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awlimagines · 1 month

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Hello! I‘m a big fan of your works but unfortunately I am extremely shy and can‘t muster up the courage to really comment or anything. I just wanna say I appreciate your stuff a lot, a wonderful life is one of my biggest comfort games and unfortunately I don‘t see as much content for it as I‘d wish there was, so seeing you write about it always brings a smile to my face :^)

Also while I can‘t say I wanna kiss him badly I‘m glad to see more Daryl appreciation, I love my best friend Daryl he deserves more appreciation LOL (we love weird freak men here)!

Sorry to drop off a request like this but if you‘re still taking rqs: Bachelorettes & Bachelors helping the farmer with painful period cramps? I know this kinda takes out the ambiguity of the farmer‘s assigned gender at birth sorry haha ^^“ (I myself suffer from painful cramps unfortunately hence I‘m a fan of this type of x Reader stuff haha)

Have a good day and keep on going, but remember to take breaks too from time to time (•w•)/

Sorry, it took me a while to get to this!! It made me really happy to see when I was feeling so sick though!! <3

Fortunately, I've never experienced period cramps to the point I couldn't function. I've been blessed that mine have always been relatively manageable without many issues. My husband is very supportive of anything I need (even if I just want something and not actually a need). Having said that, these might be pretty vague and light on details just because I don't have a ton of specific experience beyond friends who had conditions that made theirs terrible.

Also, I don't mind writing for a specific gender. It just seems fair, for the most part, to keep it as vague as possible so everyone can enjoy it. So, I keep it as gender-neutral as possible by default. Please, please send me any requests you have! I do my best to write the ones I receive and enjoy them greatly. :3

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Each bachelor/bachelorette is below the cut!

How They Help You with Painful Period Cramps

CELIA / CECILIA

She only vaguely understands the pain you feel. Cecilia was blessed with light periods devoid of cramps. But, what she lacks in experience, Ceci makes up for in sympathy. During your periods, Cecilia divides her time between working at Vesta’s farm and helping at yours. If you try to protest her working so much the young woman chides you about learning to accept help when needed. Ceci also quickly gets Vesta on board, and you join them for meals each time to limit your cooking. Both women offer you suggestions to help alleviate your pain.

CODY / GORDY

When Gordy encounters you curled in a ball, his first instinct is to fetch Dr. Hardy. You quickly explain that it’s unnecessary; this is a regular occurrence. The silent artist stares at you momentarily, absorbing your explanations before quietly excusing himself. While the thought of his abandoning you during such a time stings, you try to comfort yourself. You’re surprised when Gordy returns within a few hours and apologizes for taking your horse. He was in a rush and didn’t think to ask first. Gordy asks about pain medicine and a heating pad as he unloads various snacks and drinks from the Mineral Town General Store. He insists you tell him immediately if you need anything else.

DARYL

At first, you feel annoyed with the scientist as he rambles off the biology behind your pain. You soon realize the lecture is helping to keep Daryl calm as he assesses the situation and how to assist you best. Beyond some measly chocolate he had on hand, he is not much help the first time. Daryl makes up for this the second time and is prepared with various remedies that might help you feel better. Before long, he has your cycle memorized better than you and is always ready with the things that help you best. He doesn’t offer much help with your cattle but rambles ideas about a watering system to reduce your work for crops.

FLORA

Despite your pain, you find yourself more concerned about Flora. You were explaining how terrible your pain was through gritted teeth when Flora agreed. You couldn’t help but blink in shock at the archeologist. She said she felt the same during her period but just focused on work and tried her best to ignore it. Flora seemed surprised when you offered suggestions and shared your resources to help her. She doesn’t want to take from you. This soon becomes the most extensive argument of your relationship before you both eventually agree on a system to support each other. Flora dotes on you and consistently makes sure you have everything you need while you gently remind her it's okay to take breaks and take care of herself as well.

GUSTAFA

It hit unexpectedly when you were spending time with Gustafa at his yurt. Even through the pain, you felt embarrassed and stuttered out an apology, planning an exit to your farm. The musician caught on quickly to your pain and offered supplies. You were shocked to find the man so well prepared, and he explained that having female friends and keeping extra became a habit to try and help. Gustafa steps outside to give you privacy. He soon offers to have you stay, and he can fetch you anything you might need from home. Regardless of your decision, Gustafa is supportive. He admits to being a bit hopeless in the kitchen but does his best to wait on you hand and foot. He insists on handling any errands you need to be done and hovers if you want to do farmwork in case he’s needed.

LUMINA

You quickly learn that the life of the rich is different from what you expected. At the first mention of your intense period pains, Lumina has already arranged a meeting with Dr. Hardy to guarantee there are no medical causes of your pain. Lumina also insists on you staying at the manor under her care, and with Aunt Romana as backup, it doesn’t give you much choice. They both casually tell you Sebastian will tend to the farm with Takakura until you recover. It isn’t until you explain the guilt of putting more work on the butler makes you feel worse that she relents. Instead, Lumina focuses on learning your favorite dishes and bringing them to you throughout each period. She also masters the art of getting you to accept expensive remedies.

MARLIN / MATTHEW

Despite living with two women, you can tell Matthew is uncomfortable talking about your period. It doesn’t stop him from assisting however he can. Like Cecilia, he does more work to help you at the farm during your periods. While he seems most comfortable helping with the physical labor, Matthew does his best to cook meals for you. He’ll also mumble out suggestions to try and help with the pain. When you discover Matthew has been asking other female residents on your behalf, his face turns red like a tomato. He avoids looking at you as he grumbles about it not being a big deal if anything helped you.

MUFFY / MOLLY

Molly experiences cramps, though she admits they’re not quite as painful as yours. She shares remedies and methods to help from the vast social network of her city friends. You weren’t thrilled with her idea of spa days when Molly first arrived at your farmhouse. The blonde gently bullied you into giving them a try with an adorable pout. They quickly grew on you as you sank into the hot springs and relaxed with Molly. The worst days of your period soon become filled with the hot springs, good food and drinks from the cafe, and plenty of conversation with Molly. While your pain may not be gone, her support and company help make it more bearable.

NAMI

You both slowly realize there are times you never see each other. It turns out Nami suffers similarly to you and essentially just holes up at the inn as she becomes irritable. You tentatively offer suggestions for the things that help with your pain. A sigh of relief escapes you as Nami returns the gesture with her solutions. You’re surprised when you drag out from your bed during one to find Nami at your door. She offers to share the homecooked food the doting Lou made. Nami and you soon have a system alternating between the farm and the inn. You both find comfort in knowing someone else understands your pain and struggles and can provide support.

ROCK

Rock has the best intentions, but you can tell he never paid attention to sex education in school. The blonde surfer understands almost nothing about periods. You're annoyed at his appalled look when you have to explain the menstrual cycle and the source of your pain. The feeling doesn’t linger long when he calls asking if you prefer lemon or lime at the store for your products. You can’t help but laugh as you hear a female worker lecturing him in the background. Rock has to be gently reminded not to eat all your snacks, but he always comes around with new movies from your favorite genre to watch while you cuddle together.

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uninformedartist · 1 year

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Just an fyi when you see a lot of attention getting shown to Stolas/Moxxie/Angel getting beaten and bruised. Viv has bondage fetish and scramble to hide a lot of the bondage stuff she drew about Angel, but can't hide the stuff she drew with Addison further back.

CW ahead: Beastiality mentioned with a minor character

Hmm I have heard about this from other blog posts especially the Addison art she made way back then. Seeing his bio on the wiki its still listed as him being 17 and I cropped the art much more but yeah that is a huge yikes, beyond yikes.

To start I'm not going to shame Viv *IF*she has this fetish or anyone that has an intrest in that fetish. As long as its done with consenting parties who are majors in a safe way/environment etc. What is a problem is the Addison info above (cannot stess how disgusting that is) and how Viv seems to portray the scenes of bondage in her shows. Like its mostly scenes where the characters are held against their will, have their agency taken away or are also getting harmed while being tied up in that moment etc and *IF* it is to be as a scene that should be seen through a fetishising lense aswell then that is horrible.

I put emphasis on *if* because it does look that way but until it is proven solidly like the Addison situation (a minor character in such a sexual situation) then its just heavily implied which is bad aswell but one must just be aware of it, don't make assumptions but be aware. Also we don't really know if Viv has a bondage fetish (I won't make assumptions like that or say anything to solidify she has such a fetish) if there is a post she clearly says she has one then I would be interested to know as I couldn't find any information confirming that otherwise won't say she has one.

And going back to this post I do find it egregious how Stolas is portrayed here, not the fact that this scene is bad thematically in show but here Stolas was captured, tied up against his will and harmed badly but they are making "fun" prints of him to be signed and saying "poor Stolas", can express how bad that is considering the situation. And I know its fictional but this happens in real life and considering the helluva boss fandom (its mostly teens hands down) it can cause desensitization towards these situations (I've seen it happen 1st hand in my life, it does happen unfortunately).

Ty for the ask, gave me things to ponder on and this post isn't very polished its quite rambling sorry but it is things to *Consider* but until solid proof come out then that's all we can do, is be aware and consider these things.

#vivziepop critical #helluva boss critical #my post #ramblings #spindlehorse critical #not so polished post sorry #ty anon for this question really good point.

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alicenpai · 2 years

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Have you answered Q21 and 30 yet? Would love to hear your thoughts on those :o

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

hi chiko!

I think I tried so many different styles over the years, and bc of art school I can probably draw in cartoony or anime styles pretty alright, so I won't pick any kind of animation adjacent styles for this one!

Edward Gorey, Ronald Searle

Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker

Dean Cornwall, Mead Schaeffer

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

this one is tough! as I haven't been drawing a lot of full pieces/posting very very sporadically this year.

like what is considered "underrated"? is it notes? funny enough I think before the pandemic my art used to get more notes, so, would someone consider my recent works "underrated" in that sense? it's tricky. 🤔 I know it's easy to blame the algorithm but there are so many factors at play that we cannot qualitatively control for. being on the right platform at the right time, drawing for the right fandom at the right time, catering to a suitable audience, how you format the post (like do you show closeups or just post the full illust or crop your art? do you just post a video instead??), and a suitable caption (e.g. something witty, relatable, funny, or just something basic like emojis or just 1 word)

for me I consider a work "underrated" or underperforming (I think is a better word for it), is if the drawing is not interesting enough that nothing is said about it. either about either subject matter or artistic techniques. for me connecting to others through art is so integral to the artist experience. if a post gets 1000 notes but it gets 0 comments, then i consider it a failure. if something gets 100 notes but it gets many comments, i would consider it the opposite of "underrated'.

like would original drawings be more underrated than fanart? 🤔 people have trouble connecting to ocs since they don't know the source material, so often those kinds of posts would get less notes or less comments. just interesting things to think about.

it's easy to go into the archive and look at the older stuff that possibly didn't get seen around as much, but i'll try to pull some more recent pieces.

I think this 6 fanarts did badly in comparison to other works because the trend appeared in 2020 but I wasn't able to complete this that year ^__T and the trend didn't come back in 2021... guess I'm not a trend setter..................... sighs 😔 haha

I do want to try this kind of fanart compilation again though! I'm bad at drawing under pressure though so I would have to come up with my own prompts...

this Kekkai Sensen x Trigun piece! I think the crossover alienated fans of both series bc you had to enjoy both T__T and I also didn't draw characters from either series interacting so I don't think it ended up that interesting? bc I wanted to make this a diptych (it's clear that there's a middle divide now that I mention it) but the triptych didn't end up happening!

besides both being created by Yasuhiro Nightow, I haven't come across that many fans who are fans of both, actually...? it's not in the case where the author's work is more or less similar in tone (or same universe), like Baccano x Durarara, Pandora Hearts x Vanitas no Carte, Higurashi x Umineko. I think something like trigun x cowboy bebop would have worked better because people are always unfortunately comparing the two hahahaha.

#ask #i had this in my drafts for a few days then forgot about it sorry!#chiko akihari #q

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multim00n · 1 year

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⚠️ WARNING !! : This shit is LONG, I don't know what happened and I'm so sorry.

୧ Hello ! I don't know you and you don't know me, but I saw that you were doing TOH match-ups and, after going through some of you work, I've decided to give it a shot ! ! :}

I'm omniromantic and (possibly) genderqueer, any pronouns but I'm more used to being referred to by she/her since I'm afab and closeted,,

Appearance-wise, I'm 172cm tall (which means I'm always the tallest of my friend groups, for some reason), have light olive skin, curly dark brown hair and eyes and . . . I wear glasses! (unfortunately) and if I take them off I basically can't see lol.

(Not joking, everything gets so blurry it's absurd).

Fashion sense is based a lot on silhouette and that twenties trend of looking girlish in a boyish manner. My iconic look is a horizontally black white striped cropped (the white lines are really thin and it's not really a cropped but I tie the back of the collar so it acts like one) and baggy dark grey military pants. Looks way nicer than it sounds ! And also my Saint Benedict necklace, mum gave me before I came back to my dad's house after recent holidays.

Personality-wise!, I’m, like, chronically tired and always have to take a deep breath out of sudden because I forgot how to breathe, haha! ^^” I feel this need to know everything about everything and to be smart and have a library installed in my brain, but I don't really have the motivation to do so . . .

I do know some trivia facts tho! If I remember it, I'll say them when it calls and I also think a lot about stuff, so I like to try to share my thoughts (which range from video essay material to philosophical discussions to sounding like I'm high) with my friends, if I feel like they're forcing a reaction I'll just stop talking and ask them about something I know they like talking about.

So in general I know quite a bit of stuff and my Dad told me that I'm very observant and have an interesting brain wiring (thought process) but I'm awful academically-wise and am almost failing four classes. Generally I’m too tired to things, so if I don't have a topic in my brain that I need to talk about I'll just let the other person start the conversation and make an effort to not make my answers seem forced.

My best friend told me that I'm sarcastic and mean and stuff but that I just pretend to be like that and that I'm actually a gigantic softie and I pretended to gasp offendedly in response. So I’m like the ‘comic relief’ of my friend group, I laugh at things that are not funny and I laugh out of nervousness and I just laugh a lot period. I'm really empathetic so I try to be patient with people, but if they're being stupid in my conception I'll make an ironic comment about it and then make sure they know I'm joking. I'm being sarcastic but if I realize the other person is uncomfortable I stop on spot— I also work a lot on people's patterns!! So like, if I see someone doesn't like something or reacts badly at something I'll never do that again.

My humor ranges from dad jokes to DHMIS humor and I'm (surprinsingly enough!!) the mom friend of my group even though I'm not the most responsible one. I (silently) look out for my loved ones while being awful at comforting others and call anyone and everyone by pet names just like a stereotypical elderly woman. I also hold grudges and have my Dad's temper, so that's something.

In terms of likes!!! I prefer animation to live action, but if the live action has pretty colors or figurines or stuff, I'm totally eating that shit up. Movies from the 90s-2000s too ! ! I loved period dramas and romances or slice-of-life books, but I'm also a big fan of horror and sci-fi. I can't watch a movie without shuttting up about composition, and figurine, and soundtrack, and dialogue, and— I had a filmography phase and it's still stuck in my brain wiring. I adore people who can produce good movies or shows and think they're integral to society.

I also like video essays on stuff I know and don't know about, drawing, reading a bit, writing, blasting music on my earphones and getting my whole family mad at me, watching the same shows and movies I've already watched 172836281627 times before since I'm scared of watching something knew and it being bad. I like collecting ! ! I have a space in jewelry music box (a gift from my stepmom’s mom) that is exclusively for my little trinkets and a pinecone in my wardrobe ! I still sleep with the same bunny plushie from when I was four, no one knows who gave me that bunny.

I would also like to be either an engineer or a fashion designer! But since I'm horrible at math, Dad is thinking about enrolling me in a fashion school when we move . . . 🤞🏼🤞🏼

Hmmm, I feel like I had more stuff to say but I can't remember now . . . Favorite artists are Mitski, Cosmo Sheldrake, Lana del Rey and Florence + The Machine ! ! By the way ! ! Thought you should know.

Also, I hate using abbreviations and most slang, could you tell. Also ny sleep schedule is so weird, I go to sleep 9pm and wake up 4-5am like what is up with that.

Okay, WOW, that was longer then I thought I’d be 💀 but that also means I have plenty of information

I had a hard time deciding between two characters, so I matched you with both of them, hope you don’t mind!

Amity Blight!

Despite her character development, I think that Amity would still be sarcastic and a bit mean (but not in a bullying way)

Also a softie!

She gets worried whenever you forget how to breath, and will probably ask if you’ve breathed yet 💀 she just does want you to faint on her, if you do she’ll have a panic attack 😭

I think she’d be very interested in how your thought process works, and how observant you are!

She also feels the need to know everything, and she’s a bit of a control freak as well (personal headcannon of mine)

I feel like Amity also likes collecting things, mostly cute trinkets or some jewelry

LOVES Mitski and will gladly listen to her with you, she also collects her music vinyls (or whatever they’re called idk 😭)

I hc that Amity sleeps with plushies as well, but mostly a little black cat plush that Ghost is strangely jealous of and has tried to assassinate it 💀

Amity doesn’t really care about live action stuff, but she’s probably watch them with you on movie nights if you really wanted too!

—————————————————————————

I also match you with….

Hunter Deamonne!

He is also chronically tired

Have you SEEN his eyebags?

He would LOVE to listen to you info dump about the amount of knowledge that’s stored in your brain

He just thinks you’re so cool, you know?

I feel like he LOVES live action movies, and also LOVES figurines

This guy LOVES sci fi too, he’s literally dressed up as a character from a sci fi show, cmon now!

He’s also scared of watching new things, which is why he sticks to cosmic frontiers, Amphibia, and Gravity falls, but he also watches a few other sci fi movies as well

I feel like he’s like horror, just nothing too gory!

This guys sleep schedule is fucked up too, he’ll go to bed at 12am and wake up at 6am

—————————————————————————

Sorry if this was too short :( but I hope you liked it!

#the owl house #hunter x reader toh #hunter noceda x reader #amity blight x reader #amity x reader #amity blight #toh x reader #toh matchup

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mental-health-advice · 1 year

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Hi to whoever is reading this! I hope you’ve had a good week and you’ll approach this weekend with a smile!

I have an anxiety/panic disorder, I am a people pleaser and a problem solver. For the past year or so the thing that has triggered the anxiety has been my best friend. And that sounds horrible - but let me explain. I’ve known this best friend for over 11 years now and we’ve had our fair share of discussions and struggles - but we can’t live without each other. Over the past year she has started picking fights about - to me - very unimportant things. I’ve always been very understanding, because maybe the thing I said hit different and I can’t judge someone for that. My friend would then crop up their feelings and finally send me a couple of paragraphs with whatever annoyed them about me or something surrounding me. Like I said, I’ve always been understanding - trying to look at it from their perspective and giving an explanation. Every single time, we talk it out and it is done.

But this time it is different and I’m currently riding the wave of my fifth panic attack over it. This time they’ve decided to not tell me something is wrong, they’ve decided to just not say anything. A full on silent treatment. But because I do not know why I’ve been given the silent treatment, my body goes into anxiety mode because it can’t problem solve this. And now… well.. I’m a bit lost. It is tiring. Mainly because this is giving me anxiety, but the confrontation is also scaring me.

I don’t know if this is even something to send in into this askbox… but at least it is out of my head now!

Big hug 🧡

Hey there,

I can only imagine how badly this must be affecting you! Not only can it be tough when we have a disagreement with a friend but to be given the silent treatment and not knowing at all why or what has transpired to it getting to that stage must be horrible!

I think that the best thing you can do right now is to be there for yourself and just try to be kind and taking each day as they come. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about your friend unless they are willing to talk to you about things and what is going on, but you can put things in place to help to protect you from further hurt and anxiety. For example, trying to remind yourself that there is only so much you can do right now in terms of with your friend and so consequently knowing that you have not done anything wrong and especially as your friend has not confided in you with what is going on. It’s also important to reassure yourself that whatever is going on, it’s probably more to do with your friend than you and this is not your fault at all, you have done nothing wrong!

I know that all of that is much easier said than done and so just try to take each day as they come and know that until or if your friend communicates with you again, all you can do is to try to move on if you can and know that you are not a bad friend for doing this. But it’s not worth worrying about something that we have little or no control over as this will only worsen our anxiety and make it really difficult to think clearly in other situations that we may find ourselves in.

I really hope that this has helped a bit and/ or at the very least it has helped you to get all of this out! Please also do know that we are here for you and if we can help to support you in any other way then please do let us know!

I’m thinking of you and hope that you are going well!

Take care,

Lauren

#mha-lauren #advice #advice blog #mental health advice #anonymous #friend #silent treatment #anxiety

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nemrut · 1 year

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Manga: The Savior Messiah : The Former Hero Who Saved Another World Beats The Real World Full Of Monsters

Trying to talk more about stories I read and watch here on my tumblr, let's see how this goes.

Read all 15 existing chapters of the manga Messiah: Isekai wo Sukutta Motoyuusha ga Mamono no Afureru Genjitsu Sekai wo Musou suru or the English title The Savior Messiah : The Former Hero Who Saved Another World Beats The Real World Full Of Monsters by the writer/artist duo Heisei Owari and Harada Eri.

The summary is quite generic, and the story is not breaking that much new ground, but here it is: Takeru Yamato was a bullied kid in the early 2000s or later 1990s and got isekaied into another world where he was received as the savior and messiah against the danger threatening the world but as this usually goes, after the job was done, that society turns against him and executes him, with only one person going against it.

The protag then wakes up back in his own world, but 40 years from when he left, in the body of another bullied teenager who had just attempted suicide and society has quite changed since it seems that after he died, magic entered the world and portals started randomly opening from where monsters poured out and now there are people using magic and special skills to fight them.

He, of course, still has his immense powers and skills and so far seems to be the strongest character we have seen, but he doesn't want to be in the spotlight ever again, after how disastrous it turned out last time, so he is happy just helping when he sees issues cropping up but to fly under the radar otherwise, which is of course not really feasible, since his strength kinda sticks out, and it is then about him navigating these waters.

As I said, there are quite a few stories with similar premises with the somewhat novel thing, at least to me, being the twist on the return to his old setting and that having become more magical and fantastic in his absence, while still retaining a lot of "normal" modern life.

I actually quite like the protag so far. A lot of isekai protags have an uphill battle to fight for me, unfortunately, because most of them rub me the wrong way, but it helped that there was no perving or fanservice-y stuff, nor was he an obnoxious or powerhungry asshole. And even though he was burned so badly and experienced abuse and betrayal, while he is wary of opening himself up, he isn't very bitter or negative, nor constantly swearing revenge or saying that humans are bad, which was a nice change of pace.

The magic seems fun enough so far, and while those who are cast in the antagonist roles, or really any characters, really, are above being generic, we are still in the first 20 chapters, so I have hopes that things will improve on that front. The main girl, who is one of the strongest in the world, is also cool enough so far, in that I liked that while she was of course concerned and worried about such a strong person appearing out of nowhere and wanted to check him out to figure out things, that she was quite respectful of his wishes and determined to honor them once she realized he was just some absurdly powerful guy who didn't want to stand out. That's something she shares with the spear guy who appears later on, and I have to say, quite like those two so far, and I am curious to see where this goes.

But of course, the problem with stories where the protag is so much more powerful than everyone else is the danger that the other characters just quite often fall behind and are simply unable to matter in the plot, and we'll see how this manga handles that. It's not even that every fight might become a curbstomp for the protag, you can do that, you just have to make sure that the side cast never becomes irrelevant, but as I said, still in the beginning stages.

The art is quite good, think a bit simple at times, but you can always tell what is going on. The character models are not exactly novel, though, cute and solid, but also very familiar.

Worth checking out, but not exactly a must-read.

#The Savior Messiah : The Former Hero Who Saved Another World Beats The Real World Full Of Monsters #manga

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lozeyart · 2 years

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Character opinion bingo with Jennyanydots, Mungojerrie, and Rumpleteazer?

Jennyanydots:

I love Jennyanydots so much! Her number is one of my favorites and ugh the character is SO ADORABLE and motherly. Unfortunately none of the bingo spots here really express fully how I feel about Jenny and how much I love her, so there isn't much to work with RIP

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Mungojerrie:

UGH GOD I LOVE JERRIE SO VERY MUCH. A lot of that love comes from my boy Joey too, my blorbo by proxy. But fuck me up dude I love Jerrie to hell and back. What a fun character, what a great design, I would absolutely want to do hijinks with him (I want to so badly). He's *chef kiss* can Jerrie please give me his crop top also

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Rumpleteazer

I love Teazer!! SO MUCH!! I've really warmed up to her over the past year too. I would kiss her, absolutely, and if she kissed me I would be so down. Teazer, if you're reading I'D KISS YOU PLEASE SAY YOU'D KISS ME TOO-

#lozeyasktag #character bingo

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platinummice · 2 years

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Kriv, my baby boy Kriv,,,,

#kriv #i am bad.... at drawing reptiles....#so if we ever see a front facing drawing of them it will be a miracle #or even anything but a side view lmao #they...#very badly cropped unfortunately but what can you do

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hermannsthumb · 3 years

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Town council Hermann vs Alien Conspiracy Newt please!!!

THIS WAS FUN!!! inspired both by this tweet and conversations abt a newt/herm AU of that tweet with @k-sci-janitor (who also thought of the funniest sign newt made in this fic, aka the cheekbones one, and what his tats should look like). this is long sorry :/ gets a little spicy towards the end but nothing worse than a high pg13/light M

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The evening of the weekly town council meeting, it pours like nothing else. Which Hermann figures is really quite appropriate. Loathe as he is to soak his trouser legs, trudge through the mud that used to be his front walk, and hold his umbrella for so long his arm aches (for the community center is a mere half-mile walk away that Hermann can't justify substituting with a bus), he can't imagine council meetings happening in any other sort of weather. In fact, they rarely tend to; their dreariness seems to be a necessity, part of the preparation, as if to put everyone in as miserable a mood as possible.

Hermann hates council meetings. He supposes he'd be more sympathetic towards the plights of his constituents—if one can call one's neighbors constituents—if he'd wanted the damned job in the first place. As it is, he feels a bit like he was conned into it. Hermann had been a lowly physics professor at the local community college, passionate about public education and funding for public education and all those proper sorts of things an educator ought to be concerned about, when he suddenly found himself seized with the idea of making a difference. So he ran for a head position on the council. And he won it. Only no one told him that the council deals a lot less with public education and a lot more with noise complaints, cul-de-sac bake sales, and raccoons in dustbins, which makes why he ran completely unopposed all the more obvious.

A fat raindrop explodes against the edge of Hermann's umbrella and splashes his glasses. Hermann grits his teeth and wipes them dry with the cuff of his sweater. Bloody meeting; bloody rain; Hermann just wants to go back home, and fix up a nice pot of herbal tea, and set a blanket in the dryer for ten minutes, and...

"Dr. Gottlieb! Hey, Dr. Gottlieb, wait—!"

A blur in an oversized yellow raincoat hurdles itself at Hermann from the stairs of the community center. Hermann considers pretending he is a different Dr. Gottlieb, one who certainly has no reason to know maniacs in raincoats, or maybe high-tailing it in the other direction. This is the other reason why Hermann loathes council meetings: Newton Geiszler.

The unfortunate thing is that Newton Geiszler was, at one point, a respectable academic type, and in fact one of Hermann's own colleagues at the community college. (Hermann only found this out after the fact—he does not make a habit of intermingling much with the biology department.) And Hermann does mean was. Around a year ago, Geiszler was asked to temporarily step down from his position after he suddenly and unexpectedly went off the deep end. He has not been asked to come back yet. And not without reason. "Dr. Geiszler," Hermann sighs. "I've asked you not to lurk about here like that. It's...unsettling."

"Sorry, man, sorry," Geiszler shouts. He stomps over and makes himself at home under Hermann's umbrella. Hermann's not sure how he's been managing to see anything, let alone Hermann approaching down the sidewalk: his glasses are completely fogged-up and rain-splattered. "Do you mind if—thanks, dude."

Geiszler flips his hood down. He’s short, only coming up to Hermann's nose, with stubble nearly overgrown to a full beard and a mess of wet brown hair. He shakes that hair now, like a dog, soaking Hermann in the process. Hermann growls. "I beg your pardon,” he says.

"Oops,” Geiszler says. “Sorry. Anyway, Dr. Gottlieb, I'm really glad I caught you, there are—there are some things I wanted to tell you about. Before the meeting. They're—hold on." He rummages around in the deep pockets of his raincoat and produces a damp notebook, which he begins to flip through frantically. "It's about—"

"I know what it's about," Hermann says. Geiszler fumbles to push his glasses back up his nose. "In fact, there are some things I need to speak with you about as well."

"You've seen them?" Geiszler says in a hushed tone.

Hermann scowls. "I certainly have.”

They first started cropping up in the forest around the little cabin Geiszler calls home. Then, like dandelions or bamboo, they spread fast and far—to the town commons, in the front lawn of the coffee shop Hermann frequents, in front of his house. Whenever Hermann dashes one down with his cane or hauls one off to a rubbish bin, two more only crop up in its place. It's annoying, frankly. As if Hermann doesn't have to deal with enough already.

3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS IN ONE WEEK - WHEN IS THE COUNCIL GOING TO DO SOMETHING?, the new one sitting in front of the community center says.

It's better than last week's sign, Hermann supposes. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - AND HERMANN GOTTLIEB IS BLIND TO IT.

"You know you need a permit for those, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says. "Or, at the very least, the council's permission. They're a public nuisance."

"My signs are a public nuisance?" Geiszler shouts. Hermann flinches back. Geiszler may be compact, but if he doesn't have the shrillest voice on the whole damned planet. "Open your eyes, dude! A dozen people went missing last month! The only public nuisance is whatever's coming from—" He bites his lip and jabs his finger at the sky, as if saying anything remotely akin to outer space would suddenly send fleets of UFOs pouring down from above. "And you're just letting them walk right fucking in."

“I thought they were flying in?" Hermann says. He raps Geiszler’s shin with the end of his cane. "Do get out of my way, Dr. Geiszler. The meeting starts in ten minutes, and you're welcome to air all of your grievances then."

Geiszler is silent as Hermann ducks around him and ascends the community center ramp. For a moment, Hermann thinks he may have won this small victory, and then he hears the wet slaps of Geiszler's rain boots against the pavement behind him. "Really funny," Newton says. "Real fucking funny, dude. I bet it'll be just as funny when they come for you next!"

Hermann unlocks the door. Geiszler waves a stack of black-and-white polaroids beneath his nose. "I took these last week," Geiszler says, and begins flipping through them as frantically as he had his notepad. Each one is blurry and indistinct, like Geiszler snapped them through a gauzy curtain with shaking hands. Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. "The day that waitress went missing from the bus stop. And two nights after that—your neighbor, the one who went outside to let his cat in and never came b—"

"Enough," Hermann says. He pushes the polaroids away, knocking two to the ground, and Geiszler scrambles to pick them up before they're ruined. "Dr. Geiszler, it is undoubtedly tragic that these people have—er—vanished, as they have, but continuously insisting extraterrestrials had something to do with it, and furthermore—" Geiszler opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hermann raises his voice and pushes on. "—furthermore, that I'm meant to do something about it, is completely—well, it's unhinged, frankly. I'm not law enforcement. Or the mayor. Or bloody—NASA. What do you want from me?"

Geiszler stares at him for a long time. He pockets his photographs. "They're gonna come for you," he says, ominously. "Just like they did for me."

The meeting goes off as expected, which is to say, badly. Hermann gets shouted at by nearly everyone in town, many of whom blame Hermann and his presumed negligence for the disappearances over the past year as well (blessedly, they don't also blame aliens), though many more of them blame him for more trivial things such as the broken water fountain in the commons or the library's slow wireless internet. Hermann can't decide which is worse.

As it is, when the clock strikes eight, he's more than ready to go home. "Right," he announces, standing up and making a show of tidying his meeting notes. They're already tidy: Hermann's notes are always meticulous. He continues—rather quickly, in case someone gets bold and attempts to interrupt him, "Thank you all very much for such a, er, productive meeting. I'll make sure to pass along everything you've said to the appropriate people. If there's nothing else..."

Geiszler jumps to his feet. A few people groan; Hermann has a feeling they're just about as sick of him as Hermann is. "Um, yeah, actually, I want to add something."

"No," Hermann says. “Dr. Geiszler, please, we can talk—”

"When we were outside," Geiszler continues anyway, raising his voice, "you asked me what I wanted you to do. Well, I just want you to listen to me! That's all! I have so much proof—so much I can show you—and you won't even—!"

"Proof?" Hermann says. "Your rubbish photographs?”

"It's not just the photographs! It's other stuff, too! Like—" Geiszler lets out a long, angry huff of air, and actually balls his fists up at his sides. Hermann has never seen him so incensed, not even when he accused Hermann of being an alien himself during a council meeting last summer. "Look, just come to my house and I'll fuckin' show you. Or are you that afraid of being—I don’t know, proven wrong?"

Part of Hermann is convinced that if he follows Geiszler out to his isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the very least, he certainly has no desire to spend more time with Geiszler than he's already forced to. Yet—on the other hand—Hermann does not appreciate the challenge, nor does he appreciate being made to look like a fool by the man who chairs the local paranormal society. "Fine," he snaps, and Geiszler startles in obvious surprise. "Fine, you wretched little man. I’ll let you show me whatever proof you think you may have, so long as you take every single one of those signs down."

"Um," Geiszler squeaks. He clears his throat. "D—deal?"

Hermann seizes his cane and thrusts his chair back under his table roughly. "Well?" he says to the rest of the hall, none of whom have budged since Geiszler began shouting his head off. He scowls at the lot of them. "The meeting is over. You can leave."

It's Hermann's job to shut down the building each week, so he waits for the very last stragglers to toss out their paper water cups, shrug on their raincoats, and file outside before switching off the lights and locking up. He finds Geiszler lurking by a rather worse-for-wear green VW Beetle at the curb, the hood of his raincoat flipped back up over his hair. Hermann desperately hopes that the car isn't Geiszler’s. He is Hermann’s ride home tonight, after all. "I took the signs down," Geiszler says in a rush. "All of the ones around here, anyway. I'll have to do the rest tomorrow." He jerks his thumb at the backseat of the Beetle, where Hermann sees a haphazard pile of some of the 3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS signs. His heart sinks. The X-Files bumper stickers should've been a dead giveaway, really.

"Thank you," Hermann sighs. "Well, let's get this over with."

"The heat is busted, so you might wanna leave your coat on," Geiszler says apologetically when Hermann manages to squish himself into the passenger's seat. The floor is a sea of empty Dunkin' Donuts cups, stacks of pulp science (or, if Hermann were to be less kind, pseudoscientific) magazines spanning back at least half a decade, and a pin-littered linen tote bag filled to the brim with boxed Annie's macaroni and cheese.

"Uh, sorry," Geiszler says. "I had to run some errands earlier. You can just—toss that in the back. Yeah."

The ride is short but bumpy, and though the removal of Geiszler's shopping bag offers Hermann more leg room, there is nothing that can make up for his tragically awful driving and his tragically awful CD collection. Hermann almost bolts from the car when they finally pull up at Geiszler's ivy-shrouded cabin, so relieved to have made it there in one piece that he's all but forgotten that he must now spend the rest of the evening with Geiszler, too. He remembers soon enough: another duo of aggressive signs have been pounded into Geiszler's mossy front path, TURN BACK NOW - ALIEN ABDUCTION ZONE, and a rather good sketch of Hermann beneath WHAT ARE THOSE CHEEKBONES HIDING? "That one's from the summer," Geiszler says sheepishly, kicking down the latter with the toe of his boot. "I keep forgetting to take it down. I don't still think you're an alien, by the way."

"Er, thank you," Hermann says. "I suppose?"

"They wouldn't be that obvious," Geiszler says, emphasizing the they with a meaningful glance up at the night sky.

"Of course not," Hermann says.

He's not quite sure what he expected Geiszler's house to look like. Some sort of—conspiracy nutter's den, perhaps, with aluminum foil hats and deconstructed radios and elaborate photoboards full of thumbtacks and red string. Or the interior of his car on a larger scale, with empty takeout containers and crumpled up papers on every surface. He's...sort of right. There's a noticeable lack of tinhats, but there are plenty of (modestly-sized) corkboards on the walls and multiple coffee cups peeking out of a recycling bin. The rest is merely precisely what Hermann would expect from an academic in his 30s: books, and mis-matching furniture, and a sink of dishes begging to be washed. It's...a bit disappointing, frankly. Though Hermann is rather impressed with the sleek telescope angled in front of the back slider door. Impressed, and envious. It's a very nice model.

"Make yourself at home," Geiszler says, unzipping his voluminous raincoat and tossing it, along with Hermann's, over the back of a worn armchair. He's wearing a pair of torn skinny jeans and a band t-shirt that reveals his heavily tattooed, and deceptively shapely, arms. Hermann tears his eyes away and forces himself to sit down at one end of Geiszler's couch. "I'm gonna make us some coffee. Do you want any sugar or non-dairy creamer?"

"No, thank you," Hermann says. "I don't drink coffee this late. It'll keep me up all night."

"Well, I hope so, that's kinda the plan,” Geiszler says. He rolls his eyes. “The aliens never come before at least midnight. Soy milk or almond milk?"

Hermann thinks, briefly and longingly, of his nice warm bed, the blanket he intended to toss in the dryer, and the herbal tea he won't be having after all. "Almond milk?" he hazards.

Geiszler stares at him in evident disgust. "Dude, I was kidding. You know how bad that shit is for the environment? It takes, like, a fuckin' thousand gallons of water or something like that for one carton of almond milk. It's insane. I mean, I guess it's still less water than what dairy needs, but there are plenty of better options."

"Oh," Hermann says. Hermann drinks skim milk. "I'm sorry. Er. Soy milk?"

As Geiszler fixes them mugs, Hermann begins to poke around some papers scattered across the coffee table. One is a list of names and dates, seemingly random, Hermann thinks, until he recognizes (scrawled in purple ink at the very bottom of the page) that of the gentleman who disappeared from his back porch just down Hermann's street. When he recognizes another—a teenager who worked as a barista at Hermann’s favorite coffee shop—he realizes it must be everyone who's vanished from town in the past year. Another paper has the same dates repeated, though not alongside any names—rather, bizarre little phrases like circling lights and that sound again. "You found my notes," Geiszler says cryptically, and then thrusts a mug out to Hermann.

Hermann takes the mug. A logo on the side tells Hermann it was from some academic conference in California ten years ago. "What are they supposed to mean?" he says.

Geiszler snorts. "Uh, I thought it was kind of obvious. Look—" He sits next to Hermann, far too close, and points at the column of numbers on the first page. "These are the dates when people have been reported missing," he says, and then scans his finger over to the second page, "and these are the dates when I've observed extraterrestrial—or at least, unexplainable—activity overhead. See how they match up almost perfectly?

"Mm," Hermann says. He does not. "So—if I am to understand you correctly—you believe that a, ah," he takes the page back from Geiszler, "a 'weird swoopy sound' from overhead had something to do with that poor young woman disappearing from a bus stop last week?”

"It wasn't just a weird noise!" Geiszler exclaims. "I showed you the pictures. I ran outside when I heard it, and thank fuck I had my camera, because I caught those lights just as they were leaving. And then what do I find out the next morning? There was another abduction, at almost the exact same time I saw the lights!"

"Ten miles from here," Hermann reminds him. "It would've had to have been a bloody fast ship."

"Yeah, no shit, Hermann," Geiszler says. "They're, like, fucking—mega-advanced lifeforms. They probably have the tech to vaporize the entire Earth if they wanted. Of course it was a fast ship.”

Geiszler is still sitting awfully close to Hermann. He runs very warm, unlike Hermann, warm enough to make Hermann warm too—like a scruffy, tattooed, freckled furnace. Yes, freckled, for Geiszler has the lightest dusting of freckles across his round chipmunk-like cheeks that Hermann finds inexplicably charming. He wonders if Geiszler would notice him loosen his collar a bit, perhaps take off his sweater. He really is getting quite warm. "So, I was saying," Geiszler continues, and though he speaks almost directly into Hermann's ear, he sounds as if he's a mile away from him. "Waitress at bus stop—weird lights over my cabin—waitress gone from bus stop. The proof is, like, undeniable!"

"Indeed," Hermann says.

He undoes the top button of his collar. He hasn't touched his coffee yet—he wonders if Geiszler even cares. The tattoo on Geiszler’s bicep, some sort of space tentacle monster, stares back at Hermann. "I'm telling you, man," Geiszler says, "this is no joke. They're taking people, maybe even for good."

They're gonna come for you, just like they did for me. When Geiszler began spouting nonsense about aliens last year, he was not booted from the biology department right away. Mostly everyone at the college, Hermann knows, tolerated his eccentricities on account of his admittedly brilliant mind and popularity among the students. The final straw came when Geiszler's extraterrestrial delusions (for what else could they be?) reached a new level: he showed up to campus in his pajamas one morning, raving that the aliens were not only zooming about over his house, but had actually abducted him the previous evening. "You seemed to fare alright, though, didn't you?" Hermann says. "When you were—ah—taken? They even dropped you back off in time for work. Quite courteous, I should think."

"That's—" Geiszler begins to shake his leg up and down, nervous energy radiating up his body and through Hermann's. He spills some of his coffee on the carpet. "That was—that was dumb. I got lucky. I think I was one of the first ones, you know? Because the disappearances didn't really get bad until, like, a month after that? I was in bed—and, and it wasn't like how it is in movies, I wasn't sucked up in a giant beam of light or anything like that, one minute I was there and then the next I wasn't, I was somewhere...else. And—uh. I don't really remember what they looked like. I tried to—sketch them out, but it was like trying to remember a dream, all the specific details about them just faded once it was over. But, um." He rubs the back of his neck, and Hermann is surprised to see him blushing. "Well, if I'm being honest, I think I kinda freaked them out."

Hermann can't help but snort. "You what?"

"I'm serious!" Geiszler shrieks. "I freaked them out. I was just really excited about it all. Like, dude, come on, I was abducted by aliens. How fucking cool is that? I just kept asking a bunch of questions, like, are you gonna probe me? are you gonna take me back to Mars or Jupiter or, like, I don't know, fucking Gallifrey? do you even understand what I'm saying, how do you communicate? and then the next thing I knew, I was landing on my ass in the school parking lot. They must've been observing me like I was observing them, like, they maybe knew I worked there? Anyway—" He shakes his head. "I tell you what, I'm real glad I decided to not just wear boxers like usual to bed that night. That would've been really embarrassing."

Bombarded with the sudden mental image of what Geiszler usually looks like in bed, Hermann (feeling rather warm again) tugs at his collar and clears his throat. He has certainly seen more than enough for the night, and if his mind is straying to something as prosaic as what does Dr. Geiszler look like half-naked?, it likely means it’s time for bed. "Er, right. Dr. Geiszler—"

"Just call me Newt, man," Geiszler says.

"Newton," Hermann concedes. It gives him a private little thrill. No one calls Newton Newton; it’s always either Newt or Dr. Geiszler. "Newton,” he says again, “this has been a very—illuminating—evening, but it's getting rather late, and I think you ought to drive me home before—"

And then Newton begins to take off his shirt.

Yes, a small part of Hermann's brain whispers traitorously, yes, yes, yes, even as Hermann recoils and stammers out, "Newton, what—?!"

"Oh, calm down, I'm not coming onto you," Newton says. He drops his t-shirt on the floor and jabs a thumb at his chest. His bare chest. "See, look. Proof."

Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. The giant Godzilla tattooed over Newton's pectorals? The flying saucer tattooed above Newton’s belly button? Newton’s nipple piercings? Hermann thinks he understands what an overheating computer feels like, an influx of too much information with processors unequipped to handle it. "I," he says. Newton’s belly button is not pierced. Hermann’s not sure why he thought it would be.

"Look at my chest, dude!" Newton says, tapping his skin insistently.

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to pull his eyes away from the nipple piercings. In the dead center of Newton's chest, spaced perfectly between his pectorals and right over the nostrils of Godzilla, is a strange, almost luminescent glyph of a language Hermann can't begin to recognize. It's raised from Newton's skin, more like a brand than a tattoo. And...well, when Hermann says luminescent, he really means it. The squiggle seems to glow blue. "This was on me the next morning," Newton says. "I think they marked me. Like you'd tag a lab rat?”

Hermann can't help himself: he reaches out and touches the mark. "Strange," he murmurs. Compared to the heat of Newton’s body, the glyph is quite cool. Frigid, in fact, like metal, and yet as soft as the rest of his skin.

He's close enough to Newton to hear the hitch in his breath when they make contact, and as he traces his fingertips over the glyph, he can feel Newton's heart pounding beneath them. Strange, indeed; Newton has been such a thorn in his side for so many months, and yet all Hermann wants to do now is touch even more of him. He trails his hand lower, down to the flying saucer on Newton's soft abdomen. Newton inhales sharply. "Um," he says. "Should—should I put my shirt back on?"

"Do you want to?" Hermann says.

"Not really," Newton says.

He stares at Hermann, eyebrows knit together behind his glasses, like he can't seem to make sense of him. His confusion is very much warranted; Hermann can’t seem to make sense of himself right now, either. Then, to Hermann's supreme annoyance, the pieces seem to click into place in Newton's mind, and he grins. "Oh, duh," he says. "No wonder. You wanna fuck me, don't you? That’s why you’re so obsessed with me.”

That would certainly explain the strange warm feeling that comes over Hermann sometimes when he thinks about Newton in the dead of night that he has, up until this very moment, attributed to bouts of temporary insanity and/or a latent murderous desire. Nothing so dramatic as all that, then—just regular human biology. Urgh. How disgusting. And for Newton, of all people. “Obsessed with you?” Hermann sniffs, desperate to retain some element of propriety even while he begins to tug at Newton’s button fly. “Newton, you have spent thousands of dollars on yard signs just to invite me over for a coffee.”

“Uh, yeah, and it worked,” Newton says.

He curls his fingers in the front of Hermann's sweater, thumbing over one of the buttons.

“Even when I thought you were an alien,” Newton says, “I still kiiiiinda wanted to fuck you.”

Delusional or not, Newton looks terrifically good with a beard.

"Wait," Hermann gasps some time later. "Newton, stop a moment—"

Newton pulls away from him, frowning. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "What is it?" he says. "Did I hurt—?"

But Hermann pats at his shoulder frantically, pointing beyond him at the back slider and the dark of the forest beyond that. Newton cranes his neck around. "Only I'm sure I saw something. Lights, or…” Hermann feels a small twinge of embarrassment. The night is dead silent, and dead still. “Well, now I'm not sure."

“You probably imagined it," Newton says. He slips back down to press a kiss at Hermann's jaw. “It’s too early to be them.”

Not even ten yet. Newton kisses behind Hermann’s ear. It feels very nice. "Yes," Hermann agrees slowly, his eyelids flickering shut. He smooths his hand up and down Newton’s back. "Yes, I suppose you're right." Newton’s stories must have left him on edge. Which is of course ridiculous, because they’re all a load of rubbish—there may be extraterrestrials somewhere out there in the great wide universe, but they’re certainly not swooping down and plucking up hapless test subjects from Earth, let alone their small town, every other day. Hermann has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like how it feels when he threads his fingers in the soft strands of Newton’s hair, or the sound Newton makes when Hermann digs his nails into his skin, or how wonderful kissing Newton is...

And, unobserved by both of them, the three lights hovering above Newton's cabin blink away as quickly as they'd come.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag

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pianorexic000 · 3 years

Text

Sweetspo Saturday

Hi y’all, so today is sweetspo Saturday.......

it speaks for itself. By the way, none of these are mine. I take no credit I have 0 creativity.

I dream of collarbones and thigh gaps, of hips jutting out and ribs just visible, casting shadows on porcelain flesh. I dream of crop tops and denim shorts, of thigh highs and sugar highs. And when I lay in bed at night, counting the calories of the day before my mind can’t help but wander, and I press into my doughy stomach, feel the hips hiding underneath, and remind myself how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to go.

Please listen, I know, I know it’s hard but listen, focus, you, you the most beautiful person on this whole entire planet you are going to make it, I promise you sweetheart, you’re going to make it. Think about it, think about how skinny you’ll be, how happy you will be, how you are going to be able to wear what you want, how you are going to be able to eat what you want and no one is going to make you feel bad for eating, no one. They’re going to be jealous, so fucking jealous, jealous of how you look and how you feel. They’re going to envy you. So stand up, keep your pretty head up and go. Exercise, drink water, eat less, eat healthy, sleep, do yoga, dance around. Get skinny and be finally happy. Please be finally happy.

You’ve been so disappointed in yourself lately. You’ve cursed those girls with a fast metabolism and regretted so much, sweetie. Countless of times you’ve thought, planned and wished to be skinny. I know you want this so badly, honey. But it’s never going to be given to you, sugar. You have to work for it and make yourself proud! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

I know you’re very impatient with your weight-loss. You want to lose it NOW and would do anything to wake up tomorrow at you ugw. But that’s never going to happen, doll. It’ll take time, but you will get there, sweetie. You just have to be persistent and never give up. The road is very long, and there will be days where it’ll feel hopeless, angel. But i promise you that those days where you feel incredibly sexy and comfortable in your own skin are just around the corner. You’ll get there baby, but it’ll take time. So don’t beat yourself up.

You’ll look good in everything; you remember that bikini with the cute print? yes, you’ll look beautiful in it. you won’t look like a fat pig.

people will be jealous; they’ll envy you. you’ll become thinner while others are getting fatter.

you’ll be dainty; you’ll be the lightest in the room. everyone will be able to pick you up effortlessly.

others will compliment you; people will look at you and say “wow, have you lost weight?” “you look great!” “i wish i looked like you.”

you won’t be able to keep more than a cup of food down; you’ve trained your body, you and your body both know its limits.

you’ll have power; you can can control how you look, you’ll have control. self control instead of eating everything in sight. you’ll be proud when you refuse a chocolate bar someone is offering.

are you going to keep saying “i’ll do it tomorrow”

or are you going to start today?

you’ll get there sweetie, make them regret the day they dare call you fat; they’ll start talking GOOD behind your back; “she is losing so much weight omg” “ i wanna look like her.” “im so jealous of her tiny waist.”

make it happen, you cause the gain of weight

and the loss of weight.

It's Okay!

You were really bad this weekend weren’t you? You ate fatty food and cheated on your diet? I know you bash yourself for pushing yourself further from your goal, but it was just Easter and you were enjoying spending time with your family. Unfortunately that included eating. Thin is all you think about cutie, why would you stuff your face uncontrollably like that, sugar? You can’t stop now, i know it’s hard but it’ll be worth it in the end.

Meanspo

Dear You,

You’ve grown up being the “big” girl. You’ve grown up being the “I want seconds” girl. You entered college being the “let’s eat out because it’s easier” girl.

When will you be the “I eat healthy” girl? The “people can pick me up” girl? The “I love my body” girl?

Today? Oh, right, you say tomorrow. Funny, that’s what you said yesterday.

It’s YOUR fault you’re fat. You don’t control your fatty urges to binge and stuff your face. One day, you’ll regret that. And that day is TODAY. If you regret it, then make a change. Skip that meal. Eat less calories. Exercise and burn what you have consumed and stored from your past pathetic eating habits. Get rid of your fatty urges. BECOME SKINNY…Become beautiful. Because if you don’t start today, you’ll only hate yourself tomorrow… again.

Do it. Do it so you can wear cute short shorts without everyone looking at your thighs and being disgusted.

Do it for that bitch who always called you fat at middle school.

Do it for that fuckboy who never looked at you as girlfriend potencial.

Do it so you can be confident.No seriously you’ll never be confident with that big tummy dude.

Do it so you don't ALMOST DIE in fitting rooms.

Do it for the cute clothes.

Do it for the summer.

Do it for the pool parties and how all of your friends will be SHOOK at your perfect body.

Do it for that life little baby. You deserve it. You deserve so much happiness.

Imagine you’re sitting at your desk in your perfectly decorated bedroom. You’re doing school work (all A’s of course), and since the lighting is good, you stop studying for a second and take a selfie.

You notice your collarbones are perfectly peaking out, and your chest bones are slightly visible. You have no makeup on but you still look absolutely gorgeous. Your flawless skin (that you got from not eating junk food all the time) looks great on your camera. Your thin arms look especially toned in this picture, and your smile is unforgettable.

You decide to post it to Instagram, and it instantly gets likes and comments saying how gorgeous you look. You want to keep studying…but the amount of likes and attention is distracting!

You think to yourself “Amazing how my life has changed. 30lbs ago I barely got 30 likes. My grades were bad and I had horrible acne…it’s so great what being thin can do to a person”

One day I won’t have to suck in

One day I’ll sit down and not have belly rolls

One day my thighs won’t touch

One day I’ll be able to see my ribs

One day I’ll step on the scale and smile

One day I’ll be able to smile at my protruding collar bones

One day I’ll wear the clothes I want

One day I’ll be confident

One day I’ll be skinny

do it for the boy who leaves your snapchats at read. imagine how quickly he’ll reply when he sees how good you look in your new body. do it for the girls you envy, the girls who show up in crop tops and short shorts whilst you hide behind a baggy sweater. imagine how proud you’ll feel when you can finally wear what you want and look just as good, if not better than them. do it for the people who bullied you about your weight and the boys who turned you down because of it. watch them gawk and whisper among themselves at how much weight you’ve lost. do it for the mean girls, the ones that walk around school like they own the place, the ones who’s parties you never get invited to, the ones that all the boys want. prove yourself to them. soon they’ll notice you and you’ll be too proud to care. own your new found confidence, throw your own parties, feel wanted. do it for the boy you’ve been crushing on since the first time you met. make him want you just as you wanted him. laugh at yourself as he chases after you. watch him suffer just as you did. do it for the bikini you’ve never had the body to wear. make your old self proud. wear that bikini. finally feel good in it. go to the beach and the pool and show it off. it belongs on you. do it for yourself. do it for your own happiness and do it right now. you deserve this. it might take some time and maybe you’re growing impatient. but it’s okay, everything good takes time. so be safe, stay strong, and don’t give up. this will be worth the wait. trust me.

I literally cannot fucking wait until I’m thin. I can’t wait to not feel like the outsider in my friend group. I can’t wait to not feel like the ugly friend. I can’t wait to be as thin as my best friend and for people to not see me as a charity case. I can’t wait to be able to go shopping and not worry about what will hide my fat. I can’t wait to see my collarbones and feel great in shorts. I can’t wait to be able to post selfies confidently from any angle and get as many likes as all the thin girls from school. I can’t wait to be someone else’s thinspo. I can’t wait to be happy with myself. I can’t wait to be thin.

Okie lovey, I know you might have had a rough couple of days or maybe you’ve been doing everything right and you just need a little pick me up. That’s okay too. I’m here for you, maybe not there physically but I’m still here. Make some tea, and take a bath; while you’re in there light a few candles and take time for yourself. Paint your nails read a book or simply think about bettering yourself. You’re almost there, I’m so excited for you! I’m going to be there when you cross that finish line (UGW). Finished with tea? Are you hungry? No. Exactly, chin up sweetheart, you got this. I love you

10 Reasons I want to be Thin

1. A flat stomach looks so good in anything. 2. No more armpit fat. 3. Finally have a thigh gap (again). 4. Feel beautiful and in control 5. people you already know will ask you how you did it, new people you meet will fall in love with you. 6. Go on adventures and have fun without worrying about your fat jiggling around. 7. Tan outside or at the lake without wanting to die because you’re too fat for a bikini. 8. Going out to parties and making friends because you’re confident and beautiful. 9. Not wanting to cry every time you see your full body in a mirror/ reflection. 10. Not crying in general anymore. Finally being happy.

11 Reasons Why I'm Doing This

1. To be the skinny friend

2. So I can be lifted up and be called light

3. To wear anything and still look cute

4. To have pretty bones to show off

5. To hear those words; ‘Have you lost weight?’

6. To not feel guilty when having a sweet treat (occasionally!)

7. To wear tight jeans and not have a muffin top

8. To not want to cry every time I look in the mirror

9. To not feel embarrassed in a bikini or swimsuit

10. To sit on someone’s lap without fear of crushing them

11. To finally feel happy with myself

They are in the kitchen making dinner. It smells so good, and all you want to do is have some. But would that make you happy? Would that food actually do anything for you? Sure, it would taste good. But as soon as you swallow, it would be gone. You’d take a drink of water, and the taste would wash away. Five minutes of fun, and then you’d be full. Full of food, regret, hate, shame, and disgust. Today would be yet another day wasted. So go ahead, eat the food. Be the fat tub of lard you always have been. Or don’t. Don’t eat the food. Be a day closer to your goal.

The choice is yours.

#sweetspo #proana #anorexia #edthings

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greywindys · 2 years

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@arrnuts

I’m still trying to avoid posting full art book spoilers at the moment, and I’m also aware of the fact that there are a variety of readers here with various perspectives on fandom. What’s okay with one person, may not be okay with another, and I’d like this to be accessible to as many people as possible because I think it’s important. For those reasons, I’m going post your ask with a cropped picture. Thank you for sending it!

soo i got my artbook today. and i was really happy, the art was great, there was a decent amount of jamie art, and the comics were a super nice touch. i was pretty excited until i got to this picture

and then i was. grossed out a bit.

but i couldn't figure out why. i so badly didn't want to turn into one of those "noodle purists" that can't fathom a 30 year old woman showing skin, and i was afraid that was exactly what was happening. until i realized that wasn't the issue!

noodle has had more scantily-clad art, which has never bothered me. this art weirds me out because noodle's body....... never looked like this. shes never been curvy, she's mostly been portrayed as rather petite, so this just seems off. weird. uncanny almost!

i don't like how often artists tend to exaggerate noodle's body to make her "sexy". unfortunately jamie hasn't been immune to that.

idk i just feel like i had to get that out there.

---

First of all, congratulations on getting your art book! Z2 seems to be doing a better job this time around, but even so, just receiving it is an accomplishment lmao. Everything I’ve seen from it has been really impressive, so I’m glad you’ve gotten to experience that.

That being said, I understand where you’re coming from. To put it out there, being uncomfortable with how Noodle is portrayed at times doesn’t make you a “Noodle purist,” imo. I think it’s hard to deny the clear difference between the art of Noodle/Cyborg Noodle and the art of the rest of the band. Noodle is a cartoon character. She isn’t real. She doesn’t choose her outfits, she doesn’t have thoughts of feelings. Pointing out what you did in your ask doesn’t mean you criticizing her for “showing skin,” you reflecting on a choice Jamie and other artists have made in how they portray her, and the context (historical, societal, etc) in which they’re creating and sharing their work. For that reason, yes, the thoughts, “Wow, Noodle looks great here,” and “Yeah, maybe this is geared towards the male-gaze,” are two thoughts that can co-exist and don’t contradict each other. You can also still love the art book and Jamie’s work and Gorillaz while acknowledging that.

Tbh, I’m not a big Noodle fan and I typically stay away from Noodle discussion because I don’t care that much, but this talking point has been around a while, and I think it gets a reputation as being very polarizing, when really it’s pretty nuanced and people are never usually one extreme or another. And on a personal note, as someone with Noodle’s original body type, I don’t take any offense to people pointing this out about her when they make their critiques. I actually like when Jamie draws her using her original, petite design, and I wish more artists would use it too. But, I also know and accept that it’s not always about being accurate.

#asks.#arrnuts #obvi I'm open to discussion on this #but I think I covered all the pertinent points 🤔

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aliwritesfic · 3 years

Text

Night Shift Part 3 (F!Reader x Frankie Morales)

Summary: Yours and Frankie’s weekends take very different turns

Word Count: 2K

Warnings: Emotionally abusive relationship, very brief mention of drug use, drinking, T*m D*vis makes an appearance

Part 1 Part 4

Frankie slept better that week than he had in months. Every night was long, uninterrupted, mercifully dreamless sleep. The diner had done exactly what he had hoped. When he awoke that Saturday afternoon, he felt better than he had in ages. He hummed while he rummaged through the refrigerator, grabbing out some leftover padthai and throwing it in the microwave.

Each night that week, a routine between you and him had formed. You’d work, barely exchanging words until the dinner rush was completed, then you’d make him a coffee and he’d make you something to eat. You’d requested something different each night, and each night you’d spoken to him a little more. Some nights you were in a better mood than others, but he quickly realised it wasn’t personal against him.

He found he was a little disappointed when he woke up that afternoon and remembered that it was his day off. If he was being honest with himself, he’d grown to enjoy your company. Something about you intrigued him, made him want to get to know you more.

Frankie spent getting stuff together for poker night with the boys. It was his turn to host, so all he had to do was make sure that his dining room table was clear and his portable speaker was charged.

While he got ready, his mind kept wandering back to you.

He thought of the way you had a different smile for certain customers. The truly genuine one was reserved for only a select few of your favourites. He felt himself hoping that one day you’d give him one of those smiles, instead of the one that didn’t really reach your eyes and disappeared quickly.

He thought of how when the diner was quiet, you’d lean against the counter and sip your coffee, your gaze firmly out the window.

He thought of how when your shift ended and you checked your phone, your face would change for just a fraction of a second before you’d say goodbye and rush out the door.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thought, do I have a crush?

Frankie hadn’t had a crush since high school, when he had finally had the guts to ask out Portia Inglewood. That relationship had lasted until he left the military, and brought all the emotional baggage with him.

A loud banging on the door knocked him out of his thoughts.

“Cat!” Benny didn’t wait for Frankie to open the door. “We’re here, and we have beer!”

“You know where it goes,” Frankie called back.

Santi grinned at his best friend and handed him a beer. “How’s the new job?”

“It’s exactly what I need right now,” Frankie told him. Santi nodded in understanding. They all had their own ways of dealing with what they carried. “Plus, the extra cash doesn’t hurt.”

Frankie didn’t want money - he had plenty from when he’d do private jobs with Santi. If he ever became desperate, he knew he could just join Santi on his next job.

“Well, extra cash or not, I’ll always be the hottest person you’ve ever worked with,” Santi winked, making Frankie roll his eyes.

“Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better, man.” Frankie laughed.

The night progressed in a haze of pizza and beer and poker. Will lost money to Tom, and Tom promptly lost it all to Benny. Santi told the group about the new girl he was seeing, some French expat over stateside for a few months. Benny double checked everyone was coming to the fight next weekend. Tom revealed that he and the girls were moving to Ohio to be closer to Molly’s parents. The boys promptly began planning a going away party, which would basically just be another poker night but with more beer and possibly a cake.

Any worries Frankie held seemed to melt away on nights like these. At one point, he briefly wondered what you were doing and if you were thinking of him too. Yep. Definitely a crush.

~*~

You didn’t like Kurt’s friends. Unfortunately, you were stuck spending your Saturday night with them crowded in your apartment, loud and disrespectful as hell. It didn’t matter to them that you’d asked time and time again could they please go outside to smoke, could they please put their beer bottles in the recycling bin, could they please not use your nice plates to do coke on.

If your grandfather could have seen you now, he would’ve called you a push-over. You hated that you had become this person - afraid to stick up for yourself in your own home. Hell, you didn’t even know at what point you’d become this person. It just seemed to happen over the five years you’d been dating Kurt.

You had lost yourself in trying to be what he wanted.

With a sigh, you sealed yourself away in the bedroom with a bag of Doritos and your phone, wishing you could call your grandfather. You still had his number in your phone. Occasionally, you’d look at it, the numbers seared into your brain.

Instead of calling the now disconnected number, you settled for messaging Sara. She was one of your only remaining friends from high school, and knew as much about your feelings as you were willing to let on. The thing was, you knew what she would say if you told her how you felt every single day. How lost, how hopeless you felt. She’d tell you to leave, forget Kurt and all the years with him, but to you it wasn’t that simple.

Part of you still loved him, despite everything, and that part remained hopeful that you and Kurt could fix the fractures in your relationship. Plus, a voice in the back of your head told you he was right when he said he was the only one who could ever love you.

Being alone, unloved, was one of your deepest fears.

This was one of the nights you actually missed being at the diner. You missed the lemon scented countertops, the radio that seemed to be permanently set on the oldies station, hell, you even missed Frankie and his amazing food. He’d been working with you less than a week but he had already wedged himself into your stomach. But, it was just two more nights until you were back there. It struck you that this was the opposite of how most people thought. No one you knew actually wished to go back to work.

It was almost dawn when you were woken out of your half sleep by Kurt stumbling into the room.

“Baby,” he slurred, crawling into bed beside you. “Baby, I love you.”

“I love you too,” you mumbled, moving over so he could fit in the bed easier. He reeked of sweat and booze.

“I’m sorry,” he planted a sloppy kiss on your neck. “I really try to be good.”

“I know,” you ran your fingers over his head. He liked his hair cropped short, in an almost military like style. “I try too.”

“Can we go back to how we were?” Kurt continued kissing you, his hands moving drunkenly over your body. You bit back a sigh, knowing where this was heading.

You decided it would be easier to let him do what he needed, despite how badly you wanted to sleep. The only saving grace was you knew Kurt would only last a couple of minutes before it would be over.

~*~

“So, what’s the new guy like?” Manny asked. You were seated outside, at one of his favourite cafes. The sun shone down warmly on you both, brightening your mood.

“I like him, I think,” you said. “He’s nice, quiet.”

“And pretty cute, right?” Manny wriggled his eyebrows.

“I hadn’t noticed,” you lied. Of course you had noticed. It was impossible not to notice.

“Don’t feed me bullshit, I can tell when you’re lying.”

“Ugh, fine. He’s good looking. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“That’s the thing lover, it only means something if you want it to.” Manny took a conspiratorial sip of his drink. “And I didn’t get a gay vibe from him.”

“Oh good, because the only thing holding me back from jumping his bones in the kitchen is that I didn’t know his sexual preference.” You rolled your eyes, deciding to quickly change the subject. “Anyway, how’s the new job?”

“I’m loving it!” Manny lit up. “Everyone says teenagers are the worst group to teach, but it’s like they forget middle school exists.”

You smiled at Manny’s happiness. It thrilled you to see someone you considered your best friend so happy. If anyone deserves the whole world, you thought, it’s him. But he wasn’t going to let you change the subject that easily.

“You know, maybe you could invite Frankie to one of our lunches,” Manny said slyly. “It could be a night crew thing.”

“That would mean inviting the weekenders,” you reminded him. Manny held a grudge against the weekend crew, but you could never figure out why.

“No, weeknight crew only. Come on, lover, it could be fun! Plus, I want to get to know my replacement a bit better. Make sure I’m not handing the spatula to someone I don’t approve of.” Manny pouted and switched on his puppy dog eyes.

“Ugh, fine, I’ll ask,” you conceded, “but don’t be surprised if he says no. The man probably has a life.”

“It can’t hurt to ask though, and I will bother you about it until you have an answer.”

“What are you planning?” You knew that look all too well.

“Just on making a new friend,” Manny said innocently. “Lover, you can never have enough friends.”

At that moment your phone buzzed with a text from Kurt.

Where r u?????

You grimaced and sent a quick reply, hoping it wouldn’t lead to what it usually did.

At lunch with Manny from work. I’ll be home in a couple hours, do you want anything?

“Why don’t you just break up with him?” Manny asked, watching you carefully.

Is he the gay 1?

Yes, you met him and his husband last year.

“It’s complicated,” you said. You didn’t have anywhere to go. You were terrified of being alone. Part of you still felt like you could salvage what you had. The one and only time you had tried to break up with him, he had threatened to kill himself if you left.

“You deserve better than that,” Manny said. You remained silent, not sure if he was right. “You’ve been unhappy for ages now.”

“I’m happy!” You protested.

“No you aren’t. Don’t fucking lie to me. You’re miserable with that douche bag, even James agrees.”

“I haven’t seen James in months! How the hell would he know!” You were getting defensive, but you still managed to keep your voice lowered.

“Lover, I talk that man's ear off every chance I get. Because I love him. Because he likes to hear me talk about my day and the people important to me.”

“I’m important to you?”

Manny rolled his eyes and threw his napkin at you. “Of course you are, you’re a sister to me. Stop trying to change the subject.”

“What subject!” You scoffed.

“The subject of you for some reason wanting to stay in a relationship with a man who makes you miserable,” Manny’s voice softened and he gently held one of your hands. The gesture almost made you tear up with its gentleness. You merely shrugged.

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

Manny nodded. “Just please think about it, for real. I couldn’t sleep at night if I never said anything to you about it.”

The walk home was slow, you took your time to sort out your scrambling thoughts. Manny had offered to drive you, but it was a nice day, and you wanted to enjoy the sunshine. You pushed the issue of Kurt to the side, knowing either way the outcome would be the same unless you magically grew a spine and a few extra zeros in your bank account.

Instead, you thought about Frankie and how best to ask him to Sunday lunch. Honestly, if there was going to be a night shift tradition, it just felt downright rude to not at least extend an invite. And if Frankie said yes, well, that was even better. It was like Manny said - an opportunity to make a new friend. Just a friend.

So why did your stomach flip at the thought?

Tagging @hnt-escape if you’d also like to be tagged just let me know <3

#the night shift #frankie x reader #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales #triple frontier #slowburn #diner romance #friends to lovers

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bondsmagii · 3 years

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People get fucking crazy when it comes to books, it blows my mind how some take you not liking something as a personal attack. It really feels sometimes like some people think if you don't like a book they do, it means you don't like them as a person which is why they get so defensive and vitriolic. Which is honestly pathetic, thinking about it.

honestly, they really do.

this is extra loaded, because the book in question is a book written by a Cree author about the atrocities committed against her people by the residential school system -- which is, undeniably, an awful piece of history that deserves far more attention that it's got. unfortunately, the book -- while decently emotional, in fact that it its only strength -- is very, very badly written. the characterisation is barely there, the pacing is downright confusing, the dialogue is stilted and uncomfortably awkward, and it just does not do its story justice. my criticisms were all about this aspect; I even awarded an entire extra star because despite this, it still made me feel utterly despondent for the real people who suffered through this.

unfortunately a lot of people seem to have interpreted my dislike of the book as an inability to understand how serious its subject matter is, and since being featured on the first page of the book's reviews -- as its only naysayer, no less -- I have been inundated by clowns subtly calling me a racist for disliking the book, insinuating that I just don't get it, and now -- the absolute crème de la crop of takes -- that because my people were historically hanged for speaking their own language, and murdered in their millions by a foreign invader, I should have more understanding. more understanding of what, exactly? I understand the subject matter! I sympathise! but my understanding that the book is badly written has absolutely nothing to do with the atrocities committed against my people. ironically, one scholar commenting on my review has slammed me for judging a Cree author with English language standards, when she wrote the book originally in English and I am reading it in English -- and yet both the author and myself are only speaking English because of damage to our own native languages thanks to the exact same kind of cultural genocide. it's maddening.

as I said, the fact that someone thinks they can say this kind of thing to a person who lived this oppression in a real-life warzone and lost real-life people to it, to defend fictional characters? it's insane. what's extra incredible is that the Irish have always had the upmost support for Indigenous Americans, and of course, none of the people jumping on my review so far are Indigenous themselves. the thought of a bunch of white non-Irish trying to pit us all against one another on a Goodreads review so they can pat themselves on the back and call it activism is almost comical. I dislike the book. I have complete sympathy and respect for all other oppressed peoples. I can do these things at the same time. absolutely inconceivable, apparently.

#anon #asks

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sodacansculptures · 3 years

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Hello, everyone!!

Just wanted to give an update on my life and my absence. It is a bit depressing, so feel free to skip the rest of this post. I am on mobile and do not know how to do a "read more", so I apologize.

The TL;DR version is that I have been struggling with unemployment for over a year (thanks, covid) and have become very discouraged in my efforts, and I am essentially in survival mode while battling depression. I do have a therapist and I know I will ultimately be okay--just not having a particularly good time at the moment.

The full version is that in 2018, finishing grad school became my top priority and was why I had to take a break from sculpting. I graduated in May of 2020 with my Master's, and I had a job lined up with a university, but it got withdrawn because the whole university shut down. As far as I know, the position was never re-offered or re-posted.

The industries for which my degrees qualify me and that I am pursuing were highly affected by budget cuts and project cancelations due to the pandemic, so they have many displaced workers seeking reentry into the field, resulting in unusually high numbers of applicants and competition for people such as myself. (USA Today actually interviewed me for my expertise on this topic.)

Lower-tier jobs pass over me because I am overqualified and they assume I will be pursuing other employment, leaving them with turnover, which is expensive to any agency. Higher-tier jobs are in high demand as they offer better wages and better working conditions, so they have a large crop of candidates from which to pick and elect someone with more experience than myself (and obviously I cannot gain more experience without employment). I am in a sort of impossible situation that has left everyone involved in my employment search with frustration.

Over the past year, I have enlisted the help of an employment training/retention program and multiple staffing agencies, and they have been extremely supportive of me and helped me expand my network. I have sought out much help, and I am endlessly grateful to have support, but unfortunately there is little they can do more than what I have already been doing for myself to gain employment.

I have a stellar resume, an awesome number of favorable and practical references, and I always study the agency and position to which I am applying so I can write an informed cover letter and have relevant talking points during interviews. I put a lot of time and effort into every opportunity, and when I inquire for feedback, employers repeatedly tell me that they admire my resourcefulness and work ethic and think I would be an extremely valuable worker, but another candidate just had a little more experience. It is heartbreaking to know I have done my best and interviewed excellently but ultimately end up back at square one. I honestly wish there was something I was doing wrong so that there was something tangible I could improve to fix my situation.

My effort feels invisible to the outside world and it seems the public assumes I am on a sort of easy vacation. In reality, every day for me is full of uncertainty, and every day, I wish I could be working. I get by utilizing my skills from high school robotics and self-instruction via the internet to repair, restore, and upgrade old electronics, but it is not stable work and not for what I went to school.

Additionally, I have been deemed not to qualify for Unemployment for a nonsensical rationalization. They ask for employment history in order to calculate how much to pay, but for some reason, student jobs do not count as jobs to them. So although they have me in their system as having been employed as a graduate assistant, they both demand to know from my previous employer what that wage was (and the institution would not forward that wage information to Unemployment because it is a student job and irrelevant to Unemployment's calculations), and would not consider that, anyway, in how much to pay me. So essentially, Unemployment could not figure out how much to pay me, so they just decided not to. I have opened appeals over the situation with them twice, and I have been rejected twice and had the case closed with no opportunity to reopen it. It is a huge slap in the face that even the social system put in place to help people such as myself has failed me and turned me away.

I would take a factory job or do some other physical labor since those are hiring, but I have plantar fasciitis and being on my feet for more than an hour or so at a time just is not feasible for me. I was receiving physical therapy for it at one point, but insurance stopped covering it because they decided I should have had enough visits by now to have recovered. I'm also struggling to get my insurance to cover things like treatment for GERD, which makes eating anything at all a nightmare to deal with.

I have been getting by mostly on pity from family and friends. I do not have unnecessary things like wifi, and I have a lot of expenses I had been putting off because I assumed I would have a job by now (such as a vacuum cleaner. Mine is broken). It kills me to ask for money because it's embarrassing for me that I can't provide for myself, and I got into the field of public administration because I want to be a servant to the people and help them have resources and money, not take money from them.

If you don't have a lot of money, please keep it for yourself. I'm not hurting that badly that I would want to put others in a precarious situation. But if you have a little change you'd like to spare for me (and absolutely no pressure. If I receive nothing, I will still be okay), my Venmo and my PayPal are each @asclw7643. Any little bit would help and I'd be greatly appreciative.

Finally, I did finish that project I was posting about last year in my previous post. I want to post a photo of it, but I can't seem to locate where I put it at the moment. It's Kicks from Animal Crossing. I wanted to do a series of wooden block sprites (mainly Pokemon) and I do still want to. I want to come back to soda can sculpting, as well, so I want to let you all know that I'm here, I'm alive, and I'll persist.

Thank you all for your patience. I promise it will be rewarded and I have a lot of ideas for new sculptures. =]

With love,

- Crystal

(or Cris. I go by either.)

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