a cotton pad, dabbing it over his bruise. “I don’t know if this is enough, Aemond, we really should call someone… Helaena – ”

“It’s fine, darling. I’ve been through much worse,” he says coldly, and your face falls at his insinuation. You’re afraid to know just how much worse – what he went through, what he still could be going through. He reaches for your knee, and squeezes gently as a gesture of reassurance. “I’m sorry. But trust me, I’ll be fine.”

You shoot him a look of disbelief. He’s comforting you? It almost feels absurd – he’s the one who looks like he ran face first into a pole, yet here he is, acting like it’s no big deal. 

“Tell me what happened,” you demand, putting the contents of the first aid kit back with an audible snap of plastic.

Aemond hesitates, jaw clenching as he tries to find the right words. You can already tell that he’s going to try to downplay it. He says, “I, uhhh, got into a fight, I suppose.”

“What, you just felt like it?” you say bitterly. Ever since you’ve known him, Aemond has always been the most composed out of all his siblings. But it seems as if another Aemond came out the night of the accident. If you don’t look close enough, you would think he has changed completely. But you do, and you know that your Aemond is still in there somewhere.

He doesn’t answer right away. If he were to say he never feels like breaking things, like letting it all spiral out of control, he’d be lying through his teeth. “You should see the other guy,” he replies, leaning back with a cocky smirk that you just want to wipe right off his lips.

With your own.

“It’s not funny,” you mutter, lightly slapping his arm, and he puts on an exaggerated grimace.

“Don’t hit me. I’m already injured,” he playfully scolds. 

You sigh deeply. The boy isn’t making any of this easy. “Who did this to you? Who… who did you – ” Your face contorts into obvious worry, and he exhales sharply, his eyes flickering with distaste.

“Not Lucerys,” he sneers. “You don’t need to worry about your little friend. One of Alys’ degenerate friends at the club. Must have been a Greyjoy. He certainly smelled like one.”

The callousness of his tone, the way he spits the words without a second thought, feels wrong. You’ve heard Aemond make cutting remarks before, but they were always sharp, witty, delivered with a certain sensitivity. Now, it’s like he doesn’t care who he hurts.

“You got into a fight because… you wanted to defend Alys, is that it?” 

“No, gods.” He immediately shakes his head at the notion. “She had nothing to do with it. She left early… she wasn’t even there by that point.”

“Then what?”

The truth of it was, he heard the news of Lucerys’ early induction into the board at Driftmark, like some hero’s welcome. Lucerys, the Velaryon heir, rewarded for his resilience, for living through what nearly destroyed Aemond. His grandfather Corlys, being the CEO, had always doted on him – the raven-haired grandson who didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to him nor to his late son Laenor. 

Lucerys was treated like the golden child. And Aemond… Aemond was left to lick his own wounds in the shadows. 

So Aemond heard the news, and went on a bender. It was nothing if not immature. He knows it. But he hates that he can’t just let it go, that he can’t turn the other cheek like he’s supposed to.

“They said some idiotic things,” he mutters finally, his tone hollow, “and things got unruly. Next thing you know – ” He clicks his tongue, shrugging as if it’s no big deal.

“You just threw yourself into a fight? For what? To feel something?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, darling,” he says, his voice flat. Your frustration reaches its peak, and you wordlessly walk to the kitchen to retrieve several ice cubes, wrapping them in a clean hand towel to create a makeshift cold compress.

When you hand it to him, he just looks at you with brows raised. “Press it against your face,” you explain, your voice clipped but calm.

He looks amused, and he hovers the compress over his bruise for a mere second, before dropping it on the couch beside him, shaking his head. “I’ll pass,” he says, his tone dismissive.

“Just do it, Aemond.”

“It’ll cover my fucking eye,” he mutters, his voice breaking. “and I want to be able to see you. I want to… look at you.” He shifts uncomfortably, gesturing vaguely to his eyepatch. “As you can tell, this one is permanently out of commission.”

His vulnerability chips away at your frustration. “Aemond… ” you whisper his name softly, as his gaze burns through you. “You don’t have to act like this doesn’t bother you. You can be hurt, you can be angry. You can feel whatever it is you’re feeling. Just don’t shut me out.”

His jaw clenches, but his gaze doesn’t leave yours. “I’m not shutting you out.”

“Right. Sure,” you reply, unable to help the sarcasm. “Then stop brushing me off when I try to help you.”

He exhales sharply, his shoulders stiffening. “I don’t need you to fix me.”

“I’m not trying to fix you, Aemond,” you snap, but your voice cracks under the strain. “I’m trying to be here for you. There’s a difference. Why can’t you see that?”

“Because it’s not that simple!” His voice rises, sharp and biting, his frustration finally matching yours. “You can’t just magically undo what I’m going through. Who I am –”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” you shoot back. “I know I can’t make everything better, but I’m here and – ”

“You shouldn't have to stay,” he mutters, quieter this time. “It would be easier for you if you let me go.”

“You don’t get to decide what’s easier for me, Aemond,” you say, voice trembling with emotion. The silence stretches between you, and for a moment, you think he might actually let you in. 

But then he stands abruptly. “I shouldn’t have come,” he mutters, pacing the room. “This was a mistake.”

“Then why did you, Aemond?” you ask, standing too, your heart pounding in your chest. This was not how you expected your cluttered little night-in to go.

“Because… because of you!”

“Me? I have done nothing but try to help you, even when you push me away… I wait for you, and I keep waiting and – ”

“Why?” He leans over you, tilting his head. “Why wait? I can’t deal with what you seem to expect of me. I can see it in your eyes. How can you look at me like that?”

“Enlighten me,” you challenge, stepping closer. “Like what?”

“Like… I’m better than I am.” Like I’m good. “I’m not. I would ruin you.”

“And yet, here you are,” you insist. “You came here. You sought me out.”

He looks away, jaw clenching again. “I shouldn’t have. Alys would have taken me in, tucked me into bed without all this questioning. Not… whatever this is.”

Your throat clenches at his words, and you have to swallow back the pathetic sob that nearly rises out of you. “Is that what you want? Did you come here for a pat on the back and quick roll in the hay? Is that how you see me?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His eyes snap back to yours, full of anger and regret.

“I’m not going to ignore what’s happening with you, Aemond. I can’t. I care about you. You’re a lot better than you think you are. You’re good and kind and fair. But you’re just – ”

“Broken?” he interrupts, his tone biting, as though the word itself is a weapon.

“Aemond – ”

“Am I just a fixer-upper to you then, darling? A project for your brilliant mind?”

“That’s not true. You know it isn’t. You’re lashing out on me, and I just want to help you!”

“I don’t want your help.” His words are clipped, final, made clear over and over. But you don’t back down.

“Then what – ”

“I just want you,” he confesses, the words tumbling out of him like something precious. You stay silent, trying to process his words.

He continues, his voice growing more pained. “That’s just me. I’m fucked in the head for wanting impossible things. I want you to stop looking at me like I’m still the Aemond you used to know. Maybe that Aemond was never even real. I want you to stop wanting to fix me. And I… I just want you to love me.” 

You say nothing for a while, your chest rising and falling, betraying your erratic breathing. He says in finality, “Like I said – impossible.”

“It’s not impossible,” you find your voice, your eyes never leaving his. 

“What?”

“It’s real, Aemond. And quite frankly, it’s driving me insane,” you admit, feeling braver than you ever have before.

“Darling – ”

“You want me to love you?” you ask, your voice steady despite the chaos of the evening. “Well, you have it.”

He shakes his head slightly, like he’s trying to shake off your words. “You don’t actually mean that – ”

“I love you, idiot.”

“You love me,” he echoes, the words tentative, like he doesn’t quite believe it. He looks at you, like he’s seeing you for the first time. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood you,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

“Just what every girl wants to hear,” you tease, a small, weary smile breaking through the tension.

But Aemond isn’t smiling. He’s still staring at you, his hand twitching like he wants to reach out but doesn’t quite know how. “You love me?”

“Aemond.” You can only nod, growing unsure of yourself. Is this him realising that he doesn’t actually mirror your sentiment? Fire and ice – he wants your love, but can’t love you back.

In the heaviest of silences, you do what you’ve expertly done thus far. 

You wait. 

Series taglist (comment below to be added): @caught-in-the-afterglow @aemondtargaryensrider @punggo66 @dollfaceyourfear @candypurplebutterfly @moonmaiden1996 @mxrgodsstuff @lolitaisreal @blue-serendipity @melsunshine @thejanecampaign @fxngsfxgxrty @padfooteyes @msmarvel-19 @tempo-rary-fix @lauraneedstochill @julczimozart @sarcasticfangirl @witchyv @pyjama-shorts @bellaisasleep @zillahvathek @thincrusttheworks @krispold @yougotthatlove @raging-panda @fleetingly-artistic @throughgoeshamilton @polireader @katsav17 @minttea07 @kravitzwhore @meggiemay82 @hedonefox @daenysx @schniiipsel @namoreno @afro-hispwriter @aemondswifeisme @emcharra @malfoytargaryen @iiamthehybrid @fullmetalriotts @kellzlib @justsumtuffstuff @daydreamy-me @yentroucnagol @kezibear @queenofshinigamis @paprikaquinn (continued in comments...)

Some notes in the margins...

Maroon is back! Grateful to all of you lovely readers who waited 🖤

The suspense at the end! Gah!!! If I'm honest, I hit a wall right there. Does the night culminate in heated passion? Is it the right time? Would it be good for either of them?

I'm sure you'll know my decision from the first passage of part seven 😆

As always, I am eager to hear from yous!

[dreamingcloudie]

❛❛ In which; Dottore as a streamer... ❜❜

✎ ❛❛ I'll have to admit, this character is quite... alluring.❜❜

Pairing(s): Streamer!Dottore x (kinda) Game-Character!GN!Reader (Mordern AU)

Genre/Format: N/A (headcanons)

Warning(s): wrote this at 6am without thinking straight so possible grammar mistakes and sentences that don't make sense

Notes: There really isn't much of x Reader here, sadly :( I might write more of this in the future but idk

I know i have requests to do but this idea came out of nowhere and it was too tempting to not write something for it— I've only written headcanon once so this is short. I have no idea if I'm doing this right 💀

Let's be real, this guy would probably stream live torture on the darkest part of the internet

BUT, let's just pretend in this AU he's not an evil doctor man <3

He is a tired university student who majors in biology and thrives to earn a position in the medical field

And that means becoming a coffee addict and endless nights of staying up late to study 

Sleeping? What's that?

I can see him being so focused on his studies to the point where he doesn't interact with the internet much

If someone showed him a popular meme he wouldn't understand 

Boomer

L

Due to how busy he is, he doesn't have the time to find a job

He lives off of the money his parents send him every month lol

That was until someone introduced him to the wonders of the internet…

One of his friends—Childe, told him something about a streaming platform and he should go check it out

And that night when he got home, he pulled his laptop out and searched for it

He also learnt that people can earn money streaming whatever

For instance, most of the people streams "let's plays"

He scrolled down a little and he found people streaming… questionable things, and he was baffled they get paid for it

So that means, he could stream anything he wants and he'd earn money from it, as long as he has a certain amount of viewers 

Say less

And an account was made 

This basically becomes his part-time job now

He usually streams to tutor struggling students and you best believe they were very thankful 

He'll sometime do "study with me" streams too

As he takes his fifteen minutes breaks from studying, he'd talk to his viewers 

And when I tell you this man has the driest humor ever—

That's what got his channel to grow

Viewers would clip his dry ass jokes and post them onto other social media platforms, which caused his view counts to blow up

As he got more and more popular, his viewers would beg him to do gaming streams

With how dry his humor is, they thought his commentary would be gold…

And they're absolutely correct, they get to see a different side of him too 

Surgeon simulator is the very first game he was introduced to by his fans, to get him interested in gaming

Man's cursing every time when he accidentally drops something

"Now, we put this lung over— Shit."

Cue chat spamming the Kek emote 

It's been months since he started to stream and things are going pretty well for him

He comes back home from his lectures today to find his Discord server is filled with loads of fans telling him to check a game out, mostly because of a certain character

The general chat is flooded with hundreds, and I mean hundreds of pictures of them

And Lo and Behold

It is you

The moment he first has his eyes on you, his jaw drops

God DAMN YOU LOOK FINE AS HELL

Not to mention that harness you have on you—

Ahem

Anyways

He doesn't even know who you are or what game you're from

But man he's head over heels for you already 

The next time he starts his stream, the first thing he says is:

"Everyone was going crazy on Discord yesterday about a game character. And now my question is…

"Who are they and which game are they from?"

Babygirl took his first step into the world of simping <3

[phantom-playdough]

Macaque x GN!Reader: Comforting

EDITOR NOTE FOR TITLE

Changed the title cause I WANTED to use the quote: "You're worrying me..." But I completely FORGOT about that line, LOL

Didn't know what else to call it, but it is LITERALLY 2:00 am, so this is the best I could come up with.

===========================================

This is my first post on this Tumblr blog, and I thought it would be super fun to write something for Macaque cause I adore this boi. I also noticed that there is a distinct lack of hurt/comfort fanfics for him on every platform I am on. So I will do it myself.

TWs: Mentions of nightmares, a lot of trouble eating and sleeping, the reader struggling with self-care in general, angst(?) in the beginning and middle, but there will be sweet fluff and confessions at the end to make up for it! I will add to these warnings if need be.

==========================================

Macaque tried to let it slide at first. He really did. But it was almost 3pm and Y/n was still sleeping...! Normally, he would probably just assume they went to sleep late the night before or something. But the thing is... this has been happening for over a month now.

It worried Macaque because his first thought was that something was wrong with Y/n’s sleep.

As the clock ticked on, closer and closer to late afternoon, he decided he couldn’t wait anymore and went to wake Y/n up.

When Macaque opened the door, he realized he had not been in Y/n’s room in a while. It was rather messy, to say the least. Clothes were thrown on the chair and desk and were lying on the floor. There were small wrappers all over the dresser.

Even though Y/n was lying in bed, it was super messy. Some of the blankets and pillows were lying on the floor around the bed, and one of the plushies that previously was on the bed was somehow thrown to the other side of the room, in front of Macaque's feet at the bedroom door.

Macaque picked up the plushie and slowly approached the bed, placing it by Y/n's feet. When he looked at Y/n's face, Macaque noticed their face twist into a look of discomfort. Their eyes were screwed shut and they groaned like a zombie.

It didn't take a brain scientist or rocket surgeon to figure out what was happening to Y/n in their mind. Macaque wanted nothing more than to wake them up; he wanted to relieve them of whatever horrors they were dreaming about. But he bit his tongue and held back, knowing better than he probably should that being woken up during a nightmare can cause more harm than good.

The mental image of Y/n being woken up, crying or even screaming because Macaque was too selfish made his heart clench. He just decided to wait by his best friend's side, even though his heart raced so fast it almost made his ears ring.

Macaque gently grabbed Y/n's hand, swallowing his pride, and rubbed gentle circles onto their skin. He couldn't say how much time had passed as he watched Y/n, his heart breaking as he saw them grow antsier in their dream.

Finally, Y/n opened their eyes. They squinted at the sun shining through their bedroom window. They looked over at Macaque, seeing that he didn't even bother trying to hide the fear on his face. It was only then that they noticed Macaque's hand on their own as his grip tightened slightly. It wasn't enough to hurt, but it showed that he was very scared.

Y/n simply spoke in a hoarse voice, "Hey, Macaque." They then cleared their throat. "What are you doing in my room? Is something wrong?"

Macaque adverted his eyes, glancing around. He had a smirk on his face to try and hide his anxiety. "I, uh... I was actually kinda hoping you could tell me that."

Y/n shrugged. "Nothing new." They said as they slowly sat up. Before Macaque could question what they meant, Y/n turned to him and spoke with a slight blush. "Mind if I get dressed?"

Macaque blushed and cleared his throat. "Yeah, sure. Take your time. I'll go make you some lunch."

"Don't you mean breakfast?" Y/n asked, clearly unaware of the time.

"Breakfast doesn't happen past three, Y/n." Macaque said with a smirk. He then left the room. Y/n sighed as they checked the clock.

Sure enough, 3:15pm.

Y/n dug through the piles of clothes on their desk and chair. They finally landed on an outfit they had worn a few days this week. While they were aware they should do laundry, the thought was too depressing to commit to. The idea of all the clothes to sort through and self-loathing over not doing the laundry sooner made Y/n shiver in discomfort.

The aroma of eggs on the frying pan, mango juice, and waffles filled the air in the kitchen. Y/n felt their mouth water, their stomach growled so loudly that it alerted Macaque of their presence.

"Hungry?" Macaque asked with a chuckle. Y/n nodded sheepishly.

"I thought you said breakfast doesn't happen past three." Y/n pointed out with a sweet smile. Macaque found himself staring at that perfect smile for longer than he should've been. He snapped out of his trance and cleared his throat, turning his attention back to the eggs.

"I don't remember saying that!" Macaque played dumb to see if he could get a reaction from Y/n. He did.

Y/n laughed lightly, before their expression turned soft. "Thanks, Macaroni." Y/n was the ONLY person that could call him that. Period.

There was a small silence that followed as Macaque focused on finishing the cooking.

Eventually, it was all done, and the pair started eating. Although, Y/n suddenly felt very full, despite only eating less than five bites. They pushed the food on their plate around, trying to motivate themself to eat. But for some strange reason, the smell of delicious food that made them want to eat a mountain suddenly made them never want to touch food again.

It was all so confusing, these feelings. Macaque noticed that Y/n lacked the sparkle in their eyes as they stared down at their plate. He heard another loud gurgle from Y/n's stomach, but they didn't make an effort to eat.

"Does it taste that bad?" Macaque chuckled as he asked to hide his disappointment.

"No! No, no, no! I-it tastes good, I swear!" Y/n yelled, their hands waving in front of them frantically. "I just have been having trouble eating lately! Sometimes I feel really hungry and everything, but I--"

Macaque grabbed Y/n's hands in an attempt to stop their loud rambling. It worked, thankfully. "It's okay, Y/n. I'm not mad." Macaque said a soft and sweet tone in his voice. "How about I save your food for you?" Macaque was reaching for Y/n's plate, but he still waited for them to say something, to not pressure them.

There were a couple seconds of small silence, but eventually, Y/n nodded once. Macaque frowned for a moment, but he smiled again as fast as he could to hide his fear deep inside. He took the plate and saved the food; the two were worried, even if for different reasons.

Y/n felt scared of the idea of telling Macaque was wrong because they didn't even know what was wrong!

Meanwhile, Macaque was trying to figure out just that. Things were so good only a month ago, but slowly, Y/n fell back. It worried him so much because Y/n and he had become so close over the time they had known each other.

Macaque hadn't expressed it much, but Y/n had helped him in ways he never thought possible! They helped him overcome his insecurities. They helped him grow more comfortable with touches that didn't involve fighting. Heck, they even helped him become friendly enough to do things like offer a stranger on the street a small smile!

Macaque didn't like the fact that he was unable to help Y/n at the moment. He felt that problems were meant to be solved. He wanted nothing more than to scoop Y/n up and pepper them with kisses. To give them comfort for whatever was troubling them. But he didn't want to scare them off.

The two of them had been friends for so long. Macaque didn't know he could feel this level of love for someone since...him. Even though Macaque knew Y/n long enough to know that he loved them, he didn't know if that was reciprocated.

But it was. Y/n was just as afraid of the idea of Macaque not feeling the same way, so they made their affection as subtle as possible so they wouldn't ruin the friendship. When they first met Macaque, he was so bruised deep inside. Y/n refused to call him broken the entire time they had known him. Because he was so much stronger inside than he ever thought.

But now, Y/n felt much more bruised than they had in a long time. It scared them.

Eventually, everything was cleaned up and put away. Y/n was still sitting at the table when Macaque walked over to them and offered them his hand.

Y/n gave him a confused look. But they trusted him and placed their hand in his. Macaque pulled them out of their chair and led them to the couch. He sat the two of them down and very gently wrapped an arm around Y/n's shoulder to pull them close to him. He leaned them back, and Y/n curled their legs up onto the couch and leaned on him.

The two of them stayed like that for a while, their faces beet red and hearts racing a million miles a second. But eventually, Macaque couldn't handle the silence anymore. He turned his head to look at Y/n, bringing a hand up to hold their face to meet his gaze.

"You know you can tell me if something is wrong, right...?" Macaque whispered the last word so softly that it made Y/n's stomach flip.

They nodded one time. But they knew that kind of response just wouldn't cut it. Y/n sighed and pulled their head away from Macaque's grip.

"I know I can tell you. But I don't even know what I know to tell you. For some reason, I have felt really out of it the past couple of weeks. I want to eat, but I can't. I need to sleep, but I get nightmares. I...I want to hug you, but I am scared."

Not even a second after that last sentence left Y/n's lips, Macaque grabbed them and hugged them as though they would disappear. "You don't have to be scared, Y/n. I...I don't usually do this. Expressing myself, I mean. But with you, it's different." Macaque laughed just a little bit. "I don't usually let people get as close to me as you. I trust you to call me Macaroni. I let you touch me. I...I let myself love you."

At that moment, Y/n smiled wider than they had probably all their life. They pulled away and looked Macaque in his gorgeous eyes. "I let myself love you too." Macaque smiled, and he looked from Y/n's eyes to their lips. Y/n got the hint pretty quickly, and the two of them slowly leaned in.

Macaque and Y/n were a hair away from kissing, but Macaque still mumbled over the thick silence, "Are you sure?" Y/n answered by closing the distance and kissing him. It was short, and they pulled away too soon for Macaque's liking. He pulled them back in but gave Y/n room to break away should they choose to.

They didn't.

Eventually, the pair parted for air. Macaque took Y/n's hands and held a look of love on his face that made Y/n feel like royalty. How many people got to see this side of him? Sadly, not enough.

"I'm willing to work with you on what's bothering you. I can't fix this overnight," Macaque said sadly but smiled as he continued. "But I mean, you helped me. I might as well try and return the favor."

Y/n smiled, kissed one of his ears, and whispered, "I'd like that."

[bleachbleachbleach]

[Bleach 080]

I'll be honest, I forgot that the walls were made out of a special stone. I always get distracted by the part where the walls live in the sky and only slam down to ground-level sometimes. Though... post-ryoka invasion, do they ever go back up? I feel like they're down in all the bird's eye shots we get, but what do I know. They're down in all the diagrams various shinigami use to describe the Seireitei, but maybe that's more indicative of a shinigami worldview than the literal fact of the walls normally existing on the ground. I'm sure the Ruth Wilson Gilmore of the Seireitei is thrilled about every part of that sentence!

4 Questions I have:

1. Who mines the sekki-seki?

Similar to I guess... all mining... it seems like it would be deleterious to your health to be around sekki-seki, if you had any spiritual energy to speak of, given that touching it (bare-handed) would wither you and it also emits deleterious waves. When Kuukaku talks about "spiritual energy" she uses the term reiryoku. If reiatsu is the outward, exerted spiritual pressure, reiryoku is, like, the in you version--the you version, which makes it seem to me like it's not just, oh I can't attack this thing. I feel like the wall should have a Surgeon General warning sticker on it.

Option 1: Rukongai souls mine the sekki-seki. Imagine showing up in the afterlife and not even getting to die of boredom in some crappy village. You have to go TO THE MINES.

Option 2: Maggot's Nest folks mine the sekki-seki. If they get weird and warped due to exposure (despite their protective gear, which I assume the Seireitei surely invested R&D into at some point), or explode, well... Did it really happen if no one saw it? Maybe sekki-seki exposure gives you cute horns.

2. Where is the mine?

Certainly, wherever they mine this stuff would have to be an incredibly controlled area, given that in the right hands (the wrong hands?) it would be a potent weapon. Luckily not one either Quincy or Hollows would be able to use easily, but 1) if you don't mind also dying I'm sure it would become very usable, and 2) I'm sure there's other beings out there.

I assume this stuff is also used in the Aizen Prison, and perhaps the Aizen Prison is just part of the mine, which would make it nice and easy, logistically.

3. Is there...radiation protection?

So... the walls... emit reiryoku-dissolving waves... That descend into the ground and dome over the city. Is there a reason the waves don't also just radiate through the middle of the whole city? I assume there's probably some additional spellwork that bounces those waves in some other pattern, or I perhaps some fancy doodad that lives in the middle of the Seireitei and emanates different, cancelling waves that extend exactly to the limits of the walls. But this all seems very tenuous and quite dangerous.

If you live near the places where this wall comes down, is there risk of residual sekki-seki radiation?

Is there an Erin Brockovich of the Seireitei?

How robust are these mirrors or anti-waves or whatever they're using to keep the center sfw? Like we're sure this works, and a natural disaster or a thousand-year blood war or something wouldn't compromise this?

Is the thousand-year blood war actually reiryoku leukemia =_=

Or does sekki-seki have...poles? Does only one side of the rock have wave emitting properties, and you just have to point that side outward? But then the dome thing would be hard, I guess... Actually, I guess if it's a dome over the city, the central point from which these waves are radiating is not the middle of each slab of rock. So the rocks, arranged in a ring around the city, are "speaking" to each other somehow via these waves, and the path of least resistance is in a dome shape over and under the city. I feel like I could buy that; like, cryptogeologically, why not?

Do I trust that enough to want to LIVE there lol, is a different question.

Boy, this just all seems wildly dangerous!!! Surely I can't be alone in this? And it amazes me daily that the Seireitei hasn't wiped itself off the face of the afterlife. But I also feel like this tracks, and is very true to life, and I wonder this about the human species all the time, too.

Last question:

4. How much does it cost to take a tour of the mine

[beardedmrbean]

(Reuters) - The Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday will consider banning smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate a generation of kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health.

The proposal was being formulated before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label on social media platforms, akin to those on cigarette packages, due to what he considers a mental health emergency.

The board of the second-largest school district in the United States is scheduled to vote on a proposal to within 120 days develop a policy that would prohibit student use of cellphones and social media platforms and be in place by January 2025.

The L.A. schools will consider whether phones should be stored in pouches or lockers during school hours, according to the meeting's agenda, and what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities.

Nick Melvoin, a board member and former middle school teacher who proposed the resolution, said cell phones were already a problem when he left the classroom in 2011, and since then the constant texting and liking has grown far worse.

"It's a moment whose time has come. When I talk to teachers and administrators and parents, it's one of the number one concerns," said Melvoin.

If approved, Los Angeles would join a number of smaller school districts to ban access to phones or social media. Florida, with some 2.8 million public school students, last year passed a law requiring school districts to prevent student access to social media. Several other states have introduced similar legislation.

While the research on mental health risks remains incomplete, the surgeon general said the emergency was so apparent as to demand action.

He cited a JAMA study showing adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media may be at heightened risk of mental illness, while also referring to a Gallup poll showing the average teen spends 4.8 hours per day on social media.

The L.A. school district cited other evidence that cellphone addiction was linked to soaring rates of anxiety and cyberbullying.

[miasmal-sweetness]

Needle in to a bug (part 2)

I recall being told years ago that many surgeons have an unusually perceptive sense of touch, able to feel and palpate things that others struggle with or can’t feel at all. I think that could describe Derek.

Also, I know why it’s usually not mentioned wtf a kidnapped darling does when they need to pee, but I personally prefer it. Being able to just use the bathroom and clean ourselves up plays a big part in feeling human and dignified for so many of us. Whether they’d treat it like nothing at all, enjoy your humiliation, or degrade you for just having human needs, I think it would all stress me out way more than getting slapped around a lil bit every now and then.

Summary: 4.7k. You finally get the chance to move around and learn more about Derek, but he’s studying you, too.

Alt summary: Your hot surgeon is really hands-on and gives you the worst sponge bath you’ll ever have.

Pairing: yandere!Derek Stiles x reader x (in the future) yandere!Victor Niguel

Warnings: author’s medical trauma is showing, general medfet, kidnapping/captivity, bondage, urine (but like not in a sexy way, it’s just there), reader refers to having a period, noncon, violence, use of pet names (princess, honey), general yandere and obsessive behaviors

part 1 part 2 part 3

MDNI – NSFW – 18+ only – take care of yourself

Needle in to a bug (part 2)

You’re still sleeping. You breathe quietly as your eyelids flutter. You’re dreaming, and Derek hopes it’s of him. Whether it’s of him holding your hand, fucking your brains out, or slicing you open, it doesn’t matter—he just wants it to be of him. Derek glances at your throat. The blade has left red circles on your chin and chest, but it doesn’t look like you tried to scream at all, and that brings a smile to his face.

He hopes this means that you’ll adjust quickly, but he’s not against the idea of you putting up a fight, either. You could squirm and swing at him, and he’d smack you in the face and shove you on to the floor and—he’s getting carried away. Derek clears his throat and adjusts his glasses; heat is flowing from his neck up to his face. And down to his pants.

You’re here. You could help him fix that. And it’s tempting—but you’re still healing, and he also hasn’t had the decency to feed you yet. Derek pinches his thigh in an effort to calm his raging libido, before kneeling down beside you and smoothing some of your hair out of your face. He always thought you were cute, even when you two first met, but you look adorable when you’re sleeping.

He should have just taken you back then. He gave you a pass and didn’t kill you because you were so sweet, and then you were smart enough to not come back for a while. He thought he wouldn’t be so soft this time, that he’d rip you apart and be done with you, but then you had to go and look so adorable while he was cutting you apart.

“Rise and shine, sweetheart,” Derek coos, running his finger down your cheek. You eyes flutter open, showing only your white sclera for a moment, before your eyeballs roll to the correct place and slowly focus on him. “How are you feeling?”

He knows you can’t speak without getting hurt, and he knows you’ve likely forgotten in your current state. “I—” You wince and whimper when the blade digs in to your flesh, and you snap your mouth shut to try to end the pain.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot,” Derek says in a tone that is far too chipper. He undoes the leather collar around your neck, returning your ability to speak. “Better?”

As if you fear the ghost of it will manage to hurt you, you hesitate, slowly opening your mouth to test it before actually speaking. “My—my back hurts. My lower back.” Your sacrum is both numb and aching, likely from the pressure of being against the hard tub for so many hours. The pool of your own urine underneath it only added to the damage.

Derek doesn’t want you to get a pressure ulcer. Those are nasty and annoying to heal. Even so, you haven’t been here that long. “If you behave,” he begins, touching his finger to the irritated red spot on your chest. “I can let you move around a little bit.”

You immediately nod. Ugh, that hurts. The back of your head feels like the skin is ready to slough off.

“No running. You stay by me the whole time unless I give you permission not to, okay? No screaming,” he lists, tapping the spot on your chest with each new rule. “No silly ideas.”

“Okay,” you quickly agree, eyes wide at the thought of actually getting to move. Maybe you can’t escape with him right next to you, but you can at least get your bearings and start mapping the place—and take some pressure off your sacrum and head.

Derek smiles at your agreeableness and reaches down to pull you upright. It hurts; if anything, you expected relief, but you were only met with more pain. Your muscles are already sore and stiff from being contorted behind and underneath you for so long, unable to stretch, flex, or extend. Your hips click loudly. Your knees pop. You can feel cold urine running down your skin and it makes you want to throw up a little, but there’s nothing in there for you to expel.

“I should get you cleaned up first,” Derek muses. He’s unfazed by what a fucking mess you are. He’s a doctor, a literal goddamn surgeon, of course he isn’t bothered by the sight of your red skin and dried blood and urine all over you. The mats at the back of your head. The indents and edema left by the rope he bound you with. The fluid that oozes from the flesh he tore in to. This is the reality of the human body, a reality he is very familiar with, and one that he can now make a personal show of through your trembling little form.

You’re stupid for expecting hot water. You’re dowsed with ice cold water from the shower head and you suppose you should just be grateful that it isn’t a tub full of it, but you’re not. Urine, blood, and sweat run off of you and flow down the drain. He’s careful to avoid wetting your sutures; those need to be cleaned differently, he says, but you already know that, right?

Derek runs a rough, soapy washcloth up and down your arms. You’re shivering like he’s dunked you in an ice bath, but you haven’t complained, at least. His gaze trails down your spine, to the blooming red over your tailbone, and he presses his fingers against the center of it. As he expected, your skin doesn’t blanch from the pressure, but you do wince.

“That hurt?” Derek asks automatically.

“Y-yes.”

Of course it fucking hurts, it’s a pressure injury, but it made his cock twitch to hear you say it. Derek isn’t gentle when he scrubs your back or washes your hair with his soap and shampoo that just dry you out because he isn’t the kind of guy that has figured out how to take care of all that yet. Even he can tell that you’re in need of something gentler by how tight your skin feels now, but you’re still pretty soft, so it’s not that big a deal.

He drags the washcloth down to your inner thighs. You jump and wriggle, your limbs instinctively trying to lash out at him, but you make no progress. The ropes around your wrists and ankles might be wet, but they’re still tied tight around your limbs.

“You’d rather get an infection?” Derek mocks, pressing the harsh cloth in to the soft skin of your thighs. “Do you think that would make me stop?”

“No,” you whimper, averting your gaze. “I-I can do it myself.”

“No,” he mumbles, his eyes fixated on the soap running down your mound, “I don’t think you can.”

He was already harsh when he washed your back, and he was even worse when he started scrubbing your inner thighs and folds. Fuck. The soap burned and this washcloth was made of sandpaper.

“Stop,” you hiss, squeezing your thighs together. “That hurts!”

Derek mutters something you can’t hear past the water rushing out of the shower head. He doesn’t even look at your face; he just forces your thighs apart enough for him to wedge his hand in between them again. And then you see that his cheeks are flushed, and his lips are parted as he takes in deeper and deeper breaths.

“Stop,” you plead again. It’s no longer just the washcloth against you; you can feel his fingers exploring, teasing, prodding. You should have known, you think. You should have known that the man who cut you apart and kidnapped you and tied you up would be a fucking pervert, that he wouldn’t leave you with any kind of dignity intact. You feel your hope of escape draining from your soul when you look in to his eyes. He won’t look at your face. He looks exactly like the kind of man who could cut a person open, take out their heart, and feel nothing about whether they lived or died.

The kind of man who would never let someone go if they had even the slightest chance of fucking up the life he crafted for himself.

“I told you to stop!” you screech, throwing yourself against the wall of the tub in an effort to escape his touch.

“No screaming,” Derek reminds you. His eyes lock with yours for only a second, long enough to remind you of the rules he laid out for you. He shoves his index finger in to you without any warning and thrums. You’re squirming and writhing and whining, your face red from salty tears stinging your skin. You feel hot and soft around his finger, even with how cold the water still is. “You’re tight. I wouldn’t be able to pull out if I tried.”

You don’t hide your disgust at his words; not like it matters when he just keeps staring at the finger he pushes in and out of you. It’s invasive and gross, and there’s nothing you can do about it except cry and growl and sniffle. He’s done after just a few more moments; he clears his throat and does a little shake of his shoulders, like he forgot himself. He looks at your face now and smiles, smiles like the kind doctor you met years ago that you would have never expected to be a probable murderer and rapist.

“All clean,” he says with a grin. “Let’s get you dried off.”

The towel he uses is as rough and miserable as the washcloth. His bathroom might be fancy, but he’s still a young and clueless single man who doesn’t know the first thing about maintaining a home. He tousles your hair dry, inevitably filling it with more knots, and doesn’t bother to brush it.

“Remember the rules,” Derek said, grabbing the ropes around your wrists. “You said you’d be good.”

“I will be,” you assure, leaning away from him.

Derek leans closer, of course, and tightens his grip on your bindings. The soaking wet rope scrapes away a layer of your skin. “I mean it,” he warns, “Don’t test my patience, princess. I use most of it for work.”

You feel his breath on you. You want to spit in his face—he’s certainly close enough—but you also don’t want to die yet, so you simply nod and bat your lashes at him. He looks at you for another moment, but finally undoes the ropes around you. You immediately shift in place and bring your hands in to your lap to stretch.

“Don’t get too excited,” Derek says, rising to his feet. He looks between your hands and your hair, and ultimately decides to pull you up by your hair instead. Punishment for your scream earlier, he thinks as he watches you wobble in your attempt to stand. “I can’t let you keep your hands and your eyes.”

Your eyes widen, and you hide your hands behind your back. He was going to amputate them? “I—n-no, I—”

“Not like that,” he laughs, his eyes crinkling as he watches your plight. He looks so genuinely happy in this moment; he’d be pretty cute if he weren’t joyful over your suffering. “Come on, princess. Follow me.”

Like you have a choice. Your feet feel heavy and borderline useless from pins and needles as you stagger after him. You get only a glimpse at the bedroom connected to his bathroom before he throws a blindfold over your eyes. No use in fighting it—you’re too weak on a good day and still shaking from the shower.

“And… there.” He’s slid something over your hands. Mittens, by the feel of it; the kind of soft restraint you sometimes saw applied to patients who kept grabbing at tubes and lines. They’re soft and useless and utterly harmless. The most you could do is bat at him like a kitten would at a toy. “You can stretch and move your legs, but stay by me, honey.”

You grimace at the pet name—a pet name you probably would have enjoyed before all this shit—and nod. He guides your covered hand to his arm and has you hang on as he leads you further in to his apartment. Your plan of learning the environment has failed. Your head is too foggy from pain and drugs to keep track of how many steps you take or the turns you take. You’ll have to try again another time, if there is one.

Your foot catches on something soft—a rug, you realize—and Derek is nice enough to catch you before you can bust your face open on his living room floor.

“Careful,” he warns, placing your other hand on his arm.

“I can’t see anything,” you grumble. You’re pouting like a kid who was scolded, and it just gets worse when you realize that and hate yourself for it.

Derek pulls you towards his couch and lets you fall against the stiff cushions. It feels like a couch that was bought for looks over function and that badly needed to be broken in. There was no wear on the fabric, something you could feel even without putting your hands down, since this man did not have the decency to give you your clothes.

Maybe your period would strike and you’d bleed right on his fucking couch. You bet it’s a white couch. Judging by his bathroom, his apartment is probably a soulless, monochromatic bachelor pad that costs an absurd amount to rent; a place that looks more like a picture in a magazine to advertise one of the three pieces of furniture in it than a place anyone actually lives in.

“You can relax,” Derek tells you, seeing how rigid you are. Back straight and tense, legs squeezed together; you’re even tightening your core. You look pretty cute—it’s not like he’s immune to what it’s doing for your tits and waistline—but also pretty uncomfortable. “I’m not going to do anything to you right now, princess. You sit here and I’ll get you something to drink.”

The thought of your captor continuing to hang out next to you on his couch that felt like it was stuffed with books wasn’t appealing, but somehow the thought of being entirely alone here was worse. You tried grabbing on to his arm, but the mittens don’t allow you to actually grip anything. Still, he feels it and chuckles at your attempt.

“Cute,” Derek purrs, “I’ll be right back, honey.”

Honey. Princess. You feel his weight leave the couch as the saccharin sweetness of his voice leaves an aftertaste in your mouth that makes you grimace. You run your mitten-covered hands over your thighs in some attempt to soothe yourself and then pat the cushion you sit on. Stiff. You can hear the roughness of the fabric. You can hear his footsteps, too; he’s awfully loud for a criminal.

You hear liquid splashing, the sound of a fridge door opening and closing. What was he going to bring you to drink? Your mouth was so dry. IV fluids did not feel the same as oral hydration. A cold glass of water would be heaven in liquid form—but what were the odds he’d actually give you that?

He’d cut you open. Peeled your flesh back and toyed with your sinew. Probably took a fucking souvenir, unless you in your entirety were that souvenir. Assaulted you while he bathed you, bound you so you couldn’t scream without a serious injury, and left you without the dignity of being able to use the toilet. This little excursion, his offer of a drink, were both more likely to end in more pain than anything that could restore some of your humanity and comfort.

Your anxiety grows in your chest as he approaches. You feel the air pressure change around you; he’s to your… right. Leaning over you, exuding warmth. Cool glass touches your lips.

“Here,” Derek says, pressing a glass to your mouth. “Drink up.”

It’s fizzy; you feel bubbles popping and misting your face. It smells sweet. Your thirst outweighs your fear, and you take a hesitant sip that quickly turns into a desperate guzzle when you recognize it as lemon-lime soda.

“Slowly—you’ll upset your stomach, princess,” Derek laughs. You can already feel your stomach expanding from its shriveled state and starting to ache. He pulls the glass away from you; you follow it, but lose it immediately. “You can have more in a little bit. If you do well with this, then we can see about moving to full liquids. Okay?”

He tilts your head up, holding you by your chin. He can’t look you in the eyes like this, but he can still see your quivering lip. “Okay,” you breathe.

“I’m going to get a few things to clean your incision. In the meantime, you should stretch,” he says, pulling his hand away. “And make sure to take deep breaths regularly. I don’t want you getting pneumonia or a blood clot.”

“Okay,” you say again, in a strained voice. He’s leaving you here? Alone? Your hands might be soft and close to useless right now, but even you can bat off this blindfold with enough effort.

“I’ll be right around the corner, cutie,” Derek warns, his finger tapping the shallow wound on your chest. “No silly ideas.”

That makes much more sense. He leaves you on the couch to bitterly stretch out your tight calves. You can hear him rustling around somewhere nearby; any attempt to leave will end in tears.

He speaks to you like you’re a patient. Not only like you’re a real patient in a real hospital, but like you don’t know this shit anyway—like you don’t work at the same stupid hospital he does, the hospital that doesn’t pay you enough to afford real medical care, so you end up going to coworkers that are kind enough to treat you even though you can’t pay and they fucking kidnap you. Greatest goddamn hospital in Angeles Bay—in the nation, even—and they won’t pay their non-physician staff members a wage that would afford them something so basic. Caduceus was evil enough just for that without Derek slicing and dicing in their empty units.

You thought he was nice, once. When he worked at Hope Hospital and he saw you needed help, he pulled you aside after you refused treatment and offered to help you at no cost. It wasn’t an emergency, so you just had to come back later; he’d take you to the little office he worked out of for this and treat you. And he did. Your desperation paid off, and you left with the hope that you could be like him and never lose that kind of compassion when you started your career.

You wanted to be like him, as disgusting as it is to admit that now. You ran to him for help again. Let him put his hands on you once—a murderer’s hands—and then asked for more.

You slouch forward and let your mittens touch the hard floor beneath you. You’re stretching, technically. The fold is hurting your belly, but it distracts you from your thoughts, at least.

“Feeling any better?” Derek asks as he approaches you again. You look like you’re broken in already, and it’s better that you can’t see the overjoyed grin on his face at the thought of that.

“A little,” you mumble honestly. Your muscles feel ten times better, although your back is still a tad sore.

“Good, good,” Derek chirps, guiding you back on to the couch. “I’m going to clean your incision so it doesn’t get infected. All you need to do is lie down, honey.”

You stay put, bringing your hands close to your chest and your arms over your abdomen.

Derek’s eyes narrow in the slightest, but he remains smiling to keep his voice sweet. “You can have more to drink after this, princess—if you’re good,” he bribes.

That’s enough to get you to behave again. You lie down on the couch, and it feels only a little more comfortable than the tub. You twitch each time a package rustles as he readies his equipment. A bottle opens—antiseptic. Paper rustling—a box of gauze. Plastic peeling—a transparent dressing.

You hiss and bristle when icy antiseptic runs over the inflamed incision on your belly. One of his gloved hands grips your thigh, as though he’s trying to steady you.

“Breathe and relax,” Derek orders, running a new piece of wet gauze over the wound. “You’ll be fine.”

The kind thing to do before dressing a wound is provide pain medication. You are not in a position where you are afforded any kindness, so you bite your cheek and accept the pain of antiseptic sinking in to your flesh. It dries quickly, at least, and he’s soon applying antibiotic gel and a transparent dressing.

“There. It shouldn’t need to be changed for a while, if it heals normally,” Derek says, peeling off his soiled gloves. “I think I promised you a drink, right?”

Your brain digs up a memory at that word—promise. “You promised something else, too,” you say in a weak voice. Your incision still burns, and the dressing feels itchy and sweaty.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You said—before you left, you said you’d tell me why,” you remind him, sitting up from the couch.

Derek sighs and adjusts himself so that he’s sitting down on the floor in front of you. “I did say that,” he mutters, furrowing his brow. His smile returns to his face and voice, and he rests his hand on your knee. You’re still cold to the touch; probably from low blood sugar, he thinks, so he gives you another sip of soda. “You want to know why I took you as my patient?”

You grit your teeth. “Why you kidnapped me and tortured me,” you whisper.

“Well, I’ll admit that my ways are unorthodox,” Derek says, tapping his fingers against your thigh. “And maybe the medical board wouldn’t be thrilled with me—they’re pretty clear that they don’t want us pursuing our patients.”

What the fuck is he talking about? You widen your eyes behind your blindfold and think that he’s somehow crazier than you thought—again. “Pursuing? Do you… Do you think this is romantic?”

Derek laughs. “Are you asking me, Derek, or are you asking Dr. Stiles, the man who cured GUILT?” He grins at the sight of you swallowing.

“You,” you quickly say, “I’m asking you. I want a real answer—please.”

“So polite,” he praises, just as you expected. “I think it is. You’re the one person I’ve changed my mind about killing, after all.”

That’s not romantic, you think and nearly say aloud. You don’t want to know how he’d respond. Instead, you ask, “Why did you try? Why did you change your mind?”

“You were an easy target,” Derek admitted, letting his fingers freely wander up and down your thigh. “You know, I mostly get older patients. They’re used to this. They’re calloused, inside and out. But not you; you’re still young and soft. Softer than normal. I’ve operated on hundreds of people, but you felt… different. Like an actual human, not just another body on my table.”

He leans his face against your thigh; his cheek feels hot, so hot you think he’s actually blushing as he murmurs this delusion against your skin. His fingers brush against the crease where your thigh meets your pelvis; it tickles, but you’re too focused on his words to react. He’s murmuring it like a confession of a crush, rather than a confession of how much he wants to see you suffer.

“It felt incredible to touch you like that,” Derek breathes. He presses his lips against your thigh, gripping your legs in place when he feels you lean away. “You don’t need to be shy with me, honey. I know you need me, too.” He drags his lips over your skin, his fingers trying to pry your thighs apart.

“Stop,” you whimper. You raise your hands to push his head away, but he grabs them by their straps and pulls them to the side. “I don’t want this! Just let me go and I—”

“Won’t tell anyone, you swear,” Derek finishes. The warmth in his face is gone, as is his smile. “I’ve heard this before, princess. You aren’t clever. Now, I’m going to give you another chance because I know you’re scared. Try to be good this time.”

Refuse again and he’d tie you back up. And probably worse. You can’t stop shaking as he kisses up and down your thigh, like he’s your lover and not your captor. You want to throw up every ounce of your drink, but the most you can do is pathetically try to pull your hands away from him.

“Be good,” he says against your flesh, “I won’t need to hurt anyone else if I can just feel you, princess. Think of all those people you’ll save.”

If you weren’t so panicked and weren’t blinded, maybe you’d see the tension in his shoulders and the way his eyes widened. Maybe you’d see his lower lip tremble and the desperation he held back in his kisses. Maybe you’d realize it’s been a long time since he was last given someone’s vulnerability, instead of taking it by force. But you can’t see him, and he’d never admit just how much he wants to hear you moan.

“I don’t want you,” you spit, twisting your hands out of his grip. “Get away from me!” You tear at the blindfold, managing to push it above one eye, when you hear him laugh and feel his hand leave your thigh.

“Well, that’s too bad, princess.”

You’re grabbed by your hair and dragged kicking and screaming across the floor of his living room. He’s taking you back to the bathroom, back to that stupid fucking tub. You gnash your teeth at his hand when he reaches for your face, but it only earns you a slap across the face. Fuck, that stings.

“You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not,” Derek growls, tightly gripping your chin in his hand. You squint your half-revealed eyes up at him; your cheek is bright red and starting to swell from his strike. “If you want to keep acting like a bratty little girl, be my guest, but don’t expect to get anywhere. I don’t reward noncompliance.”

You wriggle and thrash and bite and yell and it gets you absolutely fucking nowhere because he flips you on your belly and ties you up before you can so much as blink. The Healing Touch. The power that made him a surgeon above all other surgeons—the power that probably made it possible for him to get away with murder all these years.

“We could have had fun,” Derek laments, dropping your rigid body back in the tub. “And I would have been nice at the end and given you your pain medicine, but it seems like you’re refusing my treatment… So I guess we’ll try again tomorrow.” He’s all smiles as he speaks, and you’d give your life savings to smack that stupid grin off his face.

“Fuck you,” you gnarl, glaring up at him.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Derek straps the bladed collar around your throat and takes the blindfold off from around your face. You grit your teeth as you glare up at him; he can see every bit of fire and poison in your eyes, every unspoken curse you want to spit at him, and every ounce of fear that keeps you from opening your mouth with a blade at your throat and his presence threatening your life. “There. Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow. See you in the morning, honey.”

And he leaves you. You’re back in your porcelain prison, counting ceiling tiles again and trying to block out the pain going through your body. You should have kept your mouth shut and gone along with it; all you did was delay the inevitable.

[19orionis]

🖊 Lazare or Manfri (or both!) :]

I thought I’d compare and contrast an aspect of both of their personalities, one that can be kind of unsavory at times, one that can cause them to clash with each other. Because that’s fun!

Lazare and Manfri both have very strong convictions. Morals. Ways they think things should be. Lazare because he’s terrified of turning back into the person he was in his twenties, and Manfri… for a variety of factors. Scrupulosity is a facet of his OCD. He’s had a lifelong tendency to think in black and white. His brother went down a bad path, hurt the rest of his family, and he’s trying to distance himself from that. He wants to keep being good. Lazare is trying to be a type of good he’s unsure if he can ever be again. He feels like he’s tainted himself permanently.

Both of them can be judgemental. This aspect is something that Manfri actually has more self-awareness with, because he is the more rigid of the two, has been this way all his life, and he’s more confident in his convictions. He can go “sure, I’m being judgmental, but they deserve it.” Lazare, because he’s more willing to play nice with people and keep his thoughts inside his head, has a bigger blind spot when it comes to his own tendencies. He can go a lot longer, turning up his nose and harboring resentment towards someone for a decision they’ve made or a belief they’ve had before noticing that he’s doing it. Admitting it is even harder, but he’ll do it, begrudgingly.

Manfri tends to judge other doctors and surgeons. Harshly. Some mom-shame, he doctor-shames. In the real world, this is probably good to an extent, but in roleplay it’s made him act inflammatory to other Medics 😂 even if their unconventional practice is working for them. He’s also generally very lawful and is pessimistic about people’s ability to change, so if one was a thief or conman years ago, and he knows about it, he’ll treat them as if they did that shit yesterday until he’s told to cut it out. Even THEN sometimes…

Lazare judges… people like Manfri! He can’t squint too hard at past actions if the person shows they’re remorseful, or he’d just start internally beating himself up for the millionth time over his own crimes. But he also very very deeply judges smokers, despite losing his dad to that addiction and knowing that it isn’t easy to quit. He’s very terrified of secondhand smoke. Used to just take others’ cigarettes and put them out without warning. It’s the one thing I could see him getting smacked for. I can also see him really hating people who don’t have an indoor voice, etc. He is NOT confrontational in public (or in general, he tends to beat around the bush and take a lot of time to say what he wants to), but if your feet are up on a chair, or if your cart’s in the middle of the aisle, he will make some kind of face at you.

Because of all this, the two don’t exactly talk very much. Lazare avoids Manfri more than the inverse, but Manfri can feel the mistrust coming off of Lazare and it kind of creates a feedback loop. Even though, if they could JUST GET PAST THEIR OWN EGOS, I think they’d have a lot to talk about!

[a-mag-a-day]

MAG 39 - apple cutting

This is the first time we see Jon perform under immense stress: He does very badly xD

This is the first time we see Martin perform under immense stress: He does very well :)

So Jon is bad at leading. Sasha is just waiting for instructions. Martin actually does lead - hot take: Archivist!Martin? (I know, it's more Web!Martin^^)

I like how the subject of the corkscrew is handled. We don't see anything, it's audio only, so there has to be a workaround in order to let us know, what someone is holding in their hand. Sasha asks Martin if he drinks, he starts explaining it's for the worms, that a knife was not sufficient and that the corkscrew is better. Only in the very last sentence we hear, what item they're talking about. It's great, it feels natural!

While we're at the subject (canon-typical Flesh content warning) - you know what else other than worms can be super easily removed from your body using a corkscrew? The femoral head of your thigh bone after is has been cut off! (I'm not kidding, surgeons use a corkscrew for this when implanting an artificial hip.)

JON "[Softly] Well… thank you." - Jon sounding soft when talking to Martin is everything!

JON "I don’t want to become a mystery. I refuse to become another goddamn mystery." T___T

Jon and Martin's bickering and heckling in this episode is so cute!

Ahhh, finally Jon admits, there are definitely real statements. When I was first listening I was waiting for this moment!

Martin and Sasha freaking out when Tim returns sounds like the sort of cinema audience everyone hates when watching a horror movie XD

TIM "Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding sinister happenings in the downtown old" - oh god I was howling when I first heard this XD

JON "Stay with it, Martin. Tim. What happened to Tim?" - Jon again helping Martin keep his coherence there^^

MARTIN "Push the sceptic thing so hard!?" - Martin snapping is the best, he should do it more often!

JON "Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact Storage? That’s enough to convince anyone. But, but even before that… Why do you think I started working here? It’s not exactly glamorous. I have… I’ve always believed in the supernatural." - ::::´(

JON "Because I’m scared, Martin!. Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will… know somehow." - Jon and Martin talking heart to heart is even more cute than the bickering! Also first time explanation, why Jon's such a theatre kid when recording.

JON "Why haven’t you quit?" <.<

MARTIN "Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck." - Excuse me, but after that line I was thinking the EXACT same thing as Jon like "OMG… You can't move on? You have unfinished business? You died here???" … Also obviously our first hint about them not being able to leave the Institute.

MARTIN "No, no… it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in" - T____T - "well, I’m there too." ::::)

ELIAS "You know how those two are… John puts on a good show, but sometimes I swear he’s worse than Martin." - Elias is already shipping them XD

SASHA "I think John’s got a lighter somewhere." - I always forget that the lighter gets mentioned here. In general I'm bad at keeping track of that thing, I was subconsciously aware that it existed during my entire first listen, but there is a very funny chat with my sister about this when we get to MAG 197.

ELIAS "He’s not smoking again, is he?" - Why does he care? Afraid of too much Web-influence?

ELIAS " I really don’t want to have to find another Archivist so quickly after Gertrude" - capitalist corporate scum…

TIM "Funny story really / Fine! Fine! Gas… bit light-headed. / Although the ones down here are faster for some reason. And quieter." + Tim pulling down his pants - I just freaking love S1 Tim!

That pause after Martin confesses using the recorder for his poetry is amazing XD This episode truly is an office romcom!

Has Sasha ever read the statement of Amy Patel regarding Graham Folger? I get that she couldn't leave while watching the table, it being hypnotic and stuff. But not turning on her heels and running away when suddenly seeing a shadow of a person IN FREAKING ARTEFACT STORAGE after she just told us that this is an awful place with scary and potentionally super dangerous items is such a person-in-horror-fiction-acting-against-all-logic trope xD She and Jon are so much alike xD

SASHA "Show yourself." - Are the actual last words of Sasha. So many people get it wrong and pick "I see you".

Sasha screaming RIP ears again.

I like that echo-y hushed effect for the first words of Not!Sasha.

PRENTISS "Archivist." - My first thought back on my first listen "Huh… She calls him Archivist again… Could be something up with that".

So in general, yeah, amazing episode! Still one of my favorites!

Sasha screaming hurt in more ways than one

[marinsawakening]

Reading Round-Up May 2023

I am going to try to catalogue new media/art I've experienced each month in an effort to kick my ass and expose myself to new stuff. Because it'll be really embarrassing for me if at the end of a month I have to say 'I didn't read a single book, didn't watch any movies/shows, or play any games'. Despite the name this isn't just about reading, I just couldn't resist the alliteration. That said this month it's very much about reading because the only game I played was Stardew Valley and I didn't watch any movies or shows, press F. So with the explanation out of the way:

Things Read (Or, More Accurately: Novellas Read)

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

A newly published horror novella about a mermaid and a plague doctor coming across a village of children under the cultish leadership of three surgeons able to cheat death. Also it's set in the taiga. I pre-ordered this and I'm so glad I did because I'm absolutely obsessed with it. Honestly, this book has shot up to be one of my favourites of all time already, probably. The prose is fantastic, the world eerily well-drawn despite the general lack of detail (which works in its favor if anything), the characters unique and interesting, and I just adore the pacing and plot development. Excited to read more by this author. If you like stories with themes of death/immortality, and/or well-described viscera, you should read this. (Major content warnings include cannibalism, medical abuse/trauma, child death, and domestic abuse.)

The Seven Who Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev

Anti-death penalty propaganda from more than a hundred years ago, available on Project Gutenburg, this novella follows seven prisoners doomed to be hanged, five insurrectionists and two murderers. A competent and interesting book well-worth reading, but I admit I don't have any strong feelings on it personally.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Already a well-received novella, this book recently got an influx of sales thanks to one bigolas dickolas, one of the funniest things that's happened in publishing in quite some time. It's about two agents from opposite sides of a time war, exchanging letters and falling in love. It's a good book with lyrical prose and a very interesting world, and I was engaged and enjoyed reading it. However, as expected (and why I put off reading it despite it having been on my radar for a while), I was much more interested in the time war than I was in the romance, which was kind of an issue. The characters were so thoroughly defined by their love for one another that a lot of the emotional beats at the end of the book did not hit me as hard as they should've. Still, that's hardly an issue with the book; those who like romance will probably get much more out of this novella than me, and I still found it a very good book.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz

A (self-described) f/f asexual romance novella about an engineer and a near-300-year-old sapient robot who runs a tea shop in memory of her former lover/owner, who learns to move on. I really want to like this book, if only because it's a queer indie work with a lot of heart. But I just don't. In a word, this book is lackluster; the prose is lackluster, the worldbuilding lackluster, the characterization and development lackluster, etc. It persistently reminded me of fanfic as I was reading it, and that's not a compliment. It was not an awful read, and it's short and cheap, so if the premise interests you, there are worse ways to spend a few hours. But that's hardly glowing praise.

Ten Days in a Mad House by Nellie Bly

Non-fiction novella that's a collection of newspaper articles written by Bly, chronicling her commitment to and subsequent stay in the Blackwell Island insane asylum. Bly faked insanity in order to go undercover, resulting in a landmark piece of reporting that called attention to the horrific treatment of patients in insane asylums, written in 1887. A fascinating read, though obviously, tread cautiously. Bly's writing reads easy, and it's easy to see how she captivated newspaper readers at the time. It's available for free on Project Gutenberg; the edition there also includes two other articles, one of Bly attempting to find work as a servant, one of Bly working a factory job.

Through the Gates of the Silver Key, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The History of the Necronomicon, The Dunwich Horror, The Festival, The Haunter of the Dark, The Whisperer in the Darkness, At the Mountains of Madness, and Out of the Aeons by H.P. Lovecraft

I've been making my way through Lovecraft's bibliography and specifically the Dream Cycle stories for the past few months. This month I finally finished the Dream Cycle, and began working through the Cthulu Mythos stories I've thusfar missed.

I fucking hate Lovecraft's writing. It's formulaic as all hell; if you've read one Lovecraftian horror story, you've read at least 90% of the others. His descriptions can be quite vivid, but too often he insists on not fucking describing shit when it actually comes to the horrors, and I get that's the point, but you can only say 'the horror is indescribable' in so many ways before it becomes boring. Plus, even when he does describe things, his descriptions always follow the same cadence, sentence structure, and vocabulary, making them, again, formulaic as all hell. Some of his concepts are interesting, but they're invariably bogged down by his absolutely rancid worldviews. His racism is, rightfully, famous, but his stories indicate a deeply classist, exceptionalist, and eugenicist worldview as well, not to mention a preoccupation with escapism and nostalgia that's beyond childish, which makes these stories absolutely fucking insufferable. I quickly resorted to finding readings of his stories on Librivox and Youtube when possible, so that I could at least be doing something else while I worked through them. From the ones I've read this month, I'd say the ones worth reading if you're interested in Lovecraft's worldbuilding are Through the Gates of the Silver Key (though you will need to read, at the very least, The Silver Key first, and preferably some other Dream Cycle and/or Randolph Carter stuff, especially The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath), The History of the Necronomicon (exactly what it sounds like, extremely short), The Whisperer in the Darkness, Out of the Aeons, and At The Mountains of Madness. Reluctantly, I’ll also recommend The Shadow over Innsmouth by virtue of it being basically required Lovecraft reading, but I was rather unimpressed by it. Also major racism warnings for pretty much everything but specifically Out of the Aeons in general, two instances of the N-word with the hard R in Through the Gates of the Silver Key, a white guy cosplaying an Indian one in that same story, and whatever the fuck Shadow over Innsmouth had going on, this paragraph is already far too long, I do not have the time to get into it.

TL;DR don’t read Lovecraft but if you must, from this month’s stories the ones worth suffering through are Through The Gates of the Silver Key, The History of the Necronomicon, The Whisperer in the Darkness, Out of the Aeons, At The Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow over Innsmouth.

[darkmaga-retard]

by Brian ShilhavyEditor, Health Impact NewsOne medical “fact” that the majority of people living in western countries today accept as “true”, is that smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer, and that tobacco is a toxic substance.But is it true? Can we trust our government when it comes to health advice? Have they ever lied to us in the past about health or diseases?First, think about it logically. People have smoked tobacco for hundreds, if not thousands of years.U.S. Government “experts” figured out only in 1964 that cigarettes caused cancer and were bad for health, as the Surgeon General put out a warning declaring that cigarettes were bad for one’s health.Was there actually any evidence or credible science to back this up, or were other interests in play behind this warning?Fortunately, if one decides to search out the evidence themselves, there is plenty of evidence and research to show the opposite, that tobacco does not cause cancer, and that as a natural plant, it actually has some therapeutic properties, which at one time seemed to be well-known.I want to state up front that I do not smoke cigarettes, and never have (I never enjoyed them, even when I was in high school and most of my friends smoked them), and that I have no economic ties at all to the tobacco industry.Neither am I recommending that anyone should either start smoking tobacco, or quit smoking tobacco.That is an individual choice, and my sole interest is in publishing the truth, and giving further reasons why it is unwise to trust our current medical system and the government alphabet agencies that protect them, rather than protecting the health of the American public.If there are indeed therapeutic properties to tobacco, such as relieving neurological disorders like Parkinson’s Disease, Big Pharma would have plenty of motivation to suppress that information in favor of their pharmaceutical patented drugs.Also, cancer has always been the largest money-maker in the pharmaceutical industry, and there is plenty of evidence that cancer is a modern disease caused by pharmaceutical products, especially most recently as a known side-effect of the experimental COVID shots, so they need alternative products to blame for the ever-increasing cancer rates that bring in $billions to Big Pharma, while continuing to propagate the lie that there are no cures for cancer, when in fact there are many, but all of them are banned by the FDA. See:

[nonfer]

your miserable, half hearted attempts at journalism? good enough for wrapping fish with means what? guess you could wrap digital fish.

what i, and every other content provider online, have seen isn't honesty out of either trump's administration or honesty out of biden's administration.

"- two point -"

"you're just old. you're old, okay?"

images above and below are from Late Night TV Talk Show Lineups Page (interbridge.com) and (free graphics editor) gimp.

"- a sixteen year old on edibles is more reliable."

wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_Public_Health_Service#Personal_awards_and_decorations

29% in U.S. Say Neither Biden nor Trump Would Be Good President (gallup.com)

[biglisbonnews]

Party Nails and Boy Sim Warn 'Like U' May Cause Severe Dancing Los Angeles-based producer and pop artist Party Nails has paired up with Austin-based queer pop icon Boy Sim to create a dance-pop single “Like U" in the eurohouse vein of Vengaboys, Cascada and Haddaway.Co-written and co-produced by Party Nails and Boy Sim, "Like U" is reminiscent of '90s and early-2000s rave music, with bright synths, driving bass and high-octane hooks.“I like to think of it as our homage to ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,’ when Cyndi Lauper sings ‘I wanna be the one to walk in the sun,’” Party Nails says playfully, adding, “It’s meant to be danced to alone or with friends. We even thought about releasing it with a Surgeon General's warning: This music may cause severe dancing.”Read on for PAPER's conversation with Party Nails and Boy Sim about Elle Woods, Limited Too glitter body spray and why they're bringing back "fun music."How did this collaboration materialize?Party Nails: I had known of Boy Sim and loved him and his music before we met. I really hoped our paths would cross. Our mutual circles overlapped eventually and we set up a session while I was driving cross-country with my dog last summer.Boy Sim: I had been working with Mike Grubbs here in Austin for a while, and he and Elana (Party Nails) had worked together before. She came through Austin and Mike thought it would be a great idea to get us in the studio together. He showed me her music and I loved it. How does nightlife influence your sound, creative practices and this project?BS: Nightlife has a huge impact on my production, songwriting and overall creativity because my entire adult life has been centered around working, performing and participating in showcases in queer nightlife spaces all around the country. I started DJing and clubbing a lot when I was 18, and I realized that I loved dressing up, performing and making people dance. All my best friends are drag queens, queer nightlife performers and queer artists. I’ve found a home in nightlife. PN: For me, nightlife is emblematic of an epic quest for that perfect moment where a song comes on while you’re on the dance floor and hits you in such a way that you almost shift into another realm. Even though it’s sound, the song feels like a whole other physical space you can enter into. I think I’m always trying to catch that, create that, define that.BS: Nightlife has become my go-to for inspiration. Sometimes, if I’m having writer's block, I’ll just go out to my favorite clubs and venues and mentally dissect all of the songs playing. It can help me figure out what makes people dance and what makes people want to leave the dance floor for a drink or a restroom break. Before I started Boy Sim, I was making EDM. What was the creative process of putting this track together? PN: I played a few other songs that I was working on in the hopes that Boy Sim and our co-writer Michael Grubbs would catch a vibe, and they absolutely did. Grubbs was an endless fountain of lyric ideas while Boy Sim went in on the track. Every hour we’d kind of touch base with each other, veto a verse or pitch a new lyric, until suddenly we were done. Boy Sim sent a version over and once I heard it, I couldn’t shake the idea that he should be on the track too. I asked him if he would want to be on it and he sent his verse right over.BS: The original beat started out as this funny, bubbly, SOPHIE-inspired euro-pop beat, and we started thinking of melodies and lyrics to go along with it. I had smoked a bit before, so I was a bit giggly, and we just kind of all caught this giggly silly vibe. The whole time we were like, “Oh my god... it’s so hilarious and it’s so catchy." The amount of laughs we had while writing the song was definitely a big part of what drove the lyrics to just be so crazy and outlandish. It was the most fun I’ve had making music in a really long time, actually. Something about stepping back from all the serious and overly sophisticated, sort of melancholic music I was working on a lot at that time felt so freeing. I think bringing back "fun music" is very important right now. I miss Taio Cruz, Kesha, Rihanna’s EDM phase, Gaga’s ARTPOP. I miss LMFAO. Stuff like that. Happier times.Where did you draw inspiration for this project?PN: I’m always inspired by Robyn and her style of pop music, so I thought of her a lot while we were writing this. I also was very inspired by Charli XCX. She is so serious and yet so playful. Grubbs was riffing on this concept of “iconic," and that was a big inspiration — like, what if you thought of yourself as iconic? What kind of self-love and actualization would you possess, how would your relationships be? They would be supportive. Interdependent. Never smothering. But also this unhinged sort of Elle Woods vibe. Grubbs’ lyric contributions nailed the Elle Woods vibe.BS: Production-wise, I drew inspiration from a lot of the melodic pop-house revival stuff that’s been really trendy in pop music lately. The '90s organ bass, the house drum groove, it’s been taking over the radio again and I love it. "Show Me Love" by Robin S., "Waiting For Tonight" by Jennifer Lopez, "I Didn’t Just Come Here To Dance" by Carly Rae Jepsen, Gaga’s Chromatica, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Pop-house is back and we wanted to put our own spin on it. My favorite movies are the ones about the '90s rave scene, so releasing a track like this feels very full-circle.What is the mood board for “Like U?”BS: When I listen to it, I kinda start to picture my sister’s bedroom when we were little kids. It smells like Limited Too glitter body spray. Pink fuzzy mirrors, colorful beads everywhere, friendship bracelets, snap bands, the transparent pink and blue landline telephone. Bazooka bubble gum, nerf guns, laser tag, Spice World. It’s also like if Disney channel’s Zenon was an HBO Max show and the space station was a giant club orbiting the earth. That’s what I imagine. PN: Yes! Limited Too glitter body spray, yes! To me “Like U” looks like when you accidentally look immaculate because you’re wearing clothes you love, and you’re glowing from laughing and dancing with friends and they’re glowing too. It’s a bunch of sweaty besties giggling on the dance floor. It’s when you’re in the thick of it working hard at something you love and your partner is like, “You do you, because you’re the best.”Check out Party Nails and Boy Sim's "Like U" below.Photography by Naz Massaro https://www.papermag.com/party-nails-boy-sim-2659286771.html

[orieriee]

Writing Random Scenarios Based On a Prompt Generator! (pt. 2)

Author's note: A mini series for some of my fave one piece men just before the new year! Hope you enjoy! This is Law's and Kid's :D

Word count: 1.3k

Warnings: fluff, curse words and in Kid's, grammar errors because english isn't my first language and I haven't write in a long time

Gender neutral reader! The prompt generator can be found here

(pt. 1 here ft. Ace, Sabo, and Luffy)

my masterlist

For LAW: [I'll let you guess the prompt first]

"Law, you've been working too much. Come on, it's time for bed." You approached your overworking husband by his table and massaged his stiff shoulders. He's been working all night long finishing the rest of his paperwork. It can't be helped that he has many work to do since he's the top surgeon of the city after all. 

Being a doctor is no easy task. Being a surgeon is more harder. And being the spouse of a doctor/surgeon is also hard because that means you have to take care of your overworking husband, who won't rest until all his work is finished. That being said, he is one of a workaholic himself anyway. 

"I still have work to do. You can go to bed first." Law didn't even lift up his gaze from the stack of papers he cleaned up as he took another stack to work on. Having a workaholic husband sure is concerning sometimes. 

"My love, it's 1 AM. I get lonely a lot before I go to bed because you're not always home. And when you do get home, it's usually when I'm already asleep." You bring your arms forward to hug him and gave him a kiss on the cheek, "You also have work tomorrow. Save up your energy for tomorrow, your eyebags are also getting worse. Let's go to bed together ok?" 

After a long persuasion and your warm hug, he finally put down his pen and sighed. He always melt under your embrace and your care. You always know when he pushes himself too much and needed a break but could never before all work is done. That's what he really appreciates from you, being able to make him take a break and free him from his pile of stress and to be able to give him the comfort to do so. 

"Alright. You win." Law may say that as if he has no other choice but to 'obey' you but his smirk and his soft tone said otherwise. 

The nights when he usually can't fall asleep is no longer with you beside him. Your presence calm the storm inside him and allows him to sleep soundly in peaceful nights. He's too tired to even stay awake in your embrace as you shared your warmth to him through the night.

"Good night Law, sweet dreams." you whispered as you kissed his forehead, drifting off to sleep for the next day. 

The sound of the ruffling curtains being pulled is enough to wake up Law before being hit by sunlight through the window.

"Sadly you have to go to work again this early morning. Come on, I've prepared breakfast." You gave him a peck of morning kiss as he sat up from the bed. 

It has been a long time since he could sleep that well. It's usually him who wakes up earlier than you to get to work and stuff. He could say he overslept on a day like this but he feels refreshed than ever after a good night sleep. See, you never fail to bring him the comfort he needed. 

And when it's time to head off to work, Law let you make him a bento to bring in for lunch later. He may be a busy man, but he'll never forget to say thank you for the food. Yeah, he should give you a thanks after the comfort refreshment you gave him. 

"Have you forgotten something?" you asked as you looked at him, waiting for him to notice something.

This is the part where he says or rather, expresses his gratitude towards you. He leaned in to your height and closed his eyes for a second before pulling away and dusting off his coat before going off to work. 

"Oh, uh… Thanks…" you didn't expect him to kiss you all of the sudden. He's the type that rarely gives this kind of affection so it's always a pleasant surprise that makes you go all red.

"But what I meant is this…" you showed something on your hand and it's his bento you made him earlier that he forgot to take with him.

For EUSTASS KID: [below the cut!]

I'm doing something different with Kid and the prompt is....

Y/N-Kid is a couple in a youtube channel with over a million subscribers that people known as the chaotic duo that looks high but it's just themselves vibing and being chaotic together. [major modern reference]

Y/N : Ok, the camera's on now... Hey ho!!! It's Y/N here!! And I'm here with-

*pans camera to Kid who is sitting in front of a mirror, applying lipstick* 

Kid : Hey! Don't show my face yet! My eyeliner's not done yet. *panicking*

Y/N : My boyfriend Eustass Kid! 

Kid : HEYY I SAID STOP!!! 

(Video got cut off because Kid messed with your camera. The scene cuts to you entering Kid's car.)

Y/N : Ok, so we're doing our daily vlog. Where are we going today? 

Kid : TO THE STARB*CKS YEAHHHH *🤟🤟Giving me the punk rocker vibes*

Y/N : YEAHHHHH!!! WE'RE GOING TO GET SOME COFFEEEEE *adrenaline for caffeine*

Kid : YEAHHH WE GOIN' TO GET SOME LIQUOR BABYYY

Y/N : WE'RE GOING TO GET SOME- (puts down the camera angle) wait no, we don't drink liquor, this is a family friendly, content, cut the cameras- 

(Scene cuts to Kid ordering his Starbucks order)

Operator : So [your drink of choice] and then a grande with trenti iced coffee, 12 pumps of sugar-free vanilla, 12 pumps of sugar-free hazelnut, 12 pumps of sugar-free]caramel, 5 pumps skinny mocha, a splash of soy, and ice. Is that all? *out of breath but keeping the job professional, struggling to be ok*

Kid : Yeah, and the coffee is to the star on the siren's head, ya hear me? 

Operator : *visible sweating* alright, is that all, sir? 

Kid : *turns to you* baby, do you want anything else?

Y/N : Nu uh, I'm fine with my own drink, thanks. *looks at him weird, sympathizes the operator for rapping the order*

Kid : alright, that's all.

Y/N : why is your order so long this time??? *utterly confused*

Kid : I like to see them suffer *evil laugh*

Y/N : Ugh you're a devil. 

Kid : You mean a hot one? 

Y/N : Not as hot as Loki but OK

Kid : Loki isn't a devil, Y/N. He's a god. I thought you were a Marvel fan? 

Y/N : I am. But I like spiderman more. 

Kid : Spiderman is a part of Marvel, Y/N. Gosh.

(Camera cuts to them drinking starback before Kid drived off.)

Y/N : Well, now we're stuck in a traffic jam. And a lot of fans have been asking us questions on instagram so I thought we might answer some of them. 

Kid : Don't pick a dumb question, that's no fun. 

Y/N : Kid, if you have teeth coming out your 4nus, would you go see a dentist or a surgeon? 

Kid : what kind of question is that?? I'd say the dentist. 

Y/N : But(t) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) wouldn't you have to stick up your butt to the dentist? 

Kid : ugh, I hate your pun. Well I mean I think so but dentists spealize in teeth so going to the dentist is reasonable. 

Y/N : True dat. Ok, moving on. Are you guys dating?

Kid : HAH…. * letting out a big sigh and pinching the bridge of his nose* *whispering* why do you pick this dumb question out of all?

Y/N : I want to hear it from you, come on. *mischievous smirk*

Kid : Well, sorry for crushing your assumption, kid ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) but Y/N and I aren't dating. Y/N is actually my mom's… Grandma's second cousin's… First cousin. If you get it yeah. 

Y/N : PPFFFTTT QUIT JOKING *bursts off laughing*

KID : YOU'RE JOKING WITH THAT QUESTION SO I'M JUST DOING THE SAME

Y/N : NO I'M NOT *shitting tears of joy* A person legit asked that. See? 

*Y/N showed Kid the question*

Kid : Oh wait, fr. Well, yeah, no shit sherlock. We're dating YEAAAAA

Y/N : No, he's my ex-boyfriend actually. 

Kid : Eyyy so we playing this game huh? 

Y/N : No, I'm serious. *suddenly dead serious expression*

Kid: Babe? W-what? No, you're joking. Come one now~ *his heart dropped a bit there but he won't admit it out loud*

Y/N : No, I'm not joking. *pulling out something from their pocket* Will you be my spouse instead? 

Kid: *turns into that universe/milky way meme and the math lady meme*

Y/N : Kid?? Babe??? You gotta say something. 

Kid : y-yes? 

Y/N : HE SAID YES PEOPLE! WE'RE NOT DATING, WE'RE GETTING MARRIED.

[sblacksvelvet]

wolfstar muggle au fic rec

a long time coming, expertly compiled list of the most essential, very best, must-read wolfstar muggle aus (in my opinion)

guaranteed to be: fabulously well-written, sometimes heartwrenching, often heartwarming and well placed to fix any canon related trauma

Beneath a Big Blue Sky by eyra

The four-by-four heaves its way down long, twisting lanes, little more than dirt tracks scuffed into the surrounding fields and hemmed in by serpentine walls of flat, grey stone. They truly are in the middle of nowhere: the countryside rushes past, all rolling green hills and vast, endless skies, and it's odious. Sirius wants to murder James with his bare hands.

Sirius and James accidentally find themselves on a Yorkshire farm during lambing season. The farmer’s son thinks that’s a bit annoying, actually.

starting off with a very, very sweet choice. this one is the PERFECT cure to post-canon heartbreak. warms you right up on the inside. eyra is such a special writer, always up for changing things around and somehow always nailing her characters perfectly. plonking sirius and remus on a farm and making it work should be a challenge, but it works brilliantly - you'll still feel like you know these boys, and you'll probably finish loving them even more.

How Remus Got His Groove Back by RealityShowJunky

After two years of noncommittal sex:

Remus tells Sirius that he loves him. Sirius firmly rejects him. Remus tries to move on. Sirius is not happy.

OR

Remus Lupin becomes king of the cockroaches, Fabian Prewett writes a book, Gilderoy Lockhart is a catfish, and Sirius Black realizes he's a fucking idiot.

a classic for good reason. i do always think remus and sirius look slightly different than we typically see them in today’s era - but don't let this put you off! if you haven't read it yet - this is so good! very rom-com, very gorgeous and nice and light-hearted whilst also having really brilliant character development. the marauders as a group are fantastic - and we get baby harry! he's the star of the show, really. realityshowjunky is really a remus stan - as she should be - so he’s rather great here. you’ll probably re-read 900x as I have, if you haven't already.

Just what the doctor ordered by WrappedUp

This is the story of how Sirius Black finds a dog.

Except, it's not really that.

This is the story of how Sirius Black finds a dog and meets a skilled veterinary surgeon with crinkly eyes and dimples in his cheeks.

Except, that's not really it either.

This is the story of how Sirius black finds a dog, meets a skilled veterinary surgeon with crinkly eyes and dimples in his cheeks, and grows the fuck up (at least a little bit).

i almost have no words for this one. simply couldn't recommend it enough. my favourite fic by my favourite fic author. she's had 3 works out since i read this one and discovered her and i’ve honestly hung off her every word since, checking for updates like its my full time job. warning for an age difference, but sirius himself is the younger at 25 - so nothing untoward! this is likely my favourite sirius black rendition ever and it truly encapsulates how i see him. 

general comment on wrappedup: i reckon very few authors can compare to her on both vibe and characterisations. you’ll see what i mean, if you're like me and become inspired to live a relatively simple wonderful life in bristol with your best mates and a local pub as your keys to happiness after reading this fic. 

(also read her current wip, its bloody brilliant)

Sweater Weather by lumosinlove

Remus works for the Gryffindor Lions as a physical trainer, and has been half in love with Sirius Black, the Lions' heartthrob captain, for a while now, but he never expected Sirius to return the feelings. 

a controversial pick by tiktok’s standards but i sort of think that's all bollocks? this is great - just don’t read it if you don’t like smut or are under 18. it is a slightly different one, since it doesn't really have a marauders cast as you might anticipate and there are lots of oc’s along with a few of our favourites, however you will come to love love love the oc’s. sort of feels like it’s own story. i really do think it's worth a read - its so, so very feel good and you will DEFINITELY develop an ice hockey obsession (i now have two jerseys of my own, and they are not cheap).

a brief history of dragons by eyra

It's lovely up here; all meadows dotted with wildflowers, wind-beaten tracks criss-crossing this way and that through the fields, weaving inland to the pinewoods. The sun's hot on his back as he passes ramshackle stone walls, long since crumbled to piles of ancient rubble and scree, and then the path winds downwards, still following the line of the coast until Sirius finds himself outside an old white cottage, tucked away behind the hill with a rose garden that faces out to the sea.

Sirius moves to Cornwall for the summer and meets a rude, beautiful boy who is writing a book that may or may not be about dragons.

another eyra choice! i do love her. this one feels slightly less on the nose marauders in terms of familiarity than beneath a big blue sky, but it is no less lovely. might be even more lovely, and its certainly a special read if you like soft boys and soft feelings. who doesn't though? its a shorty and you might cry of affection- go read it.

Dear Your Holiness by MollyMaryMarie

During the week of his father's funeral, Sirius Black meets an unusual priest and offers to help write Orion Black's eulogy. At the same time, he's started texting a mysterious bass player from a pop-punk band that he accidentally swapped phones with. Eventually, the conversations between the two start to blur together and Sirius has trouble trying to decide which one he's falling for the hardest.

absolute a+ sexual tension in this one, folks. such a great concept, and super different! loved the characterisations of everyone, and having teddy be a part of it all is very sweet. a very cool read and a recent favourite!

bonus jegulus recs! 

Crimson Rivers by zeppazariel

Regulus Black was fifteen the first time his name was called at a reaping. He's twenty-five when it happens to him again. A lot has changed in that time, and one of them is that he's ready to do whatever it takes to make it home. Nothing or no one will stop him, not even James Potter.

James Potter has no plans to stop Regulus Black from making it home. In fact, his plans revolve around the opposite. He has his reasons, but he's made his choice to get Regulus out of the arena, even knowing it'll be the last thing he ever does.

Sirius Black was sixteen when he volunteered to take his little brother's place in the arena. At twenty-six, without the option to do it again, he has no choice but to be a mentor to his brother and best friend, knowing that only one of them can make it back out.

Two names called, a mentor on the verge of falling apart, and more secrets and grief between all of them than they know how to handle. None of them are prepared for what comes next, or how far they'll go to make it through.

as per, a big favourite already for most of us. if you haven't heard how good this is then let me tell you - get on this shit, its making for such a good wip!! each update is so exciting and the suspense and slow burn is fabulous. plus the wolfstar is as good and as important as the jegulus!! zeppazariel can do no wrong. go go go!

when you were mine by battlehamster

Regulus shattered James' heart the day he chose the Black family over the future they could have built together, and James was left witnessing from afar as Regulus turned into the monster his mother raised him to be. Six years later, Regulus storms back into his life after the Black Empire gets torn to pieces in the wake of what is arguably one of the biggest financial crime scandals in Britain's recent history.

But James is a man now, a man with a life he built for himself, and he won't let Regulus destroy him all over again.

oh my! this one makes me soft, its soooooo good. another wip. it is still strange to me to read jegulus fics with depictions of good malfoy/black family members since ive never dabbled in drarry, but don't let that, or the hints of lily bashing, put you off - it all makes sense! we get some great black brother bonding, baby harry and draco, established married wolfstar (who makes me die) and a full blown slow burn, second chance pine. its lovely. 

[marley-manson]

☕️ post-war hawkeye

Thanks for the ask!

I cannot stand the idea of Hawkeye retiring from his surgery career to be a small town doctor. As far as I'm concerned Hawkeye's post canon character arc should be getting back into surgery and reclaiming the career that he’s described as the only thing he ever wanted to do with his life.

I mentioned in the last ask that I'm not sure what the intent was with that in canon, it probably wasn't meant to be this tragic, but imo it's pretty easy to draw some angsty connections to explain why Hawk quits surgery. Maybe someday I'll write a fic about this, but til then here's meta I guess.

SO I think it comes back to Letters and Hawkeye questioning his role as a surgeon in a war zone, equating it to weapons repair, and saying he can't deny it and he can't live with it. In Letters the one thing that keeps him going is saving an innocent life, a Korean kid who presumably won't go on to kill more people.

Then, yk, in the finale he feels responsible for the death of an innocent baby. So that kind of rips away the one ray of hope in his existence as part of the army. It counteracts his ability to save people, makes it feel worthless and futile, and leaves him with nothing but death on his hands to show for his last two years as a surgeon. So now the thought of doing it for a living fucks him up.

And my ideal post-war Hawkeye fic would be Hawkeye dealing with this and getting over it by internalizing the fact that he was essentially a victim of the draft and he did what he could in the situation he was stuck in.

Anyway aside from that, hmm.

I don't think Hawkeye would isolate himself, or if he did, it would be... bad. A huge warning sign. Hawkeye always seeks people out, he hates being alone. I think his mental health would deteriorate very quickly in isolation, and Hawkeye knows it, and if he was isolating himself I would frankly expect like, a suicide attempt to follow lol.

tbh I don’t think he would necessarily be outwardly, overtly... troubled? idk a lot is made of Hawkeye coming home broken and fucked up and depressed and miserable etc and like, yeah he had a breakdown and he’s been in a war and he’s gonna have issues about it (and like I just detailed one of those issues up there), but I think he’s actually pretty well equipped to recover and already started the process in GFA, and I don’t think he’d be completely miserable at the start, or fundamentally changed overall.

Also while I’m planning to lean into the alcoholism in my own post-canon fic if I ever get that going, I actually think canon kinda implies the opposite. First with Bottle Fatigue where he belligerently proves he can drop the booze and is also the only one who worries about it, and then not drinking, or at least staying sober, in pretty noticeable contrast to BJ getting wasted at the farewell party, iirc.

I guess I think Hawkeye is actually pretty resilient, which is also a reason I can see him getting back into surgery once he deals with what I think is the underlying cause. His emotional vulnerability makes him more susceptible to the trauma of the war, as we see when he’s the character who has a climactic mental breakdown, but I think it also makes him more capable of healing.

Like whereas I envision BJ being a huge mess for years to come, eg, because he doesn’t really do self reflection or therapy, I see Hawkeye coming out the other side relatively soon (months, rather than years) and picking his life back up where he left off.

I think that’s also supported by a lot of what Sidney says to him in the various Hawkeye therapy episodes, eg suggesting that Hawkeye’s intense negative emotional reactions are a sign that he’s emotionally healthy in Hawk’s Nightmare, and again the general theme of “going insane in a war zone is a sane reaction.”

I also disregard Alan Alda pushing 50 while playing a 30 year old lol. I buy that he has greying hair now, that’s a fine detail, but I’m not really into taking every flaw and inadvertant side-effect of a long running tv show as diegetic canon, I’m more of a ‘just take it in the spirit intended and suspend your disbelief sometimes’ type, at least when it comes to Mash. So I’m not that into the idea of Daniel Pierce seeing Hawkeye and going omg he’s aged 20 years in 2 years what did the war do to him???? it feels a little over the top to me. Same way I just ignore that Radar is balding at 19.

I lean sliiiightly towards BJ keeping in touch with Hawkeye as opposed to detaching himself completely, because I really like the idea of BJ getting as weird about Hawkeye as he was about Peggy lol, but I also like the idea of BJ’s finale promises that they’ll keep in touch being as empty as his promise that a kid’s leg will be fine in that one episode. Tough call. If he did keep in touch Hawkeye would respond, and if he didn’t I could see Hawkeye not sending letters first. He does seem to have a bit of a fatalistic view of long distance relationships lol.

I’m a big fan of Hawkeye and Charles staying in touch and visiting each other, possibly working together. I think they could have a great post-war dynamic. Also a big fan of Hawkeye and Trapper reconnecting. I don’t think Hawkeye and Margaret would stay friends (I say this despite them being my favourite platonic relationship on the show lol) but they’d send each other yearly Christmas cards. Klinger would keep in touch. I’m ambivalent about everyone else.

And I’ve mentioned this a little bit but I like the idea of Hawkeye getting more political rather than dropping it after the war. He’s talked about how great protesting is, he writes angry letters about societal issues, when he cares about something it translates to wanting to actively do something, and I don’t see that as just a war-time coping mechanism. If he was a real person who knows how his politics would e or devolve lol, but as a fictional construct he’s essentially defined as a politically aware bleeding heart with socialist tendencies in comparsion to everyone else on the show so I see no reason to assume that would go away.

Oh also finally in theory I kind of dig the idea of Hawkeye/some dude he didn’t meet in Korea. I like Hawkeye/Trapper post-war endgame a lot, but I think like... thematically Hawkeye getting together with some guy unassociated with the war would be the most fitting post-canon relationship.

send me a ☕️ and a topic and i’ll talk about how i feel about it