#Basic name. but you know what? it works. I think.

[eclipsen-smiles]

I doubt any of you want to know but I love talking about them so-

Eclipse’s version (I’ll do Chai’s on my art account.)

Any variation of “I’m fine” or “it’s fine”

Basically never. They’re/we’re SHIT at verbal affection.

Also practically never, unless around either their world’s family or the bloodpack.

Childcare.

Yes. They don’t think of anything. They just can. Their human form is small and pathetic looking, they use it for pity. (I do. I’m tiny. I look young. It’s so so so easy to get idiots in trouble.)

Favourite show: ever after high. They will never mention this. Ever.

Fuckshit. Probably. Or just “GET YO ASS OVER HERE.” With their gf…… the SpongeBob theme. Eclipse is still childish at heart.

There’s actually a list.

Nothing= anon

Friend= distant.

Name = talked once or twice.

Nickname= close

Hun/bud/pal/pet names= family or extremely close. Or if they’re concerned.

It depends on the situation. It’s a weird mix. They can be very rough, but they’re usually gentle at the same time.

Random facts about mental states. Usually things that make people feel better. (Ie; fun fact, you’re face is distorted through your eyes, so how you see yourself isn’t what other people see.)

Trust me. You’ll tell. (They’re already behind them.)

People being dumb. Or people trying to insult them. (Please. Try to. It’s hilarious.)

Always. I don’t think they know how to smile naturally at this point.

With their finger. Or hand.

Home: kinda dull, calm. Work: silent, disassociated. Friends: HYPER. ABABABA. MISCHIEF. PRANKS. alone: no facial expression.

Idiots.

Memories. Others, idk.

Luna. Believe it or not, but their version of lunar is almost MORE psychopathic than them…

Panic. Not because of the person, but because they’re trapped. (One, that shouldn’t be possible. two, agoraphobia.)

1:Unknown. 2: the astals. Specifically the higher ups.

Uhh.. eye contact, I guess. They’re fine with it, but they know others aren’t.

Hilariously, normal work hours. And taking breaks.

OHHH BOY LET ME TELL YOU- (reminder: luna is a ghost.)

Bold of you to assume they only took one.

Uhh.. random facts from plants and animals to history to cooking. They’re 600+, they’ve had a LOT OF FREETIME.

Laughter.

A “dont do drugs” pencil. Responded with heavy laughter.

A break. I pled the fifth (death.)

“Your funeral”

Heavily different because of the topic of their work. Personal= eh whatever. Work= oh fuck oh shit

.. seeing luna happy actually causes the most guilt.

MONEY PRINTING. WHO NEEDS A JOB WHEN YOURE GOD?

Silence and a glare

Family/not super close friends/people who look up to them: very calm but visibly happy. Close friends/people close to them/people who don’t necessarily hold them highly: ABBABABABABABAB

…so…many

Tartarus. “Can’t kill him yet. He still has use.” But DAMN DO THEY WANT TO. (Tar is a corrupt ass in their au btw.)

Actually nothing serious. Like… nothing. Besides secrets others have told them.

Hahehakfjkwnf. One that I have. Juggling.

Excluded. They hate having people include them just for pity. Though that’s if they know. (Same philosophy as me. Just being invited is enough. Even if I can’t come or I don’t have to actively participate.)

Depends. If the person looks annoyed it’s “what an ass.” If they look neutral or uncomfortable, it’s quickly “are they okay?” or “am I too imposing?”

Unknown at the moment.

Guilt and tragedy coping. Self explanatory

They’re quick to assume people being uncomfortable or afraid is because of them. They will not mention this.

Any. Since built in language processors, but probably Spanish since is such a direct translation language.

Shoes/socks in the house. What’s the fucking point. Take em off.

Listener. Make them talk? They’re autistic. You. Will. know.

EVERYONE FROM THIER ORIGINAL WORLD. EVERYONE. they either are still on the “glad they’re dead” bandwagon or the “holy shit he(moon) killed a mostly innocent dude.” Wagon.

Girlfriend. Friends. Family. Literally anyone they know. Hey, who coulda guessed, the person grappling with their past is a people pleaser!!

Nope. Politely decline

Hhhhhh….. past morals I guess? The old belief of corporeal punishment? (they don’t now.)

“Hun” when they’re concerned.

Self explanatory (mod is a lawyer…. Eclipse is at heart..)

The blood pack or their gf. (Too much shit has happened for them to NOT believe the pack. They’re safety is top priority)

Freeze to fight in normal situations. Straight to fight in dangerous situations. Freeze to “JEESUS” in safe situations.”

Destroying worlds. It’s their job, sure, but they’d much rather stop what’s CAUSING it.

Gf usually. But she’s back on the “hub world” so probably no one.

Eating. Sleeping. Drinking…. Self care.

ALL OF THEM.

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC BUT HELPFUL CHARACTER BUILDING QUESTIONS

What’s the lie your character says most often?

How loosely or strictly do they use the word ‘friend’?

How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just the audience knowing?

What’s a hobby they used to have that they miss?

Can they cry on command? If so, what do they think about to make it happen?

What’s their favorite [insert anything] that they’ve never recommended to anyone before?

What would you (mun) yell in the middle of a crowd to find them? What would their best friend and/or romantic partner yell?

How loose is their use of the phrase ‘I love you’?

Do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive?

What fact do they excitedly tell everyone about at every opportunity?

If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference?

What’s something that makes them laugh every single time? Be specific!

When do they fake a smile? How often?

How do they put out a candle?

What’s the most obvious difference between their behavior at home, at work, at school, with friends, and when they’re alone?

What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Who do they love truly, 100% unconditionally (if anyone)?

What would they do if stuck in a room with the person they’ve been avoiding?

Who do they like as a person but hate their work? Vice versa, whose work do they like but don’t like the person?

What common etiquette do they disagree with? Do they still follow it?

What simple activity that most people do / can do scares your character?

What do they feel guilty for that the other person(s) doesn’t / don’t even remember?

Did they take a cookie from the cookie jar? What kind of cookie was it?

What subject / topic do they know a lot about that’s completely useless to the direct plot?

How would they respond to being fired by a good boss?

What’s the worst gift they ever received? How did they respond?

What do they tell people they want? What do they actually want?

How do they respond when someone doesn’t believe them?

When they make a mistake and feel bad, does the guilt differ when it’s personal versus when it’s professional?

When do they feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it?

If they committed one petty crime / misdemeanor, what would it be? Why?

How do they greet someone they dislike / hate?

How do they greet someone they like / love?

What is the smallest, morally questionable choice they’ve made?

Who do they keep in their life for professional gain? Is it for malicious intent?

What’s a secret they haven’t told serious romantic partners and don’t plan to tell?

What hobby are they good at in private, but bad at in front of others? Why?

Would they rather be invited to an event to feel included or be excluded from an event if they were not genuinely wanted there?

How do they respond to a loose handshake? What goes through their head?

What phrases, pronunciations, or mannerisms did they pick up from someone / somewhere else?

If invited to a TED Talk, what topic would they present on? What would the title of their presentation be?

What do they commonly misinterpret because of their own upbringing / environment / biases? How do they respond when realizing the misunderstanding?

What language would be easiest for them to learn? Why?

What’s something unimportant / frivolous that they hate passionately?

Are they a listener or a talker? If they’re a listener, what makes them talk? If they’re a talker, what makes them listen?

Who have they forgotten about that remembers them very well?

Who would they say ‘yes’ to if invited to do something they abhorred / strongly didn’t want to do?

Would they eat something they find gross to be polite?

What belief / moral / personality trait do they stand by that you (mun) personally don’t agree with?

What’s a phrase they say a lot?

Do they act on their immediate emotions, or do they wait for the facts before acting?

Who would / do they believe without question?

What’s their instinct in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn situation?

What’s something they’re expected to enjoy based on their hobbies / profession that they actually dislike / hate?

If they’re scared, who do they want comfort from? Does this answer change depending on the type of fear?

What’s a simple daily activity / motion that they mess up often?

How many hobbies have they attempted to have over their lifetime? Is there a common theme?

[rekino2114]

Cute ways the jjk girls (+ genderbends) use jujutsu in your relationship

A/n:I initially had this ideal with fem!gojo, but then it expanded to other characters. Let me know if you have any ideas for a part 2 or something with other characters

Also I kinda did something similar with fem!inumaki here if you're interested

Fem! Gojo

Lapse blue

Y/n:Hey babe, do you mind grabbing me that glass of water?

Fem!gojo:sure thing sweetie

[She uses blue to make the glass float toward you, but the water splashes on your face]

Y/n:......

Fem!gojo:s-sorry

Infinity

Y/n:Come on, tori, I already told you I'm sorry

[You try to hug her, but infinity stops you]

Y/n:Can you please deactivate your technique?

Fem!gojo:No way! You ate my last mochi. That's basically the same as cheating. I'm not letting you hug me

Y/n:[sighs] I'll buy you some other ones ok? And some more cakes

[Gojo immediately turns off infinity and hugs you]

Fem!gojo:Thanks, y/nnnnn! I knew you loved me

Six eyes

Fem!gojo:Hey y/n, what happened?

Y/n:what do you mean?

Fem!gojo:Your shoulder, it's all hurt and purple

Y/n:.....how did you know? I'm wearing a sweater

Fem!gojo:I have really good eyes remember?

Y/n:oh yeah, I forgot about the six eyes, sorry I got hurt during a mission and just didn't wanna bother you

Fem!gojo:it's never a bother for me, I'll just call shoko and bring you an ice pack

Fem!sukuna

Heian era form

Y/n:Kuna.....is this really necessary?

[It shows you being carried by 2 of sukuna's arms while an other one is stroking your hair]

Fem!sukuna:Of course, are you saying you don't like this?

Y/n:No, I do it's just......why?

Fem!sukuna:uraume said I should try being more affectionate with you. This is how I do it.

Y/n:I guess your arms are pretty comfy

Fem!sukuna:good, I don't want to hear you complain

[She kisses you while you blush harder]

Yuki tsukumo

Star rage

(Tbh I forgot if this is exactly how the technique works)

[You're trying to open a jar, but it's too tight]

Yuki:Do you need some help, baby?

Y/n:Yeah thanks

[You give her the jar, and she opens it without problems]

Yuki:here you go

Y/n:Thanks

Yuki:could I get a kiss for that~?

Y/n:[giggle] sure

[You kiss her cheek, and she smiles brightly]

Yuki[talking to herself] yes! I know using my technique was worth it

Y/n:......what do you mean using your technique?

Yuki:o-oh nothing

Y/n:Wait, did you put mass in the lid so I couldn't open and jar and you'd get a kiss?

Yuki:..........noooooo what are you talking about? Hehe

Y/n:If you wanted a kiss you could have just asked for one you know?

Garuda

Y/n:...........yuki, can you tell your shikigami to stop following me?

Yuki:Why? It's not that bad

Y/n:it wasn't but I think it's taking it a bit too far

[Garuda completely wraps itself around you]

Y/n:see

Yuki:that just means it likes you, just like me

Y/n:....I guess that's nice then, but it's still kinda uncomfortable

Yuki:ok, I'll tell it to stop, we both know you very much prefer my hugs anyway

Yorozu

(I've decided i wanna write for her too, I'll add her to the masterlist now and I chose her instead of mai not only because her creation is better but also just because I kinda like her more)

Creation

Yorozu:y/n! Look what I made for us

[She shows you two rings with your names engraved on them]

Yorozu:it took me a while, but I finally did it! Now we will be bound together even more than we already are

Y/n:Oh thanks, that's so sweet....even if we aren't married yet

Yorozu: Those are just details. What's wrong with thinking ahead

Y/n:hehe, alright

[You start to take the ring with your name on it but she stops you]

Yorozu:Oh no, darling, you'll be wearing the one with my name so that everyone knows you're mine, and I'll wear the other one so that everyone knows I'm yours

Y/n:Oh, that's....sweet

Yorozu:I'm glad you think that, I can't have anyone thinking my darling is free to take, here I'll even put it on you myself

Fem!megumi

Ten shadows:divine dogs (and mahoraga)

Y/n:Please, gumi, I swear I won't ask you anything else ever

Fem!megumi:[sighs] you're really like I love you.....alright

[She does the hand sign and summons the dogs]

Fem!megumi:Go smell y/n and find their hoodie

[The shikigami do what she said and start searching for it]

Y/n:Thanks, you're a lifesaver megumi

Fem!megumi:you're welcome just don't get used to it

[The dogs eventually find the hoodie and give it to you]

Y/n:Oh, thanks so much to you two too. You're such good boys

[You start petting them while megumi gets closer to you]

Fem!megumi:wait minute.....that hoodie isn't it nobara's? Why does it have your smell on it

Y/n:oh no I can explain she just gave-

Fem!megumi:I don't need any explanation. With this treasure I summon

Y/n:wait no stop it!

Fem!geto

Cursed spirit manipulation

Gojo:Hey, geto, what are you waiting for? We're gonna be late for the mission

Fem!geto:don't be so impatient satoru, I'm just waiting for y/n

Gojo:Come on! Your partner can wait, I just wanna get this over with

Fem!geto:if they don't come, I'm not going either

Gojo:fiiiine, you're the only thing that makes missions interesting anyway

[After waiting for a bit geto looks at the sky]

Fem!geto:oh looks like they arrived

Gojo:hm?

[They look up to see you riding rainbow dragon]

Gojo:You made them ride on your curse?

Fem!geto:they were gonna be late and asked me

Gojo:that's so cool you have to make me ride on it too sometimes

Fem!geto:[sighs] I suppose one time is ok

[katerinaaqu]

What's your opinion on how Telemachus was handled in Epic (so far) ? I'm curious ���.

And what is different from his Odyssey portrayal ? Not counting the fanart that infantilizes him, I'm strictly talking about the musical itself.

Hahahaha you guys definitely wanna put me against a wall one of these days! XD But I absolutely LOVE this question! Hahaha okay here goes;

Absolutely I wasn't gonna talk about the fanart and all that is part of the designing process and arguably that is part of every person to do. They could easily choose the depiction more Odyssey-accurate and still use the musical sound so yes you do well to mention it because yes I myself wouldn't touch the design part in this ask

Anyways long story short; I don't like it.

Storywise it is overly-simplified and shows only one portion of his possible emotions; the one that tries to connect with his father. That part is genuine and I see where the portrayal such as the song "Legendary" came from. Arguably Homer himself also touches the subject of glory through one's deeds and I see where the musical came from when Telemachus says what he says but the song was too bbbly, too naive portrayal of Telemachus and in a way completely disregarded the true depth of sadness and depression in Telemachus.

In the Odyssey Telemachus never connected to his father because his father was never there. To the point where he was even doubting whether he was his son or not. He basically says that "everyone calls me that but how can I know? The dude was never there. Possibly never will be here again". His whole energy was the total opposite than Epic.

Epic portrays Telemachus in a manner that reminds me of Disney's Little Mermaid in "Part of your world"; a bubbly teenager who dreams to start his life or to be making a legendary name for himself like his father and in childish naive energy says "bring me all these monsters to fight them!" while in his childish naive nature was also making him afraid or worried to face the bullying of the suitors (the way the suitors were portrayed as if Jorge wanted to make them EVEN MORE evil also had me cringe like Antinous calling Penelope "tramp". Antinous called Penelope more or less "divious" because of her scheme against them but that was all. In here they are competing for her hand while calling her names without reason? Yeah right....). He seemed like the average teenager that needs the adult to get him to realize video games is not the life and that he needs to do something about his future! Does he also seem low-key sad? Yes. But just like Ariel in the Disney movie was pictured as a dreamer that wanted escape from his confided situation through bubbly and childish dreams.

Odyssey Telemachus was both emotionally and psychologically exhausted; his mother was taken down by grief and endless waiting and had confided herself in her chambers, trying her best to avoid the suitors that were at her home for FOUR YEARS, constantly crying at this point. Telemachus also saw his grandfather lose his mind in sorrow and his grandmother melting away by desperation and sadness and dying or potentially killing herself by it. The last thing he wanted was "to be legendary". In fact Telemachus gave me the exact opposite energy than a dreamer. He was very down to earth and his main goal was to get out of this nasty situation, trying to grow as a person to set himself free from this torment. He had so much in his plate that the last thing he wanted was to dream. In fact he gave me the impression of a person with no more the luxury of dreaming. He almost seemed crushed to the point of breaking himself almost like every other member of his family. (He gives me the impression of a person that after spent years of trying and fulflling their dreams now they are forced to work in a work they hate for survival and think that "dreams are for fools. No luxury for them!")

Like I said Menelaus described Telemachus as a spitting image of his father including his eyes, which is something I find the most important. Menelaus compared Telemachus's gaze to Odysseus; a man that fought a war with him! A man exhausted by the evil he saw and caused. Telemachus's profound grief was so intense that his look was equivalent to a man Menelaus fought a war with! He was the opposite of what we see in Epic! In fact we know that Telemachus was also very much silent and tried to keep a low profile so he didn't need to face the humiliation of the men that were literally plundering his wealth and harassing his mother and himself. The last thing he had in his mind would be to "be legendary". He was also plundered by the fact that not only was he doubting that Odysseus was his father per se but also he was in doubt that this Odysseus that everyone named his father would be alive or dead. He didn't know that. He was actually almost certain that Odysseus was dead but that part in the back of his head was not yet leaving him in peace which is why he needed Athena's guidance

Which brings me to the next part; Athena In Epic Athena appears to...give Telemachus the boost to fist-fight the suitors for some reason and mind you he still gets his ass handed at him! It made it seem as Telemachus's only problem was that he didn't have the guts or skills to fight the suitors and Athena gave him a solution! (potentially a message to stand up against bullies for teenagers? Perhaps but still I felt it massively undermined Telemachis's situation in the book) As I have answered to another person around here, Telemachus's problem was that the suitors claimed the law of hospitality and named themselves ODYSSEUS'S guests. Telemachus could not yet take over as king and he had no power to send them away. Plus he was plundered by doubt about his own inheritence. What Athena did was not to make Telemachus a fighter for he already was (we see how well he stands against them at the side of his father in the Odyssey) she came to encourage him to find out on his own.

Arguably the trip of Telemachus was a mirror counterpart of Odysseus's but instead of a trip that makes you lost like Odysseus was lost, it was a trip for self-discovery. Mind you, both the trip of Odysseus and the trip of Telemachus are cognitive trips; both characters learn in them and come in contact with places. Psychologically the trip allows Telemachus to escape this boarderline toxic grief in his home and explore the world. Also find out on his own information about his father. Now, arguably he never really finds out about his father's whereabouts for certain apart from Menelaus's vision but there is something he definitely gets out of his trip that is not talked about enough;

He finds out he REALLY is the son of his father and he gets information about what kind of man he was!

He hears from friends that fought with him how similar he looks to him; not just from his closed and secluded environment but of people outside his circle and his known people that he looks like him and they also give him information about him. No more the random comments the suitors he hated say or his sad mother who could either idealize his father to escape her grief or the loyal slave Euryclea who adored the family naturally like a mother; now it was also friends and known people of Odysseus that speak about him Telemachus is double-checking his information! Thus coming home much more confident on his inheritence and his own destiny and duty

Arguably the Odyssey is as much Telemachus's story as it is Odysseus's. Telemachus was in one way a spectrum of Odysseus; fighting a different type of war; losing himself in a different type of sadness. His story was a story of coming of age not a story of a goddess that teaches him how to stand up against bullies. Telemachus already does that in the Odyssey by calling the council. Arguably he was alays standing against the suitors but his position did not allow him to do something drastic! I think just like many things Epic missed this by a mile; reducing Telemachus's profound grief, sadness and uncertainty to an average teenage escapism story rather than the fact that Telemachus had no luxury or energy for escapism, Athena's advice for self-discovery to the average "raise your fists and fight your bullies" story ignoring the deep cultural details that led Telemachus to that tight spot in the first place and of course it completely abandoned the importance of Telemachus's trip which could be a subject of a movie on its own! (Quite frankly Telemacheia covers more chapters in the Odyssey than Odysseus's own flashback! It covers 5 rhapsodies of the Odyssey while Odysseus's story covers 3-4)

I hope this answers some questions! I will be happy to elaborate more.

[thekindlygrammarfairy]

The only thing that seems like it'd work is fixing public education. I remember when I was maybe 12, my class was taken into the library and taught basic internet searching skills, how to spot unreliable websites, and so on. None of it was new to me, but having it presented in an official capacity made me think about it more often and harder from then on.

I had assignments that revolved around research, which taught me a bunch of stuff about how to find good information.

Hell, even the ability to type at a reasonable pace is something I picked up from school.

So, what schools are like these days is going to be speculation, I don't know what's up, and it's going to vary wildly from place to place. But here's my best guess:

Schools, at least in the US, have been slowly bleeding talent, money, and respect since the start of the pandemic. Essentially, kids are left to self-educate. I like teaching myself stuff via online tutorials and stuff, but that only works because I have the necessary self-discipline and underlying skills. It seems like in most schools, everyone is in survival mode, and a lot of stuf that would have been taught because it's "The Right Thing To Do" is hitting the cutting room floor. Nevada's elections are having an issue with young people not being able to sign their names, for example, because we cut cursive teaching. I don't think of cursive as particularly useful, but some things are written in it - and being able to sign your name is of obvious importance.

Services like Instagram and Tiktok are appealing because of their ease of use, and the network effect, and their ability to direct you into a hyperspecific niche. But the time and energy spent in these apps and services (having tried both, they can be incredibly overwhelming) is not spent socializing in a real, tangible community. On Tiktok specifically, it seems like it's actively harder to do something as basic as learn a creator's name. For example, Amaury Guichon's name is on every one of his tiktoks, but everyone calls him Chocolate Guy. This is not true of any other creator I'm aware of. The experiences are smaller and less lasting than any other media, but are the most readily accessible.

The "I don't want to pay money for internet anything" culture is strong, with my generation and younger. Even if quality stuff is out there, we don't want it, because it's behind a 99 cent paywall. Part of this is the soft age-wall for getting a credit card, but part of this is just stubbornness. New York Times and Washington Post, both respected and reasonably-truthful newspapers, are paywalled, but Conservative """Newspaper""" du jour are free. When I see a paywall on a newspaper, my first instinct is to get around it, not pay up. A few outlets, like the Guardian, have started working with, rather than against, this behavior, but they're in the minority. The impact of this attitude on creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch is a whole other discussion, there's some good and some bad. But "old media" (books, movies, TV, etc.) is suffering - and people who should be experiencing that stuff are suffering too.

Third spaces for young people basically don't exist. Why exactly this is is a long conversation, but the result is that everyone's on their dang phones, even if they'd get along really well with someone who lives half a block away.

Because of all of the above, patience is not a virtue most of us have. On the internet, anything you don't like can be out of your face in seconds, and there's always an infinite void of content to gorge yourself on. In meatspace, not so much. I don't think the "zoomer attention span" is real, I think it's more along the lines of Gen Z have not been taught to tolerate mild discomfort very well. The effects of this on social organizing patterns is... bad.

The result of all of this is that young people (and I'm part of this) don't have solid social ground to stand on. Everything is online platforms and services that are fickle, fragile, and can't be negotiated with. Finding friends is difficult, and everyone's social skills are atrophied to some extent.

How do we fix this? Fund schools, make spaces for young people to hang out in, and find tunnels out of doomscrolls. I've seen a promising trend in YouTube shorts of people linking longer related videos to pull people out of that infinite scroll.

And tumblr is a good example of this. We have a mix of shallow and deep content, and a culture that's not flexible, malleable, and disposable in the same way that TikTok's is.

I am concerned for gen z. Like I don't think they're doing okay. I think algorithms and a systematic denial of easy access to facts because of Internet enshittification has made them unbelievably miserable with very little sense of how warped their online experience is. Idk how to fix it.

[ozwriterchick]

Back to Us - Chapter 2

Summary: Y'/n wakes after an accident to her Avengers team-mates. But something isn't quite right and only Steve and Tony can see it.

Characters/Relationships: Steve Rogers x Reader; Tony Stark; Natasha Romanoff; Other Avengers Characters

Content warnings: Mentions of an accident (no details yet); If I missed any, let me know

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Word count: 1142 (approx.)

Tony & Steve stood close together outside the hospital room in silence for a few minutes.

“So, that was strange, right Tony?” Steve asked.

“Yeah, I noticed somethings she said earlier too.  I think she’s got some kind of amnesia.  Let’s let the Doc do his tests and I’ll come back later this afternoon and talk to him to see what is going on.”

Back in the hospital room, the Doctor pulls a chair up and sits beside your bedside.  “Ok, let’s talk some more.  You’ve been in a coma for 10 days.  We’re going to send you off for an MRI, draw some blood and check the basics first and just make sure everything’s working the way it should. How does that sound?”

Y/n smiles at him tiredly “I’m getting really tired but I’ll try and stay awake for all the tests”

“Well, the MRI you’ll need to stay awake for cause there’ll be certain breathing exercises you’ll need to do during it, but that will all be told to you when you get to the imaging department.  And apart from that, we can always work around your naps, because you definitely need to rest as well.”

Later that day, you are back in your room after the first lot of tests have been completed.  Napping on and off while waiting for the next test and the results of the ones they have already completed.

The doctor comes into the room again with the computer that shows him the test results.  “Well, all of it looks good Y/n.  I can’t see anything concerning on the MRI and the blood tests have come back fine as well, so it looks like no permanent damage.”

“Well, that’s great news Doc” you said.

“Let’s do some memory test questions, okay?” As the Doctor asks this, Tony walks back into the room.

“Sorry doc, I just couldn’t stay away, but it looks like I got here just in time for the good stuff.  Hey Y/n, how are you feeling this afternoon?” he asked.

“Really tired tony.  But Doc has just said that the MRI and other tests have come back fine.  And hopefully if these memory questions go well, I can go home?” you look at the Doctor hopefully.

“Okay, first question – what is today’s date and do you know where you are?” the Doctor begins.

“Today is May 15th and I’m at Stark County Hospital” you proudly answer.

“Great, what is your full name, date of birth and parents names?” the doctor continues.

You smile because these are all easy questions in your opinion. “Easy.  My name is Y/fn Y/ln, Date of birth 22 June, my parents are Y/mn & Y/dn Y/ln”

“Alright, here comes the big one.  What is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

“Well, I think I remember an impact, but I’m not sure if that’s a trick of my brain because I’ve been told there was an accident.  I do remember Steve, I mean Captain Rogers, Bucky, Nat and I were heading to a Hydra facility in Romania cause we had intel that there were some hostages being held there.”

“We split up, Nat and Cap went to the West and Bucky and I went to the East to make sure there weren’t any goons over and above the ones we anticipated would be guarding the facility.  Bucky and I dealt with the ones on our side and entered the building, clearing floors as we went.”

“We met Nat & Cap in the centre of the main floor, agreed they’d go up to the higher floors and Bucky and I would go down to the lower floors as we thought that’s likely where they’d hold the hostages.  The last thing I remember is being on maybe the 3rd floor down and entering a room with at least 6 people chained up to the walls, in cells.  Bucky started ripping the cell doors off their hinges so we could get into them, then there was a beeping and that’s about it. “

“Like I said, I think there was an explosion, but I’m not really sure if that’s just cause, you know..” you finished.

“Ok, get some more rest and I’ll be back later to see how you are.” The Doctor told you.  You nodded at him and Tony and closed your eyes.

“I’ll be right back Y/n” Tony smiles at you and you smile back, drifting into sleep.

Tony quickly caught up to the Doctor.  “Hey doc, so, what’s the latest?  That was particularly concerning to me?”

“She seems fine, there’s nothing wrong with any of her results.  What’s concerning you Tony?” he enquired.

“Well, that Hydra incident she says is the last thing she remembers, that was 4 years ago.  I was a bit worried today cause she didn’t seem to remember a few things, but this is the icing on the cake.” Tony conveyed his concern to your doctor.

“Hmmmm, well, I guess we’ll run some more tests and I’ll keep you posted.” The Doctor told Tony, also showing some concern now that he knew this further information.

Over the next couple of days, the doctor and his team ran further tests, but couldn’t work out why you were missing the memories, except for the bump on your head.

Tony and the doctor decided it was time to tell you so they sat down with you on the day you were to be discharged.

“So Y/n” the doctor began “We’ve run a whole heap of tests and everything looks great, however there is one thing we need to let you know.”

“Oh. “you were concerned that there was something that looked ok but wasn’t. “Alright, lay it on me.”

Tony took over “The other day when you first woke up you said a few things that concerned Steve and I.  Then when the doctor was doing the memory test questions, you mentioned the Hydra mission in Romania as the last thing you remembered.”

“Right, that was my last conscious memory that I can recall.” You said.

“Yeah, well the thing is…” Tony started “that mission was not the last mission you went on.”

“Oh, so there’s another mission in the middle that I don’t remember?  How much time am I missing” you can’t think of how long ago it was but surely it was only a few days or a week or two.

“You know what, let’s just leave it at a gap in your memories for now?” Tony asked.

“And we shouldn’t force anything, the more you force this kind of thing, the more the brain can subconsciously rebel against remembering.  We need the memories to come back naturally to give you the best chance of having full recollection of whatever is missing.”

You sat back and wondered just how much you were missing.

Tag List: @wolfbeanpotion @vioplay19 @jason-todd-fangirl-14 @crazyunsexycool @zaraomarrogers @bitchy-bi-trash

[cybbr-bb-angel]

Hey guys! Here's some transplural advice I got from a cisplural friend ♡

(This can also work for any other transIDs, so listen up, you mentally ill fucks! /lh)

Strap in, this is a long post.

With any disorder (did, osdd, bpd, mdd, hpd, autism, adhd, the list goes on), the general cause is changed brain chemistry through neuroplasticty.

Neuroplasticity is defined by psychologists Matt Puderbaugh and Prabhu D. Emmady as “the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections.” Basically, just how your brain adapts. And of course, the fast pass to large scale neuroplasticity is trauma, but it’s not the only way to change your brain chemistry. In fact, you change your brain chemistry in minor ways every day. Every time you encode a fact or a name into your memory, that is neuroplasticity. Your brain changes structure every day.

No matter what people say, trauma is never the only way to develop a disorder. Most people just never have the will to do what radqueer people do to transition. It takes a lot of work to change your brain THAT MUCH, but it is possible. Power to those who fully transition, genuinely.

All the people that tell you to fake it til you make it are completely correct. Turns out that our brains really like repetition, and by repeating a type of behavior over and over, it'll start to happen naturally. Think of it like a road in your brain: It'll start as a dirt road, but the more it's used, the more likely it is to be paved!

To make this process go faster, you need to take care of yourself. (I know, it's kind of a bummer. I got upset too.) Sleep 8 hours, eat a balanced diet, exercise, and stimulate your brain with something that ISN'T brainrot (read a book, whore.) After that, your brain and sheer willpower will take care of the rest!

Anyway, good luck faggots! And feel free to correct me in the comments/reposts if I'm wrong, but provide proof, please.

[cyb-by-lang]

Cascade (part 2)

How about a bit more?

(Wherein Kei replaces Mineta's party slot again.)

You know, I feel almost like we should thank this League of Villains. 

Oh? Why is that? 

Because I’ve never fought someone careless enough to drop me in an armory before, and it’s kind of fun. 

UA’s budget was the next best thing to unlimited, resulting in a training pool for flood rescue a dozen times the volume of the best-maintained Olympic water feature. And Kei—and therefore Isobu—had just been dumped into it. Sure, Midoriya and Asui were stuck in the water with her, and maybe Midoriya didn’t have a water-adapted Quirk, but the surface was only three meters away. Even if that was too much, and the water-adapted villains in the pool with them tried to strike, it didn’t matter. 

Not compared to the power of a jinchūriki in her element. 

With Isobu’s chakra following its favorite pathways through her body, Kei clapped her hands together and reached out. 

Everything stopped. 

The water went thick and almost gelatinous, molecules seizing almost perfectly in place across the entire volume of the pool. Though Kei could hear the villains’ garbled voices even as they shrieked in confused rage, she wrapped her power around herself and the two other students as a shield. At least one villain slammed headfirst into water gone solid and broke his hand. 

And then Asui, swimming at top frog speed and making some of the sharkier villains look slow even with Kei’s watery speed debuff, wrapped Midoriya in her tongue and dragged him toward the surface. Perhaps because Kei shot her a thumbs-up, Asui did not feel the need to slow down in the slightest before Kei took control of the local water column and rocketed upward after her. 

Once they breached he surface, Asui hurled Midoriya upward onto the deck of the ship serving as the training area’s centerpiece. Kei, landing on the surface of the water, shook out her hair before offering Asui a hand up. 

“Water-walking, Gekkō-chan?” From about ankle-height, Asui grabbed Kei’s glove with a hand that dwarfed hers. Must have been a part of the frog mutation Quirk she had going on. 

“Yep.” Sure, Kei didn’t really consider it a part of her Water-aligned ninjutsu repertoire, but that was the kind of distinction no one here cared about. “Let’s go.”

They got onto the ship with no further trouble.

 Partly because water slowed down basically everyone, and partly because Kei was just barely holding back from crushing all of the villains still flailing around below the surface. She knew how water pressure worked. She didn’t care if they all died. 

But someone might, so Kei refrained from preemptively removing child-murdering thugs from the mortal coil. 

No one needed to know she considered it, anyway. 

“Thanks, Gekkō-san, Asui-san,” was how Midoriya greeted them on the ship’s bow. Despite being waterlogged, he was otherwise fine. 

“I told you to call me Tsuyu-chan, Midoriya-chan.” 

“R-right, Tsuyu-chan!” There was no need to go around sounding like Asui was threatening him about her given name at knifepoint, but two days of class had already established that Midoriya’s overthinking tendencies and burgeoning anxiety disorder were on the louder side. “Th-thanks!” 

Asui nodded, acknowledging her victory. She turned toward the railing, looking down toward the water, then said, “This isn’t looking good.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Midoriya, “and I just can’t get what that villain said out of my head.”

“You mean about All Might?” 

“Right.” Midoriya pressed a hand to his mouth, just above the heavy-duty mouthguard that had barely survived the training exercise earlier this week. “They knew our schedule. Looking at the big picture, those guys must have set up the break-in earlier to get information. Like Todoroki said, they were waiting to pounce.”

“That’s alarming,” Asui said. One of the villains maybe dared to swim closer, but notably not in range of her long tongue and perhaps a subsequent lashing.”

“If those guys really think they have a way to defeat All Might,” Midoriya said, squaring his shoulders and clenching his fists, “then we should do everything in our power to stop them. By fighting…and winning!” 

“I’m on board with it,” Asui said with a quiet ribbit. 

“Same,” Kei muttered, already gathering chakra again for another attack.

“And the fact that they knew where to warp us means they’ve researched the USJ before now…”

“I was thinking the same thing! But while the villains clearly knew about the USJ, I think there’s a big gap in their information. Especially for a group that otherwise operated so meticulously.” 

Kei hid a yawn behind her hand, then lifted the other to snap her fingers. All the water clinging to their costumes dispersed into the air as though shaken off by a dog. 

“Th-thanks for demonstrating, Gekkō-san,” Midoriya managed, shuddering at the sensation. “But it also goes for Tsuyu-chan. If the villains realized what our Quirks were, they would’ve never sent both of you to the water rescue zone.”  

Kei glared down at the water through her goggles. At least a dozen waterborne villains had surface, and her control of the pool indicated another half-dozen lurking underwater to ambush anyone who tried to swim for safety. 

Actually, some of them looked like they were equipped for the job. Shark-Face notwithstanding, there weren’t as many obvious aquatic mutant Quirks on display as there could’ve been. One or two of them had spearguns in hand, like their expected opposition was just going to sit there and get shot. Or, rather, go into the water and get shot. 

Not for the first time, Kei wanted a complete report of all the shit Catch-These-Hands down in the plaza must have gotten into when he disintegrated his way into the school. Obito hadn’t finished writing it. But since Kei’s chakra was as subtle as a sledgehammer, she could only assume he’d noticed the new problem from Nezu’s office and started to organize a response.

And if he wasn’t, Kei would find time in her schedule to yell at him. 

“Our advantage lies in the fact that the villains don’t know what our Quirks are. None of them are trying to climb into the boat, which supports my hypothesis.” Midoriya’s determined look faded for a split second. “Um, Asui-sa—Tsuyu-chan’s Quirk is a given, but I didn’t get to see yours in action, Gekkō-san.” 

Mainly because Midoriya’s match with Bakugō had been the first and only training exercise to send someone to Recovery Girl. He’d missed at least three after that. Kei distinctly remembered wondering where all of Midoriya’s compartmentalization ability had gone, given that he’d blown up his entire arm again. Thankfully, the school nurse was able to put this Humpty Dumpty back together after all. 

“I know it’s water-based, too…”

“It’s called Tsunami,” Kei replied. She pressed her hands together again into the Dog seal. As her chakra surged, so did Isobu’s. “Which means I can create, control, and destroy all water around me.” 

There was another brief pause. Midoriya looked like he couldn’t decide to laugh or cry. If Kei had just been told her job was to fight a bear and then informed her that the day’s allowed arsenal included a main battle tank, she figured she’d feel the same way. 

“That simplifies the plan a lot, Gekkō-chan,” said Asui, blunt and sincere at once. “Thank you for telling us.” 

“No problem.” 

About a second later, one of the villains finally lost patience and created a giant hand made out of water to go on the offensive. It rose tall as though to chop the ship in half and drag everyone to a watery grave. Some of the villains even started giggling in anticipation. 

Kei slid down the length of the bow until she was directly beneath the attack, raised one hand, and caught the blow with her fingertips as well as Isobu’s strength. The water construct felt solid enough as it made contact, but it bowed under their combined control and started to reshape itself into something blunter, scalier, and wonderfully familiar. 

Best high-five I’ve ever pulled off. 

The best so far.

Kei shook hands with her shoulder devil made manifest—hand to fingertip, at any rate—and sent their power wildly down through that point of contact like a dam collapse. Soon, more and more of Isobu’s hundred-meter body took shape in semitransparent form, dotted occasionally with screaming, terrified villains who suddenly realized they’d lost control of the plot. While there wasn’t enough water to manifest Isobu’s full size, what was there could fold the enemy’s aquatic fighters into its belly and keep them there for as long as needed. 

And all the while, the demo ship sank lower and lower in the pool, away from the possibility of drowning or reaching the plaza without some help. 

“How do you feel about surfing, Midoriya-chan?” Asui asked. 

“I-I-I think positively?!” Midoriya grabbed the railing of the tossing ship hard enough to leave fingerprints in steel. It didn’t seem like he noticed. 

“Then we’ll go with that. Hang on tight, please,” Kei said, and channeled still more energy into her grasp on the water.

[tinfoil-jones]

For Your Own Good: Intermission

Askbox? Open

If you don't know what this post is about, "For Your Own Good" or tagged as "Early Amnesia AU" on tumblr is a dialogue-only Gravity Falls fanfiction I've been working on that kinda-sorta follows a Mystery Trio -esque timeline, where Ford doesn't build the portal. To sum it up, the whole fanfiction boils down to:

Researcher Ford: I told you I never wanted to see you again.

Mullet Stan: Dude, I don't know who you are or WTF you're talking about right now, but I'm leaving this town and never coming back. You are never seeing me again after this. I'm probably going to forget you in like five minutes.

Researcher Ford:

Researcher Ford: *immediately kidnaps him*

You can consider chapters 1-10 to be Act 1 of the fanfic, and I’m taking a break for at least a week, most likely longer. The chapters so far were already written out in advance, and so was a huge reveal, but I still need to tie things together.

Here’s some authors notes/extra stuff about it, some of it might have already been put in the AO3 before or after notes. These are in no particular order:

This takes place 10 years after Ford and Stan were separated, currently they are both 27 about to be 28. Fiddleford is slightly older than them, being in his early 30s.

Ford is unironically the only person who finds Stan’s really dumb jokes funny.

Ford is the one who displays the most behaviours that would be seen from Mabel and Dipper decades later. Like Dipper, he views washing clothes as a waste of time, and like Mabel he ate an entire tube of toothpaste (granted, it was on accident)

While Ford is the more likely of the two to display traits that later present in Mabel and Dipper, it still happens with Stan as well. Stan has a similar nervous-chewing habit that Dipper displays in the OG series, but his only comes out when he’s particularly anxious. In this case, it was because he had nicotine cravings.

The 'That motherfucker is ugly' line that Stan used on Ford can be considered extra ironic because of how much the Stan Twins look like their dad.

Bill Cipher was originally supposed to speak in Times New Bastard (which is Times New Roman except every 7th letter is jarringly sans serif, a meme from tumblr), but AO3 and tumblr don’t let you change the font.

Stan goes out of his way to avoid using Ford and Fiddlefords given names- but this isn’t because he doesn’t know what they are. In the few times he has used their names, it was a sign that he was being sincere.

If you want to wonder whether or not Fiddleford likes Stan back, consider the fact that he could have walked away at any point, and either washed his hands of the whole thing, or just outright reported Stanford to the authorities. 

Bill is more like Discord from MLP - he’s just chaotic, often to the detriment of others, but he isn’t outright malicious (anymore), and he’s too busy SIMPING to cause any real harm. Basically, Bill is Fords patron for studying weirdness - he helps Ford in his research, but the cost that Ford pays is that Bill is able to possess him when he sleeps, and has unlimited access to his brain.

If Ford knew Rick Sanchez, why didn’t Rick see how similar Stan looked and put 2-and-2 together? Easy; Rick didn’t give a single shit about Ford, so he never committed his face or name to memory. Ford himself only remembered Rick because Rick was such a massive, egotistical asshole. If anything, Rick would think Ford is the lesser version of Stan.

Chapter 10 was the first concrete proof that the Stan we’ve been following likely is Stanley Pines and not some similar conman named Stan Malone. The last time Ford saw Stan would have either been when they were teens, so other than Stans commercials for his failed products there’s no way Ford would know what an adult Stan would even look like, and he’d have to use himself as a reference.

Stan has given some insight on his Thalassophobia (fear of the ocean / large bodies of water). In Chapter 10, he told Ford a number of things he escaped, including the trunk of a sinking car, and cement shoes. Cement shoes are either when you tie someone to a cinder block and throw them into a body of water, or when you literally incase their feet in cement, wait for it to dry, and then toss them into a body of water, so they’ll drown. Presumably, these are still things that would have happened to him even if he didn't lose his memories, so why would it give him a fear of the ocean now? Stan Pines in the OG still had a lot of positive memories associated with the ocean - he grew up on the coast, and had a lot of his hopes and dreams tied to the ocean. But without his childhood memories, he has no positive associations with it, only memories of times he almost drowned. 

Ford himself is not a touchy guy. The reason he hugs Stan even though it isn’t reciprocated is because from his perspective, this is his twin brother who is in pain and has been suffering all by himself for a long time. And Stan - at least how Ford remembers him - had a very touch-based love language. Fords doing it because he thinks it’d comfort him.

Stan seems pretty calm and chill for someone who’s been kidnapped by a ‘stranger’. This isn’t because he’s an overall chill guy because of amnesia, no he’s super pissed and the second he knows he’s free he will let them know that with his words, and incredible violence. He’s remaining calm because he’s been imprisoned and kidnapped enough times to know that pitching a fit or lashing out at his captors won’t do him any favours.

Fiddleford is still married to Emma-May and they do have Tate. But it's one of those lavender marriages (they're both gay and mutually bearding each other)

[what-eats-owls]

It matters how you do it

I finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard and had some big feelings about it. Spoilers for basically everything under the cut, and frankly, it won't make sense unless you've finished the game anyway.

First of all: I had a blast with this game. I didn't find Act 1 slow, I did find Act 2 a bit of a whack-a-mole, and then Act 3 kicks you in the kidney (complementary) while insisting it's for your own good.

I've seen some recurring complaints: that it lacks depth/edge/darkness, that it abandons previous lore, that the previous choices don't matter. I don't entirely disagree. To me, it felt like a massive Dragon Age 4 game that pivoted to a different, tighter game after complaints about bloat in Inquisition. The key is that when editing down, there's such a thing as trying to trim the fat and taking a chunk of the roast with it.

I enjoy the concept of Lucanis's character, and the voice actor sold the hell out of him, but the storyline felt like being taken to a museum and allowed to see one (1) beautiful unfinished sculpture. Why did Spite, specifically, work? We know the spirit of Justice became Vengeance by abomination, we knew Solas was Wisdom before he became Pride, so what was Spite before, and why wasn't that tied to Lucanis's own personal arc? (Doubly so if you romance him!)

Similarly, Harding was a delight, and her greenhouse was such a lovely little haven. I would have loved to see more explanation of the connection between plants and the titans, and how Harding's own personal struggles with rage connected to that of the titans. She has every reason to be angry and scared, and the game tells us she pushed that away—but we don't actually see her toxic positivity manifest to that degree, until she abruptly has an angry clone.

On the flip side, I loved the other five character quests, and I felt they had solid, poignant arcs that delivered. I also adored their interactions with the codex—if anything, I wanted to see more of that type of interaction on the screen. You have to fill in a lot of the character work for Rook yourself; Rook has all these interesting potential backgrounds, but I think starting the game playing through those, a la Origins, would have gone miles towards establishing more personal stakes up front and made for a stronger start.

So that's all my nitpicking. But let's talk about the bigger theme: It matters how you do it.

In the first Fade conversation with Solas, he gets so mad when Rook refuses to let him DARVO them about the consequences of his botched ritual. This makes way more sense when you understand he's literally imprisoned by his own regrets, and he needs Rook to have that same kind of regret in order to take his place. His entire arc is about rationalizing binary choices and shitty actions that hurt others in the name of a hypothetical greater good that he wants.

Solas can't engineer every binary choice Rook's forced into, but he uses Varric to maximize Rook's regret. He is trying to quite literally mold Rook into him, and the game is great at presenting this both as a coldblooded manipulation and a broken plea for validation—if you let it. You don't have to give Solas a moment of consideration; you don't have to take time to view his memories, or kill his demons, or listen to those scraps of Mythal still holding onto the good in him. You don't have to do any of it.

But you can. And in the end, it matters.

It matters because for every companion, you can encourage them to either be more nurturing/compassionate or destructive/closed off versions of themselves, and that is frequently tied to continuing or breaking from a cycle. (The exception is either Neve or, presumably, Lucanis, who are forced into the Hardened version depending on which city you save.) These aren't presented as morally opposing choices, just who you want them to be. You can see how the Grey Wardens fucked up bad with griffons and decide they have a better place. You can help Emmrich face his fear by finding deeper meaning in life instead of indefinitely postponing death. You can help them do things differently.

So when you get to the final choice in the game, you may have two options: physically force Solas into saving the Veil, or trick him into it. The kind of binary choice Solas has molded you into making by pelting you with cruelty and manipulation.

Or, if you've taken the time, you can get him to understand he's wrong. You bring out the people who saw the best in him and speak to what he's had to endure, even as you're showing him there's another way. You reach him not as Pride, but as Wisdom. And he goes willingly.

Ultimately, I think DA2 and Inquisition grappled with big questions of oppression and violence, faith and authority. It makes sense for those games to delve into harder, uglier subject matter, and ask you to make binary calls.

But my read of Veilguard is that, at its core, it's about how those decisions are meant to trap you in regret at best, and numb you to rationalizing cruelty at worst. It's why the companion who loses their home city becomes colder, more isolated, in response—more like Solas.

That's why it offers you a third way at the very end, but only if you've worked for it. A better way is possible, yet it has to be more than words. You have to understand where the pain comes from, what maintains and is being maintained by the current cycle. Then, and only then, can you break it.

I can't wait to play it again.

P.S. Utterly obsessed with the Trevisan fish merchant.

[pluckyredhead]

You have been posting intriguing things about Big Bad Wolf, and I always love a rec, especially when I'm having a rough year for books! If you care to, I'd love to hear what draws you to the books.

Ahhhh I'm obsessed with them!

Okay so Big Bad Wolf by Charlie Adhara is a series of five M/M paranormal romance procedurals, all about the same couple, Cooper and Park, and the first book is The Wolf at the Door.

Basically, Cooper Dayton is an FBI agent who right before the series begins is nearly killed by a werewolf, and that's how he learns that werewolves are real. So he gets transferred to the super secret werewolf division of the FBI (the BIA), and in the first book he's assigned to catch what appears to be a werewolf serial killer with a werewolf agent named Oliver Park. Full "oh no he's hot!!!" reaction goes here. Cooper is very very very bad at relying on anyone else or needing help but he and Park eventually figure out how to work together and also hook up a bunch of times before they eventually catch the serial killer. The rest of the series follows the development of their relationship as they solve various other werewolf-related murders.

I read the entire series in less than two weeks and it only took that long because once I got to the last book I drew it out because I didn't want it to be over that fast. And then I reread them all immediately.

Anyway! You wanted to know why I like them:

THE ROMANCE. I am not usually an established relationship gal but watching these two grow as individuals and as a couple is so rewarding. They both have significant issues (the first couple of books make it seem like Cooper's a mess and Park is perfect, but that's just because Park is very good at masking - he is actually even more of a mess than Cooper), but they grow so much as the series goes along. The conversations they have about their issues and their relationship in Book 4 are 100% not conversations they could have had in Book 2. It helps that they are both in their mid- to late-30s and like, they know who they are, and they are working very very hard to be better for each other. I'M SO PROUD OF THEM.

This is still on the romance part, but: also they genuinely LIKE each other. Like in Book 4 they have to go undercover at a couples' counseling retreat (for werewolves, obviously) and I'm like "How does anyone here think you guys are having relationship issues. You are BEST FRIENDS. Disgusting."

I specified that they are also procedurals because they are genuinely good mysteries! Sometimes when books combine genres it's sort of half romance and half mystery and not enough of either to be satisfying. These are ALL romance but they are also ALL mystery and Cooper is a very good detective. (Park is a pretty good detective but mostly he's great at biting people.)

They are extremely funny. Again, they like each other so much and this most often manifests in literally constant A+ banter. You know how I feel about banter!

The sex scenes are...chef's kiss. It's like Adhara was running down a list of my favorite tropes.

Anyway I HIGHLY recommend them and if you read them please come sit by me so we can talk about them thank you!!!

[tigerwing-animal-hrt]

Cat HRT 0 Months

My alarm went off, blaring in my ear. I turned it off and got up, heading for the bathroom.

Sure, getting up at noon wasn’t exactly early, but it was for me. Thank you being a night shift employee for giving me a reason to be up the hours that actually work best for me.

I brushed my teeth and got ready for my appointment, being sure to make sure my partner was awake to take me. She was sitting up by the time I was ready.

“Are you ready for your appointment?” She asked, checking she had her wallet.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Here’s your keys.” I handed them to her and left the room, scooping small kittens out of the way before they got a chance to run in before my partner closed the bedroom door again.

The car ride was quiet, save for music playing as he drove. Until we got to the appointment.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” He asked, gesturing towards the office of Dr. Erian as a woman with budding horns, fur, and a tail walked out.

“Yes, I am,” I responded, a bit shakily. “Is that… I think I know her.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“Yes, please…”

We got out, and she must have seen the nervous and startled look on my face. “Is this your first appointment?” She asked kindly, looking at the way I clutched my fiance’s hand to my chest.

“Yeah. I think I’ve seen you talking about your experiences… Josie?”

“Yeah, my name’s Josie. You look petrified. Don’t worry. The doctor can be difficult, but you’ll be fine. Take the leap. I think you’d be happy.”

“Thank you…” I looked up at her. “Thank you. I should get in there, don’t want to be late.”

“Of course not.” With that, she was heading away.

My fiance looked at me. “Do you know her?”

“Kind of, I’ve seen her talking about her transition. Now let’s go before I’m late.”

We walked up to the doors, and into the reception area. He went and sat down on a larger seat, likely one meant for a dragon or similar creature. He laid down as I spoke with the receptionist.

“Appointment for James… at 2pm.” I said.

“Alright, I have you right here. Fill this out and bring it back to me.”

I took it and went to go sit and fill it out. It was a basic questionnaire, asking about health problems, identity information, the works. I got to the information about species and paused before writing Domestic cat- Felis catus. Longhaired tortoiseshell variant.

I signed the waivers after skimming them, then took all the paperwork back to the receptionist.

“Can my fiance come with me?”

“Sure, but she’ll have to wait for a few minutes after you go back there.”

“Alright, I’ll let her know.”

--------------------------------------------

“James?”

“Coming!” I got up, put my phone in my pocket, and walked to the nurse.

They led me through the doors and sat me in a room to take my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, ask me the usual safety questions. After I was done, the nurse got my fiance and we walked to the office of Dr T. H. Erian.

“Which one of you is the patient?”

My fiance pointed at me. “He is, I’m just moral support.”

I nodded and we both sat down opposite the doctor.

“I see you’re interested in becoming a… domestic cat?”

“Yes.” I gripped my fiance’s hand tightly under the desk, he squeezed back.

“And you’re a trans man?”

“Yes.”

“How unusual. Why a tortoiseshell? Those are always female, and you marked down male as your legal sex.”

“That’s complicated, doc.”

“I’d expect you to pick a coat pattern that you’d see on a male cat is all.”

“My answer won’t change.”

“Very well then, I’ll see what I can do. Have you been living as your preferred species for the last 48 months?”

“Yes, I have, doc.”

“Can you confirm this?” He turned to my fiance.

“Yes, yes I can.” He held up his arm, showing a faint line of scratches that were still healing. “This is because I gave him a bath yesterday.”

“Is that so? Hmm. I’ll need to develop the formula for you, but that shouldn’t take too long. Your prescription should be ready in about two weeks.”

“Thank you, doc.”

“You’ll need to make changes to your diet while taking this medication. More meat, less everything else. Read this pamphlet before you leave.” He handed me and my fiance both pamphlets about feline HRT. “Some things may differ in order and strength of effect, but all of this information will be relevant.”

“Am I the first trans man to be taking this?”

“Yes, and I’ll need you to log any and all effects to see how thins differ for you.”

“So he’s an experiment?” My fiance asked, standing and looking like she was half a step from hopping the desk and decking the doctor.

I put my hand on her arm. “It’s new and experimental. Someone has to be the first.”

“Exactly. Now. Any questions?”

“Will you call me when it’s ready?”

“Of course.”

“Will I be coming here to pick my prescription up, or will it be sent to the pharmacy?”

“I’ll send it to the pharmacy.”

“Alright, thank you. Oh, last question. Will it be an oral medicine, or an injection?”

“Oral is the usual route. Do you want injections?”

“Depends on if it tastes bad.”

“I’ve heard it isn’t too bad.”

I stood up, and my fiance and I left the office. I was shaking, nervous but excited.

-------------------------------------------------

I got the call that my prescription was ready, almost exactly two weeks later. I turned to my fiance, almost vibrating with excitement. “It’s ready!”

“Alright, get dressed, and let’s go.”

I scrambled to get ready, almost bouncing off the walls.

“Calm down, kitty. I know you’re excited.”

“But… but… but…”

“I know. Let’s go.”

-------------------------------------------------

My prescription was a bottle of small pills, enough for a month with instructions to take before bed each night.

“I wonder what happens if you take it during the day?” I showed them to my fiance.

“Feli- Felisterone?” Is that what it says?”

“Yeah.”

“Wonder what they taste like.”

“You’re not taking them, dear.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to.”

“Go play your game, dear.”

“Love you too.”

I made a post online about picking up my prescription, and a few comments on the timelines I saw, including the white tiger and a few others like Josie, since I’d met her briefly, telling her thank you in particular for giving me the push I needed. I commented on the king cobra guy’s, saying I was another transmasc on HRT. Same for the black arms timeline that crossed my dash shortly after.

I also commented on the slimes, werewolves, dragons, and bat that I saw afterwards. The lamias were neat- I asked to join a server about HRT.

I went to take a quick shower before my fiance gave me my testosterone shot and I settled in to play Farmer’s Life until it was time for my new medication.

My fiance handed me the pill bottle, my drink, and my stuffed animals.

“Here goes everything, I guess.” I took my first dose.

“Good boy.” She patted my head. “Do you feel any different?”

“No, but it’s only been a minute.”

“Still.” She tucked me in and then turned back to her game. “Night, kitty.”

First Prev Next (TBD)

[scorndotexe]

Out of curiosity, why do you dislike Midnight Mass? It's really like hear your opinions.

it's just so fucking BORING!! the concept is interesting i do find the concept interesting (vampire priest who believes his vampirism is a gift from god) but somehow it was done in the least interesting way possible. sometimes there's like a minute where i thought "holy shit is it finally gonna get better" and then i watched the next episode and it continued to be exactly the same.

all the characters are basically exactly the same. i know it's by monologue flanagan but can they at least monologue in DIFFERENT ways??? dear god. he edited it himself and you can REALLY tell. the fucking ten minute scene that's just "what do you think happens after we die? vcnvncmrnwbvnjef vdmnnc cmnennwneetnewnnwbefnbrtnbemrbermnbmrbtrtbwnrebeb" is crazy who thought that was a good idea. god every character was so forgettable i think i remember like 4 names. genuinely i see people talking about a character and i have to look them up and i STILL don't remember them. don't get me started on the fucking therapy speak. also riley flynn is the most boring protagonist i've ever seen i can't think of a single personality trait he has. i can barely think of ANY personality traits ANY characters have.

i know we shit on his adaptations a lot (as we should) and at the very fucking least he didn't ruin another excellent work of horror with midnight mass but he is NOT a good writer with his own stuff either!! it's so BLAND. even when it's not boring it's bland and uninteresting. i know i'm biased i know i watch extreme horror to find artistic value in underlooked pieces of media so i'm used to "that freak shit" but he did nothing!!! he did nothing with his vampire priest! he was literally irrelevant by the end because he gave that antagonist role to some other character and he was never really the protagonist either. he was just there for a really dumb late-game romance plot/plot twist.

it's such an unbearable show and the ending isn't even good!!! its tone is so fucking weird like everyone dies and yet there's still a weirdly hopeful tone to it. i feel like that's a moment to REALLY lean into the tragedy. it doesn't have a happy ending but it also doesn't let you feel sad enough for it to be truly tragic.

also there's like three different types of vampire in the show and it makes NO sense why they're so different from each other. i'm not asking for extensive lore i'm just asking for consistency.

it's like 8 hours long and i know i've probably spent way more than that complaining about this fucking show but still a waste of my time. it just sucks so much. it could have been an okay movie but as a whole show it's so dragged out and doesn't DO anything with those eight hours. i don't mind a slow burn i really don't but a) the build up has to be worth something and b) it has to have something really really good at the end of the build up.

honestly it looks SO good in gifs and screenshots and fanart that it makes me wish the show was better because you could have a much better experience just looking at those and imagining a good show than actually watching it.

on the plus side if you DO watch the actual show riley's death scene is the funniest shit in the whole thing.

[cloudxgears]

I feel like what people don't get about Vi being so affronted by Jinx compared to Powder, going as far as to say "You're not my sister, you killed her," and trying to sacrifice Jinx at the alter to her idea of Powder, is that she spent all that time in prison with Powder being the only thing she had to hold on to.

Vi's confirmed backstory is that she had two goals in Stillwater: beat up and basically vigilante attack all inmates with association to Silco, and get back to Powder one day to look after her. When you're forced to endure a harsh environment and don't have any way out of your situation in sight for a very long time, possibly ever, you fixate hard on specific goals. You develop a really deep sacred core to your identity and beliefs so you don't go insane.

Vi's identity was 1) Take revenge on Silco for killing Vander and 2) Look after Powder, as were his dying words. And then she gets out and Silco is instantly dead and it turns out Powder is a young woman called Jinx now who doesn't really need looking after anymore.

Frequent beatings, fighting every day, surviving isolation, solitary confinement, surviving Stillwater — her fantasy of Powder and getting back to her was what she stayed alive for, that was her goal, and she had this fixed idea of her in her head this whole time because that's what she needed. She needed a constant. It would be a bit like Powder being her God at that point. It was shared by the creators that "Powder" was the name she called out to like a prayer and begged for after beatings when she was bloody and in pain and at her lowest.

But then she's broken out of that fantasy and realises, wait, this is a grown young woman with her own shit going on, completely different from the comparatively simpler and sweeter little girl she was when they were separated. She got to have the powder blue tearful reunion she'd been dreaming of for years with that idea of her for only five minutes, before she got to see the new side of Jinx and that hope of simplicity and comfort was dashed, snatched away in an instant, like sustenance finally being waved in your face after years of starvation before being plucked right back again. It would be a bit like being thrown into a void. It would be like having your god cruelly ripped away from you.

She's like wait my little sister doesn't actually exist anymore (because that's how ageing works lol) but of course Vi never thought that far ahead because you can't afford to think about the future or its potential challenges on that level when your every day for 7 years is a battle. Vi is basically having one long internal panic attack over going from the small, gruelling but relatively predictable world of prison to all these massive changes.

So now it's like, what do I do with myself now? Who is my sister now when there is almost nothing in her that I can identify as safe and familiar? These big new questions and challenges that Vi was not ready for and does not currently have the capacity to deal with.

People underestimate how much Vi actually needs to act out. She was the parentified child, and then she had to grow up way too fast, survived solitary confinement and prison life and generally growing up in an environment very different to the outside world. She's gonna be fucked up. In a way, Arc1 is like Vi throwing a total tantrum because fuck i've just come out of 7 years of hell and you were supposed to be different and now what? Now what?

Going from a fixed idea in her head for 7 years of sweet Powder, the girl who relied on her and needed her, to the reality of someone as unpredictable and independent as Jinx would be so jarring. Vi has no comfort to hold on to, she's confused and reeling, thrown out there and forced to catch up with this new world that went on without her, a world that Jinx is adapted to but she is not.

Of course she falls back hard on Caitlyn and the enforcer thing. What else do you think she has to do with herself? You know what it's like to grow up in imprisonment for 7 years and get out with literally nothing but the clothes on your back? You will be surprised what you will cling to hard when you have no other direction, nothing, and no one.

I think people expect Vi to be this great responsible moral figure because that's her cover poster, that's what she's grown up knowing she's supposed to be. But you actually think you get to have strong desires when you come from literally nothing, and then the only thing you had left is taken from you too? Of course she was going to follow along with Caitlyn, she needed someone (a motherly figure, which is why we all know Caitlyn looks deliberately like her mother) to lead her in this crazy new world, she needed someone to tell her what to do. Of course she was going to become an enforcer if it was an occupation, something to throw herself into to distract from the fact that she has nothing now.

I'm really liking Vi's development because it shows at a certain point self-preservation and personal needs do become stronger than even family or loved ones. At a certain point of true desperation the things that are supposed to matter stop mattering and all you can focus on is I Need This until you have what you need. Vi is in a state of desperation. Her need for stability and a realm she could excel and be valued in when the Lanes don't belong to her anymore becomes stronger than the uniform her parents' killer was wearing, and her selfish need for her comforting dream of Powder is stronger than her capacity to adapt to this stranger, Jinx. She needs someone to finally care for her instead, but she won't get it, so in Arc2 she will sink a while before she'll swim.

More than anything Vi just needs to feel safe, needs a purpose, and needs someone to lead her (or to learn to lead herself when she's ready. But she isn't yet. Maybe arc3 who knows.)

And then god, the end of Arc1 when Caitlyn abandons her too. She's lost her god, her family, all sense of familiarity, and we get to see her as the blubbering baby she is inside for the first time. So good~

That's not to say Vi isn't crazy strong or capable of being responsible again or that she won't climb out of this eventually but she needs to fall for now, and her story on a human level is a lot more selfish (the way most people's are when it comes down to it tbh).

[antianakin]

This encapsulates why I think it should've actually been Jacen Syndulla in Sabine's place if they REALLY needed to give Ahsoka a "Padawan" character to play with.

Jacen being very young would hit at her feelings about having been assigned early as a Padawan, especially if he is with her because he ran away from his guardians (whether that's Hera or whether he was staying with Sabine on Lothal at the time maybe, it doesn't really matter), so he has that same sort of impetuous recklessness that she and Anakin both had that gets him into trouble.

Jacen's youth and the fact that he'll never know his father would provide a really good explanation for him doing something as stupid as going along with Baylan just to get Ezra back. Maybe he just wants to connect to the person who everyone talks about like he's Jacen's brother. Maybe he wants to save Ezra because they CAN'T save Kanan and this is the closest he feels he'll ever get to getting his dad back. Maybe he just wants to prove himself to his family because they keep wanting to protect him and keep him safe and won't take him anywhere even remotely dangerous and he gets why, he does, they lost both Kanan and Ezra already, but if he can get Ezra back then maybe they'll finally let him DO things! Maybe he wants to get Ezra back because even though Ahsoka and Luke are theoretically there as options, he's insistent that it has to be Ezra.

Jacen's a blank slate character, we know who his parents are and he has a name, but other than that, he doesn't have a personality already which means he's basically just as good as an original character in this scenario. He needs to be fleshed out in a way Sabine simply does not, and so giving him a fatal flaw to overcome can only ADD to his character rather than taking AWAY from his character the way it did with Sabine.

And of course, Jacen being Kanan's child provides an obvious reason for his Force sensitivity. Even if you went with the idea that he WASN'T Force sensitive, or wasn't SHOWING Force sensitivity, there's more reason for Jacen to either believe that he COULD be Force sensitive or to just be really invested in becoming a Jedi no matter what. It might even be more compelling if he genuinely isn't Force sensitive at all, but he feels like that's the only connection he has to Kanan, the only way he can remember and honor his father he never met, and his arc over the course of the season is to learn to let go of that. He doesn't have to live up to Kanan and Ezra, he doesn't have to BE Kanan and Ezra, he can just be himself, and he doesn't need to be Force sensitive OR a Jedi in order to be worthwhile.

But if you need Ahsoka to have a Force sensitive child, it makes way more sense for Jacen to BE Force sensitive since there's an obvious connection there, and Jacen being a blank slate character means that there's absolutely no proof that he ISN'T Force sensitive in prior media that would make that choice really confusing (unlike Sabine where she's so clearly established as someone who isn't Force sensitive throughout Rebels and so they had to work REALLY REALLY HARD to explain why Ahsoka would ever take her as an apprentice and why Sabine would think this was a reasonable choice to make).

Sabine might not be his actual mother or his primary guardian, but she's somewhere in the realm of being his aunt/older sister and the connection there would clearly be very strong anyway, especially if Hera had dropped Jacen off on Lothal and Sabine was supposed to be looking after him for a while as Hera dealt with some other things on Coruscant or whatever and it's HER that Jacen ends up running away from.

It's not even like we haven't seen a variation of this done really well already with the Kenobi show where Leia is ALSO quite young in comparison to her titular character Jedi master counterpart. So Jacen being young doesn't have to be a reason for why he COULDN'T have fulfilled with this role in the Ahsoka show just fine if they needed a pre-established character with an easily explained connection to Ezra who would be willing to give up everything to save him and who could become Ahsoka's new padawan.

The only reason it had to be Sabine is because Rebels set up that Ahsoka and Sabine were going to go look for Ezra in their epilogue and that story got combined with whatever the original Ahsoka show narrative was going to be, which likely involved some sort of padawan character for Ahsoka to help parallel her relationship with Anakin. So in order for Sabine to remain a main player in the narrative and fit in with the already pre-established set-up from the Rebels epilogue, Sabine got slotted into that role. That was clearly supposed to be Sabine's story and putting someone else into the role of Ahsoka's padawan sidelines Sabine from the story quite a lot.

So even if you do put in Jacen or some other new character in the role of Ahsoka's padawan, you either run into the issue of sidelining Sabine in her own story, or you exacerbate the issue that already existed of there being too many main characters within one narrative which muddied so many things about the show since it was impossible to tell what the story was actually ABOUT or whose story we were meant to be following. The stupid show was a mess and it couldn't have been fixed by just tweaking one or two things. It needed to be wholesale ripped apart into at MINIMUM two separate shows if not three or even four separate shows (Hera's whole prequel to the Sequels narrative about the New Republic didn't belong in The Mandalorian, Ahsoka's narrative, or the Search for Ezra storyline; and if the Mandoverse needed an "Empire Strikes Back"-esque middle part, it should have been its own thing rather than co-opting Ahsoka and Sabine's completely unrelated stories).

The Search for Ezra as a story, and especially the idea of continuing the Rebels story through Sabine rather than through Ezra and shining a spotlight on her in a way that didn't happen very often in Rebels, is a GREAT concept. Whether it was exploring the edges of their known galaxy or going into a whole new galaxy, it opened up a lot of ways to be really creative while telling what could've been a really great parallel story between Ezra's survival and Sabine's search.

Ahsoka dealing with her past and her feelings about Anakin's betrayal was a necessary next step to her story that needed to be told and I was genuinely really intrigued to see how that got handled and how Ahsoka slowly learned to let go of all of her fears and pain and learned to embrace being a Jedi again after so many years. I REALLY wanted to see Ahsoka find her way back to reclaiming that identity after she had given it up and then had it ripped away from her. I wanted to see how Ahsoka taking back her own story was integrated with Ahsoka dealing with her feelings about Anakin's betrayal.

Both of these stories are GREAT on their own and really provide a way to highlight some of the best female characters Star Wars has ever had.

It's too bad what we got ended up being the most Frankenstein'd hackjob I have possibly ever seen that butchered two of the best female characters Star Wars has ever had.

Yknow, a lot of the Sabine characterization problems in ahsoka (having act like an impulsive teenager when she's almost thirty and was never like that even when she was a teenager and had grown out of her negative teenager traits by the end of Rebels) could have been solved if "Sabine" was a different character

And this "not sabine" could have still been connected to Sabine

How

Adopted daughter

Have the role of Sabine in Ahsoka be taken by an adopted child of hers, someone young and impulsive, has heard stories of Ezra Bridger and how much her mother and her adopted family that is the Ghost crew misses him and wants nothing more than to bring him back to make her family complete again, to the point of making several dangerous mistakes

And it also would have fixed the bullshit "sabine has the force now" nonsense

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

ohh can we hear about the monster au...

YES YOU CAN sure glad you asked-

OKAY. so. first off i'll address the main differences between the new au and the old one. First off. Alternates do not exist. Monsters do, but alternates don't. Secondly. Rest in piece characters like Werewolf Seth, vampire Cesar, Siren Jonah, and Angel Gabriel Hart. They are no longer in this. Thirdly. Characters that were alternates in the og au are either now monsters, or are still human. now. allow me to ramble about the characters because Brainrot is a bitch /VLH

Okay. firstly. there are a few characters that have gone through very little change from the alt monster au, aka Evelin (still a zombie), Dave (could NOT give up big bird man, but he is a tad different i guess), Adam, (still a fucked up werewolf) and Sarah (still human).

However there are differences, for example, Jonah is actually still human and. alive??? and not mutilated??? unheard of for an au of mine I know /VLH HJ

however, there are some other characters that i'd like to get into but may answer in a separate ask or post to prevent this from getting too long. For example: Mark (used to be human but. not really anymore.) Cesar (uhm. heheh. he's been better), Thatcher, Ruth, and overall. just. other possible characters I still haven't gotten to yet.

But yeah. not a whole lot of worldbuilding yet as I only officially made the decision to make this its own au like. last night. at 2 am. but still I. would like to ramble about it so i'm up for questions :) /nf

[demaparbat-hp]

Oh, Lala...