#And then the entire family constantly bullied me for being fucking fat as if I had any singular control over what I was eating

[boeing747]

And then my mom is like yeah. I feel bad I fucked up your brother and now he's like this bc I was a young and stupid mother and beat him. Ok like you didn't beat the shit out of me as a child too though! Somehow I'm expected to be able to cope w that I guess and make her feel better about it when she gets in a mood

[thediktatortot]

I don't know if it's just me but the fact they said they wished Billy was poc or fat, as if these two communities aren't constantly villainized in media to the point where it's an inherently harmful stereotype. Like, you *want* the character you've rallied against for being the most horrible, unforgivable, awful character alive to be part of a community that is already stereotyped viciously? To what purpose? Do you think he wouldn't be those things if he was? You think the Duffer Bros could handle that with nuance?

This constant assumption that Billy fans are nothing more than moronic bigots that only like him cause 'sexy white man' needs to fucking stop. Stop lumping every negative attribute onto the people you disagree with. It's the most transparent strawman argument. All this shit about how Billy would be homophobic, would bully Eddie, would storm the Capitol—there is no basis for it. And they're letting that mindset bleed over into how they view Billy stans, real people. Real actual people who struggle with their own trauma, their own childhood abuse, dealing with racism, homophobia, fatphobia in real life.

I refuse to believe that op did not know what they were getting themselves into, that they aren't aware of all the poc Billy fans. They cannot be in that much of a vacuum. Or they believe poc Billy fans are lying, which is a troubling thought on all its own.

It's not an age thing because I've definitely grown up in my white christian family hearing things that I cannot fathom that they don't understand is horrendous things to say, there's a particular subset of people who seem to think that as long as they spout themselves as a ally or a progressive, that they cannot do anything wrong.

It's as though the fact that they are some type of minority (queer, woman, black, immigrant, etc etc) in some way that gives them the right to say or do whatever they want without repercussion. Or that they feel entitled to saying what they think is right, and then when they get backlash for it, they just claim 'they didn't know' or 'I wasn't meaning it like that'.

And you're right, they do know, especially with doubling down, especially with how they are on a platform that constantly disgusses bigotry and people who make up minorities are constantly on the site and yet? They double down.

It's not about wanting to help, they want to see what they want, they don't want to be questioned for the potential wrong they've committed even if they only realized how fucked up it was after the fact because their entire community runs off being as wholesome and good as possible, discounting the fact that everyone fucks up.

At this point I feel like it's been such an argued topic that there's no way these antis don't understand it, or they just plain refuse too because they are combative or because they still live in an environment that rewards those types of thought processes (white, christian, republican).

[joy-haver]

When I was in school, I was bullied a lot. Like a lot a lot. Part of it was that I had a very precocious puberty, part of it was that I learned to read really late and was in some special Ed classes early on, part of it was that I was fat. All three of those things, and being a ‘boy’, created a perception that I was the most likely person to instigate violence.

I was constantly being beat up by other kids. Sometimes they would gather around me in groups specifically to beat me up. And every single time, the teachers and the principal would say I must have instigated it, because “there’s no way smaller kids would start a fight with a bigger kid!” And then I would go home, and get punished for starting fights that I hadn’t thrown a punch in. And because I was big and strong, my punishment was being forced to do hard physical labor for my family and for other families. It also became normal for me to be pulled out of class to do physical labor at the school, because it was seen as removing a violent element, and, hey big dumb kid = free labor right??? Things got a little better when I learned how to read, but not much. At school, i we beat up and made to do labor. At home, I was beat up and contracted out to do labor.

All the way until 8th grade, I tried to remain perfectly passive in fights. I would put my arm outstretched on a kids head so they couldn’t get close enough to punch me again, or I would curl up into a ball and let them kick me. Eventually I learned that I could pick someone up and hold them upside down and facing away from me and they couldn’t hit me, but that tended to be seen as me hurting them in some way.

I really couldn’t win. Nothing I did was ever enough to keep me from being seen as the aggressor. I Spent my entire childhood being seen as an evil threat by everyone around me. And because of that, it was seen as okay to continuously deny me education and force me to do physical labor. I was 6ft one and 250 pounds by 6th grade.

No one believed I was facing physical abuse at home, because I was bigger than my abusers. No one cared if a kid walked up to me at school and punched me out of nowhere, because it was assumed I must had done *something* to instigate it, and that he was standing up to me.

I eventually did fight back, just once at school and once at home. I picked up a kid and used him to beat up some other kids who had attacked me. I got in trouble again, but it was the same trouble it always was. It didn’t stop the fights tho, so the next year I dropped out and found an alternative education. At home, eventually fighting back stopped most of the physical abuse. I Felt fucking awful, like I was proving their point. Like I had been the instigator all along.

as these things tend to go, I ended up in a relationship that was physically abusive not long after I left home. And once again, no one believed me because I’m tall, I’m big, I’m fat, I’m amab.

I spent my entire life being seen as a fucking monster. One that it was okay to torture and abuse and force into free labor, simply because of my size and my perceived gender. Constantly being told I must be in the wrong, and that I must be the aggressor in every situation. I genuinely believed I was ontologically evil because of it. That i was disgusting and worthy of abuse and that every bad thing that could happen to me was my fault.

It wasn’t until I transitioned to a woman and lost a bunch of weight from being poor that i really started to feel like I could be normal to people. That I wasn’t constantly seen as a threat. For the brief period where I was thin and passing as a woman, albeit a tall woman, i got to have interactions where people weren’t constantly scared of me and blaming me for every wrong that happened. But even still, I’ve had to deal with the same things previous responders are talking about. Whenever there is an issue, my size and my proximity to masculinity are always a factor in how others read the situation.

I am a trans woman. I know that misogyny is real. I know that it sucks. But I am begging y’all, please, please, you have to take your perception of someone’s potential to harm you and analyze it for what it is.

It is a feeling. It is a perception. It is not a threat.

So many people begin to see individuals or entire groups of people as threats, and then they use that as justification to abuse, exploit, and commit violence against them. They use that person’s similarity to someone who harmed them, or that persons abstract potential to harm them, as justification for a preventive strike. Any action taken is justified when you view someone’s very existence as a threat to your own.

How can you possibly expect people to have healthy responses to the world when they are treated that way?

i swear to god, men raising their voice is the most terrifying thing in the whole world. they dont understand, like its an immediate panic response, game over

[duckymcdoorknob]

Ok this may be offensive to some but it has to be said.

CW BELOW THE CUT: Mentions if p*rn, mentions of slurs, mentions of threats of vi*lence, mentions of gr**ming, mentions of b*llying.

Dear Governor DeSantis,

Fuck you.

Do you really think your little bill will work?

Are you truly that dense?

Welcome to the age of IPad kids and Mass Media. How many elementary schoolers do you know with IPads? Plenty im presuming. And how many of those kids have TikTok or Instagram or any other social media account?

Do you think that kids won’t learn about the LGBTQ+ community from there?

Sheltering a child does nothing but delay their exposure to the community.

Do you really think that kids don’t have an impact on each other?

I’ll say it again to get it through your brain.

Sheltering a child does nothing but delay their exposure to the community.

Peer influence is the most beneficial, but also most harmful, way for an adolescent to learn.

Studies have shown that adolescents are most influenced by the ones around them, especially in close proximity to their age.

That being said, how many children are going to listen to you?

Do you think that they’ll just magically be sheltered from the LGBTQ+ community until you think they’re old enough?

Since you assure that stopping the topic in school will ensure that kids are safe and sheltered…

I was six years old when I watched my first p*rno in the basement of my family home. Do you know who showed me it? My best friend, who was in third grade at the time.

I was seven years old when I made my first threat of vi*lence against a peer. I told him to shut his mouth before I shut it for him. Now, Mr. Governor, my parents are absolute saints and would never hurt a fly. They kept me from violent tv shows and only let me watch certain channels with safe programming. So, sir, where do you think I learned that threat from? The boys in my second grade class.

I was eight years old when I learned about the R slur and the N word. Now, my third grade history class didn’t teach me about it, my friends did. They whispered it in my ear and giggled as if it was some sort of contraband they were spreading.

I was asked to trade n*des at age twelve. Now, I didn’t know what these were, but I knew they were unsafe. I didn’t learn about them in an online safety class. No, I learned from my classmate, who had already had advantage taken of her through them.

I was gr**med on this app at age thirteen. A role play blog constantly messaged me and asked me what I looked like, so I sent them a fake photograph. They told me go pretty I looked and how they would love for me to meet them. Block and delete after that of course, but imagine if it was someone more naive…?

I was bullied relentlessly from age thirteen to fifteen. One person decided that they didn’t like me, so the rest of my classmates shouldn’t too. They made group chats for entire classes, where they would ridicule me for the smallest things. It didn’t stop until I was in high school.

I was sexually harassed by one of my peers at age fifteen. He made a comment about my butt, claiming that I “had a fat ass.” And that “it’s a shame i’m so fat though.”

I was offered a drink at age sixteen. Not by my parents, but from a peer, whom said I would be “such a fucking funny drunk.”

If you want to shelter kids from the “atrocity” of human sexuality and gender identities, shelter us from the shit that actually matters too.

I don’t care if kids learn about drag queens or gay families.

But God damn it, don’t let them be exposed to the shit I was.

If you’re going to enforce safety, give us the safety we truly deserve, not the safety you old farts think we need.

Learning about gay people is not unsafe.

Being exploited for another person’s sexual gain is unsafe.

Being offered gateway drugs is unsafe.

Being told slurs and their meanings is unsafe.

Being bullied to the point of hopelessness is unsafe

Being threatened by a classmate is unsafe.

Being exposed to the harmful world of p*rnogr*phy is unsafe.

The common thread in all of these?

None of these were exposed to us by our school systems, parents, or home lives.

They were brought upon us by our schoolmates…

Our teammates…

Our cast mates…

Our staff mates…

So, Mister Governor, sir.

What’s your next move?

[tendertokyo]

My take on NCT at Hogwarts

what is it with me and being active on this god forsaken app all of a sudden... anyways, i know that we've thrown jk rowling in the garbage but listen i can't just throw away my whole childhood for one stupid rich white cis woman. also i have no idea what's going on with the neos but when do i ever? alright here we go

taeil: he's giving me frustrated hufflepuff, like he really wished to be in gryffindoor but it didn't work out. think he'd be a halfblood and have a pet toad. likes to visit hagrid for tea sometimes. simps over some bad bitch in slytherin, really thinks she's into him too, everyone tells him she's way out of his league. broke his wand twice already trying to open a can of sardines

taeyong: also strong hufflepuff energy. he's the keeper and captain of their quidditch team and a prefect too, picked purely cause he's good with kids. walks around without his scarf in the cold winter because he wrapped it around ten's neck one morning and nagged on him for not taking care of his health properly, never got the scarf back and doesn't mind. i feel like snape would intimidate the crap out of him, like he would not be able to stay calm during his classes rip. he'd be adored by all the other teachers though, especially flitwick who believes he's really gifted in charms

johnny: a gryffindoor pureblood and keeper and captain of the quidditch team. always the one who tries to talk things out with mcgonnagall when they pull some stupid shit and get caught, never successful. has the marauders map and likes to throw underground raves in hidden rooms and tunnels. buddies with peeves and the house elves. buddies with everyone actually. and regardless of liking him like that or not, every girl in school has fantasized of fucking him in the quidditch locker room showers ooooop-

yuta: omg the heartbreaker of the school. a halfblood slytherin prefect and beater. snape's favourite student, like he gets whatever he wants from that man without trying. everyone is lowkey into him cause of his hot and mysterious vibe and there are so many rumours about his sex life circulating around, but no one actually knows if he's seeing someone. people also speculate he's a metamorphmagus but no lol he just dies his hair a lot. has a pet cat who's mean to everyone except him and mark. likes to explore the forbidden forest cause he's a weirdo

doyoung: a ravenclaw pureblood who hates quidditch, only shows up for taeyong's matches and nags him afterwards if hufflepuff loses. he's the headboy and happily uses his title to threaten haechan. hates divination with a passion and idolizes mcgonnagal, as he should. knows everyone's bussiness in the whole damn castle, never starts drama but almost always ends it. used to tutor some younger students but they quickly realised he's a mini mcgonnagall and zoomed straight outta there. snape lowkey wishes he was in slytherin but don't tell anyone

kun: gryffindoor headboy, probably the calmest person in that entire house and the only one who can kinda control the chaos. if yangyang or hendery annoy him too much he'll give them the wrong password on purpose, mcgonnagal has this unspoken respect for him for that reason. feels really bad for the house elves and wants to help them as much as he can. known as the dad or daddy of gryffindoor, depending on who you ask hehehehe

ten: the artsiest ravenclaw but fucking terrible at riddles, so he's always stuck at the door unless someone let's him inside lmao. is super into divination but purely for the aesthetic. never wears his uniform properly, always wears taeyong's scarf and lots of witchy jewelry. started a dance club in the room of requirement, loves hogwarts halloween with his whole heart. set a classroom on fire once and managed to sneak away undetected. always hooks up with someone at johnny's parties

jaehyun: the fucking fratboy of gryffindoor. he's a halfblood and a chaser on the quidditch team. left so many girls on read oh my god. sneaks alcohol and weed into school, coorganizes parties with johnny, yuta and mark. people think he's this hot bad boy or some shit, lol no bitch he's a dumbass don't waste your energy on a doofus like him, have you heard his laugh he sounds like a 45 year old man. mcgonnagall doesn't trust him at all, always looks at him with shifty eyes. the fat lady flirts with him everytime he approaches the commonroom door

winwin: on the snobby pureblood side of slytherin, like he gives off really judgy vibes. is in ten's dance club, there's a rumor going around that he's an animagus 'cause he moves gracefully like a cat or smth, but he isn't he's just really talented. spends most of his time in the owlery petting birds. the bloody baron freaks him out, most of the ghosts do. tried to be a big brother figure to renjun and chenle but they bullied his ass like crazy so he dropped them like hot potatoes

jungwoo: the most confident gryffindoor y'all. he's a muggleborn and a chaser. has the cutest pet owl, is really into care of magical creatures. snape hates him because he's too "sunny" of a person. wild at parties but looks fine in the morning somehow. the biggest flirt you'll ever meet and has so many bitches wrapped around his little finger lol, there's a rumor going around that he's real beast in bed. awesome at dueling, uses his cute airhead shtick to apsolutely destroy people. can you tell i love his pisces ass?

lucas: a hufflepuff halfblood and beater. wannabe fuckboy but can't because he cares too much lol, those muscles are made of feelings dawg. hits on every girl he sees and is almost always successful 'cause we're weak for cute and sweet himbos. is the biggest show off on the quidditch field and has his own fan club. really into care for magical creatures, like literally wants to befriend every single one of them, hagrid has to pull his ass away from them before he gets hurt rip

mark: a gryffindoor prodigy, a muggleborn and a chaser. the most stressed prefect you've ever seen. mcgonnagall has a soft spot for him and everyone knows it. snape dislikes him but respects him because he's fucking brilliant at potions. a lot of people like him and are into him but he doesn't know how to respond to them lol socially awkward king. plans parties with johnny yuta jaehyun and ten, is always roped into the dreamies schemes against his will. no one can fucking tell if him and haechan are on good terms cause they're at each other's throats all the time, but slobber all over each other like crazy when they get drunk

xiaojun: the most emotional ravenclaw. a halfblood and a prefect. he dated a girl for a long time and she broke his heart, moped about it in the prefect's bathroom for ages. lowkey believes she cheated on him with yuta but isn't sure, is extra weary around him though. says he's done with love but then simps over a new girl every two weeks smh. no one understands how he's such good friends with hendery and yangyang, like the combination of the two of them is a recipe for disaster. whenever they rope him into their bullshit, he always manages to drop their asses in the perfect time and doesn't get caught. many portaits are jealous of him 'cause he has better bone structure then them lol

hendery: the best definition of a gryffindoor. comes from a rich pureblood family, is a beater on the quidditch team. he's the life of the party, man. out of all the students he hates, he is the one snape hates the MOST and he's so proud of that. a really fast runner so he never ends up in detention 'cause it's just too hard to catch him. buddies with the ghosts and hagrid. tries really hard to impress girls, it only works half of the time when he's not being too intense

yangyang: also a gryffindoor pureblood, tried out for the chaser position but didn't make it, is still bitter about it. has a really fucked up owl that always messes up his letters. constantly in detention, like he's cleaned that entire castle by himself 43 times already. also in ten's dance club, also really good at dueling when he actually tries. really into muggle culture, explores it in his free time and shows everyone cool, new music he found all the time. gives kun daily headaches cause he's way too energetic in the morning

shotaro: imma say he's a hufflepuff but don't quote me on that cause i don't know him that well. he seems like he'd have lots of friends though and would be in ten's dance club

sungchan: don't know him well either so i'll just say gryffindoor??

renjun: i'm torn between ravenclaw and slytherin, gonna go with slytherin for him. he's a halfblood and a prefect, also uses his title to threaten haechan. loves defence against the dark arts anď herbology, might become a healer someday. gets tricked by the moving staircases all the fucking time, ends up at madam pomfrey's way more than he likes to admit. likes the slytherin aesthetic but can't stand the evil stereotypes. most people think him and chenle are brothers, wants to strangle chenle when he plays into it. once told the bloody baron to fuck off, no one dares get on his bad side since that day

jeno: pureblood hufflepuff prefect and a chaser. he's the cute, athletic guy everyone has a crush on. is on snape's good side 'cause he likes cleaning up his brewing station after finishing the task the lession is about. is the best flyer in the entire school and has the best chance of getting scouted in the future, everyone knows it but if you mention it to him he blushes like crazy. i feel like he's been in many fwb situations but they all ended well because he's a gentleman

haechan: a slytherin through and through. halfblood and seeker on the quidditch team. thought he was gonna be prefect and was hella pissed he wasn't chosen, i mean hello you're a snake who would want to give a snake authority goddamn it. also always complains during quidditch matches, calls everything a foul just 'cause he wants to win. puts up this persona of the mischevious slytherin boy but it falls flat on it's ass because he's peeves's favourite target

jaemin: a muggleborn hufflepuff, because of that reason he's sworn to himself he'll take care of jisung like a mother. a chaser on the quidditch team. such a sweetheart my gosh, like that dude is always so happy, unless he hasn't drunk his 6 cups of coffee. speaking of, mcgonnagall and pomfrey worry for his health like crazy but won't admit it. excells at care for magical creatures and charms, horrible at ancient runes like he didn't think there'd be so much math involved. girls are also crazy into him but he's such an introvert, the thought of someone wanting to be around him so much scares him. still flirts with everything that breathes lol

chenle: a slytherin and a pureblood, from one of those rich old families. because of that people expect him to be a lil brat, turns out to be the coolest guy you'll ever meet. he's friends with everyone regardless of house, a chaser on the quidditch team, known as the one who scores the most points in a game. he's great at defence against the dark arts and transfiguration, is thinking about becoming an auror 'cause that dude fears nothing i'm telling you. was made a prefect instead of haechan, rubs it in his face like crazy, but ultimately just let's people get away with stupid shit like "haha nice one, respect". memorized all the secret passageways of the castle in his head, helps johnny, mark, ten and jaehyun with their parties. pisses off filch like no other, was in detention all the time with yangyang until they realised how terrible it is when the two of them are in close contact lol so he gets let off the hook all the time. also fucking flirts with everything that breathes, the biggest fucking tease like you never know what he means smh

jisung: jaemin's muggleborn hufflepuff son, though most people are surprised he isn't in gryffindoor 'cause god the reckless shit that boy pulls... always late to breakfast with his uniforn all messy. people think he's very innocent but like his bestfriend is chenle, so how pure could he be. he's a seeker on the quidditch team, goes extra hard during hufflepuff-slytherin matches 'cause he wants to knock haechan off his high horse. blushes like crazy whenever he sees a cute girl which only gives chenle more reason to tease him 'cause he's a lil bitch like that. is the star of ten's dance club but has tripped and fallen down multiple flights of stairs, this kid's a walking paradox

to conclude:

gryffindoor: johnny, kun, jaehyun, jungwoo, mark, hendery, yangyang, sungchan

hufflepuff: taeil, taeyong, lucas, jeno, jaemin, shotaro, jisung

ravenclaw: doyoung, ten, xiaojun

slytherin: yuta, winwin, renjun, haechan, chenle

[littlemountaintownrp]

Glad to see he’s taking a break from matricide to finally get here.

Clyde has been accepted! Please submit your blog for us to follow!

Name/Alias: Jenn

Pronouns: She/Her

Age: 23

Join Our Discord: Yeh

Timezone: CST

Activity: 7

Triggers: N/A

Password: craigs gay

Character that you’re applying for: Clyde Donovan

Favorite ships for your character: Anything with chemistry

 in character info

Full name: Clyde Lesly Donovan

Birthday: April 10th

Sexuality, gender, pronouns: Bicurious, cisgender, he/him

Age and grade: 17, Senior

Faceclaim: Alex Ernst

Appearance:

His face is rounded into a circle shape with a pointed chin, whereas his cheeks are full and small freckles dot his entire nose and around the bottoms of his olive shaped green eyes. He kept his hair brown and short, despite him constantly saying it is going to change it. And of course, being a boy who cares a little too much about his appearance, he doesn’t have a single blemish in sight. Does he use makeup? Who knows.

Being in sports his whole life, he doesn’t have a lot of room for fat (other than his spare tire that he’s tried everything to get rid of). Standing at 5’11 with the most perfect shoulders you’ve ever seen, Clyde takes pride in his muscular, coordinated body. His body is the average amount of hairy you’d find on a teenager, with muscles all the way around, covered with tanned skin. Where is his fucking tanline? Does he just go out in the sun butt ass naked to get even all over? Probably.

Personality:

Remember when Clyde was a vicious and bully type child who reflected his own emotional neglect and instability on others as a desperate cry for attention? Me neither. Clyde has always been, and always will be, a happy, hearty kid who always tries to look at the bright side of things. It’s not that he’s oblivious to the danger, but he just prefers not to think about it. Really puts his spirits down. His kindness is like no other, and his ability to make a joke out of everything could be seen as insensitive, but really he’s just awkward when it comes to negative situations. Clyde has a free spirit reputation to uphold, and he can’t let anything get in the way of that.

Even if he feels down himself, he can’t let anyone know. However, he’s still a big crybaby. His friends don’t want to hang out? He’ll annoy them until they do. He just tripped and spilled his milk? Here comes the tears. Clyde’s sensitivity has literally gotten him nowhere in life, and is just an annoying trait about him, but hey, it’s how you know Clyde is just being Clyde.

Being a part of sports all his life, Clyde really values friendship and teamwork. “Hey, Craig, I need help with my homework. Let’s work together to find a solution.” “Hey, Tweek, do you know anything about bees? This essay I’m writing is killing me. Let’s team up.” It’s never ending with his constant sport references and ability to make others feel motivated and energized with his natural cooperation-like aura.

Though, just as he was when he was young, Clyde is still a huge flirt. His favorite conquest has always been Bebe, but in reality any pretty thing in a skirt will do just fine for him. Because of this, Clyde has never had a relationship last more than a few months, despite his kind nature.

History:

Clyde’s never been an interesting child. A good ol’ average joe, if you will. The only thing off about him was his habit of not showering for a couple of days straight, even with his constant football practices and playing soccer with the kids down the street. His past wasn’t anything special, either. He had his dad, his mom, and his older sister. The perfect little family for a nine year old at the time, with all the habits perfect little families came with. His parents were so in love, he was so annoying to his sister, and his mother babied him.

But then his mother died tragically in front of him and then his sister ran away without a trace, and was never seen again. So, his dad and him were left, the men of the household, to fend for themselves. It was them against the cruel feeling of death caused by heartbreak and loneliness. However, Clyde was ten. He didn’t know how to properly react to everything. So, he did the only thing he knew how to do. Hide.

For years he hid behind a door and never let anyone in, no matter how hard they knocked. He figured if he hid well enough, everyone would just stop trying to get in all together. It seemed to work, considering that his father, Roger, remarried eventually. Clyde wanted to be angry at him, how could he do this to mom? But that would mean coming out of hiding. So he didn’t. The marriage didn’t last long anyway. His father wasn’t ready to move on, and the guilt eventually ate him alive on its own. He admitted that he only married the woman so that Clyde could have a mother figure again, and she slapped him. They got a divoce right before their two year anniversary, and Clyde hid his pleasure.

That didn’t stop Roger from dating around, sleeping around, whatever he does. Clyde didn’t pay attention anymore. He was still too busy hiding. Eventually he moved on from behind doors to behind lockers. Then behind smiles. He hid until he made it all the way to plain sight. His free, unregistered online therapy says that hiding in plain sight makes the best results to any “broken child”. Not that he’ll ever admit he could be called such a thing. He was Clyde Donovan, future athlete star and multimillionaire, for crying out loud.

Clyde, during this time, put most of his energy into sports, friends, and looking good. He did everything and anything to get people to like him, causing him to be fairly popular. Of course, he was always true to himself, despite his inner demons. Clyde knew his true friends were and always will be Token, Craig, Tweek, and Jimmy, no matter how many times they’ve dismissed him accidentally. He knew they cared. His school life is okay, his activity life is great, his friendships are perfect, but his homelife? Yikes.

Sometimes, he catches his smiles cracking, the lockers rattling, and the doorknobs turning. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before he wouldn’t be able to hide anymore.

Headcanons:

Clyde has a beautiful hamster named Sunshine. He didn’t name her, but the pet store down the street did. He gives her love and affection like no one else ever could.

All around his room are posters of sports, particularly baseball and football. It’s clear that he depends on sports as an outlet in life, and most likely will get a sports scholarship. He also has a secret love for rollerblading.

His middle name is Lesly because his mother originally wanted another girl to name after her recently deceased grandmother, but when Clyde turned out to be Clyde, she convinced herself and her husband that Lesly was still an okay name for a boy.

Clyde’s father is boarder line homophobic, and will sometimes question how close Clyde really is to his friends. It’s partly the reason why Clyde has shown no interest in boys publicly. He hasn’t talked about his bicuriosity to anyone other than anonymous faces on the internet.

He’s still a crybaby. This boy complains about a lot of useless stuff.

It’s not that he’s dumb, he’s actually very smart. His grades say he’s smart, that is. It’s more like he’s gullible.

Socks with sandals and a backwards hat with basketball shorts and a t-shirt that he hasn’t washed since last week is his normal weekend outfit.

If you looked up “nosy” in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Clyde.

[fatphobiabusters]

actually, i don't really think that a fat character being in love with food is that bad? (in response to all of your posts about soos and hunk, specifically)

it's not like their eating habits are something forceful, it's not like they bodyshame themselves or are disgusted by their own eating.

don't get me wrong, i've watched gravity falls, i'm two episodes into voltron and i really see all of the points you made. the stupid or lazy stereotypes for example and i'm not here to argue with those.

but so far i get the impression that eating isn't something bad for these characters. like you said, hunk's always thinking about food and that's supposed to be some crappy kind of joke but eating seems to be something hunk genuinely enjoys. and if you genuinely enjoy eating, there's a chance you're fat. and maybe the intention of these jokes is fatphobia but there's no fatphobia itself in the show, like hunk doesn't get really insulted for being fat and therefor doesn't lose his positive attitude towards food. that's a good lesson i, as an overweight person, take from this character. (please correct me if i'm wrong, as i said, i've just watched two episodes so far.)

and soos gets insulted from characters in the show a lot, that's true but it's not like he's bothered. he doesn't mind the fatphobia in his surroundings and whether that is because he was written to be rather stupid or because he just doesn't care, it's not something to make out as bad. if little me who was teased and bullied for her weight would've seen this earlier, maybe she would've been off better.

again, feel free to disagree and i'm not here to fight or say that you're entirely wrong, that's just my view on the eating thing because as long as the love for food is genuine and not made out to be a toxic element that the characters suffer from, i don't see a real problem there.

This is probably about a older post and tbh I don't know which mod originally posted about these characters. Hopefully I can explain this:

Loving food can be a neutral character trait but it disproportionatly is applied to fat people. Because content creators think people are only fat because they eat too much. That's the crux of it.

"Like you said, hunk's always thinking about food and that's supposed to be some crappy kind of joke" but nothing that's it that's the joke. "Fatty gonna eat." The implications is that food is a source of earthly pleasure and fat people don't have any other hobbies other that food because again, content creators think you can only be fat from over eating.

"and if you genuinely enjoy eating, there's a chance you're fat." There's a chance that any body type can enjoy eating, fatness has nothing to do with it.

People should enjoy eating anyway. Being obsessed with food is not enjoying eating, is a disordered eating condition. Thinking about food 24/7 is an obsession. (IRL this can be a sign of malnutrition, dieting/starvation/caloric deficit or working in a way that requires meal planning, like chefs or a soup kitchen coordinators. I don't think even mukbang people think about food all the time.)

Why would they change Hunks character joke, it's a tried and true one after all. Even if the in universe cast don't mock Hunk doesn't mean it doesn't play into audience expectations in a negative way.

Next character:

"he doesn't mind the fatphobia in his surroundings and whether that is because he was written to be rather stupid or because he just doesn't care, it's not something to make out as bad" if a character is being bullied and harassed and doesn't call it out its still bad? Even if he doesn't get on a soap box and have a speech he needs to have friends checking up on him, defending him. Especially on a children's show. I have no idea if this ever happens (I haven't watched it all) but bullying a character and showing that character and his friends putting up with it isn't great. Little you deserved to feel impowered by a fat character saying "fuck off" to bullies, not someone putting up with it.

If he's supposed to be "dull witted" and can't realize he's being bullied I just....the fuck? I mean "fat people are stupid" is a stereotype, so, yikes.

You know, I'd hate to bring this series up but you know enjoys eating? Like in a healthy way? The family in Blue Bloods. I catch parts of it because my mom watches it, I hate it so much its clichéd cop propaganda. They have family meals together. Delicious food, variety of foods too, everyone has helpings of food on their plates (including the women no bird eating cliches to be found!) and they talk and enjoy meals together. It's probably a nightmare to film, but delicious to watch.

No one character is obsessed with food. But they enjoy these meals. Some are more chubby than others but it's all equal enjoyment.

Anyway,

If a character is fat and is shown constantly eating then its a stereotype. Especially if there is no thin people to match.

Fat people have assumed relationships with food. Thin people don't. Fat people are assumed to care too much about food, eat too much and that's why they are fat.

You don't have to blacklist and throw away media that you love when there are problematic elements either. If you personally found it comforting that Hunk is still obsessed with food but his friends don't mock him for it then I won't try to take that from you, we all like stuff that can be bad. The media is out there and can't be changed, but moving forward I want better rep. I hope I kinda explained why it's a sticky situation.

[unmaskedagain]

Marinette Vs Santa

A quick Christmas drabble.

  How did Marinette find out she was adopted? Well… her little half-brother tried to kill her.

           Also, that’s how she found out her biological dad was Batman. Because… why not. As if her life wasn’t weird enough already.

           And to think Marinette had been secretly writing Santa every year since she was three to like nine asking for a sibling of her own. She didn’t think it would ever happen

           Then one day, on a cold December night, as Ladybug ran across rooftops to see as many of the Christmas decorations as possible. Suddenly every instinct she had told her to duck. And she did just narrowly avoided a sword to the throat.

           Marinette readied herself to fight an Akuma, only to see an angry ten-year-old with a sword and a mask. He was dressed in green, red, and gold.

“Die, usurper!” He roared and attacked her again.

           Ladybug dodged and jumped every attempt to kill her and tried to resist the urge to punch a child.

           Eventually she got the better of the kid, and ended up hog tying him.

           Marinette put her hands on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath, “Who. Are. You. Nightmare. Child?” She asked in between breaths. Ladybug picked up the fallen sword and pointed at him. “And what is your problem? What did I even do to you?”

“You are Marinette Dupain-Cheng, first born blood child of our father.” He hissed at her, “I am our father’s rightful heir; not you.”

           Our father?  Did her dad have a lovechild? Did he cheat on her mom? No, Tom Dupain would never.

“What?” Marinette pinched her nose. “You want to be head baker?”

“Fool!” He tsk’d at her. “I’ve no interest in your adoptive parents’ holdings. I will follow Father’s footsteps and rule the night. I will be Batman. Not you, sister. Kneel before me and renounce your heirship, and I will spare your life.”

           …Wait Adoptive? Batman? Sister?

           Marinette just stared at him. Not saying a word. For a while. Awhile he insulted her.

           She looked out at the colorful lights that glowed against the freshly fallen snow and sense of peace that filled the air, and Marinette whispered the only thing on her mind…

“Fuck Santa.”

           The boy stopped struggled and gave her a perplexed look, “What? What does the jolly fat man have to do with anything? Why has he made you angry, sister? I will avenge you.”

You just tried to kill me, she wanted to say.

           Marinette just rolled her eyes, “Never mind. We need to talk.” She picked him and tossed him over her shoulder. “In my room.”

           Running across Paris with a struggling kid on your shoulder and a sword in your hand wasn’t easy.

            When she got to her room, she dropped the kid on her bed as gently as possible. “Do not escape,” She ordered. “If you do, do not destroy my room. I’m going to ask my parents if…” If they’re really her parents. Why didn’t they tell her?  Why? Just Why? “What you say is true. I won’t mention Batman.”

           Or the psychotic ten-year-old she had tied up in her room. Who may or may not be her brother.

           Marinette de-transformed. Tikki hid in her hair before anyone could see her.

           She came back to her room half an hour later with a cheese plate, full of veggies, fruits and crackers. And a tray full of chocolate chip Christmas cookies and two glasses of milk. She sat them down at the desk.

           The boy glared at her.

“You were right,” Marinette sighed. “I was adopted. My birth mom was just nineteen when she had me. The sister of one of my mom’s friends.”

           The news had been a blow. Her parents had kept repeating how much they loved her and how they had been planning on telling her when she was older. Older than fourteen. They wanted to know how she found out. She said her little brother had gotten in contact with her.

           Marinette eyed the still tied up boy… her brother. He no longer struggled against his bonds, just stared with an angry expression on his face. “I don’t want to be Batman,” She told him. “The title is all yours. I like being Ladybug. It’s a name I earned, worked hard for. A name I’m proud of and will not part with easily. Is that something you can understand?”

           He stared at her for a moment before nodding slowly, “You created your own hero persona to find the terror entrapping your city; all by yourself. …Father did the same.”

           He said the last part with a sad tone that Marinette’s new found big sisterly instincts go haywire. “And you think just because you’re his… partner,” She said, instead of sidekick because she was sure that word would get her killed. “And not a solo hero, that he will find you unworthy of being his heir.” Marinette sat down next to him, and patted his hair softly. “Did you ever think that because he is the one who’s training you, that because you fight by his side, that he’d trust you more? Trust you to take up his mantle in the way he can’t trust me. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of entirely. But he knows exactly what you can do because he taught you.”

           Her brother scoffed but his face lost some of its anger and he seemed to relax.

“I’m going to untie you now,” She told him. “Do not attack me.”

           When he was untied and given back his sword, which he sheathed, Marinette brought over the food. “You know my name,” She said after he took a bite a cookie and seemed pleased with it. “What’s yours?”

“Damian,” He answered. “Damian Al-Ghul Wayne. How did you obtained magical powers? And what is the creature that thought it could hide from me?”

           Marinette just blink. Because Dammit Tikki. The pink ball of fluff out with a chastised look on her face. Unfortunately that look meant nothing as all the other Kwami Marinette now protected as Guardian thought that meant they could come out to.

           Plagg straight to Damian and sat on his lap, “Cheese. Now.”

           Marinette face-palmed. The Kwami had taken trying to declare dominance ever since Ladybug took the ring back from Chat Noir.

           Damian could only stare at the being, animal, and sprite as he reached slowly for a piece of cheese from the selection of food and handed it the small creature. That was all the other Kwami needed to rush to him for attention. Damian was easily mesmerized by the little creatures and saw no issue in showing them affection. Apart from the fact that Oracle, and Father, and thus the rest of the family were watching the feed, through the mask, while they attempt to locate him. Damian could only disable their trackers for so long. Annoying as she was, Oracle was a genius.

“Okay, little brother,” Marinette shrugged. “You tell me your story. I’ll tell you mine.”

           And so they did. The two siblings spent the next few hours telling the other all about their history. Neither were happy.

           Marinette was beyond furious that her little brother was raised by ruthless assassins, cast into the role of Robin (though mostly by his own doing), constantly risked his life, and had little no childhood.

           Damian was pissed, which was putting it nicely. His beloved sister had no training when she was charged with the task of defending the city as the hero Ladybug and fight a supernatural terrorist, dealt with sexual harassment from her once trusted partner, then her master died in battle but not before he bestowed one of the most powerful magical artifacts of all time to a teenager. To top it all off, his sweet sister was being bullied by a pathological liar who turned all her friends against her, nearly got her expelled, leaving her with little to no Allies to aid her in her fight against evil. Marinette had cried at the end of her tale.

           …He was going burn Paris to the ground.

           Little did he know, the Batfamily found it hard not to agree as they watched the livestream from the Batplane?

           Dick had gone from jumping up and down at the sight of his adorable new sister, Marinette. She was a hero called Ladybug, how cute was that? To being rather angry at what she had to put up with. It was too much pressure for a kid, superhero, superpowers, or not.

“What do we do?” Tim asked.

           Batman was still having trouble processing. He had another daughter; a beautiful little girl who seemed to have taken after him without ever having known the man. Nature versus Nurture, he supposed; nature won. Marinette who had been fighting to save her city like he fought to save his. Who was her mother? Why didn’t she tell Bruce he had another child? Granted Brucie wasn’t who most people thought would be an ideal father but still… Hadn’t he proved himself?

“Find Hawkmoth,” Jason growled. “Punch a hole through his face. And Send Steph and Cass to have a “Talk”, he air quoted. “With that Lila chick. While we have a little talk of our own with Chat Noir. End of story.”

           Cass nodded, gleefully, that little girl would pay for what she did to Cassandra’s sister. And if she was lucky, Lila would even live to tell the tale.

           Stephanie was wondering if the Batfamily, her sort of-adopted family, could really get away with murder.

           …Who was she kidding? They totally could.

“We don’t… kill?” Batman said as he turned around and stalked away. “I’ll inform Alfred of the development.” Maybe have him prepare a room, he thought with hope. He’d like his daughter to visit and feel at home whenever she could.

           When Batman left the area, Tim looked around at his siblings, “Did that sound like a question to anyone else?”

           Marinette and Damian fell asleep next to each other, with the Kwami cuddled close. The next morning she woke not only to sound to the sound of the Kwami but to the sight of five additional vigilantes heroes, in addition to the one from the night before, hovering around her room.

           Two girls who were discussing with Trixx and long about their abilities. A hero in mostly black and red, who sat on Marinette’s top bunk with Marinette’s laptop on his lap, and Pollen on his shoulder. Damian still had Plagg with him, which Marinette wanted to tsk at because she told him not to play favorites. A blue, clearly the oldest, was laying on the floor playing with the remaining Kwami like they were puppies.

           She sat up in her bed and tried to wipe the sleep from her eyes. She glared at Damian, “Want to explain?”

“Mornin, sunshine,” A guy in a redmask said, with Barkk on his shoulder, as he chopped on a leftover cookie, not noticing the way Tikki glared at him. “Name’s Red Hood. Real name Jason. Dad’s downstairs talking to your parents.”

           Dad?

           She glared even harder at Damian. He shrugged, “Marinette, these are our… brothers and sisters.” He said. “They were adopted.”

“You should get better security on your computer,” The hero on her bed said. “Name’s Tim. I go by Red Robin.”

“Cassandra,” One the girl introduced. “Blackbat.”

“Stephanie. Batgirl,” The other said.

“I’m Dick!” The one on the floor laughed. “Nightwing. Welcome to the family.”

Tim continued, “I’ve located all personal information on Lila Rossi. I believe we can now move forward with the plan.”

Jason clapped his hands together, “Awesome. Operation: Get That Bitch is a go.”

Marinette just started at them. Six. She had six siblings. One for every year ever asked for a sibling for Christmas. She just had one thing to say as she tossed the covers back over her head to hide from the world…

“Fuck. Santa.”

           Finding out Bruce Wayne, cough Batman cough, was her father was one thing. Meeting him in person was another. He stared at her with cool blue eyes that made Marinette realize she probably should’ve questioned where she got her own long before.

           Her parents had been surprised when Bruce Wayne walked into their bakery and asked to speak with them alone. Even more so, when he claimed to be the biological father of their daughter. It had been long conversation between the three. But Bruce made it clear that he had interest of just taking Marinette from them. However, he would like visitations and for her to spend time with him over the summers. And to take her out for the day so she could meet her siblings. Also, about adding Wayne to her last name.

           So that was how Marinette found herself sitting in one of the most expensive restaurants in all of Paris, in the best dress she ever designed herself, with her… family.

           The initial awkwardness was broken up by all her siblings. Though they seemed to know to how to behave in public, they had no problems messing with each other and teasing.

“How long have you been into fashion, Marinette?” Bruce, her Papa, (As her dad would always be her dad).

           She smiled, “Since I was really little. It’s my dream to have my own line.”

           Bruce’s eyes got bright at the chance to help his daughter, “I can help you with that. I can drum up a connect or two, to get you started.”

“He’ll throw money at it until someone cracks,” Jason translated which cause Marinette to laugh and Bruce to glare.

Marinette discovered Damian had snuck Plagg with him to the restaurant.

           Marinette just groaned.

“You brought Tikki!” Damian defended.

“I’m the holder of her Miraculous,” She hissed back as low as she could. “Paris’s main and sometimes only hero. I need her.”

           Damian huffed, “That’s no reason he shouldn’t be allowed to attend as well. He’s with me.”

           Before Marinette could continue the arugment…

“Wayne?” Gabriel Agreste asked, tailed by Natalie, Adrien, Chloe, and Chloe’s parents: Audrey Bourgeois and André Bourgeois. “Bruce Wayne?”

           Bruce put on his most charming smile as he stood up, “Yes and you are?” He put out his hand.

           Gabriel shook it, clearly wondering why the billionaire was there. “Gabriel Agreste.”

           Bruce nodded, “The fashion designer.”

“This is my son Adrien,” Gabriel introduced. “My assistant Nathalie. My longtime friend Audrey Bourgeois, of the Style Queen, and André Bourgeois, mayor of Paris, and their lovely daughter. We’re here for a quick lunch.”

“Same,,” Bruce nodded. “I’m here with my children. My eldest Dick, followed by Jason, Cassandra, Stephanie, Tim, Marinette and my youngest Damian.” He introduced them.

           At the sound her name, all the newcomers eyes went to Marinette. She gave them a small wave, “Good to see you again.”

“Dupain-Cheng!” Chloe gasped.

           Damian growled, “Dupain-Cheng-Wayne.” As he glared passed her at the blond boy, the former Chat Noir.

           The blond girl was stunned, “How could you not tell me?”

           Hadn’t the two moved passed their difference and become friends? The two girls, and Kagami and united together when the liar seemed to take hold of the rest of the class.

“No one knew,” Marinette defended. I didn’t even know, she wanted to add. But they had discussed and agreed on the story that Bruce and an unknown woman gave up Marinette to the Dupain-Chengs when she was born. Nothing scandalous about it.

           Gabriel paused as he tried to think of what to say. How did he not know there was Wayne living in Paris, that his son was classmates with a Wayne. The girl had power in her pinky when she was still in Nappies, then either of the older Bourgeois had currently in their entire bodies. She would’ve been a much better playmate for his son than Chloe; the vapid, girl that she was.

           Audrey was thinking nearly the same thing. “Such a brilliant daughter you have, Brucie,” She smoozed. “I still can’t believe she turned down the internship I offered her. I want her to come to New York with me, you know?”

           Bruce beamed, “I’m glad someone sees her brilliance.”

           This went on for a while as each of the parents tried their hands at flattering the billionaire.  Bruce finally had enough and all but dismissed them

“I’m glad our children our such good friends,” Gabriel said finally as he turned to leave.

           Marinette fought he urge to scoff. Adrien was not her friend.

           The boy in question looked anywhere but at Marinette as he left. He had chosen to side with the other students when the Ice’d out Marinette until the girl stopped being a bully and being mean to Lila. Even if he knew it wasn’t true. Most declared they weren’t her friends anymore. Alya said she’d never be friends with Marinette again.

Coward, Damian nearly hissed. When they were gone, he turned to Marinette, “The blond girl is your alley, correct?” He asked. “Your Queen?”

           Marinette nodded, “There’s Luka and Kagami as well.”

“I will test to ensure they are worthy to fight at her side,” He declared.

           The others nodded. Bruce got a dark look on his face, “We all will.” He would not allow his daughter to suffer another Chat Noir.

           That was it, Marinette thought as she threw down the sliver napkin, she was starting to hate Christmas.

           The end of the weekend the entire world knew that Marinette was Bruce Wayne’s daughter. This made going to school Monday morning a huge spectacle as paparazzi crowded the outside the bakery and outside the school. Each one trying to get the attention of Wayne’s crown jewel, new Princess of Gotham, as the media dubbed her.

           Suffice to say, Bruce had taken her to school that day flagged by Dick and Tim as her other siblings combed the city for traces of Hawkmoth.

           The principle had practically fallen over himself to speak with the Bruce Wayne. But quickly hid in the shadows, when the first thing Bruce said to him was, “Ah, yes, you’re the man who expelled my daughter without a proper investigation. I’ll be talking to you later. So will my lawyers.”

           Marinette tried to hide her blushing face her father walked her to class. Students did everything they could to get a look at her. Chloe and Kagami waited outside her classroom, that was practically bursting with noise.

           However She practically drop dead when Tim complimented Kagami’s sword fighting skill and offered to duel her, and Kagami blushed. Blushed. Kagami?

           Marinette shook her head as she kissed her father and brothers goodbye. This world just didn’t make sense anymore.

           The two other girls flanked Marinette’s side as they walked into class. All noise stopped instantly. Marinette didn’t even bother spare the other kids a glance as the three took a seat in back of the class.

           Chloe quickly pulled her into a conversation of the places she’d see that summer in New York.

“I’ll be spending the end of Christmas break in Gotham too,” Marinette said shyly. “I’ll open my presents there. Papa wants me there for the Wayne Ball was I can be properly introduced to society.”

           And not because Bruce Wayne was scared of what Alfred would do if he didn’t get to mean his new granddaughter before the new year. That and Martha Kent were the ultimate overprotective grandparents.

“A Ball?” Lila squeaked, poorly concealed jealously on her face. She still couldn’t believe the little twit was Wayne. IF she had, Lila would’ve been a hell of a lot nicer. No wonder Marientte always knew when Lila was lying. She probably knew the celebrities through her father. “You’re going to the Waynes’ Annual New Year’s Ball.”

“Everyone goes,” Rose awe’d. “It’s basically a red carpet event. I watch every year. And Selena Gomez had the most beautiful dress on last time.”

           Juleka hummed in agreement, “Clara Nightingale looked like a princess.”

           Marinette just shrugged as each of her classmates offered their input on what the Ball would be like. She wasn’t about to make nice with them. They had turned their backs on her, betrayed her trust. Her brothers and sisters had warned her to be watchful for phony friends.

           Alya, who’s face had been turning steadily more red, as the classmates speculated who Marinette would meet. “Girl!” She burst. “How could not tell me?”

           Marinette raised a thin eyebrow, “We’re not friends, Alya, by your own declaration. I don’t believe I have to tell you anything. And even when we were friends, I only knew you for two years. Why would I tell a journalist anything important about me?”

“She was right not to,” Kagami stated, “With how quickly you all turned on her, I’m surprised she ever told you anything at all.”

           Alya flinched back as if slapped. So did a few other students.

“It’s not fair,” Alya continued as if nothing happened. “I could’ve gotten so many interviews. OH! I could with you to the Ball. It’ll be bomb.”

           The three girls in the backrow just stared at her.

“We. Are. Not. Friends,” Marinette repeated slowly. “Kagami and Chloe, and their families are invited because Kagami. And. Chloe. Are. My. Friends. In fact, my only friends in class. Luka is invited as well as well as his family,” She turned to Juleka who turned bright red. “Luka will receive invite tonight. If you attend with him, I will do my best to be polite. My father allowed me to invite them so I would have additional company if it gets too busy. The Ball is invitation only.”

           Allowed? He insisted. Marinette doesn’t even know how he found out all their names and who their families were. For reason, Marinette had the gut instinct to blame a redhead and Tim. Batman wanted to test his daughter’s team. And if they were lacking… Well, he’d promised to shape them up. Or else.

“I’m going to the Wayne Ball!” Chloe shouted. “And you didn’t tell me. It’s mere weeks away. I need a dress. I need to tell Mother.”

           Kagami had frozen. She knew well that the Wayne Ball wasn’t just any high society event. It was the High society event. Her family had never been elite and rich enough to receive an invitation. “I thank you for the invitation,” She bowed her head. “It will be a pleasure to attend.” She paused as she pulled out her phone and stood up. “I must also tell Mother.” And with, she quickly left the room.

           Which was much more polite than Chloe who called her mom then and there.

“Mama!” Chloe sang, “Marinette invited us to the Wayne Ball this year!”

“WHAT!” Was heard from the receiver.

           Marinette giggled. She ignored the glare Alya sent her.

           Rose grasped Juleka’s arm and jumped up and down. “You’re going to the ball. Ahhhh!” She screamed. “What will you wear? Your hair? You have to take pictures.” Rose suddenly reared back and took a deep breath. “You’re going to walk the red carpet.”

“You know, Marinette,” Lila smiled sweetly. “I would be honored to help you navigate the world of a celebrity. The ball will be so stressful. If you needed me there, I’d be happy to attend.”

“No, thank you,” Marinette said. “My siblings have promised to guide me through. It will be a bonding experience.”

           Lila forced a smile on her face, “Of course.” She fought the desire to scream and throw a tantrum. How could this happen?

           Adrien on the other hand fought to keep the smile on his face. His father would not be pleased. He had instructed Adrien to get close to Marinette, and thus the Wayne family. Adrien hadn’t had the courage to tell his father that they weren’t friends anymore. And that because of the lack of friendship, the Agreste were not invited to the party of the year.

           Marinette went to bed that day with a smile on her face. The Christmas season may have started off rocky but it would get better.

           Suddenly her phone started buzzing like it was on fire.

           The first text she read was from Chloe: You’re dating Roy Queen?!!!!

           Marinette’s entirely body froze. Who?

           Suddenly, she got another text… From Jason: Hey Baby Bats, I need a favor! Can you fake date my friend Roy. I already told everyone you guys were a thing. Bruce is freaking out! Thanks! Love you.

           Her mouth dropped, raged filled her entire body. And then she remembered how she joked with Alya that she wanted a boyfriend last year for Christmas last year.

“FUCK SANTA!”

[oimoi-op]

when were you diagnosed with t1d?

Ok, so storytime! Short answer is, as of today, barely over two months ago. 

(Very long post warning y’all, contains hospital mention and extensive, possibly upsetting descriptions of health conditions, specifically DKA)

My family doesn’t really have a history of T1D or even T2D, though my second-cousin-once-removed has had T1D for over a decade now. So, there was never any reason for me to try and get tests done for it. The only sign I really had up until last semester was two copies of a variant of an HLA gene that I knew about from a 23andMe report (which, according to the report, put me at a higher risk for celiac’s and nothing else), but of course at that time I had no idea that that could mean anything serious; after all, that sort of thing only happens to other people, right?

My college started in-person classes in the latter half of August. By October, I started feeling tired, having a lack of appetite, and needing water very, very badly. I actually went to my school’s clinic, and my erratic heartbeat prompted the doctor to recommend me for a Covid-19 test. My school’s protocols meant that I had to quarantine at my home (since I live within two hours of campus) until I got a negative test result. At home, I was drinking water all the time and sleeping constantly, and my parents had commented on how I’d been losing weight. I thought these were all good things. I had been slightly overweight at my high school graduation, and I’d always heard that drinking a lot of water is good for you, so I thought I was actually in excellent health even if I kind of felt like shit most of the time.

Well. Uh. I was wrong.

When finals came around in mid-November, I was just fucking tired. I’d get a decent eight hours of sleep and still have to take naps during the day. Hell, I was even late for work because I slept through one of my nap alarms. Studying was a pain in the ass. Attending classes was a pain in the ass. Staying awake for Zoom classes was a pain in the ass. I was waking up at 5 am to go to the bathroom, and then I would drink the rest of my water, refill it, drink half of it again, and then go back to sleep. Finally, November 20th rolled around, and I got to leave campus. It was my birthday (yeah I am a Scorpio and that weirds all of my friends out lol), and my parents took me to Fusion. And I just...couldn’t eat at all? I love hibachi, but I couldn’t even eat half of my food. The chef even got me a delicious banana split that I had to basically bully my younger sister into eating with me.

For the next week, I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. I didn’t think this was weird because I’d just had finals so yeah, it makes sense that I would be tired after exams and whatnot. I went shopping with my mom, sister, and sister’s bff. We were only out for a few hours, but I was fucking wiped out y’all, like in pain. Thanksgiving arrived, and again, I love food, I love eating, but I was not hungry in the slightest. I basically had to force myself to eat some of my favorite holiday foods just so I wouldn’t offend my mom, and then I didn’t eat for the day.

The very next morning, I was puking my guts out.

This started a pattern for the next few days: I would eat chicken noodle soup or some other food, sleep like the dead, and throw up every morning and every night. I started chugging large bottles of Gatorade constantly (which, if you know about diabetes and its health complications, did not help my situation in the slightest). I started breathing erratically after very little exertion. Like, I’m talking standing up and stretching brought about heavy, labored breathing. I weighed myself on my parents’ scale, and I was under 130 lbs. Now, for some people this might seem like a lot, but due to my height and build I could fucking see some of my ribs. That was when I started to realize that something was very, very wrong, but “losing weight is good” and I didn’t want my parents to laugh at me for voicing concerns (though, for all their faults, in hindsight, I doubt they would’ve). Yeah. Don’t do that, folks, that’s not a good mindset to have. 

On Sunday, my mom took me to town to get tested for Covid. This was despite me saying that I didn’t have symptoms (which I knew very well due to some of my friends catching it at school). Rapid test came back negative, so I did a culture test. Hell, while I was sitting in the damn chair, I was about to pass out. I asked for a nausea pill but my mouth was too dry for it to dissolve. I got a cup of water, downed it all, and felt like my throat was on fire. For the rest of the day I felt so, so awful. At some point I was walking toward my bed in my room and I fucking fell. I’m fucking lucky there was carpet. 

Regarding the rest of that night, things start to get blurry, for the lack of a better term. I legitimately cannot recall everything that happened that night or the following two days, so I will just try to explain it in the way I remember it best.

Around...midnight or one??? I was on fucking fire, so I went to my bathroom and decided to lie on the floor. The floor was hardwood and not at all cold, and it wasn’t fucking comfortable even in that state, but I was just in so much pain I didn’t even care. My mom must’ve heard because she found me there and asked me what I was doing. I said something about the floor. She asked me to go back to bed, but I must’ve scared her because she asked me if I wanted her to lie in the bed with me. I don’t remember what I said to her, but we were in the bed and she was trying to hug me, but she was too warm and so I told her to stop. I kept feeling this burning just below my chest, like there was acid in me (which I guess wasn’t too far off), so I would randomly sit up to try and alleviate the pain and not cry. I remember asking my mom to take me to the hospital in the morning.

My mom put me in the truck (I think around 5 am is what she told me). I remembered hearing my dad. I was lying down. Then I was awake, but I was on the floor. I thought this was wrong so I tried to tell my mom that but I guess I couldn’t talk. Then I was in a hospital bed, the ER I assume. My mom gave me some water with a sponge, and I was just so fucking thirsty. Then I was in the ICU hooked up to a bunch of machines. I didn’t know what was going on, but my mom kept giving me water with that sponge. That is all I remember from Monday.

I remember a little bit more from Tuesday. My mom said something about diabetes, but that didn’t make any sense to me because I wasn’t “fat” and I’d been losing weight, even! What had I done to get diabetes? I was thirsty and tired, so I slept a lot. At some point I really needed to use the restroom so I unhooked my IV???? (I mean I must’ve disconnected myself somehow but I can’t remember the details) which set off a shit ton of alarms and people were Very Concerned and kept asking me Why Did You Do That? But I just needed to go to the restroom, and they told me to use the Red Button to Call the Nurse (it was already there, and I now realize that we’d probably had a similar conversation about the Red Button to Call the Nurse possibly multiple times before this) in the future. A Chopped Teen Tournament from 2017 was playing on the TV nonstop. There were commercials for CGMs. I thought that God wasn’t being very funny about the whole thing.

As of now I remember even less of Wednesday, but I know that felt better. There was this diabetes specialist who kept talking about insulin and life at college moving forward, but I wasn’t really there, either because of being so out of it for health reasons, disassociating, or a combination of the two. My mom told me she had emailed a professor so he would give me an extension on an assignment that was due by then, and I remember crying because I thought that was just so nice of him. That night, this guy got me in a wheelchair and put me in another room, which I would later learn was the ACU. My night nurse was this nice woman named Tanya, who had a very thick Eastern European accent. She got me orange juice to take some potassium pills, but it felt like swallowing rocks. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep, so I was awake when the nurses changed shifts. I remember one of them expressing surprise that I was out of the ICU so early.

My mom took longer to come that day because nobody had told her I’d been moved. I’d had plain Cheerios and orange juice for breakfast, but I couldn’t really eat because my throat hurt so badly. I talked to a lot of doctors. I guess at this point or somewhere near it I accepted that I had diabetes, but it wasn’t really real until the same diabetes specialist was going over carbs. I thought I was never going to eat shit I liked ever again. I really wanted a fucking McChicken sandwich. I signed some papers for Medicaid because I had aged out of the CHIP while in the hospital. I finally texted my friends and explained to them what had happened. I was so fucking tired.

I got out the next day, so that was Thursday. Normally, I would’ve been in the hospital much longer (especially because my Medicaid hadn’t been approved, meaning no insurance had approved of my insulin yet), but Covid cases were on the rise and the hospital wanted me out of there. The diabetes specialist and one of my nurses snuck me two fast-acting and two basal insulin pens, and I was out. I ate half a McChicken, a small fry, and drank my first Diet Coke. It tasted like diesel mixed with piss. 

That’s the gist of it. The hospital staff was very nice and thoughtful the entire time, I think. I felt as though everyone involved cared about my health a lot. 

For those of you who aren’t T1D or just don’t know, what I experienced is called DKA, short for diabetic ketoacidosis. To simplify, I was very close to entering a diabetic coma. My sister later told me that our dad had said (I assume a doctor had told my mother, who, in turn, had told him) that I was “approximately 45 minutes” away from death. DKA happens when a diabetic (usually a T1D like me) has too much blood sugar in their body due to them lacking the insulin necessary to break the sugar down, so their body breaks down their fat reserves and muscle to get the energy it needs. This is why I lost around 50 pounds over the course of a few months (I was 118 lbs. when I entered the hospital, the lowest I’ve been since grade school). I was officially diagnosed with T1D on November 30th, just ten days after my 19th birthday, which is a little older than normal I believe. It’s...well, it’s not fun, but I feel very grateful for my large support system, and tomorrow I’m trying out a CGM for the first time and applying for both it and a pump, so things are really looking up 

[putting-your-ocs-in-my-fannypack]

I apologize but i believe i am going to do a small vent about an ex of mine. SO lets get into the story...

My family is not very supportive, mainly since they are Christians and they think my being bi is just a phase to fit in. What they didnt know is i had a girlfriend (and boyfriend, it was a poly) for a long time, 3 years. And those 3 years were a hell because of the girlfriend. She would constantly argue with me on her views about kids or having kids, and like, i respect anyones opinions on subjects like that, but she would never respect mine. She would say like "if you have a kid id rather move out or worse" and we would have constant arguments. MAINLY when i was out with friends, and she would often pull me into arguments with one of her friends who is significantly younger then her, and get upset when i took the friends side. But in my fucking defense, if you call a literal 14 year old a whore for getting their first boyfriend, then im not going to take your side. And would go crying to our boyfriend when i started pointing out how she fucked up and told him stuff that i was saying to her to make me look bad which would get me and him into arguments. She would also talk down to me, acting as if she was smarter then me just because she was homeschooled and going to college early, like she would go on to do to her next partner who i am best friends with. She talked down about my art and said she was better, and yet she traces- and i dont mean tracing reference poses- i mean tracing literal art, like not even hiding it well.

And she would also fetishize gay men or men in general. She would talk about how uwu cute they are and automatically get upset when a character she desired wasnt gay and then practically accuse us of being homophobic. Which is ironic, because she "hated" men. She was pretty fat phobic- and body shamed, often when i gave her characters who are a little chubby, shed turn them into a stick. And would constantly make ocs buff and sticks because she felt uncomfortable making them any other way. Which is generally fine, draw your ocs how you want, until she started drawing our ocs like that whenever she "gifted us with fanart". Which is another thing, she yelled at people when they gave her fanart and called them theives (even though she ripped off others ocs). And also made comments about getting me skinnier, but also boasted about she had more attractive traits then i did. I am slightly overweight, and like, thats something I've accepted because genetics, but she always made me feel ashamed for how i looked.

Then comes the racism. Deadass. We had an entire recording, where she said she did not have white privilege because she was bullied for being white at a school full of POC kids. However from her recent behavior i dont think thats the case. She tended to call me exotic which i always found weird because im from california. Im just mexican. She also called her ex exotic, who was also mexican- who she would point out occasionally, also had a nicer body then me. But when she had her latest partner who was my friend kai, who is african american, she called her colored, not a person of color. Colored. And would often cry about how she was victimized by the police because she was "raised by mexicans" or "7% native american" or "raised by native americans" it would constantly change, and say how the police in california (which she claims to have lived all her life which is bullshit because i know for a majority of her life she's lived in a different state) that 30% or 90% of gang cases are where white people are killed.

She constantly tried to relate to us in situations that frankly. Did not apply to her.

And then she would white-wash characters. She has a habit of doing not normal skin colors to avoid actual skin colors, which is totally fine. But when you base a character on a POC person, like almost entirely on said person, even down to the mustache, then make them LIGHT LIGHT purple when they are a fairly dark skinned person. It doesnt really bode well. AND THEN, she culturally appropriated something. She based a character on the egyptian god Set, kinda made him look like Anubis somewhat and gave him a mark of Horus, even when we warned her like 1) set is horus's enemy, vis versa. And 2) not all egyptian gods have a dog head. She also gave him roman armor and the name of a greek god, etc.

I cant post this on my instagram, because i feel shes still stalking me and i feel uncomfortable posting it, knowing one of her friends might see and show her. When she gets upset she victimizes herself or gets violently angry, and punches herself.

And she would also behave very inappropriately towards minors, making innuendos and sexual jokes or comments. Primarily to minors who were my friends. Stalking my mutuals and trying to befriend all of them, coincidentally. They were ALL 15? She is 18. And i have lectured her on this before i cut her off, but she doesnt listen. She never did

I apologize for the long vent post.

[cornwaiidesu]

a boohoo-y deep dive into my ~psyche~ cuz I had A Moment at work yesterday :P

I care too much about what people think of me. plain and simple. I have been this way since I was a little girl. my cousins would pick on me because I was the special baby girl out of the three of us and they were the two older boys. they would pick on me for being shy and soft spoken and liking girl things, and I wanted them to like me because I thought the two of them were the coolest boys in the world, so I grew to be a little tomboy. I wanted to like fighting games, and anime, and comics because those were "boy things".

but then when puberty started to set in, being a tomboy wasn't cute anymore. at least according to the bullies I had in middle school. usually boys who would call me a d*ke and make fun of me for wearing baggy t-shirts and loose pants and my dad's army jacket every single day of my life. "girls are supposed to be feminine" so obviously something had to be *wrong* with me and they would speculate shit about me directly in front of me. try to engage me in the conversation just to rub it in and of course that made me feel like shit.

so then in high school I try to flip the switch again. I start wearing tighter fitting clothes. I grow my hair out because I was constantly being dogged on my hairstyle even tho that shit was kind of REVOLUTIONARY FOR A 12 YEAR OLD LIVING IN IOWA. PROPS TO TEENAGE MRH. even back then I was a little punk. :3c I digress tho.

the beginning of high school was when I started my curse that lives on in me. I wear earrings every day of my life and I do because I convinced myself back then that I would be mistaken for a boy otherwise. and I still hold that fear because it was upheld! I started wearing dresses and skirts to school, but it didn't matter because dudes would still flip me shit and say that I was a predatory lesbian and strip me of my femininity. adults would still call me young man and sir despite being a 16 year old wearing make up, denim skirts, earrings, and covered in beaded necklaces. I would wear SO much jewelry to try to get it through people's minds that I was a girl.

but then through that came another weird thing where, like, though I was dressing ~feminine~ I was still "one of the guys" because I had a crude sense of humor and still liked comics and anime and wasn't as, for lack of a better word, "delicate" as my other (white) female friends. but then AGAIN I *couldnt* be one of the guys because it was a secret special task force essentially and I was just a stupid girl.

a lot of that fucked up my sense of self with my sexuality growing up too. I knew at a fairly early age that I was bisexual even though I didn't know there was a word for it, but I didn't want to admit to liking girls because that would mean my bullies were right about me, and if they were right about that then what if they were right about all the other horrible stuff they said about me being hideous, and gross, and weird?

because! if that was right too! a boy would never fall in love with me and have dance sex with me like Johnny and Baby do in Dirty Dancing! or would never save me from being sacrificed like Rick saves Evie in The Mummy! I'd be alone forever because boys would think I was big ugly butch with no value to them, and girls would think I was a predator and would always have to be on their guard to make sure I wasn't gawking and fawning over them. (and let's not even GET into how my religion fucked up my sense of morality about this. I have since grown out of it at least.)

every person I ever confessed to having a crush on has turned me down (mostly politely though, thank god) in my life except for one and a half. (one said they also liked someone else as much as they liked me, and since I had no self-esteem at 18 I was like "oh that's cool. let's date anyway." because I just wanted to have a boyfriend. that's the half.)

the other we kind of connected right away, whirlwind romance for me, but I don't think they ever quite felt the same way and that ended in an actual divorce anyway.

I've had three "relationships" my whole entire life and no more than that, and in my head i told myself thag was because I am fat, and ugly, and MASCULINE, no matter how hard I tried to be sweet and charming and pretty.

as I've aged I've learned about the systematic de-feminization of black women since all the way back to slavery times and shit and I won't claim to be an expert about that shit but it makes me cry that it's just ingrained into people's minds. it doesn't give us a single fighting chance from birth. it makes me feel like I'm going to be a lonely freak for the rest of my life because iowa is like one of the whitest places in the world, and my own internalized racism has convinced me all my life that I don't belong in black spaces because I'm not "authentic", I'm watered down. I've been called a half-breed and an oreo so many times.

I can't be black, I can't be white, I can't be a boy, I can't be a girl. I'm a copper penny in a jar full of nickels and dimes. I don't look the same, I'm not the same shape, and im not as shiny.

though I am attracted to women I have this OBSESSION with men, and to have a relationship with a man as PROOF. SOLID PROOF. that I am a valid woman, because there seems to be no other way for me to get the point across. and it's important for me to get the point across because I grew up with my business being the punchline, and curiosity of my peers, and the concern of my family. I couldn't exist without speculation from someone.

and then came a moment last year while I was at work, where a co-worker told me something that a person in another department who I did not get along with had told them. that I was a mean, jealous bitch who wanted them "out of the way" because they were getting too close to my friend that also worked at our store, and I was obsessed and in love with her and trying to stop a relationship from forming between the two of them. and it made me sick to my stomach. it was the thing I had been trying to steer clear from, from the moment I knew I was bisexual, but I hadn't tried hard enough. my anxiety shot through the roof. I had a panic attack. I broke down sobbing in the bathroom. this person was vengeful, I had nothing to do with them or that friend anymore, and I hadn't for months but they wanted to spread this rumor about me. and even if I truthfully denied it like I did, it didn't matter, because a person could take one look at me an think "you know, I can see that." because that's what people thought my entire fucking existence.

I cried off and on the rest of the day. I was too sick to eat dinner. I barely slept. and then I ended up puking what little food I had to eat that night anyway. I still barely ate the following few days I stayed home from work because I still felt so sick to my stomach with anxiety and at one point I got faint-ish when I had finally returned to work, and had to have help to get to the breakroom and force myself to eat. I bawled to my step-mother about it all, that I didn't feel comfortable at work anymore because it was just my words against theirs, and my bosses never held the person accountable for any of the other bullshit that they caused anyway.

it took me a VERY. long time to move past this incident. I think the only thing that ever ended up fully distracting me from it was covid and my uncle and my father's health both taking a turn for the worst last June. and even then, in between, I had such loooow moments. I self harmed and wrote mean notes to myself, stayed in bed for days. I wrote my own suicide note just to feel better, even though I knew I'd never do it. I was too chicken, but I just wanted to write it and pretend, just to release the depression pressure in my brain.

I've since been better for the most part. I know my parents love me and that I'm important to them, when just a few years ago I used to claim that I was an orphan because I was convinced that my father and my step-mother never cared to see me again because I was an ungrateful brat. I still get very lonely and long for a significant other but I'm kind of just coming to terms with the fact that unless I put myself out there, it won't happen, and im just too insecure to take the steps.

yesterday though, just for a second, out of nowhere, I thought about the claim that person had made about me even though the atmosphere at work has since changed, and things are patched up between me and my friend.

that gossiper is irrelevant now, but I couldn't help but have a little meltdown about it anyway because. like. apparently that's the vibe that I give off. because that's what everyone has said about me from day one of my life. and. I just. have to keep dealing with it. I'm stuck like this. and it sucks. and that little thought about it reminded me again.

[digitalbounce-digitalsound]

My in-depth analysis of why I left the Kpop fandom.

Please be aware, this may touch on sensitive topics.

As most of my  followers may know, I have been in the Kpop fandom for many years (Since 2006 to be exact) which means I have seen a lot, A LOT, of shit. I have had nearly my entire life controlled by Kpop and by about 2010 I completely moved away from more normal music.

Since I started secondary school I was bullied for my taste in music, I never thought anything of it because as I still believe, music is music and nothing is wrong with safe creative influence and inspiration. But the thing was, this music, this fandom had me so deluded and so removed from myself that I didn't see it was destroying me, inside and out.

After I was in the fandom for around 4 years, I was getting more and more obsessed with kpop, keeping track of the idols, watching their MV's obsessively, hoarding albums and putting up high defences for when someone made fun of them. Up until 2019 when I dropped the fandom completely, I managed to spend over £4000 on Kpop merch, be it albums, clothing, food, concerts. It was bad and a huge waste of money.

The Kpop fandom is a toxic place to be with people constantly pushing you to like certain groups, with battles around which fandom is better, which group is better between fans. Fans will discriminate against you for the way you look, the way you dress. If you don’t meet their standards they will find a way to push you away. They are all entitled and many think that stalking and giving idols zero personal space is perfectly acceptable.

Kpop music has no real meaning to it and is completely lacking when it comes down to personal messages (Bar the ones that have been self-written by the idols themselves) Kpop is just as bland and emotionless as the people that listen to it as the fans attach meanings to the songs where there are none. They don’t see that all of the music is extremely generic about money, women, men, being in a relationship and looking perfect. It is extremely sexist, concreted in gender binaries that make quite literally no sense and don’t have any soul behind them.

I guarantee that many if not all the idols that don’t write their own material, hate their songs with a passion but have to put up a plastic perfect mask to hide it. There have been so many horrible things that happen inside the genre that fans just ignore. Pretend don’t happen and it is horrible.

Because of Kpop I ended up becoming disgusted with myself, Kpop made me see flaws that weren't there, it made me want to look "Just like my idols". The impossibly thin, obviously unhealthy idols, and I did, gaining body dysmorphia and an eating disorder to boot. It led to me becoming extremely unhealthy, I would barely eat and listen too much at the insults thrown my way which did nothing but make me more self-conscious.

The constant struggle between wanting to look pretty and not wanting to kill myself was extremely difficult to deal with. Kpop made me shy, it made me reserved and not want to talk. It made me aim for dreams in the wrong way. I wanted to become a translator since I was very small so that I could help governments converse with each other and maybe help countries understand each other. That dream was changed with a want to become a translator to "Translate for my oppas" and become a concert translator or a TV show translator. I want to do seamstress work on the side, originally I wanted to do it to make costumes for Broadway productions, maybe cosplay for characters as well. That dream too, was ruined by Kpop. Making me want to do seamstress work to make stage outfits for my "Oppas and Eonnies." 

All of my dreams have been ruined by Kpop, my body too. To this day I still get confused about why I am doing certain things or why I am eating this or that because it will make me fat.

Because of the constant barrage of hate coming from my own brain, my own friends (Who consequently ended up liking Kpop), from my own family and people who I thought was close to me. I ended up thinking that the only way to escape from all of the hate was to kill myself. I became suicidal, I hated myself, I have scarred my leg so badly that I am scared to wear shorts. I constantly wore long sleeves to cover the marks on my arms, I turned in on myself and became scared to talk to people incase they bullied me or shouted at me. I grew more dependant on Kpop and I'm not proud to admit it but I ended up fetishizing Asian people, it was not a good time in my life, I felt like I could change my life, marry someone who could give me child on the inside of Kpop, it was disgusting but at the time, I didn't see it.

I had no one to openly talk to about what I was going through, nowhere to go but down at the time. I ended up doing performing arts at college, hoping that I could be recruited by an agency and meet my idols, be my idols, I thought I could get somewhere with performance. It helped, but not in the way I would have expected. I became more confident and even though I was still being bullied for my likes, bullied for things that happened in school, I continued. I kept at performance. started liking more Japanese Pop/Rock, I listened to my struggling brain instead of my aching obsessed heart and it led me to become friends with C.

She is into Kpop like me, she understood what I wanted, she understood the Asian fever, we became close friends, close friends very quickly. She lived near to me at the time and would invite me over for Kpop sessions, to have fun making Korean food, singing along to Kpop songs, to learn Korean together. At the time, I thought it was brilliant to have someone like me around but low and behold, I didn't see what she was doing to me in the meantime. I didn't know that she was controlling me.

She kept me interested with stories of becoming a teacher, this would have been the perfect way into Korea. It made so much sense, if I became a teacher I could get into Korea and live in the same place as them. Now and then I would get a small spark of realisation that C was not listening, that she didn't care about anyone but herself but I still ignored it. After I finished my Dance BTEC I decided to work for a while, gain money before looking more into becoming a teacher.

Something that you should know about me is that I am a very dependant person. Due to years of being bullied and shouted at, being constantly told I'm wrong and stupid, I rely on other people to know when I have done good, to know when I can celebrate without it coming off as me getting excited over something insignificant. I rely a lot on other people for my happiness. Emotion isn't my strong-suit so I have to surround myself with happy people who can help me see that I am a good person, who can help me with how to display emotion in a normal way.

C did not seem to realise this throughout our whole friendship and would never try to help when my emotional state started dropping, she wouldn't help me understand what the correct amount of emotion is, what grade is good and what isn't. We started a higher education course together, C basically clinging to me but my dependant ass didn't notice and clung back since she was the only other person who liked Kpop that I knew. During the course I had time to think about what I actually wanted to do. Being part of the English literature course made me remember my dream of translation, in the psychology course I learned more about myself, about how my anxiety works, how my manic depression effects my state of mind. I learned about so many different and interesting things that my brain started to click, I started to realise that I didn't like Kpop, I was obsessed with it.

I was obsessed and infatuated, Kpop was my unhealthy coping method which I didn't see. Kpop was the thing that was hurting me the most. At this time, I was still unable to let go. I still couldn't stop myself. When we applied to Universities somewhere in the back of my head my brain was telling me to apply for another course, and I did. whilst C applied for teaching courses and Korean I applied for nearly entirely teaching and Korean courses but snuck in an application for Japanese and International Business.

I felt like I had to sneak at that point because of her becoming overbearing and controlling, making me feel like the only place I could be was right behind her, following her the whole time.

In some fucked twist of fate me and her got into the same university, her on a Korean and tesol course and me on Japanese and Int Business. The small light in the back of my head was still telling me that it was still twisted, that I should not be how I am. That obsessing over Kpop isn't right but I still didn't listen, thinking that Kpop was the right place to be.

I should have seen what she was doing to me when she came to my Bass Practice at one point and heard me play only to weeks later suggest I don’t bring my Bass to Uni as it would “Distract me” yet she brought her PlayStation. She also tried to deter me away from normal music both at the time and during my time around her at University.

Now, I would never try to fully get rid of that time in my life, I would much rather just ignore it as I made many great friends through Kpop (C not being one of them) and I had a lot of fun at the concerts I went to.

Funnily enough, it was religion that actually jogged me out of this freakstorm called Kpop. I always understood the idea of a higher power, of something more than chemicals but less than a "god" It ended up with me finding Satanism (Laveyan) I realised that Religion is only as powerful as you make it. Obsessions, whilst good, are bad in large quantities, you must indulge yourself but too much indulgence leads to greed which is exactly what happened to me. I got too greedy and neglected the rest of my life.

It started small, I would listen to more heavy metal (thinks like Rammstein and Slipknot) and would practice bass more, listen to Kpop less and work on my course and my grades. Of course this slightly strained my friendship with C, I still listened to Kpop, went to the events at the uni, had a fun time at most of them. It wasn't until mid-year that I started seeing the error of my ways.

We went to another Kpop club night that was part of the uni. Because I was getting more used to normal music I could see people staring more, glancing at us with disgust because we knew older songs, because I wouldn't dance for certain groups. It was a small wakeup call, the feeling of being judged and bullied yet again by people nearing on 3 years younger than me was just a pain.

C had pointed a guy out to us during first year, his name is David, he is Korean and was a little bit of an ass (which was understandable due to the amount of Koreaboos he has had to deal with) I did think he was cute, he was a nice guy, liked music I liked but I was not attracted to him (Like I would have been when I was under that disgusting influence) so I just wanted to be his friend.

It started kicking off one night when C got upset over a what David thought was a joke, they both argued and shouted, I ended up as a go between, figuring out what happened, defending C and stopping David from hurting anyone. C took this as me taking David's side, proceeded to not listen to me, make me upset and with my horrible control over emotions, I started having a panic attack whilst shouting at her. She hugged me during my panic attack (A big no no because she was restraining me and giving me physical contact which I hate. Which she should have known being friends with me for 6 years) that made me pass-out, hit my head and get sent to the hospital with a concussion.

I had to pretend it wasn't her fault even though it killed me to do so. During my night in the hospital she managed to make it about her which really upset me. I ended up hanging around with my classmate/friend M after that. M was nice, she listened to me, her and E helped me realise that Kpop isn't all it's set up to be.

After that it went down hill with argues popping up a lot and for me, no escape since we lived together. I started getting disgusted by the Kpop nights with how obsessive and OTT the Kpop fans were, how horrible they were too. It all snapped one day when I just got my results back for an essay which I got a 1st in, I was over the moon but yet again, didn't know if it was good or not. When I showed people for confirmation that I could be happy I was met with jealous but very happy responses apart from C. The one person who was basically my jailer, who told me when it was okay to be happy or not, she responded with "Oh that's alright then I guess." and brushed it off like it was nothing.

It was then that it hit me she has been manipulating me for years, not giving me any real emotions to show. We were friends for 6 years and at that moment, all of the times she brushed me off or never let me talk, talked over me to speak about herself, it all came back. I was so disgusted and upset that I just stopped talking to her, I was too angry to talk to her and was worried that I may hurt her if I do talk.

She took offence to my silence and called me names, tried to force me to talk to her (Which is also bad because I do not react well to forced confrontation and most of the time lash out both physically and verbally) so I kept ignoring her to the point I felt too threatened to leave my room. It was horrible. I wasn't until she sent me a message telling me to act like an adult that I flipped.

No one, and I mean no one, calls me childish and gets away with it. That is the number 1 way to piss me off and get me to immediately cut ties.

I put in an application to move with the Uni due to being under threat and feeling unsafe. They moved me the next day. Whilst She was still in the flat, she didn't even notice me moving out. I was so disgusted with that.

After that, I met my new flatmates, none of them liked Kpop, they introduced me to nice music, better music which actually made me feel good, not infatuated. Happy. I could talk to them more about normal things. because of the lack of the obsession, my grades went up, I started making friends easier, my confidence went up.

After getting back into normal music, i started to realise how low-quality Kpop actually is. How disgustingly gendered it is and how sexist it is. Kpop ruined me but normal music made me realise who I am and how to become that person I always wished I was.

The only music I strictly don't listen to now is Rap, Kpop and Top-Chart Pop music.

Currently, I am a university student working towards my dream of becoming a government translator. I have prospects to work in Japan after I graduate and I am absolutely ecstatic about that. I cut out so many bad friends and managed to make myself feel more human again just by getting rid of a single music taste from my life.

 -Killian.

(If you’re going to spam me with hate and try to whine about how “Not all Kpop fans are like that” or “Kpop isn’t bad, you’re just stupid” and shit like that then you are just proving my point. If you come at me with a valid argument and actual valid points, I will explain my opinions and my side of the argument.)

BASICALLY, TREAT ME HOW YOU WANT TO BE TREATED.

Don’t be an asshole because I will just be an asshole back.

[perksofbeingasinner]

I want to share my experience about something I don’t talk about often. I’m going to add a warning as well because I don’t want anyone to be upset or triggered by my words because that is never my intention. I have had many addictions over the years. Some are easier to talk about than others, and some have been easier for me to overcome than others. Six years ago, I was coming off of heavy medication. One of the side effects of this medication was weight gain and at my highest weight I was around 170 pounds.

I hated my body and I was bullied for being “fat”. I had friends who were thin that I compared myself to, I had family members giving me bullshit and snide “weight loss tips” and honestly I was done with hating my reflection once I was finally able to register it with my newly unfogged mind. For Christmas of 2013 I was given a tablet and one of my favorite apps at that time was Tumblr. I dove deep into the rabbit hole of “thinspo” blogs and “ProAna” hashtags and became “inspired” to lose weight the “quick and easy way”..

Now, I joke about my eating disorder sometimes. I say things like “you know, one day I woke up and said, ‘fuck I’m hungry’ and never deprived myself again.” but when push comes to shove eating disorders are not a laughing matter by any means. I can live without drugs and my other reckless behaviors, but I can’t live without food. At least 30 million people, of all ages suffer from an eating disorder in the US. It has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. One person dies every 62 seconds as a direct result of an eating disorder. It’s a silent and slow killer, and there are times it isn’t easy to spot. Today, if I mention my history of disordered eating and addiction to diet pills, my family and friends say that they had no idea it was something I’d ever struggled with. I harmed my body in small, but very significant ways. I had put myself in danger using behaviors that to the average person would be deemed healthy. When I ate, it was nothing but salads or healthy food. I would do hundreds of sit-ups before I went to sleep and often times was commended by my parents for “doing so well with working out”. I remember being on vacation after I had lost about 40 pounds and putting on a bikini for the first time. Everyone had something positive to say about me getting myself in shape.

But behind closed doors there was an entirely different picture and mindset I was in that had brought an immense amount of self hatred and unrealistic, dangerous expectations I brought on myself. If I ate anything that wasn’t green, I had my head over a toilet for the rest of the night. I had pages of my journal scribbled in on the bus ride home expressing how scared I was to run out of diet pills because if I ate too much I wouldn’t know what to do. My back and hips were constantly sore because I would be up until 3 am doing sit ups until I physically couldn’t anymore. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw myself at my highest weight and knew I could never be like the girls I saw online no matter how hard I tried. I have looked back at some of my journals from that time and they genuinely scare me. The drawings, the poems, the “thinspirational” quotes and rules I forced myself to live by are absolutely terrifying.

I am beyond lucky that this demon is not one that I struggled with for a longer period of time, because I have seen the path of my own self destruction in many lights, and I am glad I had the willingness to overcome what could have been a lethal one. There are times I recognize my eating disorder popping its ugly head into my life. A lot of times when I eat I need to be watching something on my phone or have some sort of distraction. To this day I can’t step onto a scale and see the result for myself. I can’t wrap my fingers around my wrist or look at blogs that might get those gears in my head turning. Exercising, in any form, is a big trigger for me as well because I don’t know how to stop.

I recognize these things and I understand them. This year I will have 6 years clean from my eating disorder. I genuinely can’t sit here and say I’m happy with my body today, but I am glad that I have the RESPECT for my body that I do to give it the nourishment I need and not dwell on my size. If anyone is struggling with a eating disorder, there is help and there is hope. You can overcome this demon and just know that you are BEAUTIFUL the way that you are.

[disappearinginq]

New Bingo Card

Crankiness is apparently a powerful motivator, but so are awesome people randomly swinging by with words of encouragement. 

Currently, the fandom is Magnum, PI, but I plan to add in some from Prodigal Son over the break.

Fic can be found on AO3: Found Family

and FFN.net: Found Family 

and below the cut: 

Rick tugged at the stiff collar of his dress blues for the umpteeth time, stretching the starched material a little further every time. The fabric no longer lined up to make an even line, and the top button was in danger of popping loose. His face was starting to itch from his five o’clock shadow, and the colonel had made it abundantly clear that he was to shave before they were picked up by their escort, but after 18 months and 11 days of no shaving, he just felt naked without at least some scruff.

Besides.

Clean shaven he looked like he was 12.

Well, used to. The rounded features he’d had almost his entire adult life that had bartenders carding him well into his thirties – a source of never ending amusement for Nuzo and TC and a shared affliction for Thomas – were gone. They’d been out of the Valley for almost four months now, but weight and muscle were slow to return.

“Why in the fuck do we have to stay in our dress uniforms for this bullshit?” he grumbled. The uniforms were never what one would call roomy but now they just felt like woolen weighted blankets slowly suffocating him. With the high collar, it felt like a really weak guy trying to strangle him all day. It didn’t allow for slouching or raising arms or even stretching, and Rick had to resist the urge to gnaw on the collar that jabbed uncomfortably at the underside of his chin. “Why do we even have to do this bullshit?”

TC heaved a long suffering sigh of someone who’d had to explain to a whiny toddler one too many times already – “because we’re a big deal. People want some good news for a change, and we’re it.”

“If people want a happy story, they can fucking watch the Hallmark Channel,” Rick growled. “This is the last of things I want to do on my To Do list.”

TC played along. He looked utterly unbothered by his uniform, the new Major insignia gleaming in the midmorning sun. “Oh yeah? What’s above it?”

“Chug a bottle of bleach, for starters,” Rick said.

The abrupt bark of laughter at his shoulder was worth the dark scowl from Nuzo and TC.

Thomas looked better than he had, but that was a pretty low bar. The same missing baby fat from Rick’s cheeks hollowed out Thomas’s entire face, making him look gaunt and worn. His hair was still too long for regs, but the admiralty let it slide, if only because Thomas wouldn’t let anyone close enough with a pair of scissors to cut it. He still wasn’t talking much, and rarely strayed any further than a few feet from any of them, but at least he was mobile. And alive.

He fidgeted with his pristine white uniform, pulling absently at the sleeves every few minutes to cover up the still healing skin graft scars.

“That’s a corker of a To Do list, brother,” TC said easily. “Anything else?”

“Well, if we’re still talking ‘Things I Would Rather Do Than a Press Tour’, then I’m going to have say  eating a nest of spiders, getting kicked in the teeth by a mule, having recreational surgery to remove a testicle,” he animatedly counted off on his fingers as he prattled off worse and worse things, ignoring Nuzo’s eye rolling and TC’s look of abject disgust while watching Thomas’s smile grow to the point it crinkled the corners of his eyes. Worth it, Rick thought. 

“Is there anything actually fun on this list of yours?” TC interrupted before Rick could come up with worse things.

“Food,” Rick said. “I plan to eat myself stupid now that we’re out of that godforsaken hospital. And I’m sorry, but German food is not my thing. I want an Americanized pizza, with something gross for toppings. I want whatever the hell that thing is,” he pointed to a six foot tall advertisement for something pink from Starbucks. “I want an all-American hot dog made from kangaroo meat and old boots.”

“That is not what hot dogs are made of,” TC sighed, making a face. “Shut up before you ruin all the things I’ve been looking forward to.”

They were sitting in the VIP lounge of LaGuardia, waiting on a ‘personal escort’ to some talk show – Rick honestly hadn’t been paying any attention when the general spoke. Fallon? Kimmel? SNL? Something that was supposed to impress him, and instead all Rick heard was ‘the first time you’ve been on American soil in over two years, and for the next six weeks, we have your entire lives mapped out for you – where you eat, where you sleep, who you talk to’ and he couldn’t shake the feeling it sounded suspiciously like they were still prisoners.

Just fewer bars and indoor plumbing.

They hadn’t been home in over two years – Rick hadn’t been state side in almost three. He’d been in the middle of back to back tours when they were captured. He almost forgot what it sounded like to hear people speaking primarily in a language he understood.

But his nerves were far from soothed just stepping onto American soil. They’d spent weeks in Germany recovering, trying to undo the damage done in a year a half, and Rick felt like it was like slapping a new coat of paint on rust – looked pretty on the outside, while everything still rotted away underneath.

They were flown first class from Bagram. Well, first from Bagram to the UAE, and then to the USA. The comfy seats didn’t mean much when he had to sit in the most uncomfortable uniform ever made for thirteen hours, with the military escort reminding them they weren’t allowed to drink in uniform.

When Rick had threatened to strip down then and there, the escort had relented, but he’d caught the exaggeratedly disappointed looks from the stewardesses. He’d smiled as they refilled his drink when out of the blue the thought struck him so hard he’d flinched, almost spilling it – would they still smile if they saw the scars?

He’d avoided any further attempts at conversation with them, just the general pleases and thank yous for service and tried not to throw up.

Nuzo laughed, interrupting the dark line of thoughts. “You idiots are gonna be the one doing the junket, not me.” He elbowed Thomas with half his usual force and tried not to let the hurt show when Thomas still noticeably flinched. “I guess married man, father of one doesn’t interest the people like three singles ready to mingle.”

“Don’t be hatin’ ‘cause we have the celebrity looks,” TC joked, fussing with his own dress blues that were still pristine.

“Yeah,” Rick piped in, slinging his arm around TC’s shoulders. “Look at these mugs. We’re gorgeous. And you somehow still have a bald head despite being stuck in a cave for 18 months and 11 days without access to a razor. Who would you want on camera?” He smiled broadly.

“It’s because Lara said no,” Thomas said quietly, before Nuzo could reply. He barely met Nuzo’s gaze, dark brown eyes looking away even before they connected. “And everyone is afraid of Lara.”

Nuzo stared for a moment. They all did. It was the first attempt at humor – actual humor, not dark, gallows jokes that made the therapists scribble madly in their notebooks to up his meds – since the Valley.

The ghost of Thomas’s former grin faltered, those same dark eyes that spoke more than the man did himself these days shifting away suddenly as he bit his lip, suddenly unsure if he’d overstepped an imaginary line.

It was more than a little crushing to see someone who once spoke so freely stop and second guess almost everything they said. Even to their friends.  

Rick saved him.

Seemed like he was doing that a lot lately. But it gave him a purpose – a mission. And isn’t that what the counselor kept saying returning servicemen struggled with? A lack of purpose in the absence of mission?

Guess they were saving each other still.

“Thomas has a point, Nuz,” Rick said. “Lara is a lovely and terrifying woman. No fair getting her to spring you.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Lara, love of my life, sun in my sky, to whom the angels pale in comparison, is intimidating enough that she can bully an Admiral into letting her beloved husband out of an unwanted assignment?” Nuzo put a hand over his ribbon rack, mouth opened in feigned shock before shrugging one shoulder in agreement. “Damn right she is.”

The frightened rabbit look faded slowly from Thomas’s expression as they continued to banter back and forth, the familiar rhythm of their teasing soothing frazzled nerves better than any therapy. It worked in the cave, it worked at the airport.

TC and Nuzo were still talking, Rick occasionally butting in with an opinion that no one asked for or needed, just to keep things lively. But mostly he kept an eye on Thomas.

Thomas, whose attention waned easily these days, and more often than not, drifted back to less pleasant times. He fidgeted in place almost constantly, clenching and unclenching his hands, only following the conversation when voices were raised and even then, only to make sure it wasn’t a danger loud, before staring off into space again. The press conference they’d already had in Bagram was a nightmare – everyone wanted to talk to Thomas.

And Thomas held his own for a while. He really did. But the questions started to get a little too personal. Once he’d answered about finding something that let him help people, now that they were being early retired from their military service, the reporters took it as an invitation to ask him more invasive and personal questions that somehow also still made political statements out of it – like “Does that mean you don’t agree with the US’s involvement with Afghanistan?”, or “Do you believe that the military presence isn’t helping people?”

Rick was all ready to come to his brother’s aide, but TC beat him to the punch with a solid, rumbling: “You’re gonna ask a man who went through hell to solve a war that’s been going on since before we left Africa as a species?”

The following “get fucked” that even had flustered Thomas laughing because TC rarely ever swore, even in the Cave, probably had more to do with the abrupt end to the questioning, but…eh. It was worth the ass chewing from the higher ups.

 Now he was starting to fidget again, despite the familiar bantering, pulling at invisible threads on his uniform as he tried not to make the constant rolling of his shoulders obvious.

“I’m bored stiff. You wanna come take a walk around the airport?” he asked, already heading for the door to the lounge. “Get some air? Stretch these legs? I think I’m losing circulation to my feet in these things.”

“Sure,” Thomas agreed, practically jumping out of his seat at the invite. “It’s stuffy in here.”

It wasn’t, but Rick let it slide. He held the door open for his friend, sending a quick ‘okay’ sign behind his back towards Nuzo and TC, letting them know he had this one.

The airport was crowded, but not claustrophobically so.  The concourse was packed with people waiting for food and flights, the enormous floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the tarmac for people to watch incoming and outgoing flights making the crowd tolerable.

Except for the part where people stared at them as they walked around.

It had nothing to do with who they were – Rick doubted that many people really watched the news. But the military dress uniforms were eye catching. Something that he never minded in the past, but now felt like he was under a microscope. He found himself walking closer than necessary to Thomas, studying the ceiling with closer intensity than it probably warranted.

“I don’t think I can take this for another six weeks,” Thomas said, so quietly Rick almost missed it. Rick hadn’t been paying all that much attention, preoccupied with his own feelings of being under a microscope, but now that he actually looked at Thomas, he wasn’t looking so hot.

The damage done by the Taliban was a slow recovery. Damage done by raging infections and Thomas’s own recklessness was even slower. Long walks winded him still, but now Magnum was looking positively gray.

“I know…I know what we did was important,” Thomas said softly. “But…I don’t want to keep reliving it. Letting people ask us like it’s some part of a movie, or somehow entertaining. And the more I try to convince myself that these people…” he gestured absently with a flick of his hand that made him wince. “They’re the reason why it should be worth it, the more I keep thinking of that press release, and the more…the more I hate it.” The more he hated them.

Rick considered it for a long moment before replying, trying to channel his inner TC to find something that might actually mean something. “We took an oath to stand against all threats, foreign and domestic. We signed up to fight for them. Not to suffer for them. You don’t owe them more than you’ve given.”

Thomas shrugged like he didn’t believe him but was too tired to argue. The higher ups made the press tour a non-optional request. As long as they were still in, they were supposed to ‘obey the orders of those appointed over them’.

What was irritating was that Thomas used to have no problem telling the chain to get bent when needed. Or just pretending like he didn’t hear them in the first place. He even said some unpleasant things to the Taliban holding them prisoners, but now…now he just didn’t seem to have it in him to complain.

Like someone had snuffed that spark.

“But first things first – I’m getting out of this monkey suit.” He veered abruptly into the clothing store, boasting hoodies with ‘I heart NYC’ in every color imaginable and Yankees and Mets gear stacked to the ceiling. He almost gagged when he saw the outrageous pricing, but hey – he had back pay for a year and a half of hazardous duty coming his way. He could afford it.

They were supposed to stay in uniform while traveling, according to the military.

Well, they could go fuck themselves, Rick thought darkly. If he was gonna be gawked at, it was gonna be because people thought he was an overcompensating tourist – not a Marine who just returned from hell.

“Here,” he tossed Thomas an overpriced t-shirt. “Take that. I’ve never been more appreciative of airlines catering to the idea that at least half their customers have lost all their stuff in customs, but I am getting out of this uniform, and so are you.”

Thomas stared blankly at the plain black shirt in his hands. Rick watched as he carefully traced scarred fingertips over the soft fabric, touching at the collar before fingering the sleeves that would only come to just past his upper arm.

“It’s softer than dress whites,” he conceded. He almost headed for the changing room before he stopped, glancing back the racks.  “I need something with sleeves,” he pointed out hesitantly.

Rick nodded his chin towards the display of hoodies. “Take your pick. Personally, I dig the pink one, so if you’re not down for looking like twinsies, pick a different color.”

Thomas laughed at that. Rick had never been ‘conservative’ when it came to civilian clothes – mostly because it annoyed everyone else, but as more than one woman had told him – ladies liked a daring man with more color in their wardrobe than that of Johnny Cash.

Their obscenely expensive clothing bought and tags ripped off, they headed back towards the lounge where TC and Nuzo were probably beginning to wonder where exactly they wandered off to.

Rick’s stepfather once told him ‘clothes make the man’, and for the most part, Rick flatly ignored him. But the change in Thomas was…tangible.

Dressed in jeans which cost more than a car rental, shoes better served for a teenager on a skateboard but were the only ones soft enough to accommodate sensitive scar tissue, and a hoodie two times too big for him, Thomas actually looked…relaxed.

No one was staring at him. No one even batted an eye as they walked past them – not even the ones who’d openly stared at the dress uniforms not twenty minutes earlier.

It was like they were invisible.

For the first time in a year and a half, no one paid any attention at all to them. Not to demand questions of them, not to decide who they were going to take away to the Pit, not to mock from behind bars, not to question whether they’d followed the doctor’s advice or if they’d eaten anything that day.

Nobody cared.

And.

It.

Was.

Marvelous.

“Like a magic cloak,” Thomas half whispered in awe. He still tugged at the long sleeves of the sweatshirt, but they were long enough he could actually pull the ends over his hands, hiding the scars completely.

It also made him look like he was fifteen.

But there was a kindling light in those dark, expressive eyes, and that was all that Rick cared about.

“Told you,” he teased gently, opening the door back to the lounge.

There was an indignant squawk of abject betrayal when TC saw them in civilian clothes.

“Really, guys?” TC gaped, a hand of mock betrayal going to his chest. “You gonna do a brother like that?”

Rick huffed. “Like we would leave you hanging.” He tossed a bag of clothes at the pilot, who caught them deftly in one hand before peering suspiciously inside. “No, I didn’t get you pink. We decided yellow was more your color anyway.”

“What in the hell is this?” TC demanded, yanking out a bumblebee yellow button up. “TM, is this your doing?”

Thomas shrugged innocently. “There’s a limited selection in the big and tall in an airport.”

TC scowled without anger. “Sure.”

“Nah, the kid’s right – you had your pick of that or lime green. I don’t know why they think a 6’2”, 240 pound man needs to be more noticeable, but it’s what you get,” Rick defended, even as Thomas shot another scowl his way at the mention of age.

“Nothing for me?” Nuzo asked. “I see how it is.”

“Your wife and kid are coming to pick you up in like an hour – don’t pretend like Lara and Jake aren’t going to have a change of clothes,” TC pointed out. “Watch the youngin’s – I’m getting out of this clown suit.”

Before Nuzo could protest, TC was out the door with a speed that belied his size.

Nuzo shook his head, then quickly darted his gaze back to Thomas who was looking out the floor to ceiling window at the parking lots, not paying them any attention. He met Rick’s gaze, cocking his head to one side, questioning.

How’s our boy?

Rick held a hand out and teetered it back and forth. Not great. But not terrible.

“Any word on our hurry up and wait status?” he asked aloud. Their flight had been bumped back in Dubai – they arrived two and a half hours ahead of schedule, and Lara and Jake had to drive up from Virginia Beach to pick Nuzo up. The others were left waiting – as per usually with the military – until someone filed paperwork to get them a ride. Their escort was supposedly off conversing with the USO representatives, but that was over an hour ago, and Rick not so secretly hoped they’d been forgotten.

“No news yet,” Nuzo answered, glancing at his phone.

Having phones again was just weird now. How fucking handy would it have been to just reach into a back pocket and call for help?

TC practically kicked in the door when he returned, grinning like an idiot, holding his arms above his head like the statue of Adonis. “I can move my arms again,” he crowed. He rolled his massive shoulders, relishing the freedom of movement out of the restrictive uniform. He pulled at the hem of the large shirt. “You know what, I ain’t even mad about the color. I look fantastic. I’m getting more of these when I get…”

The word they all dreaded died in his throat.

Home.

The only one who even had one was Nuzo, and even that came with its own perils. Trying to readjust after deployment was hard enough on married couples. Readjusting after…everything…seemed like an unwinnable purgatorial task.

“I guess this is just a temporary patch job, huh.” TC faltered. He glanced down at the bag that now held his carefully folded uniform. “We’re going to have to get changed again as soon as the guards – escorts – come back.”

Thomas flinched at the word guards, his shoulders coming up quick and sharp as he ducked his head, automatically making himself smaller than he already was. Somehow, it was made worse by the oversize sweatshirt – perhaps because it made him look even younger than he already did.

Nuzo had mentioned going to Hawaii back in Bagram, when Thomas quietly admitted he wasn’t ready to go home. But none of them had anything set up in Hawaii, either. Not for another six weeks, at least. The older man had reached out to Robin Masters, hoping the former journalist would be willing to help out the man who’s life made him a millionaire that owned half the island, but he’d only reached a very polite but very firm assistant who informed him that Mr. Masters was very busy on world tour, but she would pass along the message but couldn’t guarantee when he would be able to return the call.

“First of all, if they want me back in uniform, they’re going to have to wrestle me back into it,” Rick declared, crossing his arms over the Yankees emblem on his shirt. “And I plan to go out like a honey badger on meth.”

TC raised a questioning eyebrow at the metaphor but shrugged one shoulder in agreement. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“What if…”

All three heads turned to Thomas.

The younger man had one palm up against the window, fingers splayed out on the cold glass as it fogged around his hand. But he wasn’t looking up. He was looking down at the parking lot. At the rental car return lot.

They waited patiently.

“What if…we ran away?” Thomas asked, voice hesitant and barely above a whisper. “What if we didn’t wait around for them to decide for us? What if…what if we just left. We could just...go. Anywhere. Anywhere we wanted to.”

He shot a glance over his shoulder back at the group that was so cautiously hopeful, the first real spark back in his eyes since last September – and Rick realized he would’ve agreed to anything that kept that look on his friend’s face.

“I’m down,” he said immediately, before glancing back at TC. “Could use a pilot though.”

“Hell, yeah.” TC tossed his bag to Nuzo who caught it one handed. “Cover for us?”

Nuzo smirked. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll get Lara to do it.”

*

Fortunately, LaGuardia had an overabundance of rentals available, and while Rick pointed out the flashy sports cars in the lineup, TC argued against being forced to sit in the back seat with his knees up his nose at any point of the trip.

“Then don’t sit in the back!” Rick protested, pointing out the sport car again.

“I am supposed to believe that you and Thomas aren’t even once going to want to both be up front at the same time?” TC shot back and pointed to the SUV that looked like it would be better suited for a drive by or government agencies.

 “What about this one?” Thomas asked.

The car had no business being there. It was almost fifty years old and completely out of place amongst the minivans and crossovers, but there it was – a 1968 Chevelle convertible, in mint condition.

“I think someone just parked it in the wrong spot, buddy,” Rick said. “I don’t think it’s a rental.”

Thomas leaned over the passenger side door, fishing into the glove box. “No, look,” he said, holding up a piece of paper. “It is a rental. It’s from Auto Classics Enterprise, apparently.”

“It gets like six miles to the gallon,” TC pointed out. “We’ll need to refill twice before we even get out of the city.”

Rick glanced up at him. “You got somewhere you need to be?”

“Just stating facts, bro. Though…” he considered the front seat and back. “It is pretty roomy.”

“It’s got class,” Rick agreed. “And leg room. Not to mention zero to sixty in six point four seconds.”

“We’re in downtown Queens, Orville. We’ll be lucky to see anything about 13 miles an hour until we get out of the city.”

“Why you always gotta be a negative Nancy, Theodore?” Rick asked, squinting up at the larger man before hissing: “Who hurt you?”

“I’m a realist,” TC corrected. “And one of us has to have at least one foot on the ground while you got your head up in the clouds.”

“There’s no roof,” Thomas interrupted, making both men stop mid argument. He looked sheepish, like he hadn’t meant to say anything aloud, but couldn’t take it back. “I’m just…sick of walls, you know? Of not being able to see out. We can get a different one, I just…” he shrugged, offering a faint echo of his normal Cheshire grin. “Something without a roof?”

Rick and TC glanced at each other. It’d been hard to deny Thomas anything even before they were captured – he was just that kind of guy. He called in a million favors, but he racked them and stacked them the same way some people stacked bodies. Everyone always owed Thomas because Thomas was always, always giving something. Hard to deny became impossible – especially since lately, he asked very little. 

Rick sighed, held one hand out, palm flat and his other hand clenched in a fist on top. “On the count of three?”

“Nah,” TC grinned, giving Rick an affectionate shove. “You’re enlisted. I know your ass is broke, back pay or not. I got this.”

“That stings.”

“Not as much as your empty wallet.”

*

Poor investment or not, the car was what they needed. All of them, not just Thomas.

Rick was always a bit of a car fanatic – he liked anything that’s entire existence could be summed up with a robust vrooooom. And he could find one anywhere – no one was entirely sure how or where he’d drummed up a 1935 Rolls Royce in the middle of the Helmand province and most were afraid to ask.

TC appreciated anything with a solid engine and good mechanics under the hood that could accommodate his large frame.

Even the stop and go traffic of downtown New York couldn’t do anything to deter the animated conversation from the front seat.

“Isn’t this the car from Dukes of Hazard?” TC teased, easing the classic further out of the city while Rick had a minor coronary over it most certainly was not, how could you spin such lies?

He hadn’t been to NYC in decades, and he’d honestly forgotten how quickly the city disappeared once they were across the bridge. It didn’t exactly up and vanish in the blink of an eye, but as they crossed from New York into Jersey, the sky scrapers and towering apartment complexes with convenience stores and neon lights gave way to suburbia, the hill houses of the Palisades Parkway offering glimpses of the Hudson between the billion dollar homes as they cruised along to nowhere in particular. The million dollar homes became farm houses and ranches, vast expanses of green instead of concrete jungle and the rumble of steady traffic faded away to the occasional semi rig or farm truck. The roar of the wind dulled as they dropped from 60 to 30, winding their way deeper into the state forests of upstate Jersey and lower New York.

It was hard to believe that less than an hour from one of the largest cities in the US was rolling farm lands.

Shit, there were even cows.

Rick scrolled continuously through the radio channels, changing the station as soon as an ad came on or he heard someone talking instead of music. “You know, you would think in a year and some change, someone would’ve come along with more talent than Justin Bieber.”

“Talent isn’t what makes that kid famous,” TC argued. “Pop music hasn’t been about the music since the 70’s.”

Rick grumbled under his breath as he continued to tweak the dial back and forth before finally stopping on “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, cranking the volume several decibels.

TC shot him an incredulous look. “This is what you stop on? This is what says bro trip to you?”

Rick smirked, putting both hands up in ‘white dude shuffle’ pose, the closest thing he could get to dancing while in the front seat of a car. “When men are confident enough to write songs about their friendships, then I’ll put those on – but until then, Cyndi has us covered.”

“You gonna sit there and deny, to my face, Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend’, or Bill Withers’s classic ‘Somebody to Lean On’?” TC demanded. “What about ‘You Got a Friend In Me’?”

“The theme song to Toy Story?! How is that better?”

“How is it not better than an 80’s women power ballad? TM, back me up here!”

When Thomas didn’t respond, TC risked a glance in the rearview as Rick whipped around as if he expected Thomas to have vanished from the backseat while they were driving.

But he was still there, sitting in the middle of the bench seat. Head tilted back against the seat with his eyes closed behind his sunglasses, arms above his head as he played with the wind currents like his hands were paper planes, lost in his own little world.

The dark shadows under his eyes from months of sleepless nights were lost in the bold noon day sun, and his clean shaven face looked years younger without the stubble and lines from worry and illness.

A smile as wide as the sky above them plastered across his face.

For the first time in forever, Thomas looked…well, like Thomas.

“Play whatever you want, guys," Thomas said without looking up. His too-large sleeves pooled around his elbows, and he didn’t seem to care, despite the still healing scars plainly visible. “The sun is warm. The grass is green. Today is a good day.”

[sugarcrash]

Numb // My Story About My Mental Illnesses (Part 1)

(A/N: This is quite different, huh? I just wanted people to know about the kinds of things these illnesses can do to a person, and to let them know that they can get through it with me.This will be more than one part. This is the main picture, and each time I will go deeper into what each of my illnesses does to me.)

Warnings: suicidal themes, self harm, depression, bipolar, anxiety, panic attacks, swearing, overall trigger warning

********************************************

Why me?

I feel nothing, absolutely nothing as I had laid still on the floor, my hands and arms and entire body shaking from the realization of what I had just done. 

Blood was coated on my wrists and legs and arms as I struggled to stand up. I sat on my knees, unshed tears in my eyes. 

And I broke apart.

I cried. Hard. A waterfall spilled from my empty heart, cold and unforgiving as I screamed silently at midnight.

Everyone in the house was asleep, as far as I knew. The used razor was sitting on the bathroom counter, covered in my red blood, perched innocently as though it hadn’t left any trace of sadness or anger or regret or hurt on my skin.

It wasn’t fucking fair. Nothing was ever fucking fair. I’ve spent my whole life being bullied and teased and ignored and hurt and scared and alone, and no one ever seemed to notice or care.

No matter how many scars my friends saw on my wrists, no matter how many days I would sit in absolute silence as they went on about some other stupid topic, they said nothing.

Everything always hurts. It’s hard to simply get out of bed and wake up. It’s almost impossible for me to be happy nowadays.

I plaster on a fake smile. My parents specifically told me to bottle up my feelings inside. I’m not allowed to tell anyone about my problems or how mentally insane I am. “Keep your thoughts to yourself.” they scold. “No one should know.”

I go to school. I act happy, I try not to bother anyone. I just feel so lost.

I can’t remember the last time I put on a genuine smile. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good night’s sleep, 7 hours or more. 

I remember the night I was going to jump out of a window. My room is on the second story of the house, and I had removed my window screen so I could get a better look of the moon.

Before even thinking of it, I was sitting on my windowsill, legs dangling out. I almost fell while getting up. I had stared at the ground for at least a good five minutes, thinking about what life would be if I were gone. If I had jumped.

I thought about my family, and if they’d be sad. But then I really wondered if they would. My older sister bullies me, calls me names and comments on every little thing I do, has to point out what I eat, always giving me looks as if she’s disgusted that whatever God is out there would actually make me.

And my younger siblings. My little sister makes fat jokes, pretending they’re funny. I laugh along, but she has no idea how much it fucking hurts to hear it. And my brother, always saying how he bets I wish he were dead, how he says he hates me, when in truth, I hate me. I wish I were dead. Both of them tell me I’m the worst, and I believe it.

And my parents. They told me not to express sad feelings. They tell me they care, then they ignore me, always directly target me. I can’t express how much it hurts, how much pain I fucking feel to hear their stupid lies. To feel so unloved by my own biological family.

My friends. Would they miss me? They never seemed to enjoy my company, often favoring each other over me. Leaving me while they run off and do fun things. Making stupid inside jokes that they’ll never bother to explain to me, even if I asked.

I can’t imagine anyone crying over me or about me. I feel so alone, like it’s me on one side of the world, and everyone else on the other.

It’s really hard to live a life like mine. I’m not trying to say my problems are worse than anyone else’s, but it’s so damn difficult that no one I ever talks to understands. 

I’m bipolar, and I can go from slap happy to completely and utterly depressed in minutes. I just want to run away, scream and cover my ears, yell out into everything I’m pained and hurt by. Cry until there isn’t a single ounce of water left in my body.

I just want to be loved.

I liked a guy once. He told me to kill myself and said it was a joke. Of course, it was cruel. But I believe that, too. He moved, and ruined my entire fucking life. Hear that, Giancarlo? Are you fucking happy now? Overjoyed at my depression, I bet. 

I have a few crushes on people at my school, but they are way out of my league, even if they do interact with me once in a while. I know I love too hard. After Giancarlo, I’m scared. I’m scared that if I tell them how I feel, they’ll hate me. I’m scared that nobody wants me.

I have too many problems to be with anyone. I know that I’ll scare them away with my scars and tears and moods. I know that they won’t know what to do when it comes to me. So I close myself off. I don’t express much emotion anymore.

I’m a liar, too. I used to go to therapy until about 3 months ago, when my mom stopped making appointments because she forgot. She thought I was better, anyways. I knew that I wasn’t. I knew that it didn’t help me at all. Talking just doesn’t.

I’m just so sick and tired of everything. I’m tired of people constantly trying to fix me. I’m tired of being ignored and brushed off. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of not being normal. I’m tired of being. I’m tired of living.

I want to love and be loved. I want to stop my insomnia. I want to throw away all my sadness and anger. I want to escape. 

That’s why I turn to Tumblr and Wattpad. Because I can read about and listen to and watch and create a fake life, pretending to be whatever I want to be. Pretending that whoever I want to love me will love me. Pretending that people notice me.

That’s why I become others’ therapist, so I can forget my own problems, and feel like I don’t have any.

I pretend there’s nothing wrong with me.

There’s everything wrong with me, though. I stress out until I feel as if I’m sick. I’m okay with horror and gore and blood, but not in the “scary movie fan” way. In the seriously sick, twisted, fucked-up way.

It’s frightening when you realize what you did. What you are. I believe that I am a monster. I have written on the walls with my own blood, I have screamed until the throat is raw, I have choked and harmed myself, I have tortured myself until I feel nothing at all.

I believe I am unworthy. I don’t deserve people’s time, money, or love. I don’t deserve a life or any sort of object or feeling.

I believe I am delicate. I can break down into tears at any given moment. A single word can ruin me. My breathing is ruined, and I panic very easily.

I believe I am ugly. I am fat and hideous, both of which I validate because people have told me I am. I get scared to look into my own eyes in the mirror. I starve myself.

I believe that I am broken. That I am ruined. That nobody will ever love or need or want to. That there is no glue to put me back together, that I am destroyed forever.

I am numb.

[tymptir]

META FUN ON SAM TARLY’S REACTION TO DAENERYS’ REVELATION

granted, I didn’t originally plan to make this post, but considering that I’ve seen some disturbing opinions on a couple of blogs who recently followed me, I feel the need to get this word out. what I’ve honest to god seen on copious blogs in the past couple of days was people claiming Sam’s reaction to Daenerys telling him that she had burned half his family alive was unreasonable. that it wasn’t understandable. that he even should have been glad. and that it in no way or form explained why Sam afterwards showed a very clear dislike towards Daenerys in the crypts. let me preface this meta talk by offering these people are very solemn, very heartfelt, very generous fuck you.

now that I got this out of my system, let’s begin, shall we.

a) Sam’s reaction to Dany’s revelation wasn’t unreasonable I’ve seen it pop up again and again and it continuously baffles me. I believe we can all agree that Randyll Tarly was the definition of a scumbag. this was a man who was perpetually abusive towards his son, who bullied and belittled him every chance he could get, rendering Sam into the shy, scared, fat little boy he is because he constantly ate his feelings away as a kid. the height of Lord Tarly’s abuse obviously was him threatening to murder Sam to his face, if he did not forfeit his claims to Horn Hill and his father’s title, and travel North to take the black. Randyll Tarly was a horrible man. did he deserve to die? absolutely. did he deserve to die the way he did? probably. do we have a right to be hateful towards that cunt of a person? oh yeah, we do. and we may be hateful, hell, I know I am, but here is something all of you screaming Sam’s reaction was unreasonable have to keep in mind: Sam is not hateful. never. Sam doesn’t have a single hate-, or spiteful bone in his body. not one. he may get mildly angry occasionally, or annoyed (Oldtown, hello) but he will never, ever hate anybody. it is part of what makes him such a beautiful, sweet human being, and it is at the same time one of his greatest character flaws. that need to still see the good in everything and everybody, despite what they have done.

Samwell Tarly will never hate his father. no matter what.

we might hate his father for what he’s done to Sam, and we have every right to do so, but if we look at Sam and at who Sam is and what makes the core of his entire personality, we have to understand that we cannot project our own feelings on Sam.

b) the worst part of his reaction wasn’t even about his father Dany first tells him that Randyll Tarly had died. Sam takes the info in, he is upset, he is shaken, needs a moment to gather himself, but he eventually does. cracks the smallest smile even, telling her that maybe, now that his father is gone, he will be allowed to return home with his brother being Lord of Horn Hill then. it isn’t until Dany tells him that Dickon, too, is dead, that Sam falls apart. Dickon is his younger brother. his baby brother. Dickon may have made a few jests to Sam but he was never mean or cruel to him. ever. for all we know, these two had a legitimately good, love-filled relationship to one another, with Sam readily accepting that Dickon would be the heir to everything, and no animosity or jealousy ever standing in the way. Sam loves his brother. and he has just been told that his brother has been burned alive. how in the world can breaking down in tears be called unreasonable here?

c) the matter of how they died plays a role Dany burned his father and brother alive. I’m not pushing for Mad Queen or Aerys parallels now, so hear me out. Sam has seen a man burned alive. remember Mance Ryder? screaming his lungs out in horror at the stake, before Jon mercifully put an arrow in him? Sam was there. Sam has seen what it’s like to die that kind of death. the very same death now dealt to members of his family. he most likely still has nightmares of Mance’s death, and now he has to live with the fact that the very same very terrible thing has happened to his little brother and his father. so not only has he learned that half his family died, but also that they died in one of the most horrible ways imaginable.

d) Sam’s thoughts on Dany I talked to @zcldrizes and @killthebxy about the crypt scene we all agreed to hate for quite some time, picking apart why Sam spoke of Dany the way he did. I’ve heard his reaction being called spiteful, or that it was an attempt to pit Jon against Dany by immediately telling him to basically overthrow her and claim the throne for himself. I don’t see it that way. if anything Sam knows that Jon doesn’t want that throne. he is his best friend, he knows Jon wants none of this, he knows Jon suffers from all the burdens he has never asked for, and in which Sam himself occasionally has played not small part (nominating Jon for Lord Commander for instance against his will and without prior discussion). he would never try and force his best friend into a situation he knows he’d hate, just because Sam would personally prefer it. never. in my book, and on my blog, this scene will always be Sam telling Jon to be wary of Dany. a piece of insight offered to him, that maybe Dany is not a very good person, doing what she does. not because he hates her, again, he is incapable of that, but because he is worried for Jon. does Sam trust Dany? no, he has no reason to. does he hate her? no, he’s physically incapable of doing that. all he wants for Jon is to be careful. maybe take off those rose-tinted glasses and consider whether she really is such a good person, and whether she really should be the one sitting on that throne. and I know we all agree that from s7 on Dany has been incredibly ooc but I’m also forced to work with what the show gives me, because my character’s reactions have to be based on that, and with that in mind, Sam has very, very good reason to be worried about her.

if you believe that this sweet, soft-hearted, kind, utterly good, generous, forgiving, loving man should toughen the fuck up and swallow his feelings away and be glad that two people have died, I’m sorry to tell you that you are no better than the abusive asshole Sam’s father has been. because Randyll Tarly has been telling Sam the exact same thing all his life. now let that sink in, and don’t dare hate on perhaps one of only two truly pure, good characters in the whole show, because you feel a need to defend Dany being a horrible person every now and then.