#(the relatives I'm interested in getting to know are understandably pretty messed up I do not have a script for this)

[chillgamesh-the-swing]

having an autism moment at the function 🙃

[mochinomnoms]

Does all of Coral Sea know of Floyd and Jades future mates? Cause I was wondering if they made a public “announcement ” of them to where maybe others know now not to get too close or else potentially suffer under their wrath. Or is it a more only family friends/family know like in Tony, Azul and Aspens case?

-🧀anon

Hmm, I'm assuming this is referencing PTM right? No, they don't announce it. Really, they don't mean for the people closest to them to be aware of their feelings. But it's quite noticible when one of the twins gets a crush.

Floyd will talk a lot about something once it's caught his interest. My people with the tism will understand, it's like when you get a hyperfixation and can't stop thinking or talking about it? Floyd's like that. When the others hear him gush about Riddle, about how funny he is, how small and cute he is, how Riddle kicked his ass their first meeting, everyone just assumed he would lose interest within a few weeks. Maybe months even. But Floyd's interest in Riddle has persisted…much longer than anything else he's ever been interested in. And his comments become less teasing and more soft, talking about how cool Riddle looked riding his horse, how he changed his tie into a bow, how he's been eating more sweets like tarts as of late. Then it turns into, "didja know that Goldfishie really likes strawberries? He just eats them up!" or "Goldfishie's real smart, I bet I could get away with asking him to tutor me to hang out. Nah I don't need it, I just want to mess with him." or even "I saw Goldfishie in the infirmary the other day, he was sleeping. He looks really pretty, peaceful like that." But the real thing that made everyone realize that there was something more is when he started referring to Riddle by name in his comments. Actual names are reserved for people he actually cares about, people that he would want to make an effort for to know them and their names. Just like how Azul is Azul, not Lil Octy, Riddle is Riddle, not just Goldfishie in his eyes.

Jade is surprisingly less subtle. It might be because be doesn't normally rant to people about his fixations, only going off in tangents once in a while. So when he starts talking about Yuu, it's immediately noticeable. More so when he doesn't shut up about them. The difference between Floyd and Jade is that Jade is aware that the others know, Floyd thinks he's being slick with it. It's why Jade can take teasing from the others relatively well, he knows they know and is mostly fine with it. At least until one of them attempts to get involved for his sake. Floyd and Azul have offered to fabricate scenarios, make comments, and help push Yuu to him. Usually in exchange for him doing something, or to stop growing his mushrooms in certain areas of the dorm. Aspen and Tony are the opposite, Aspen especially willing to get Yuu into scenarios that would make them unattractive or unavailable in Jade's eyes. Most recently, this we see this in the last chapter when Aspen is pushing Wynfred to go out with Yuu. Jade's not happy about it, Yuu is embarrassed, and Aspen is just trying his best to get Jade for himself. Tony eventually gets dragged into any trouble that Aspen gets himself into, willingly or not. Though, he is prone to gossip with Floyd and listen to his rambles about Riddle. He's surprisingly insightful, though that would require Floyd to listen to his advice.

[smytherines]

☠ agent curt mega pretty pleaseeee

Ooooohhh angry/violent headcanon for Curt. This is an interesting one. I wrote waaaay too much here and I'm probably gonna end up in fandom jail for this one, but...

I mean we've talked about this before, but I genuinely do not see the horrible toxic manipulative Owen/little innocent cinnamon roll Curt dynamic that a lot of people seem to get from A1P1. It just doesn't track for me with what actually happens in that scene. Interpretation is an art, and everyone's art style is different, I just personally can't see anything to support it.

For me, pre-fall curtwen is a relationship of equals. Equals who often irritated each other because they were very different people (but also because they were very similar people), equals who didn't have any real concept of how to have a healthy relationship (especially with another man), equals who individually had a lot of flaws and messed up coping mechanisms and (in my headcanon at least) neurodevelopmental disabilities that made them uniquely suited for espionage, but also gave them all sorts of weird problems that they had no way of understanding or fixing. For me, they each gave as good as they got. For better or worse.

So keeping that in mind, I think about that part of A1P1 where Cynthia is insulting Curt while trying to recruit Owen to A.S.S., because that interaction, and what comes after it, is very important for my understanding of who pre-fall Curt was as a person.

Even though Owen doesn't entertain the idea of working for A.S.S. for even a second, Curt gets jealous, and pissed off, and hangs up on Cynthia. I think Owen's line is "What are you, jealous? You know I'd never work for the Americans," and its incredulous, like its a silly thing for Curt to get upset about because Owen would never even consider it. Curt pulls his flask out as soon as the call is over, and he responds to Owen pretty sharply by saying "Oh I do know that you couldn't handle it." He responds as if Owen has threatened his status at A.S.S.

We see this dynamic again when Owen chastises him for drinking, and Curt mocks his accent while saying "not until the jobs done." We see it again when Owen gestures to the banana peel like "what are you doing," and Curt responds fairly harshly with (I think, I'm doing this off memory) "this whole place is about to be garbage anyways, who gives a shit."

Those moments, for me, imply that Curt gets embarrassed easily, he gets jealous easily, and that he reacts very defensively when he is criticized, which is just Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria 101. It couldn't get more typical RSD than that. And each criticism, even though they're individually pretty mild, just seems to make him act more recklessly during A1P1, like he's trying to show that actually he's a badass and Owen just worries too much. Again, very RSD.

The thing about RSD is that- especially when you don't know you have it- sometimes your first impulse is to get furious. Not annoyed. Not irritated. But like blood pulsing in your ears, seeing red kind of furious. Your heart rate elevates. It's like your body goes into fight or flight, and more often than not your body is going to pick fight. And because ADHD is a lifelong thing, unless you're getting treatment or at least a diagnosis and information, you literally have no concept that this is not how other people react emotionally, so you justify your own behavior because you truly do not understand that this isn't normal (ask me how I know hahahaaa)

As much as we love them, and as much as I truly believe they loved each other, they probably got into a fair few fistfights over the years. These are two men who are accustomed to violence. Who are very good at violence. Who have a flirty torture scene and then tell the guy whose knees Owen just shot out that "you've just been used for sport" (Owen), and "I hope you had fun- I know we sure did" (Curt).

To me, pre-fall Curt seems like the type to put Owen down a lot with relatively minor digs "as a joke" (aka he is bad with feelings), and to some degree it doesn't bother Owen that much because that's just how they are. They banter. But sometimes, maybe when Owen is tired or feeling particularly sensitive that day, he'll go straight for the jugular- zero in on the thing Curt is most sensitive about. With Curt its death by a thousand cuts, with Owen its a laser guided missle.

I've talked about this before too, but I think that by the time we get to A1P1 Curt probably already has a bit of a drinking problem. After the fall, drinking is just how he manages to survive his grief. But I think before the fall he could get miserable and sour and petty while drunk, take out his insecurities on the people around him, and probably on occasion just start fights because he's bored and will take any stimulation he can get.

I don't think this is just a thing he does with Owen either, I think this has probably been a problem for him his whole life. He feels things very close to the surface. He is very emotional, which is a thing you're not allowed to be as a man, as a boy/teen/man in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and a thing that is very dangerous if you are a gay man during this time period.

He also has a big fucking ego. During the 54 Below concert spoken intros they describe what happens in A1P1 as "when these two spies are together they are gay and unstoppable- until Curt's ego gets in the way." And I think a big part of that ego is wrapped up in his performance of his gender. That if he's the very best at this extremely hypermasculine profession then nobody will notice any of the stereotypically feminine traits he has, no one will think he is actually sensitive and tender-hearted and more vulnerable than he appears. He thinks that performing stereotypical 1950s masculinity will insulate him from anyone ever finding out his secret- that he likes men, that he's in love with a man.

Also, ADHD can make you very impatient, easily bored, and Jesus let me tell you I know from experience that when an ADHDer gets too bored for too long, they get irritated. At everything, at nothing. So the combination of these factors makes me think that he probably was the kind of kid to get into scraps (especially at any suggestion that he was not masculine enough), the kind of adult who felt too much and got it out with aggression. He was a brawler. Spying helped focus his aggression. He got to still have it, but he got to feel like it was serving a noble purpose.

I do also think that, even if he gave Owen a lot of shit (particularly for the crime of not being American), if someone insulted Owen in front of him, or if one of their enemies hurt Owen, I fully believe Curt would go full-on berserker mode to defend Owen. So it isn't entirely a negative thing. He can utilize his anger and violence to protect people he loves too.

[mumblingsofanerd]

Randomly thinking about how weird it is that Jake and Amy are by far my favorite sitcom couple when I never like the main couple in a sitcom the most and while a lot of that is just personal taste I think there are a couple of things B99 does very well just like structurally with their relationship.

For one they don't start off in love. While they start hinting pretty earlier that there might be something more to the relationships then the friendly rivalry both present S1 its not until the end of the season that Jake acknowledges or becomes aware of any interest in her "romantic styles" and Amy doesn't clearly show interest in him until she breaks up with Teddy. This is critical because it gives them time to build a dynamic and establish chemistry that feels authentic instead of the we open on one or both parties having some interest or crush on the other and almost all the chemistry comes from this supposed interest and/or history which mostly works but often leaves the relationship without a core of genuine compatibility which can make it hard to understand why the relationship is worth it when sitcom drama inevitably occurs. IMO Ross and Rachel and Lenard and Penny both suffer from this quite badly and Eric and Donna get it a little bit. The other thing I think B99 does quite well is Jake and Amy have relatively little drama directly with each other. They struggle with timing as one is dating someone else then the other and they have some concerns about potential fallout at work but direct fights with each other about things they do to each other a few and far between. This is one where I think Donna and Eric struggle, That 70s Show gets some leeway because part of the point is it's a teen relationship and they are figuring out some of this dating stuff and messing it up on the way but still so much of the drama is just Donna and Eric disagree about something and fight about it which is fine and reasonable, things happen in a relationship but so much of the drama and plot especially in the early seasons is just them so they fight episode after episode to a point where it can start to feel like do these two even actually get along? By comparison B99 does a good job of having enough other stuff going on that the relationship drama doesn't take up too much screen time and the couple can just like be convincingly in love instead of fighting all the time.

I don't know I'm sure this stuff isn't unique to B99 and Jake and Amy, as I said at the top a lot of my appreciation for the relationship is just that I'm personally really fond of their dynamic. Nor do I hate the counter examples I used I like the big bang theory, friends and that 70s show and I can appreciate all of the mentioned relationships they all have their moments even if none of them are my personal favorites but I'd never really thought about how the structure of B99 really helps to make Jake and Amy more compelling and I thought that was interesting

[squish36-writes-and-draws]

All the Lemon Squares Argon

Summary: Another renamed fanfic from my creative writing class, this one's assignment was to use setup and payoff in a major element of the story. In the story, Fitz and Dex have a final chemistry presentation project where Fitz has chosen to bake lemon squares, but they've been stolen. I'm not sorry for the pun that is the title.

Word count: 6946

Tw: mild sexual innuendo, jokes about poisoning baked goods, food

Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @faggot-friday @kamikothe1and0nly @nyxpixels @florida-preposterously @poppinspop @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @did-i-say-you-could-get-up @rusted-phone-calls @when-wax-wings-melt @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @hi-imgrapes @callum-hunt-is-bisexual @xanadaus @callas-pancake-tree @hi-my-name-is-awesome @katniss-elizabeth-chase @arson-anarchy-death @dizzeners @thefoxysnake @olivedumdum @loveution @notyourlegacygirl

On Ao3 or below the cut!

    Fitz doesn't even get a chance to sit down next to Dex before Dex’s gorgeous periwinkle eyes glitter up at him with a thousand new ideas. This is going to be…interesting. 

    “What if we could get powdered galactose?  Or lactose? Hm. That’s probably not the best idea. Milk sugar might do weird things chemically. Although that might be the fact that it’s a solution of water and butterfat. Or we could get fructose. That should work.”

    He’s so pretty when he gets like this—especially when I can’t understand half of what he’s saying and I know I’ve missed a lot of context.  

    “We’ve already decided on the parameters of the experiment. We are going to stick with the plan,” Fitz pleads, trying to appeal to Dex’s sense of pretending to be organized. 

    It doesn’t work very well. 

    “What about aspartame? Or Splenda? Is that a brand name? Yeah, it probably is. I should look that one up before putting it in the presentation. Generic Splenda.” 

    “Dex,” Fitz starts, hoping Dex’s name recognition reflex is strong enough to get through this whirlwind of thoughts. “We are not doing any more of this. We have enough. It’ll be fine.” 

    “I wonder what the sweetest one is. Then again, that might not be the best option. Ratios and all that.” 

    An image of the crumbly mess that would follow flashes through Fitz’s mind. He’s forgotten sugar before and it was not a fun result. Better than the three sticks of butter incident in terms of the clean-up, but at least that remained edible. Not that the sugarless one was inedible—that’s a very difficult bar to overcome, but it wasn’t pleasant.

    “It would. But, honey, will you please—”

    “Yeah, honey would be fun!”

    I was calling you that. I realize my error now.  

    Dex’s tirade is finally ended by the school bell ringing in the last hour of the day. It takes a solid five minutes for Mr. Sweeney to take attendance and get the presentation loaded for the group unlucky enough to get drafted on this fine spring Monday. 

    Because AP Chem isn’t already enough of a land of suffering, Mr. Sweeney has graciously decided to fill the time between the exam and the final with a little presentation on whatever chemistry experiment each pair of lab partners wants to do. 

    It can be live or in a video that contains both of you, and it should be relatively safe. This group—composed of Stina and Rissa—has decided that they want to spend an absurd length of time talking about baking soda. Heating it up, predicting the products, hearing about both its and sodium carbonate’s use. Because those are definitely not the same thing. One is used in baking and the other is used in soap. Our class is all in for a riveting ten minutes. 

    Fitz is pretty sure they just found a lab on the internet and followed it, which is a valid method to do things. Once you’ve crossed that mental boundary, though, you should at least try to find an interesting one. He’s heard one group arguing about plating a penny in brass or something. That’s fun. 

    It might be considered defacing currency, but it could easily be argued that that’s the appeal of it. 

    But no. They get to sit there for ten whole minutes, and half of that time is waiting for the sample to heat. Curse you, thermodynamics. Dex doesn’t stop suggesting ideas for how they could embellish their own presentation in a few short days, but Fitz isn’t even sure they’re going to finish what they already have on the agenda. 

    While they’re painfully waiting for the baking soda to heat up enough that it decomposes, Dex asks on the lab table in blue, fine tip expo marker, How are the lemon squares going? 

    The big idea for their project is that they’re going to be taking glucose and sucrose and seeing what happens when they react with Benedict’s Solution. Who’s Benedict? Some guy, probably. It’s a shame they’ve turned him into a soup. At least he’s blue from the copper(II) ions. 

    Fitz should know this by now, but that’s what Wikipedia at two in the morning the night it’s due is for. 

    Anyway, it turns orange in the presence of a reducing sugar, like glucose, and doesn’t react with others, like sucrose. Why do we care about those two? They were the most easily commercially available and it’s taken until today for Dex to start suggesting more sugars for them to try. 

    They’re also performing a taste experiment between lemon squares made with glucose and those made with sucrose. It’s good practice to bring the audience snacks while presenting. 

    Of course, it was a whole process choosing the variety of pastry to be used in this project. As in, Dex asked really nicely for it to be lemon squares—puppy dog eyes and all— and Fitz is incapable of telling him no. It was also convenient that the recipe Fitz had didn’t use brown sugar, and could thus be closer to a controlled test. 

    I made some last night, Fitz replies, and Dex has begun doodling either a chocolate chip cookie or an asteroid on his side of the table. It’s the most precious thing Fitz has ever owned and he will cherish it forever. 

    Dex pauses his masterpiece to say, That’s good.

    Yeah, um, so, about that, Fitz barely manages to write around Dex’s arm, this morning I woke up to find them disappeared. 

    Dex has to erase some of the previous conversation to ask, Well, what’d you do with them? 

    I remember specifically putting them into the back of the cabinet above the microwave. 

    And they weren’t there this morning? 

    Nope. 

    That marks the first time Dex has stopped talking long enough to think for the first time since last Wednesday. 

    Fitz erases a space to write, smearing a haze of blue across the table.

    Don’t worry about it. I’ll make more tonight.

    And then those are going to disappear.

    I’ll put them somewhere else. 

    Until that gets raided too. 

    Then I’ll make MORE. 

    I don’t think you have that many eggs. 

    That’s why grocery stores exist. 

    Before they know it, the presentation is over, and it doesn’t really affect a whole lot. There’s three presentations a day. It’s still going to take a week to get through all of them, but it does make it so that it doesn’t take longer than that. And that’s somewhat relevant. 

    This next one is over the most classic science fair project of all time: the baking soda volcano.  It’s not surprising that Jensi and Valin are the ones to try to blow up the classroom. 

     Dex writes the chemical reaction on the table with accompanying chemical structures before they’ve even gotten off the title slide. 

     NaHCO3 + HC2H3O2 → NaH2C3O2 + CO2 + H2O 

    Jensi also takes his time explaining acid-base chemistry like we’re all fifth graders, which likely isn’t that far off. “You see, class, baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is a base, which means that when it comes into contact with water, it is able to rip off some of water’s hydrogen atoms, resulting in an increase in hydroxide ions. And then when vinegar, also called acetic acid, is dissolved in water, it releases hydrogen atoms, forming hydronium ions. Do any of you remember the chemical formula for hydronium?

    Crickets fill the room as Dex writes H3O+ on the desk without a single thought. Mr. Sweeney is probably off crying in the corner as their final grades slip lower and lower. 

    “That’s alright,” Valin continues, “it’s combining the two reactants that’s the fun part. When an acid and a base come into contact with one another, they undergo a double replacement reaction. In this case, sodium and hydrogen switch places.”

    The presentation flips to the next slide, filling in the products of the reaction as CH3COONa + H2CO3. 

    Sodium acetate can be written either the way Valin and Jensi did or the way Dex did. It’s a matter of preference or something about organic chemistry. Now, carbonic acid, on the other hand, is a bit more of an issue. 

    Jensi points at the second term. “But that’s not its final form. This last reactant here breaks apart into water and carbon dioxide, so there’s a second reaction inside of the normal reaction.” 

    Yes, yes, we all know how carbonates work, Dex writes. 

    Fitz laughs silently. 

    “And, with all that in mind,” Jensi flips to the next slide and lowers his goggles from his forehead to where they’re supposed to go over his eyes in true mad scientist fashion. “It’s time for eruption.” 

    Everyone has seen a baking soda volcano before. It’s not surprising when it bubbles up and oozes out of the beaker that Jensi and Valin didn’t even bother to make look like a volcano. It is nice to note that they did bring food coloring to make the lava foam orange and didn’t get it on the ceiling, which is a win for everyone. 

    And then Dex has to ruin it. Did you know this reaction is actually endothermic?

    That’s big fancy chemistry words for “it gets cold.” Curse you, thermodynamics. Lava isn’t supposed to be cold. Fitz is going to personally take this up with the second law of thermodynamics. It’s not going to work, but entropy deserves to feel bad about what it’s doing. 

    Valin and Jensi putz around for another five minutes after their initial volcano has stopped reacting, mostly just adding more vinegar or baking soda at random intervals to see how the increase in concentration affects the rate of the reaction. Definitely not just standing around to run down the clock for the next group. 

    That next group is the brassing a penny group, and it takes them so long to get to their experiment, the entire class is freed from the confines of the school building before it’s over. Except for Fitz. He still has to play chess for an hour. 

    It comes and goes with more blunders than Fitz would care to admit, but that very quickly doesn’t matter when he shows up at Dex’s house to work on homework. And by “work on homework” he means “desperately hope that he doesn’t get horrifically distracted before they accomplish a nonzero amount of progress on the chem project.” It doesn’t seem likely. 

    And then that probability crashes to zero. 

    Dex is found standing in his room at a bulletin board, winding a red string around thumb tacks stabbed into sticky notes. 

    In the middle is a picture of Fitz and a torn-off corner of notebook paper with a three dimensional lemon square drawn on it. Fitz can tell it’s a lemon square because it’s been messily colored in with a yellow crayon that doesn’t show up very well. 

    “Do I want to ask?” Fitz asks hesitantly. 

    Dex smiles into the board. “No, I don’t think you do. But that doesn’t stop me from explaining it. Here in the middle is you, of course. There’s only a few people that know that we’re baking for this project and that I made you do it.”

    “How do we know that the person who took them even knows about the project? Do you not realize how often I find myself baking? I have a problem.

    “Good point.” Dex adds a lopsided question mark to the sticky note with the word ‘project.’ “That doesn’t really change who might have had access to the stash. Which is where our suspects come in.” 

    Dex turns to face Fitz, gesturing widely toward the board like any of it makes sense. His handwriting is absolutely atrocious right now, a sure sign that he’s put more thought into this than it deserves. 

    “Our first suspect is Keefe. I don’t trust him. He’s got a long history of making things disappear. Case in point: Mrs. Cuddles. One day, she was here in all of her stuffed animal glory and the next, we’ve never seen her again.” 

    “We never proved that it was Keefe.” 

    “Well, we really should get around to doing that.” Dex points very intentionally at nothing. “He is also likely to know you well enough to know where you would hide things.” 

    “You have fun asking him. I’m not interrogating my best friend.”

    Dex’s eyes glimmer, and Fitz knows all hope is lost. “We should absolutely do an interrogation! With threats and everything!” 

    “Until he asks for a lawyer,” Fitz deadpans, trying to calm down Dex’s racing thoughts. This is both a common situation and one that Fitz is very bad at de-escalating. 

    “Your dad could be his lawyer.” 

    “I feel like that would make things objectively worse.” 

    “Yeah, it probably would. I think we should declare independence and therefore we don’t have to comply with constitutional rights. Who needs those anyway?” 

    Fitz blinks. He expected for Dex to increase his outlandish ideas in a short amount of time, but not that quickly. 

    “I mean, if you wanted to take the ‘the first amendment protects you from the government, not the Dex’ approach, that would be entirely reasonable without having to prove sovereignty. That would take a while.” 

    Dex smiles. “I forgot about that. That’s perfect. When do you think you can take Keefe into custody?” 

    “I’m not doing it, you do it.” Fitz pauses, trying to think of a good reason why because he clearly did not think through the implications of this before saying it. “You’re the lead investigator here. You’ve got the corkboard and everything. I’m just a guy who happens to be here.”

    Dex looks at him, not believing any of what he just said to be true, but accepting it as fact anyway. 

    “Please don’t let this end with Keefe having a restraining order against us,” Fitz adds. 

    “I make no promises, sweetheart.” 

        Fitz’s faded, once-pink hair falls into his face as he pushes his glasses up to pinch his nose. 

    Why did I know that was going to be his response? 

    Fitz shouldn’t be surprised the next day after school to find Dex in his basement, Keefe sitting at an old wooden table, the lights dimmed as low as possible before total darkness. The incandescent bulbs don’t much like this as they flutter in pain like they’re having a little bit of a stroke. 

    “About time,” Dex says, leaning against the wall. 

    Fitz turns on the lights. “This needs to be taken down about three notches. Keefe, I’m sorry he’s like this.” 

    “I’m not,” Dex and Keefe reply in alarming unison. 

    What did I sign myself up for and why do I do this to myself? 

    “Dex, if you would please proceed with the reason we have gathered y’all here today, that’d be great. Some of us have homework that we actually do,” Fitz suggests. 

    “That’s what study hall is for,” Keefe replies. 

    Dex interjects, “No, study hall is for Wordle.”

    “That’s what English is for.”

    “No, that’s when you do the homework you didn’t finish at home or in study hall.” 

    “Okay, yeah, that’s almost fair.” 

        It isn’t often that Dex concedes a point in an argument. Or maybe Fitz isn’t good at arguing with him. Fitz is very distractible when it comes to Dex and that might affect his debate skills. Or it could be that he knows Dex will pout for a month and a half if he’s proven wrong, and Fitz just lets him believe that he’s right. Yeah, that’s it. 

    Dex bounces off of the wall and slides into the chair across from Keefe. Fitz takes a seat, off center, directly next to Dex, close enough that Dex’s infamous left handed elbow jabs are a serious threat. 

    “First, I would like to confirm that you are, in fact, Keefe Sencen. Is this accurate information?” 

    “What, no middle name?” He looks at Fitz. “Do you not know it?” 

    A smirk tries to blossom on Keefe’s lips but quickly gets shut down by Fitz’s own. 

    “I absolutely know what it is. I didn’t think you wanted to acknowledge how you were named after your father, considering everything.” 

    Dex continues, “This is not a government-sanctioned interrogation, and, as such, you are not entitled to any of the protections provided by the Bill of Rights. Miranda rights do not apply here. You are not getting a lawyer unless you want one of my siblings, who are, by the way, not recognized by the bar association.” 

    “This is quickly sounding like more and more of a trap.”

    “It’s like five questions. You’ll be fine. The most severe sentence you will receive is mild disappointment.” 

    Keefe gasps sarcastically. “Not that, never that. How am I going to cope?” 

        “On the seventh of November of this year, it was discovered that a tray of lemon squares went missing. Do you know anything about this?” Dex asks. 

    “No,” Keefe replies, fast enough to not think but not too fast to be suspicious. 

    “Are you absolutely sure?”

    Fitz adds, “They would have been above my microwave.” 

    “Yeah, I’m sure.” Keefe shifts his attention to Fitz. “You made lemon squares and didn’t tell me?”

    “I guess you should’ve taken chem with me.” 

    “Well, I wouldn’t have gotten them either way, considering they’ve been stolen. But, now I know you have a recipe for them, which means I have the ability to annoy you enough to convince you to make them. Who’s the real winner here?”

    “So you’re sure that you didn’t take them? You’re not just being difficult because that’s your only personality trait?” 

    “Actually, I have two. Beauty is a personality trait. But I was very unaware of that particular stash. The one under your bed and in the back of the lazy susan are less safe.” 

    Fitz swears. “I just found that one a week ago and now you’re telling me I have to find yet another one?”

    “You could always use your closet. You’ve already got everything else in there.” 

    Dex snorts. 

    “You knowing where it is would take away the whole concept of it being a hiding place. And then you’d figure out how to sell it on the black market.”

    “I wouldn’t do that. That would risk my own stash. Although your sister is going to stiff it out with that bloodhound nose of hers faster than I’ll be able to raid it.”

    Dex interrupts, “Do you think there is a possibility that Biana was the one to find the lemon squares?”

    “Possibility? Absolutely. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have been your first suspect. She literally lives in the same house as the lemon squares. She would’ve had the largest window of opportunity.”

    “Like you aren’t there almost as much.”

    “That’s because Biana is usually off gallivanting with her friends.” 

    Keefe has a slight inflection on the word “friends,” but what he’s trying to imply there remains unclear. Knowing both of them, it’s probably more than a little gay. 

    Fitz waits a beat before saying, “I’ve got to go get to making another batch. If more go missing, I want you to expect that we will be seeing you again.”

    “I also expect you to come to us, whether it be in person, in an overcomplicated disaster of scavenger hunt clues, or anywhere in between, if you find out any information. We can offer a better bribe than those other people can.”

    “Dex,” Fitz hisses. 

    “What? It’s accurate. It’s not like this is going to lead to a crime syndicate,” Dex replies. 

    “You never know. Alvar could be involved.” 

    “He probably still thinks of you as a fifth grader. I know I do the same with my siblings, and I see them every day. Unfortunately. But that means he likely believes that you shouldn’t be trusted to operate the oven on your own.” 

    “Unless he’s been purposely watching you only to ruin your final project,” Keefe suggests. 

    Fitz holds his head in his hands. “There’s no reason to exaggerate this as much as you are. Next you’re going to be telling me that I should poison the next batch to find out who took them.” 

    “That’s actually a good solution,” Dex says. “You’d make sure there are no more stolen lemon squares…after those, at least.”

    A couple of bitter almonds crushed up into the crust would make that far easier than it should be. Cyanide is known for being delicious. 

    …And that’s exactly why I shouldn’t be allowed access to Biana’s Amazon Prime account. 

    “Are we done here?” Fitz asks tiredly. “Or are you two going to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain the entirety of thermodynamics or something? And do I really have to be here for that?”

    “Hey, there’s probably a fourth secret law of thermo somewhere,” Dex argues. 

    “There already is. The zeroth law. If A is in equilibrium with B and A is in equilibrium with C, then B is in equilibrium with C, remember? You’d need a secret fifth law, and at that point, that’s unrealistic.” 

    Dex laughs. 

    “Please don’t figure out a way to violate any of the laws while I’m gone. I don’t want to deal with the consequences of that. That would imply that the project would have to change and I’m not putting that much effort in between now and Friday.” 

        “I hope you know that’s my goal in life now.”

    “I knew it would be.” Fitz sighs silently. “I’ve got too much homework to keep following this conversation. Just have fun doing whatever it is you find yourself doing this evening.”

         “Let me know if you need distracting from your homework.”

    I give myself fifteen minutes before I’m going to be taking you up on that offer. “I won’t, thanks. Have a nice evening.” 

    “I won’t. And I’m sure you won’t either.” 

    Keefe snorts. 

    “Both of y’all are legally required to have a nice evening. Because I said so. And now I’m going to leave you to it.”  

    Fitz leaves without any more argument, because he’s had enough of that for today. There’s a limited amount of coherent thoughts he can have while being faced with Dex’s dimples and that number is very, very low.

    The next day interviewing—interrogating—Biana goes much the same as Keefe. Which is to say, it’s a complete waste of time for everyone involved. She threatens them slightly more, but that’s to be expected. 

    Fitz spends far too many hours reading scientific papers about glucose and sucrose and a few other sugars just for fun instead of working on the actual project part of the project. 

    It’s to make it as accurate as possible. Yeah. That’s why he didn’t get to bed until two in the morning. 

    That might also be due to the fact that he spent a few hours surveying his house to look for the most advantageous spot to hide the next batch of lemon squares—and with two slices per person in class, it’s not particularly easy to find anywhere even remotely helpful. 

    There aren’t a whole lot of viable options left between Keefe and Biana’s incessant searching for hidden snacks in the walls. Even behind the fish tank in his dad’s office is no longer safe. 

    Eventually, he finds a light fixture that will surprisingly work quite well. They might get a little warm from the heat given off by the lights if they’re turned on. Curse you, thermodynamics. They’ll be fine. 

    Then, and only then, at like two in the morning, is he able to make more. Most of their cooking time is being stuck in the fridge and it gets left there overnight. 

    The next day is Thursday, and Thursdays are good days. Neither Dex nor Fitz have anything to do after school, which means Fitz can drive Dex home. 

        “I made more lemon squares last night.”

    “Oh? And how did that go?” Dex asks, staring firmly out the window. 

    “Well, they weren’t there when I checked them again in the morning.”

    Dex swears. “Is there anything else we can do?”

    “Not unless I don’t let them out of my sight until tomorrow morning when I let Sweeney take custody of them. Do you think I could maybe make and leave them at your house? I don’t want to get up at four in the morning and that’s pretty much my only other option. I’m not staying up all night just to make them at a reasonable time.” 

    “I would rather gouge my eyes out with my pencil than wake up at that heinous hour. Good luck to both you and your sanity. Stars know I’m not going to be doing that. I’d pull another all-nighter before I do that one.” 

    It takes a second and a half for Fitz to realize what Dex just said. 

    “What do you mean ‘another’ all-nighter? Dex, we’ve been working on this.”

    “Well, we’ve also been working on this project for a few too many days for me to just ignore this whole mystery situation we’ve got going on.” Dex’s voice cracks. “I have to solve this problem. I have to find out what happened. We’re going to be very lucky if I get anything tonight.” 

    “Then I guess we just have to make sure you don’t think about the problem. If we don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist.”

    “You’re not playing the object permanence game with me today, Fitz. We all know I’m going to lose and I don’t like doing that.”

    “There’s no such thing as losing. Either you win the game and pass out in the middle of our presentation tomorrow, pushing it to Monday as you get dragged to the nurse’s office, or you get to sleep.”

    Dex sighs. “You do raise a fair point. I can’t get on a first name basis. Keefe and Sophie may have been the first to accomplish that particular honor, but that doesn’t mean they’re ever going to let me live it down.” 

    That wasn’t the point I was trying to make, but whatever works, my darling. 

    Fitz reaches over and gently squeezes Dex’s hand. “We’ll figure it out. I’m not failing a project over this. That’s not something I’m physically capable of doing. Besides, if something does happen, we’ve still got Benedict’s solution and a hot water bath. It’s not as fun or as memorable, but it’s functional.” 

    “Ah, yes, copper sulfate soup. I’m sure it’s very tasty.”

    “The forbidden gatorade. The fact that it’s that shade of delicious, delicious blue is so unfair on so many levels.”

    “I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one.”    

    “Well, it’s not my fault it looks so drinkable. Also, you’re a very bad influence on me.” Fitz smiles. 

    “I know. But I’m just picking up what Keefe started. Can you feel the corruption sinking into your bone marrow?” 

    “Yeah.” Fitz says bluntly. 

    They unceremoniously get out of the car, and Fitz leads the both of them towards the kitchen. They’re trying to be productive today and making another batch of lemon squares before sitting down and getting distracted seems like something productive. 

    He checked after Biana’s interview yesterday to see if Dex’s house had all of the ingredients, and for some unknown reason, they did. Why do they own so much glucose? Normal table sugar is sucrose. That would be reasonable. Glucose is not. 

    It might be a little out of date, but at this point, Fitz’s just hoping to not have to do the conversion from baking powder to baking soda. After making the crust and throwing it in the oven, he discovers that his hopes aren’t fulfilled. 

    How am I supposed to measure a sixth of a teaspoon of baking soda?

    And also, why does this always happen? They should really standardize this. Make everyones’ lives easier. 

    Just to be even more difficult, it decides to spill onto his shirt, right next to the flour and powdered sugar from the crust. Flour has no reason to get everywhere and yet it does. 

    Dex leans over the kitchen island where he’s seated, looking up from his phone for the first time in several minutes. “Am I going to be allowed to quality control these?”

    “No. We barely have enough for our victims—sorry, classmates—as it is.”

    Dex snorts. “Have you poisoned these again? Fitz, we talked about this. This is a crime against humanity.”

     Fitz finishes whisking the second lemon filling—the sucrose one—and the oven timer goes off a few moments later. He checks the crusts, and they’re both beautifully golden brown. 

    I need to bake here more often. This oven is better than the one at home.  

    “Says the guy voted most likely to become a dictator by our chem class.”

    “That simply means I know what I’m talking about.”

    “That’s funny, because I’ve never known what I was talking about in my life.”

    “That seems like a you problem.” 

        Fitz pours the filling into their proper crusts—differentiable by one of glucose’s corners being less than all the way to the corner—before sliding both pans back into the oven. 

    That can be Dex’s piece. I just can’t tell him that yet. 

    “Do you have any other homework tonight?” Fitz asks, leaning across the island counter to match Dex. 

    “That really is your only mode of conversation, isn’t it?” 

    “Yeah. It’s sad, isn’t it? I’d ask if you had any new personal projects going, but I think I know the answer to that.” 

    “You do?”

    “You’re fully occupied solving my life’s problems. You don’t have enough time to start something else.”

    “It’s lines of reasoning like that one that make me want to start a new project just to prove you wrong, and I hope you know that.”

    “And now I can ask you very nicely to channel that feeling and work on the presentation we have tomorrow. Unless you forgot that it was tomorrow. Did I mention it was tomorrow? We have a presentation tomorrow and we are extraordinarily unprepared.” 

    Dex tilts his head, considering. “No, I don’t think you did,” he replies flatly. 

    “So do you think it might be a good idea to get the slides open so that progress can be made towards readiness?”

    “No,” Dex replies, getting his laptop out of his backpack and hitting the keyboard approximately fifty percent more than necessary to make it turn on and start functioning. 

     Its fan immediately starts running, producing a high-pitched whine on top of the normal laptop fan sounds. 

    Dex smacks the side of the keyboard, likely an effort to make it stop doing that. It doesn’t. “Curse you, thermodynamics,” he whispers, along with a few stronger suggestions for what friction can do to itself. 

    “I’m going to be hunted for sport if Bex hears this. I’m going to my room. If you need me, you can literally just text me. You’ve done it before. I believe in you.” 

    I don’t know which one of your siblings that is, but I’m not letting you go back in that room while that cork board is still there. I need a focused Dex and that would not be a focused Dex. 

    “Or we could head down into the basement,” Fitz suggests. “I can probably still hear the oven going off from down there and being in the room where we interrogated our suspects seems kind of fitting.” 

    “That’s fair,” Dex says, picking up his still-open backpack and laptop as he begins to descend the stairs. 

    Fitz tries to brush away some of the suspicious white powder dusting the front of his shirt. It doesn’t do a whole lot, but maybe now it won’t be as ground into the carpet lining the stairs and lower level. 

    Fitz finds Dex arguing with one of his siblings—it might be Lex, but it’s difficult to tell. All of their names rhyme because their dad thinks he’s hilarious, only making Fitz’s life more difficult. 

    “Why are you turning down the opportunity to go trash my entire room?” Dex demands. 

    “Why are you so willing to give me that opportunity? Last time you were this agreeable, you planted stink bombs under your bed!”

    “To be fair, that was objectively hilarious.”

    Maybe-Lex smiles. “It was fun banishing Rex outside for a week.”

    I remember that happening. 

    “Just find somewhere else to go live for the next couple of hours. If that ends up being outside, that’s your problem. I have the Fitz and since he’s a guest in our house, that means he, and by extension I, have superiority.” 

    The corners of Fitz’s mouth widen into a smile and his heart flutters slightly. 

    Hearing him use that argument never gets old. It’s kind of pathetic. I’m kind of pathetic. 

    More-than-likely-Lex huffs and stomps up the stairs. The carpet muffles most of his anger. 

    “Sorry about him,” Dex says as he sits at the table, friction causing the laptop to shriek as he slides it back because he put it down too close to the edge. Fitz’s ears want to bleed. At least the journey got the fan to stop screeching for whatever reason. 

    Fitz takes a seat across from him, the chair still ominously warm from probably-Lex sitting there. And then, from the all-encompassing silence left behind, comes the sound of Pop Rocks emanating from the table itself. 

    Fitz looks up to find Dex moving his laptop to the far end of the table so he can get a closer look. 

    “What on Earth was Lex doing here?” Dex whispers to himself. 

    Ah, so I was right on which one it was.  

    That’s not the takeaway you were supposed to make there.

    Fitz shrugs. 

    Dex pokes the table. “It’s sticky.”

    “Now I definitely don’t want to know.” 

    “Not like that. Get your mind out of—” An idea blossoms in Dex’s mind, and without any warning or elaboration, he runs upstairs. 

    A cabinet slams closed. “Where’d you put the baking soda?”

    “To the right of the pantry, top cabinet, bottom shelf, right side.”

    “Thank you!” he yells, running back down the stairs and to the table, becoming a living example of the doppler effect. He pours far more than the recommended serving size of baking soda onto the table, and the popping sound intensifies. 

    Dex swears triumphantly. 

    “Care to elaborate?”

    “No,” he says, looking at Fitz, dimples prominent and so close Fitz could probably count his freckles. “Bicarbonates react with acids to form a salt, water, and carbon dioxide.” 

    “I know. Why is that relevant right now?” 

    “I just dumped an entire mountain of baking soda on the table and it started reacting with whatever Lex left there. That means whatever he left there was more than likely an acid. And, no, it’s not that kind of acid. Probably. It wouldn’t leave gook on the table like that.”

    Fitz’s eyes narrow but he doesn’t ask why Dex would have this information. The answer is probably a Wikipedia rabbit hole. “Do you know what it could be then?” 

    “This isn’t a very helpful answer, but, no, I don’t, and I don’t know what other tests I can do to narrow it down from literally everything else.” 

    “Don’t you literally carry around a gallon of Benedict’s solution? I fully believe there’s something in your backpack that can solve this conundrum.” 

    “Not quite that much, but, yeah, I’ve got some. For reasons we do not discuss.” 

    It’s because it’s the forbidden gatorade flavor.

    “I’ve got the oven going if you need hot water. If that would help. I don’t know. There’s a reason I just let you do the chem labs without getting myself between you and a bottle of one-molar HCl.” 

    “That’s a valid solution to the problem. I wouldn’t get between me and my son HCl either. Benedict’s might be helpful. Then we’ll be able to figure out where to go from there.”

    “The presence of reducing sugars,” Fitz corrects, and he feels way too proud of himself at knowing that fact. Even when Dex already knows it. 

    Dex grumbles, “Close enough.”

    He runs back upstairs to get a spoon and a small glass, filled with a tiny splash of water. He scrapes off a corner, and it forms an off-white peak on the edge of the spoon before it gets dunked into the water and swirled into solution. A few added drops of Benedict's solution makes it a pale blue color before Dex runs it back upstairs once again to throw it in the oven. 

    “That glass better not shatter into my lemon squares!” Fitz yells, but Dex probably isn’t listening. One must respect the science, and the lemon squares get to deal with the collateral damage. 

    Yeah, the crunchy topping is on purpose. It’s isomalt. Totally. 

    Dex spends a very long thirty seconds pacing, the floorboards creaking with every step he takes. 

    He was probably counting in his head, because when he decides the timer is up, he’s running, once again, to the oven to get the sample out. 

    “It’s orange!” Dex yells, echoing through the house. That must be a wild sentence out of context. 

    “That’s a good thing, right?” 

    “That means you’re gonna move on to the next phase of inquiry: the smell test.”

    “Why aren’t you doing it?”

    “Do you really think I just let you sniff the chemicals in the lab for fun? I don’t smell things very well. I’ve got a library of, like, five things, and even then it has to have a lot of smell for me to even be slightly aware of its presence. We’ve been over this.”

    There’s so many reasons why this could very easily be a very bad idea, some of them involving ammonium hydroxide or chemicals like it, but Fitz is just going to trust Dex’s omnipotent chemistry knowledge. He’s done it all year, and he’s not failing AP chem yet. 

    So long as Fitz is well enough to take the final so that he can definitely not cheat off Dex on it, it should be fine. 

    Dex comes rushing back down the stairs, nearly spilling the forbidden now-orange juice on the carpet.

    He finds Fitz trying to waft the airborne aromatic molecules into the air, his nose slowly inching closer and closer to it. 

    Something registers, and he has to have smelled it wrong. His brows knit together. “There’s citrus in there.”

    The pieces click together—the smell, the stickiness, the presence of reducing sugars in a place where they typically wouldn’t be, and the acid. Citric acid, malic acid, ascorbic acid. Maybe some other acids. 

    “...These are the lemon squares.” Fitz takes a deep breath, before quietly asking, a dark undercurrent running through his words, “Have you been the one taking them?” 

    After all this, all the work Dex has claimed to have done to try to find them, if he knew where they were the entire time that’s—that’s absolutely unthinkable. And if he wasn’t the one to squirrel them away, having them end up in his house of all places is terrifyingly coincidental. 

    Dex puts his hands up defensively, his voice rising in pitch and threatening to crack. “Let’s think about this logically. I would’ve known exactly why you made those. Do you really think I would take them? Do you really think that little of me?”

    Fitz stands. “Then how else would your siblings get their grubby little hands on them?”

    “Why do you expect me to know? Why don’t you go ask them if you’re so concerned with where my priorities lie?” 

    “Keefe,” comes a yelled voice from the great beyond of the upstairs. So quick to throw their source under the bus, but that also means Fitz’s best friend lied to both Fitz and Dex without so much as a moment of hesitation. 

    …I’m not even disappointed, Fitz thinks, and that realization is…kind of depressing. 

    But that also means Dex’s siblings have another source if they’re willing to give that one up so easily. 

    Just because this one case might have been solved doesn’t mean the possibility is removed from the future. They’re going to find a way. At least finals season is upon us, so the baked goods will be plentiful because the stress is plentiful. 

    “I’m sorry,” Fitz whispers, staring at the baking soda hills to deliberately avoid eye contact with Dex and his perfect periwinkle eyes. 

    Dex sits across from him. “I can’t apologize for their actions, but I can apologize for not thinking of them during my whole process. I just figured I would know if they were stashing it in my own house, you know?”

    “Yeah, that’s fair. I don’t trust Biana enough to use that same logic with her, but I get where it would be coming from if I did.” 

    Dex smiles softly. “How mad would you be if I were to join you on that particular endeavor?” 

    Fitz smiles. “So mad.” 

    Dex takes Fitz’s hand, smearing the baking soda across the table. 

    And then the oven timer goes off. The lemon squares are done, and all that’s left is for them to cool off and be powdered sugar. Then they’re ready to go for tomorrow’s presentation. It’s not the most prepared he’s ever been, but at this point, it’s good enough. Monosaccharides and disaccharides aren’t that bad to just completely ramble about with no notes. Dex knows too much for his own good anyway. Between that, some unhelpful clip art, and a four in the morning rabbit hole, everything will be fine. 

    Besides, it’s not like any of the other students will care. They get snacks. 

    “You, uh, might want to go check that before they get taken,” Dex suggests. 

    “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” Fitz mumbles, beginning the long journey of trudging up the stairs. 

[finniestoncrane]

OH I DIDN’T KNOW WE COULD DO MORE THAN ONE. Okay so I will also send in a blind date request :)

I’m not sure how much info you need so I’ll give you the basics

- I consider myself to be pretty quiet? Not intentionally I just happen to stumble over words a lot so :P I’m pretty detail oriented and everything in my house is either super ultra organized or an absolute mess, no in between. When it comes to dating I really just like someone who I can watch movies with (and have like a pretty interesting conversation about what we’re watching) AND someone who will give me good art feedback. More basic info is that I’m a tattoo artist, about to turn 22, and I have a relatively thick southern accent!

This was fun, I hope I gave you the info you needed :D

💜 blind date 💜 the kitchen is now closed! 🔞minors dni🔞 • masterlist • kofi link • tag: finnie1500 (to follow or to block) a/n: is it a blind date when you know who i'm putting you with??? lmao💚

“Welcome to the Vill-Inn! You're lucky to get a double date, or at least... a date with two handsome guys!”

There's only one man at the table you're pointed towards, but as you take a better look on your way over, you realise you know exactly who you're going to be seated across from.

"Harvey Dent. Although, I guess the work I've done as Two Face has superceded the fame I got as Harvey, doing what good I could do."

He seemed slightly bitter, but he warms up quickly. Especially when he realises he's spent the first fifteen minutes of your date talking about himself and his past as the district attorney, and then a further fifteen minutes arguing with himself about how much more important his work in the criminal underworld is, without you interrupting once.

"You're quiet. Or we're loud. It's one of the two, but it works, right?"

When you finally do say something, he's completely enamoured with your accent. Harvey finds it charming, he makes a joke about how Southern lawyers always seem more wholesome and trustworthy. Harv chimes in with a comment about how it makes it sound like you might be up for getting rowdy and dirty. You roll your eyes with a smile.

He asks where you live, and mentions the apartments there are nice. His interest is piqued when you mention that yours is a bit nice, a bit messy. That you can be cluttered an organised. That your space reflects both sides of your personality. With a wink and a chuckle he tells you he understands that all too well.

At one point, he excuses himself to take an important call, and when he returns to find that you've been doodling on the napkin he requests to take a closer look.

"Is that... is that me? Is that us? Wow. It's amazing. Always nice to see how you look through the eyes of someone else, and I like the way I look through yours."

Two Face is... less impressed with how you've drawn his side of Harvey. He offers some 'constructive criticism' as he puts it, and though Harvey apologises, you tell him not to. It's nice to hear feedback, positive and... 'constructive'.

At the end of the meal, Harvey refuses to let you pay. He tips the waitstaff with a crisp $100 bill and stands up, pulling your chair out for you. Ever the gentleman. Although, it's nice to have his other half leaning in close to smell your neck, a bit more forward than Harvey, but a nice contrast.

Outside, you say goodbye and move to grab a taxi, but Harvey waves the one who stops off. You're confused, but intrigued.

"Dinner and a movie, huh doll? There are two of us, you owe us a date each."

[akajustmerry]

would LOVE to hear more about your tabitha and naomi headcanons!!!

and yee shall receive !! idk these are probably silly n basic because we know SO LITTLE about both, but whatever it's free real estate!!

considering we meet tabs at the underground rich ppl party, its a fair bet she's probably a rich nepo baby like everyone else in succ, but she seems pretty chill about it. she's just vibing, wooing her hot rich peers.

tabs has the laidback vibe of old fuck off money. older than the roys or pierces, i think. probably in property or land which is why she has no interest in the Roy trust or the pierce's or politics. we know that makes her more attractive to rome but probably to naomi too. here's someone so rich they really are only in it for you!

i imagine naomi and tabs crossed paths and hooked up occasionally in the past, but grew closer during/after naomi's accident. naomi told ken in the show she was struggling cos of press, trust, trauma, addiction, etc, during that time. from what we see of tabs with roman, she is a pretty patient and understanding person, at least to a point (everyone has limits). i imagine after her accident, naomi would have appreciated having someone like tabs in her life who isn't after anything and is relatively non-judgemental and chill.

don't really count this as a headcanon cos it's just true but tabs and Naomi were hooking up that whole weekend at the Pierce estate. I know it's framed as the "Ken and Roman attempt to get Some" weekend but we know neither of them got any lmao but u know who did?? my gorls <3

for what it's worth I do think naomi and Tabs both genuinely liked kendall and roman. i don't think there were any ulterior motives on their parts. as we saw, neither naomi or tabs had any power or insight to sway the deal in any way. equally, tabs and naomi really gain nothing power-wise from dating these guys so u gotta assume it was genuine on some level. like they really just saw these human shaped messes of men and went "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii <3" kinda very bisexual of them both really. I felt v represented by it I must say

i dooooo think in the immediate aftermath of naomi and Kendall break up, the next time she hooked up with tabs, they defs had a little "what IS wrong with them?" convo where they probs just showed each other roman and Kendall's lame texts, had a laugh, and then washed their hands of the roy boys

when it's announced tom is ceo of waystar, naomi calls tabs like, "isn't that literally the guy who swallowed his own load because you told him to 😂" and she's like yeah turns out he never stopped and idk they probably start dating seriously again after that.

after naomi gets her share of the money from the sale to the Waystar I like to think she uses it to start some overpriced rehab centres or something. eventually, her and tabs get engaged. nan pierce never acknowledges the relationship and passively refers to tabitha as a friend of the family, even at their wedding because she honestly seems like that kind of bitch.

honestly they probably just continue living cool beautiful bisexual women lives. maybe naomi has some rough patches here and there cos you know addiction isn't easy, but tabs is there for her. they just become this quietly classy wealthy lesbian couple who throw great parties with other philanthropic influential gays and closeted wealthy folks. I'm imagining something like what the kindness blind items say sandra bullock does with all the Hollywood lesbians gays.

shiv invites them both to her baby shower because they're honestly the closest thing she has to friends who are women after everything. they don't go though cos they assume shiv is just inviting them to mess with the boys. they send a very precocious expensive gift though like literal gold and silver baby cutlery or something

tabitha becomes like an insanely successful ghostwriter or something. idk why I just have the impression she's kinda been a wallflower in all these insane wealth spaces and eventually tells all those stories somehow

I feel like if I don't stop I'll just be writing fanfic so I'll stop but idc if it's just projection I jus love that there's 2 beautiful aloof bisexual women in this show and the only thing we really know about them for certain is that they were both way too good for the Roys <3

[soulfullofold]

continuing from previous post but uuuuuuuu not sure if this is remotely interesting to people but i'm taking a ceramics class rn and it's consumed my life completely

i'm out of university so i am auditing it. which has its own unique challenges of working full time + missing work for class + having to put in so many extra & odd hours in the studio to get assignments done. it's really nice to be in an academic setting again. I never actually took an art class in college...well...I took a 300lvl Art History class and tecchhhnically an ART class but focused on motion picture / film so not a proper studio art class with critique and studio hours. it's a nice new experience is my point. I was signed up for wheel throwing but they had to split the class into two sections so I got put in hand building instead (so that the actual students could take wheel LOL). it's fine; i really don't mind hand building. but we're starting from scratch scratch and i'm like. I just want to make weird sculptures not tiles but i understand and respect the progression of the class.

i'm pretty proud of what i'm making (even with the railroady assignments) and i really like our professor. she's really good about involving students in more complex things if they ask, and i love to ask. like please teach me how to make your own glaze and how to load / unload the kiln...

today i was sitting at my work desk just daydreaming about how to continue doing this after this class. i know ceramics is expensive as hell but it's also like. not That bad all things considered. like clay isn't too too bad, and you can recycle a lot of it from your tools and messed up projects. even if you have like. 1-2 glazes that you return to over and over again, it helps establish your identity as an artist so there's no need to have like a bajillion different options necessarily, as nice as it would be. even a wheel isn't required since you can hand build everything. a slab roller would be nice and so would a K I L N but you know how it is. studio membership is pretty expensive but at least i could have access to these things if needed. anyways i went on kilnshare and the nearest kiln to me is ~2 hours away. but i stalked the lady who ran the studio and learned all about her LOL (she shares prolifically on FB). And it's just....yeah i dunno. it would be cool to keep it up if I could.

But also I know I have a tendency to throw my entire self into whatever I do, no matter how mundane it is. So I'm like. Okay do we REALLY need to deep dive into all of this ceramics stuff and try and source a kiln and clay and build a studio (whaaaat)? I've literally been doing this for 3 or 4 weeks. What Gives. Cool The Jets. I did this with screen printing and block printing and embroidery to a lesser extent and it's just...I'm not in a place to afford RENT why am I like 👀 oh let's see if anyone is selling their used $5k kiln haa haa. Don't worry. I will definitely have a place for it and be able to literally power it with enough electricity.

I really enjoy sculpting and I think the ability to make Functional art is very very cool. And to produce it relatively easier (compared to a painting which is...a huge huge time sink for not a lot of replicable effort imo). I'm also happier experimenting with sculpture than I am with paint, I dunno. It's a different brain space to me.

The clay dust must be congealing in my brain. Clown Brain is a very accurate title; it's like clown lung but for my art-related decision making. I guess I'm just in the honeymoon stage with ceramics. I really am enjoying it very much, even if I do sometimes have to spend 14 hours straight in the studio to get projects done or come in multiple times per day or whatever. And it's literally just the most simple hand building projects that I just like to make crazy complicated for fun.

Yesterday and today I made 100 pinch pots :) Mugs are SOON since we learn handles tomorrow. mother of god it's all real. once my tiles are through the glaze firing, i will post them. also i found out someone's project blew up and took mine out with it in the bisque. i spent like 40 hrs on that thang. Great. but i'm trying to stay positive.

AND . sorry this is so rambly i'm just on little sleep and many thoughtless hours hunched over a banding wheel. and it has been nice, i think, to just make art i want to make again. (holds my hands out like spongebob about to be squished) I MEAN like . non arpg personal art. just like. yeah i want to draw a hill with a distant figure on it. no it's not an oc and no i don't have to score it for points and no i don't have to show or explain it to literally anyone. like i'm enjoying experimenting with subject matter that i like outside of twwm / esk after my fallout from exiting staff. also that is a whole other can of worms i am still processing so if you know me from that space, i am very sorry for the sudden change and for the little to no explanation for the sake of being professional but you can dm me and we can talk about it if you're curious. i don't hold any ill will for the game and i'm so happy that people are still enjoying it and their characters outside of me but man i have had experiences and many many thoughts.

okay that snuck in outta nowhere YAY sculpting YAY someone stop me from trying to randomly derail my life and create a pottery studio in the backyard i don't own

[menciemeer]

okay I was scrolling through your blog (a normal amount? too much? I'm sorry if this is weird I don't know if dragging up old posts in acceptable on this site!) and saw one where you said you use vim and I am curious about that! I tried it a while ago and was like... okay I can see how this might be faster once you get REALLY good at it, and it would definitely be useful to have the ability to export easily in multiple formats because I have realized suddenly that it seems like AO3's downloads frequently mess up the formatting? (Or maybe just fail to fix messed-up formatting that the browser smooths over?) Sooo yeah do you use it to write or just for code or what? is it worth it to become a Vim Person?

HELLO this is actually one of the things I most love to talk about because vim is my Favorite Piece Of Software. I love it well beyond a normal amount. That being said it's ummm not for everyone and not for everything. I'm putting this under a readmore because this is too long to inflict on poor unsuspecting souls who are just here for Hannibal content.

Section 1: The ways in which vim is useful

Vim is most useful when the stuff you're working on is more structured and what you're doing is more rote. So something like code (which, yes, is what I learned it for) is very formally structured, and something like html is sort of vague scaffolding around text, which is pretty much a blobby mush where really nothing means very much of anything. (The number of times I ct. only to get pulled up short by an honorific is very high, and I am grouchy.)

Part of the thing that makes structure good is that vim is more useful (relative to a traditional editor) when you can precisely define the action you want to take. Getting better at vim is really about improving your vim-vocabulary so that you are more able to make precise statements about what it is that you want vim to do. I use a "normal" markdown editor for drafting, because what I want to do is "write the next bit" which is not a very vim-interesting action and obviously not very precise. I do use vim for editing, though, because often the things I want to do are, like: "replace this word with some other word" (cw), "delete the end of this paragraph" (D), "rewrite this bit of dialogue" (ci"), "remove this whole paragraph" (dd)--you get the idea.

Also, the place that vim goes from "ok, this seems pretty good" to "this is invaluable" is really when you want to repeat stuff. Something like "the compiler is giving me 25+ pedantic warnings because the file I'm working on was written prior to the introduction of the C++ override keyword" or "I'm rewriting an API so I need to fix the function name in these dozen callsites, remove the first argument, and swap the places of args 2 & 4." These examples are programming-related because I haven't found a use for macros in writing yet. (I live in hope.)

Section 2: If you want to learn vim, here are my tips

I don't really want to tutorialize because there are a lot of those out there already. I do wish to dispense some general philosophical wisdom. (!!!!!)

First of all, keep in mind that the bar is very low. Normal editors are not really that productive. Fancy WYSIWYG editors (which I hate, equal and opposite to my vim-love) are negatively productive for me, because I will get distracted and/or distressed by all the available buttons, formatting options, and whether I accidentally italicized any of the spaces. You don't need to be maximally productive in vim to make use of it, and you don't really need to know that much to match the capabilities of a normal plaintext editor.

If you want to learn vim, I would pick a small set of keys to understand first. Like, i and I (capital-i) to enter insert mode, <Esc> to get back to normal mode. bwhjkl as basic movement options. u and <ctrl>r for undo/redo. If you must, y and d for copy/cut, p and P for paste. (System clipboard--I'm sorry--accessed with "+, so "+y or "+p for example.) That is probably well over enough.

After you get a handle on the basics, the fun part of vim is figuring out where your inefficiencies are and learning how to improve them. Realizing that you're pushing more buttons than you want to be pushing, figuring out how to describe the thing you want to do in a google search, and then finding out that vim has a key to do that. gg G } { c % $ ^ zz . ; and so on, and so on. The world is your oyster &c. (The sheer delight I felt when, more than half a decade after starting to use vim, I found the aforementioned ci"? Indescribable.)

Section 3: In which I address the actual ask

Ok ok okokok sorry. I've written all of this to tell you that I don't actually know what the weird formatting stuff you're talking about is. I read pretty much all long fic on an ereader after downloading as epub and I haven't noticed anything bizarre with the formatting? When I do want to go in and poke around in an epub I usually just use calibre's built-in editor.

In terms of exporting your own plaintext/markdown writing to multiple formats, I use pandoc. I've been very happy with it, but it isn't anything that couldn't be done by hand (and also doesn't require you to start from Vim In Particular). I would love to talk about pandoc but aaaggggh this is already way too long (sorry).

I do have strong feelings about writing in plaintext (glorious! small! no weird formatting distractions! what you see is what's in the actual file you're really writing it there's no secrets) versus WYSIWYG (too many buttons! what do they do! am i using it wrong if i don't push them! why is the filesize so big! what are your secrets, renamed .zip file!) but vim isn't the only choice if you want to go the plaintext route only the best one no, look, I spent the whole of section 1 talking about this, I am not allowed to go backwards. Honestly, though, if you're interested I'd say go for it! Vim is fun to learn and very clever! Knowing vim feels a little like knowing a weird, hyper-specialized little language.

[bee-the-whovian]

My thoughts on "The Artful Dodger"

1st, I haven't read Oliver Twist or know anything about the story except the very surface level.

2nd, this isn't going to be HEAVY spoilers, but also not spoiler free so if you are wary... ok

So I just finished it, 3 sittings or so to get through 8 episodes. I was *iffy* after the first but each subsequent episode I did get more invested.

The Good:

The vibes are good. Victorian Era Australia, very nice. Medical drama, Crime/heist show, bit of a romance

Thomas Brody-Sangster is a gem (he's the reason I watched it in the first place, sue me. I have a thing, ok?)

Jack and Fagin's relationship is very interesting

As is Belle and Jack's dynamic

They are actually very cute on several occasions

I thought the story issue from the first episode was going to be the entire plot and it wasn't and the show was so much better for it. TIME PASSED and that's so important for character growth

All of the characters were good or pretty good in their developedness, even/especially the side characters. I understood nearly everyone and they feel like people and I understand their motivations, which is quite the task for a show with this size supporting cast

Good through line story without feeling like "this is a very long movie." Each episode was its own story, but they did all tie together well

The foreshadowing about Belle was well done

The... something

The gore is a lot so if you have gore issues, definitely not the show for you. It didn't bother me since it was plot-relevant. Victorian surgery, yes it's a bloody mess. It wasn't slasher movie gory. But if you're messed up by any blood, period. Yeah not it fam.

I don't know much about Oliver Twist, as I said, but I do know he was the protagonist of the original book. I intend to go and read it. In any case, pretty sure this was a disservice to him. In a few ways. You can have a story that focuses on a former antagonist, and show their redemption without making their former adversary an idiot or worse.

The costuming was kinda strange. The gentleman looked really nice most of the time, but varied, (Jack was a whole vibe, and I liked Fagin too with his fun patterns) but the lasses were weirdly distracting. I liked some of Belle's dresses but a good few looked like costumes. They looked fake. Outrageous colors and patterns. The colors, ok, maybe, but a lot of the patterns were just, lol, no. Fanny... her costumes seemed relatively era-appropriate, from what I know, but them being so gaudy on purpose... thanks, I hate it. Insert the same for that one suitor and for Oliver Twist. That collar the mother always had... oof.

Its streaming on Hulu only so if you don't have Hulu, you're up a creek. I've got access through a friend, with ads, and the ads along with my initial misgivings made me almost give it up.

The music is fine. Not bad. But nothing stand out. I read something about Australian rock and... cool. The music sure is there. I'm willing to give it another go, but good music makes a name and I just didn't feel anything here

A couple episodes end in the middle or right before something crazy happens, and the next episode just cuts to later and... ok I might have liked to see that, at least a bit (notable, Red in the cemetery)

The Bad

As most television has now-a-days, quite a bit of language and innuendo. Sometimes it's tolerable, sometimes it's completely uncalled for.

2 scenes I had to skip through, one very bad (episode 3? I think)... at least the main characters waited until... no, no it was just bad, and took away some of the importance of their conversation in the previous episode. The "not just the last in a long line" thing. It felt pandering and disrespectful to Belle as a character, and to the audience... well, me. I know the creators know there is an audience for that, which is a problem in itself.

The feminism was... weird. Fanny and Belle are talking and it's just... they are not from the same century. Their dialogue is a Frankenstein of two wildly different scripts. There is nothing wrong with women who fight for things but the way they show us in ep 1 that "look Belle is a strong woman" felt so gross and hamfisted. The misogyny was pretty heavy-handed too, not that I believe it's far from realistic for that time (people are the worst and have been for a long time) it was also very weirdly implemented.

Everyone was cheating. All over the place. Not one health relationship in the whole show. Just... rough. Also, very few if any of the characters are good or nice people. They have their moments (Belle is actually not terrible past the 1st episode and Jack is pretty inconsistent, which when it comes to wibbly morality is actually a blessing rather than a curse) but in general, yeah not really any straight up role models. Is that too much to ask? Character don't need to be perfect, in fact they shouldn't. They'd be rubbish characters. But having clear cut flaws and labeling them as flaws is important. I think the best arc in the show is actually Fagin (not to say Belle's and Jack's are useless, they're just not GREAT. I actually also liked what seemed to be a bit of an arc for the governor... it had a bit of hope.)

The depiction of religion was upsetting, though not surprising par for the course. It was catholicism so... ok, understandable, but the frequency of faith being the butt of a joke irked me

So, overall....

There is enough ill in here that if I knew what I was getting into, personally, I might have skipped it. I know my triggers and issues and this isn't great. But, since I did watch it, I will acknowledge it's good parts. I am glad I watched it. I'll probably watch a 2nd season if it comes out since I'm already invested in these characters. But at the same time, I wouldn't recommend it to friends without heavy warnings. I have plenty of friends who would deal fine with this content, but personally... it's a very caveoted recommendation, if that. More of a, I watched it and it won't kill ya or anything. There is stuff to enjoy. But bad stuff up to your ankles to wade through, too.

Thanks for reading all that if ya did. Cheers.

[dragontamer05]

Thoughts / sort of rating of the Yugioh dubs;

DM- Look for all it's flaws, weird edits and censorship over all it's fairly decent. Most of the voices are good, generally speaking the tone and story are still relatively in tact. No episodes were skipped or out right cut, although changes were made.

Are somethings handles better/ make more sense in the orignal form for sure but during a time among a sea of very mixed dubs (and even compared to some of the other series 4kids/4K tried) It's honestly pretty good.

GX- Look while I admit to having some nostalgia for it's just.. not great. The joke meter got turned farther up and while some areas they did manage to keep the tone/ emotion- particularly there's a few good lines of Jaden/Judai from the dub when desperately going after Jesse/Johan

BUt oh boy is it sure just a product of its time with just some of the dialogue feeling very peak 2000s energy. And also a lot more questionable voice choices for characters (some is decent tho)

I'll sooner recommend someone watch the sub first if genuinely interested in the series. But if you've got a bit of nostalgia or just want to have some fun riffing on something it can be a fun watch.

Other majour problem is due to the desire of wanting to get on the next series fast as possible it never got completed and never got s4

5Ds- A mess.

Once again for a lot of the main cast voices are okay but definitely getting worse/more extreme in their attempts to try and hide death / censor or alter things. Whole chunks of it simply was not dubbed at all which I'm sure made pacing weird.

Never actually watched it all but oof. Even if everything else was great just the fact that there is a good chunk that got cut / not translated makes it hard to recommend watching it.

Might be a fun curious watch I guess but probably the dub series with some of the most issues (maybe)

Zexal- Well at least it got completed, like DM did so that's something. Personally kind eh about some of the voices. Astral's is great love it, Yuma is okay but I can understand how it may get annoying for some.

Another one with pretty bad censorship problems that I think even some who's only watched dub could probably figure seem off.

Probably could have ended up a lot worse truth be told but even looking at how DM was handled probably could have been better in places.

Still suggest subs over dub generally but if knowing of the changes doesn't bother you / okay with the voices I mean there's worse out there.

Arc V-

Decent. A clear sign of things to change and improvements. Complete series, still some expected censorship and changes here and there but otherwise fairly faithful to the source. No egregious changes even any allusions to death if altered it's in away that still makes sense / doesn't totally negate it just perhaps stated less overtly or something.

Serious moments often able to be kept serious (compared to some from what I recall just the usage of jokes didn't feel as egregious / bad)

Voicing pretty good over all with only a few characters that make me question the voice direction.

Overall, for sure worth watching it's fun (also there are just some great very quotable lines that got me laughing)

Likely helped in part by being owned by Konami thus I'd assume giving them some control/input on how things go

Vrains-

So good. Voice acting great and just everything was handled well I think.

Once again Complete series, some of the typical changes that are just usual stuff at this point but for a series that can get as dark and serious as it does they handled it pretty well. I think honestly they even have a few lines that just wow.

Like as much as it would be great to have them do a dub where nothing gets changed (say for anything that is typically might happen for any localization- i.e like changing a joke that doesn't work in translation or whatever) I'd say it's pretty darn close and over solid job.

I know some people we kinda eh on that ending/scene in the last episode and I get it, wasn't what was expected or hoped for maybe but I thought it was fine. Far from the worst thing they could have done and it still felt at least fitting/ pretty in character. And if your someone watching only dub I think they still manage to hit and keep the emotion of that scene just doing it in a different way.

Sevens-

As it is, Sevens is a pretty goofy show with big Saturday morning cartoons energy. From the get go it had the makings of what would be a fun dub and they nailed.

Voice choices are so good, continuing on the track of completing series and whatever changes might have been made be it dialogue or what have was nothing that I ever noticed or affected the plot/story in anyway.

Like obviously the script can't/won't be word for word exact but I'm pretty sure more often then not whatever was used or said was pretty close to/equivalent there of whatever was in the original anyway.

It's good, it's fun and silly and I can promise that despite what you may think I'd argue the vast majority of jokes come straight from the Sub itself or at the very least it keeps within the general tone /feeling of something the character would say. Never came across any moment where a joke was used that did feel quite right.

As said as it is Sevens is a pretty silly and fun show even in its original form and the Dub does a great job of keeping the spirit alive and story intact

Sub or dub I strongly recommend watching it anyway. Yes it's animated by a different group- no longer done by Studio Gallop. But honestly it fits and works. I have no idea how much was already planned out before the switch was made or any of the behind the scenes but regardless the art/animation style really fits well the tone of the series - and you can still look at it and go 'that's a yugioh'

Plus after the plot of Vrains ngl kinda nice n fun to have what Sevens brought.

Also look it's time to accept that for as much as it is a series that anyone can enjoy the target demographic IS technically kids / a younger audience (and trying to use this as a means to attract more of that younger audience get them interested)

Go Rush doesn't have a dub yet but I'm hyped and am sure it'll be a blast to.

[100dayproductivity]

72/100.

This morning's cup of coffee. I'm not sure why the daffodils are IN the cup of coffee but ok AI, lol.

Ok, the daffodils were really bugging me so I tried again. It had no problem with "English garden" (left) but really struggled with "tulip & daffodil garden". I don't think it understands the ampersand so I got rid of that. Finally got the image on the right but it really had to "think" about it. Much better than the first try though!

Anyho.

Yesterday's to-do list:

Mow the lawn

Process payments from clients that already paid!

More laundry

Pick up tomato sauce for tonight's supper. (I already had some in the pantry! Woot!)

Empty dishwasher

Clean cat litter

Scrub litter box I left out in the rain to soak

Put away laundry I washed yesterday

Order my kid's school photos

I did it! I actually scratched everything off my list yesterday!! It was mentally exhausting to stay focused and on track, though. This is why I'm beginning to wonder: do I have some form of ADHD? I'm convinced that my brother does (undiagnosed) and honestly would not be surprised if my sister does too (diagnosed bipolar). And my parents... well, my whole family just seem like people with a lot of ideas and interests but difficulty seeing anything through to completion. But also the ability to be hyper-focused on things that really interest them. I think some people thought my parents were "lazy" because our house was always a mess and neither worked a "regular" job but I think my parents were interesting and intelligent and always doing and learning.

Ok, enough about my childhood, here's today's to-do:

Pick up condolence card for friend that has lost a close relative

More laundry (bedsheets)

Pick up sandwich fixings for lunches

Take cat to vet

Clean up leaves in backyard

Vacuum upstairs hallway and stairs

About the leaves in the yard. Yes, I know it's already May, and I haven't cleaned up the yard yet?? HOWEVER. When I raked the lawn the other day, a big fat bumblebee came flying out from under there! Did you know bees hibernate (or get born, or whatever they do, I don't know, I'm not a bee expert) under the old winter pile of leaves? So it's best to hold off on raking in the spring if you want to help bees survive and flourish. And we want bees to survive and flourish. So I'm pretty pleased with myself for not having raked the leaves until two days ago, lol. Just doing my part to save the planet! 👍

I'm pretty sure I'm procrastinating now. I really want to drink more coffee, and then I'll get to it, I promise.

Good luck with today!

[introvertfox]

Some things about me AKA why I think I might be autistic:

Hate clothes with buttons

Had a gibberish language with my siblings that only I spoke when I was younger than 9. I don't remember how old I was then

Go non verbal when overwhelmed

Misread the room and end up saying rude/embarrassing things without understanding it was rude/embarrassing; ie, when I said my parents sleep separately when relatives were visiting and being shown around the house. I did not know, in fact, that was a no no. I was 12-15 then. Had to be pulled aside for that.

Genuinely asked "Is that rude?" after telling Theater(? It was a weird extra English class mom signed us up for) teacher to "Shut up". I don't remember what it was in response to, but it was probably some innocuous comment. Further reflection leads me to believe that a more appropriate response would have been "Please don't say that." Or just saying nothing. Also learnt since then that "Shut up" was rude

I forgot what was said moments before, but it led to grandpa saying "Walk on all fours", and I replied "Like a dog" giggling because dogs are cute and I've heard this saying on the TV. Get told off for being sarcastic. Never felt comfortable talking to grandparents about anything ever again

A more recent example was when a housemate's phone rang with a guy's name and I said as much while passing her phone back to her from the living room. She was with her mom. Another housemate had to escort me out. We're in uni (by now I usually run everything I want to say in my head several time before saying it aloud, but if I get too comfortable it slips my mind)

Inappropriate eye contact; always either too much or too little (usually this). Only started noticing this last year

Empathy issues. "Okay, sorry that happened to you" is something I had to teach/remind myself to say instead of just "Okay". Especially not to say "Why are you telling me?" or "What does that have to do with me?"

My only frames of reference for how to act normally are media/ pieces of fiction I've consumed; I somehow passed through the schooling system until college without getting social cues and norms IRL. Mind you, I went through two different schooling systems; government school in the morning, religious school in the afternoon, alongside tuition for language and math; neither of which had me learn how to interact with people, regardless of how many "group projects" done

Additional things about me that psyche me out of self-diagnosis:

Only ate things separately/methodically (vege, then rice, then meat) because it'd drag out the time I spent in recess, than having to sit alone in class; and I could overhear classmates talking about stuff for longer

I don't like soups or any liquid foods; but will still eat them else it'd be wasteful

Holes hate may just be my tryptophobia. Also despise drains in the sink and shower that's round. Covered or slitted is fine

Non verbal due to social anxiety. And 90%+ introversion. last I did that MBTI test. People battery runs out fast; the exception is if the task at hand is interesting and I'd power through the low battery like I'm in a weird drunk/high state. (I've never imbibed so I'm assuming)

Am doing better in group settings nowadays. Have been emailing and booking rooms for group courseworks okay

I don't stim or fidget or have repetitive behaviour

According to aunts, I was pretty talkative as a kid, so no speech impediments

I don't have a set routine, nor do I care for one

My compulsion to arrange things in a specific way only applies to things I have irrationality decided to be picky about; ie, how I arrange my suitcase and closet. I'm not OCD about every little thing in my spaces. I don't throw tantrums if something I arranged gets messed with

I don't explode in tantrums at all. Or breakdown. I just cry in bed sometimes but that's more to do with being overwhelmed by life in general every few months or so

I'm not entirely touch averse. If anything I'm touch starved, but I'll never initiate hugs unless I think it's an obligation

Probably unrelated, but I have trouble projecting my voice, like I can't not talk with my head voice, so saying stuff out loud is difficult for me. Unless you're my parents, because every time I try to make myself heard, I'm shouting n being disrespectful

[the-firebird69]

Don't you shoot me the weird glances shoot anyway glasses and site classy mess okay psychological classes UMass you seen that staring at me it's not a couple times I didn't find you they didn't go to class behind you don't sit there staring at me what am I supposed to I don't know move out I did I didn't do anything okay then don't do that fine my hair good God. Not accustomed to cut me off I see that you're very hot and sweating tired distracted me to go over this later what you looking at me that way boy okay mama don't call me Mama Said always winter fatty says there's a giant number of fat women on ET and I said I don't care now I feel better that's great you jerk that's something funny I got some sleep apnea or something stupid looking falling asleep right away that was exhausted there's a lot going on and it's interesting into you so I'll go that Thor say it

Hera

She didn't shoot you no glance it was something else and that's what I mean she says well he didn't mean to stuck here and other stuff I do understand what you're saying. They hardly ever look nice and it's a nightmare and screwing around someone else to bother you to take from us and it's annoying. And that was Hera again. And she has a good point now getting to work here and seeing what it is and we're watching people get ready to leave and they're leaving okay they're out of here there's not going to be that many people left and there are big ships offshore and they're coming from up North and they got stuff on them to sleep on and so forth it was really quite a nightmare but BJ for you to know BJ figured it out and he made a ton of bunk beds and the fairly sturdy and he anchored them pretty good it's really they're well built y suggested it's the plywood ones you suggested and they send ships back and it is hell but people make it it's a giant Force and we are doing things that we can. And there are a number of people here who are his relatives and he doesn't recognize them. But there's more going on and it has to do with us and what's happening that was Hera again. They are evacuating in their pain in the ass but they're leaving here finally. And we're moving in foreigners movimg in and Max and it is a huge deal. It's a big day and they're saying finally you got your fat asses out of the way. And they really had to. Right now it's some numbers

-it's like $355,000 octillion evacuated Florida thus far on the East Coast are 75% evacuated on the West Coast they are 35% evacuated. So we're having a good time but no that's not very high but it was nothing for the years all the way up to today. No they were evacuating but really 1% a day for two and a half weeks this is only like 15% of 17%. So really an additional 17% evacuated that's far but we see another 20% getting up in the West Coast and that would make the number well really it's 55% today they evacuate 15% prior to today so if you included that it would be 70% but they did infill so we fall back to 55%. Are the East Coast it was 75% and 5:00 p.m. and now it's up to 85%. And there are a lot of people thinking him but he did only a little bit only a little something most people don't do anything to help each other. The rest of the world is up to about almost 90% and the rest went out now and they need help and they're trying to get car rides and everything and they're moving fast VGA put some to work when they get there.

The numbers will change shortly so we're going to publish

Thor Freya

It's a humane thing to do is to let the creature know that it spouse knows and he says goodbye he died in peace

Hera

Thor and Freya a great teachers and although the animals feel sadness and are afraid lots of them have done bad things that they won't change from because that's how they operate so they don't know about that but it is right thing to do it is compassion for them and it's important being mean to import animals it's not necessary. But I'm going to be okay and they have information on why

Zues

We all felt it because when you told her what was going on not to go there she felt sad and had to go and we know it's a method to use here and sometimes it happens mostly they get ready we want to tell people this is a hard time right now be aware and be safe and protect yourself with whatever you can and stay hidden

Freya

I do see what you're saying she's worried about you. A lot of people thought that until bad and are getting to work now

Thor

Olympus

[escape-rock-bottom]

Journal #22 - Dropping the Mask (Discomfort Challenge Journal)

I heard of this concept a while ago called "masking." While it's mainly associated with the autistic community (autistic masking), it does seem to exist in people with mental illnesses. Take me for example, a guy with a nice little combination of diagnoses that culminates into one big ol' weird mess. The main contributor? My dissociative disorder. 

The disorder came about as a direct result of trauma. While it's a great protective barrier when faced with seriously horrific and terrifying situations, it's pretty useless and annoying when it comes to everyday things. One major thing I noticed an effect on is my social interactions (or lack thereof). You see, the disorder seems to have an automatic trigger when faced with people I am unfamiliar or not too close to: It causes me to clam up, basically. This is a similarly observed response in people with a wide variety of conditions. It's why there's a ton of people out there with mental illnesses - some of which you have met - but barely any show truly overt symptoms. Masking with mental illness, much like with autism, is a protective response.

There's nothing more frustrating than being a relatively social person who's afraid of socializing. It's extremely counterintuitive, and deprives me of my needs. Worst of all, it puts me in a position of fear when I think about attempting to do it. 

It took me a while to fully understand what was the deal. I will admit, it's more complex than a simple "knock it off and grow a pair." It's a long list of factors. After a while of digging deep, I found quickly that one of the more unconscious, automatic responses is one I can actually work through and resolve. So, I set one of my discomfort challenges to get me to learn how to be aware of my reactions and practice my social skills: "Drop the mask" with 10 people. 

The idea was to tackle all the issues I have regarding the dissociative masking:

Understand when I'm doing it

Acknowledge the feelings that are present

Face my fear of rejection and opening up

Practice social skills and get comfortable with it

Reframe my negative thoughts

Sounds like a lot because it is a lot. However, that's skills for ya. Anyways, as I began, I honestly had trouble. I didn't make much progress at the start. It wasn't until the first few attempts that I began noticing something interesting: It just got easier. I noticed it was much easier to open up once I just reminded myself it was okay, and that I shouldn't be so judge-y about others' intentions and perceptions. 

It seems that doing this unlocked something in me and changed the way I think. I can't really say if it was a result of this challenge or if it was a matter of me just proving to myself the world didn't suck THAT much. Regardless, I'm glad I could do so. I have a long way to go honestly, but I can feel I'm taking steps in the right direction.

While it took a while to break through, it was a step-by-step effort. Like many things regarding self improvement, it was a matter of mindset and work. Your mileage may vary. I just know where I lie in the social needs scale and my personal dispositions and shortcomings. Take a moment to answer to yourself:

Am I an introvert, extrovert, or somewhere in between? Do I feel the need to hide myself from fear of judgment or rejection or harm?

Am I intimidated by the thought of approaching someone? How much so? Why is that?

Am I anxious about being approached by people? How much so? Why is that?

What do you fear most about other people's intentions and why? 

If you could change, what ideal type of social disposition would you desire? What fears would you like to let go of?

Build your own challenge using your specific fears and shortcomings! It can be something like "Say hello to 5 strangers today" or "Have a conversation with 5 people" or even something nuts and scary like "Contact or approach people who you would like to talk to." They have to be goals that you find scary, are attainable, and will help you work on improving yourself and your mindset.

[white--moon]

No, I wanted to know what we were calling it, so.” So. Now, he knows. He’s not sure how to describe why he wasn’t expecting it, except, “I’m used to it being a joke.” Not even one told by Shiro usually told by Shiro. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before.” Is that an odd thing to say? “I don’t hate it...” Maybe he just needs to hear it in a different sentence.

He’s regretting not sitting beside Shiro, because then at least, he could get his hands on the troublemaker. Hands running up his thighs sounds like a really good place to start. He huffs and wants to tell Shiro he’s lucky because if he were anyone else, Ichigo might feel the need to do something about it. Only Ichigo did try. He tried hard. And that fact makes him antsy in his seat while he thinks about all the places he wants to get his mouth. “And I hate you.” Just so Shiro knows that hasn’t changed, especially when the bastard is being such a shit, but, “But… I still like you.”

That makes him pause. “No?” Seems like the right answer. He sighs and rolls his eyes, but mostly for show. The food is good and it doesn’t take more prompting to have him digging into it. Shiro didn’t say what they’re doing though, so he’s guessing he has to wait to find out. He gestures to both plates. “So is that a… juvenile prison whatever thing?”

He ditches his empty glass and grabs his new glass, taking a drink while Ichigo sort of fumbles through his thoughts. He gets it. His thoughts are a jumbled mess too. "It was a joke, but not... I was serious about the boyfriend part. I like it, but it could be negotiated, if you decide you do hate it." He shrugs. "I never really had a real boyfriend before either. Dating's new to me." He wouldn't be surprised at all if he's been with more guys than Ichigo has, he's actually pretty certain of it, but nothing was ever serious and only one or two ever seemed to be heading in a serious direction. "Perspective change, I guess. I mostly just, uh. Played around a lot, before." Which sounds a little weird and gross all of a sudden, even if he's pretty sure no one would be surprised. He slouches in his seat a little, but he's already this far, so, "A little late, I guess, but I've been tested. I'm negative for everything, so." He shrugs again, letting his attention drift off to the side.

He stuffs a big bite in his mouth and stares at Ichigo, watching all that frustration while he eats. It's like dinner and entertainment, it's great. Ichigo's always been a lot of fun though. so it's no surprise. He swallows and gives Ichigo a look of amused skepticism. "You hate me but you also like me? Those're really mixed signals." And, unfortunately, completely understandable. Probably deserved, even. He has absolutely no regrets about it. "I think you mostly just like me. What you hate's that you can't intimidate me into gettin' what you want like you can with most people."

That response has so much question in the tone. "That's right, the answer's no, good job. Now eat for real or I'll end up eating your food too." He's not sure if that's really much of a threat for Ichigo, he doesn't seem nearly as interested in food as Shiro is. He looks down at his own food when Ichigo motions to it and then looks back up, snorting. "No. We got three square meals and no one went hungry, that would'a been child abuse. This is a–" Hm. Why is every subject they talk about today awkward? He could make something up, or brush the question off with a generic response. He doesn't think Ichigo would push, but he's already a relatively honest person to begin with and he doesn't quite feel the need to not be honest with Ichigo. "It's a too many drugs and not enough food after I dropped outta high school thing. I still have the metabolism of a tweaker, I'm hungry all the time." He flashes a somewhat embarrassed smirk and shovels more food into his mouth so he can stop talking.