#Crying is basically unavoidable

[none-of-it-was-accidental]

noah kahan’s stick season (forever) is not safe to listen to after 10pm

[outlanderalien]

Not sure if I'm sabotaging my relationship or not but I feel like I'm in the right ? Perhaps ?

[mylonelylittlestar]

My little star

Characters: Xavier Summary: random relationship headcanons with Xavier Warnings: None A/N: I've completely fallen in love with Love and Deepspace, especially with Xavier. It's truly hopeless

the type of boyfriend to get you matching pyjamas

he gets you so many that they slowly start to replace all of your own

likes to match with you even if you don't live together, so sometimes he just texts you to ask which pyjamas you're wearing so he can change into the matching one after he showered

if you ever gift him slippers, blankets, or pillows, he will keep them forever (even if it's something goofy like those big fluffy bunny slippers)

the best person to ask for good midnight snacks. He can recommend fantastic instant noodles, chips, crackers, or other snacks that are light and won't give you stomach aches late at night or negatively impact your sleep in any other way

very interested in your skincare routine (if you have one) and will try out any mask or cream that you give him

if you come up with a routine for him (a simple one, maybe, like the basic cleanser > toner > moisturizer), he will follow it diligently, dragging himself out of bed before he sleeps every day to do it because you were the one to pick those products for him and he doesn't want to waste that

he feels like it connects you to him, even if your routine is completely different and a bit more complicated

never cries during movies, no matter how sad they might be, but he does (on very rare occasions) get a bit teary-eyed

he will hold you if you cry during a movie, and he would never even think about making fun of you for it

he does secretly think that it's cute that you get so worked up about a movie

can sleep through anything. a bomb could go off in his house and he wouldn't know that it happened until he woke up

has seen every single episode of any shitty sitcom you can think of at least three times because he occasionally watches them while he sleeps

sometimes he quotes them but because he knows each of these shows so well now he always quotes the lesser known scenes and no one gets what he's talking about

you start to understand his references after a while, so sometimes he will quote some obscure scene from a super unpopular sitcom that got cancelled after one season and you're the only one laughing

secretly sneaks to the arcade sometimes to practice the claw machine game because he wants to get you the plushies you don't have yet (and to impress you)

he ends up getting dozens of repeats of plushies that you already own. he collects in a small storage room in his apartment that used to be empty

he ends up giving them away when the collection gets out of control, donating them to a children's hospital nearby

gets all shy when you find out about it, blushing bright red like a tomato (or a wasabi octopus)

knows about every single 24 hour store in the city because of his odd sleeping habits and always knows what to do no matter what time it is

you can't sleep and want to go on a date at 3:27 am? he knows a place

if someone is mean to you he will try his hardest to deescalate the situation, but he's also fully willing to fight the person if that doesn't work

I mean have you read his Anecdotes 2? He doesn't give a fuck. He'd prefer not to fight, sure, but if it's unavoidable? What is he gonna do? Not fight and defend you? Ridiculous.

The fandom has already started turning him into this soft uwu stereotype, but the thing is that that's... just not him? He's sweet and kind, yes, but that's not all he is. He's complicated! He has layers!

if he ever falls asleep during a date he would feel awful about it for days, even if you reassure him that it's fine and that you're glad that he feels safe enough around you to fall asleep

he tries to make it up to you with a different date and he falls asleep again, which starts a vicious, endless cycle

when he finally does get over his guilt it's only because you fall asleep during a date after you had a long day at work

knows when you cheat in kitty cards, but sometimes he just lets you get away with it, especially if he knows you had a stressful day at work. He hopes that the win will cheer you up

his good night kisses are forehead kisses while his good morning kisses are on top of your head if you didn't sleep over or on the cheek if you did

[vaguely-concerned]

do you ever think about how, when we get lucanis' ossuary mind note on what he was thinking during the fireplace scene at the end of his recruitment mission... what's implied to be his instinctive internal reaction as he's saying "you'd have to kill me" out loud sure isn't 'and I don't want to die'. it's '(and spite would die)'. do you think spite's gremlin-y candle-hungering give-me-FIRE! >:D presence has maybe saved that guy's life even more times and in more ways than are immediately obvious at a glance. do you ever. cry.

it's also very. him that the thing that would stay his hand on killing himself partially might be that he just isn't willing to visit the same cruelty or harm on spite as zara, even when accepting his passenger spirit as collateral damage would at least offer a chance to put an end to his own pain, which at that point he seems unable to see any other way of truly escaping or find real relief from than to die. there's so much resentment and fear and other understandable fraught emotions in spite and lucanis' relationship early on, but it's just as clear that deep down lucanis conceptualizes spite as fundamentally innocent in what's happened here -- perhaps, indeed, more innocent than he manages to conceptualize himself until someone else can help him get in there and start to untangle it with him. he's protective of spite in some subtle ways right from the start, taking pains to point out several times on the jog through the ossuary that the spirits here were just as much victims in what was done to them as anyone else. when spite acts out during the fireplace scene... how much of lucanis brushing it off the way he does is about the '*actively bleeding from the eyes* don't worry about me' avoidant side of it all, and how much is him trying to shelter spite from the eyes of people he does not know well enough yet to predict how they’ll react in response — towards himself or spite. (additional idea to really bring on the heartache: do you think he has maybe intervened in pretty much the same way between illario and caterina over the years and that’s how he does it so smoothly and automatically; it’s basically psychological muscle memory. Haha. ow.) 

Between that and the pretty consistent language he uses that frames spite as child-like, even when he means that in frustration/enfant terrible flavoured terms lol, you get the sense that regardless of how much Lucanis is aware of this on the surface, there is a deep instinctive protectiveness in him for spite. I think that even comes across in the scene where lucanis tells you he’ll continue to pursue a way to separate him and spite on the minrathous route. So I was kind of picking up on/working with that already subconsciously, but when I found that note it hit me like a sledgehammer that clearly in some part at least, the reason lucanis is still here is that he knows now that spite would die with him and doesn’t find that price acceptable. Spite thinks that lucanis mentally locking himself in his (torture :() room and refusing to speak to him is an act of rejection or trickery, but to my eyes taken with everything else we know about how lucanis’ brain tends to work… as much as it’s an expression of avoidance and fear and overwhelm and trying to get away from the voice pushing him towards action when the mere prospect of action fills you with despair to even contemplate (“There’s nowhere to go”), I think it’s also a mark of lucanis’ affection and protectiveness of spite. The guards along the way make it very clear that more so than to keep the outside world from coming in, this place is for protecting people from what might break out. 

And that’s why I think this is also such a good case study to look at lucanis' internal freeze logic and why it has been so adaptive for him up until now when faced with completely impossible emotional situations to which there are no good answers or causes of actions available, even though it's inherently and unavoidably one of those 'what's worse, the medicine or the disease' solutions a brain cooks up. lucanis by the point of inner demons is facing this conundrum: 1) I can't live like this, it hurts too much. I've been in pain so long I’ve got screams where my blood should be and it just keeps getting louder, and nothing really touches or helps that. 2) I can't die to escape this, because that would also kill spite (and also I've got a job to do I guess *working 9-5 slowed with reverb and with underwater sound distortion effects is playing in the background*). those are of course not actually his only options, but in the state he's in they are the only options he can conceive of. (that's not infrequently how it works, when the suffering is that intense and unrelenting. Nothing gives you tunnel sight quite like ‘I just need this to stop’ agony that has gone on long enough to add sheer soul exhaustion to the mix)

so what happens in the end? his freeze brain -- honed, I'm sure, through many long years of attachment trauma and abuse and loss for exactly this kind of 'uh-oh. Incoming FUBAR situation alert let’s go' -- kicks into action and makes him do nothing except what's externally required of him, so he can stay just functional and momentarily distracted by a plethora of avoidance behaviours enough to get through his daily life, if like not particularly happily so... and otherwise, as it were, locking himself in his room deep inside where nothing can touch him, where nothing gets in and nothing gets out, no harm allowed to either escape from within nor allowed to pierce through and get inside. numbness isn't actually a cure for that kind of suffering, but it's the closest thing you're likely to get with any immediacy and if you’re desperate enough by god you take those. It’s how he survived his upbringing, and it’s how he survived the ossuary — as he tells Davrin straight out, the trick to just shut down every part of his soul he can to get through intolerable pain, loss or helplessness. I don’t think that mechanism came to him in the ossuary the first time, I think that blueprint was deeply embedded in his neurons and went ‘ah. My time again. Not to worry I’m a bit of an expert at this I’ll get us through this yet (though you may not thank me for it by the end of it all)’. 

In that state he's unable to himself reach out and meaningfully ask for help (and also like... why would his inner world have any framework for that as even being on the table? this has never been an option before in his life, not in any safe or consistent way; he's fucked up the way he is because the same things/people that should have been and partially, comparatively, were the sources of help and relief and safety growing up are also the sources of pain and abuse, that eternal irreconcilable ambivalence, the double edged sword of unpredictable insecure attachment), but it also keeps him from doing anything uh drastic the other way too, on acting impulsively in ways that can’t be taken back. (that seems to be more illario’s role/dubious privilege in the family lol.) at many points in his life and especially growing up, freezing and going numb around the pain is as close to having control of anything as there was any hope of. 'harm will be inflicted on me unpredictably, but fuck you I don't have to truly feel it as long as I shut all this other stuff down as well, that's what I can control' nervous system logic. (it'll get you every time.) for what it’s worth I’m not so sure his nervous system judged that one incorrectly, I think that is the kind of rebellion you would have to cling to while being raised by someone like caterina, because look at illario if you want to know how much she respects and rewards anything more overt or active. (I mean, if you don’t succeed, at least. swing at Grandma Dellamorte you’d better not miss or you’ll meet that cane swinging at you the other way and she will not miss)

I say all this because I think it's as easy to demonize the freeze response as it is to demonize anger, to conceptualize it only as an obstructive force that, as bellara puts it, is one of the purest forms of a heart not seeming to want to let you be happy, or a mindless byproduct of trauma. But in my experience, the brain doesn’t generally come up with ‘stupid’ defense mechanisms. Even in the most maladaptive of coping mechanisms, there is at the core of it some part of you that once meant to save your life, no matter what trouble it is wreaking for you today. when you look at the setup of Lucanis’ soul, as it were, you can see the dual and in some ways genuinely noble and even tender qualities this response has in him, however misguided: it does imprison, but it also protects, and it means to protect; for all the pain along the way it has sheltered all the parts of his soul that are most precious and breakable, the most vulnerable parts that want to live and so so importantly love completely and freely. Lucanis thinks he’s protecting not even primarily himself but everyone he loves by staying where he is. (“It would be better for me to stay here than to risk losing you”) A child’s logic, to be sure, but logic of a kind and clearly one that caterina has encouraged in him because that’s a conception of love it’s been very useful for her for him to have. Freeze looks like utter hopelessness on the surface, but in some ways I think it’s the utmost triumph of hope — a spare and unrelenting winter that exists because it thinks one day spring might still come, and the things too precious and fragile to thrive in your life as it is now might bloom then. 

He is an adult now, and Caterina no longer controls his entire world, physically and emotionally. There’s finally room for other things, other people, himself, in his life, without everything having to defer to the gravitational force of what Caterina wants from him at the end of the day. And while I think her jumpscaring him with the First Talon position is partly her attempt to wrangle him back into the status quo of control she once had, I’m not sure it’s going to work quite the way she might hope — at least in the Treviso saved route, there are just too many fresh spring shoots in his life at that point that could grow into something new, it’s too late to trample all the saplings growing up through the cracks in time (and indeed some of them might also fight back). (The outlook on the Minrathous saved route is um. Perhaps less convincingly immediately hopeful to me and the prospect of actually getting around to healing further down the road, but I refuse to give up on him that’s my little guy and he’s above all incredibly smart and stubborn and not a quitter and all the rest of this still remains true beneath it all, just like. Give him a moment here.) His hopes and dreams have diversified while she had her back turned lmao he suddenly keeps them with so many more people than just her and Iillario now. She doesn’t hold the monopoly of meaning and connection in his life the way she used to. And whether out of love (you know. Hope is every man’s prerogative I suppose) at seeing him really happy for perhaps the first time or sheer pragmatism, I think she’s going to have to accept that and adapt her ways of doing things with him accordingly, or else have him drift even further away from her.

Spite is the urgent impatient voice that starts to break through to go ‘that moment is now it HAS to be now. We need to shake off the shackles and illusions and face what’s actually here so we can learn to properly live now, or this winter will starve us to death as surely as anything Zara could do to us’. And he is right! As crucial as this soul-starvation landscape has been in survival, it has clearly reached the end of its sustainability, you can’t survive permanently on frost alone. I just also want to recognize the credit Lucanis (and his fucked up but valiant nervous system <3 pour one out for a real one) also deserves for stubbornly holding on in any way he had to until Spite’s true escape project is even an option for either of them. Especially since Lucanis seems to harbour a lot of self-loathing and frustration over his own propensity for freeze — “You know him. You can open the door, but he won’t walk through it”  (still one of the saddest most painful things I’ve ever heard. In case you were wondering. He knows. He knows what he’s like, and he despairs of it, he thinks it means it’s his own fault he still feels like this. Augh.) The real point at the end of the day is not that spite saved lucanis or vice versa, but that as traumatic as it was to get there and against all cultural expectations, it is ultimately their enmeshed condition, their togetherness, that saved them both. (which, again, when you consider the cultural narrative of possession and spirits most andrastian nations are working with…what a radical conclusion to come away with haha. Not unprecedented at all, if you look at Wynne and her spirit, but on a deeper and more psychological plane than ever and even more impactful for it, to me.)

[xmads-omensx]

The Chain

Pairing: Noah Sebastian X Reader

Content warnings: allusions to smut, basically just smut

Tags: @collisionofyourkissmakesitsohard @lma1986 @alwaysfightforwhoyouare @tosoundlessdarkistare @heyyoplayer

Noah had bought the chain on a whim.

He never really wore much jewellery besides some rings occasionally or the rosary he used to wear before the band was as big as it is now.

But what he didn’t know, was how much you loved chains.

Sure, he noticed the glances you stole. Or the way your eyes would go straight to looking at it when the two of you spoke.

But he never knew how deep it ran.

You didn’t either.

Your love for the chain came unavoidably obvious when Noah had you on your back after a particularly exhausting show and you moaned when the chain tapped your nose.

The coolness of it made your body shiver.

You needed more.

Looking Noah in the eye, you took the chain into your mouth and ran your tongue along it a few times, not breaking eye contact with thin, making him still inside you momentarily as he watched, completely mesmerised by your actions.

He was fucked.

Before you could even register what was happening, Noah’s hips began harshly snapping against your body, making you cry out in pleasure.

Your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer.

The chain fell out of your mouth due to the impact, making Noah stop, only to slide it back into your mouth.

“That falls out one more time, Princess, and I stop.”

Neither of you wanted that.

You tried your hardest to keep the chain in your mouth through Noah’s harsh thrusts.

After you both finished, Noah pulled the now soaked chain out from between your lips and captured your lips with his in a heated kiss.

He muttered a low “good job, baby” before pulling away to clean the two of you up.

[emotsper]

Hi!!!!!!!!

You’re like the szai person on tumblr, and even tho I’ve been playing proseka for like two years, I still don’t read a lot of the stories………

So as the certified szai tumblr person, since you kinda own the tag, would you like to explain to me why szai is such a popular ship? I really didn’t read much of anything…

Have fun!!

let me be brief (1/350) (no bc its actually gonna be a long ramble. apolocheese.) (also sorry if formatting is awful im a mobile user and I literally just type whatever)

FOR REAL THOUGH. PLEASE JUST DO ME A FAVOR AND READ MMJ MAINSTORY...... not only its a good source of szai cocaina you get to experience the entire mmj mainstory. i was normal before mmj mainstory and i was less normaler after mmj mainstory.

it simply went even more downhill when i read tenshi no clover. genuinely the one event story that first made me cry (second one was ice drop event but thats a bit biased)

okay now lets get to the main meat of it. szai.

admittedly i was kind of normaler early on but one of my tipping point was Chasing the radiance event especially chapter 7. please read/watch it. please. this specific chapter sent me into my trip of insanity when it comes to szai. it also opened my eye to specific scenes in their side stories/mmj mainsto that i skimmed early on especially bc im a jp only player so fan tls may not be super accurate back then 💔

to start off, airi was a girl that was often made fun of for being tomboyish, and seeing idols for the first time made her feel a glimmer of hope that maybe she can also bring hope to other people. she finally manages to reach her goal and became an idol after several of failed auditions (very deserved especially after her hard work) while shizuku became an idol purely out of luck from the idol grand prix context her friends convinced her to join 😭😭 From the start their relationship feels a little bit doomed with how jealousy is kind of unavoidable from airis side. but against all odds, you get to see airi go to shizuku and cheering her up by giving shizuku her towel and telling her to wipe those tears especially with such a pretty face like hers (MACHINE CLANG CLANG RACK SFX) they are so crazy for this. especially when you realize that shizuku kept the towel until now. (the towel is her area upgrade item)

from this point, airi thought nothing much of shizuku yet other than her being her new rival (and that shes rly pretty) but shizuku sees airi as her main reason to keep going in this idol stuff at that time, and that was enough.

(okay purely for this next part im forgetting a bit so do remember it may not be fully accurate 🙏)

after training minori for awhile, szai went thru a mini divorce arc where airi was telling minori that being an idol isnt all fun and games and that minori should consider quitting, continuing on with how she flopped in the industry bc she was more popular as a reality show figure. but shizuku disagreed and kept saying how airi was an idol through and through and that she shouldn't have quit, but that just tipped airi off and she shouted at shizuku, unloading all her pent up jealousy that she had for awhile now. iconic as hell scene in the most angsty way possible.

u can easily tell this wasn't received well by shizuku. at all. airi you done fucked up. shizuku left her idol group the next day.

(addendum i forgot to add. shizuku truly believed that airi was the first and if not, the only person who sees shizuku as shizuku hinomori herself, without all the idol filter that people plastered on her. so when airi admitted that she was jealous w shizuku getting everything good in the industry, that basically broke shizuku. (color of myself is a nice one to read when it comes to this 🙏 also the i am we are event is a crazy good conclusion to shizukus current arc))

at this point airi realizes just how much shizuku was influenced by her past actions without her fully knowing about it. girl you done fucked up.

this scene is still one of the biggest and strongest kryptonite for szai fans. especially with what happens after.

after confronting shizuku about her choice knowing full well its airis fault, airi, angry at herself, goes immediately to cheerful*days training place (she knows the place since theyve kinda shared the spot iirc) while the rest of mmj follows. she started threatening arisa and almost threw punches but she held back and told the rest of cheerful*days that shizuku is more of an idol than everyone in the room (i may be hallucinating this one. do lmk)

they finally leave the place, and both apologies to each other. at the same time, they both admitted that they were each others idol

and then shizuku goes to tackle hug airi. what the queer

that only concludes the mainstory section btw. upon realizing it may be too much of a recap instead of actual explanation ill be brief w the rest of it (keep in mind i dont read EVERY szai story, just ones i was made aware of bc im playing on jp and story content is a bit harder to see/consume)

Main szai crazies for szai fans

1. chasing the radiance ch7. airi yet talks again about how shizukus hands are slender and elegant while hers are short and chubby (she compared her hands to a manju) and shizuku was mad at her about this and went on a long tangent about how airis gentle hands were the ones who pushes minori and shizuku forward when they think they couldn't.

this is probably the fifth time ive read this story and it still gets me. i hate these fruitsssss. please read the full chapter ive linked it near the start this chapter is so special to me.

2. my ideal idol (airi 5, jp only event for now)

Bro i Dont Even Know What Else To Say. Just Look At This Card

but if we're being serious . lets talk about this one specific card and the story shall we.

this card was a blast to the past; pre-mmj szai again.

we start off with present mmj getting ready for their turn in the joint performance with a new junior idol group that they were paired with. airi was a bit nervous and shizuku noticed it. so she offered to do something that would hopefully lessen the nervousness for both of them. shizuku softly puts her head on airis back and whispered several word of encouragements. shizuku reminisces to the past.

pre-mmj szai. shizuku was very nervous as she was waiting for her first performance ever as an idol. airi was also there, and it was going to be her first too. airi shows up to say hi to shizuku but she noticed that shizuku was really nervous and at the verge of crying. airi knew she had to do something and told shizuku to turn around, shizuku did. shizuku lets out a little surprised yelp as she feels airis hands and head pressing against her back. she could hear airi muttering some encouragement but we never get to hear what the words were, only that shizuku thought about how warm airis hands were. (i need to be euthanized)

back to the present, shizuku says that she hopes that this gesture can somehow "repay" for what airi did to her back then. i think im losing it. sorry

OKAY IM DONE IM DONE ITS ALMOST 1 AM MY BRAIN IS NOT GOING TO WORK ANYMORE IF I KEEP TYPING..... my brain can handle so little. anyways i hope this wall of text ramble can convince u to read mmj mainsto and consume more mmj stories........ i admit its not perfect or whatsoever bc i haven't read the mmj mainstory for awhile and i have a wee memory issue thats paired with my deafness so. yeah. enjoy. haha.

[literaila]

HEYYYY!! It's me again!!

I have two things to discuss today.

Firstly, have you seen those reels where Megumi reminds Gojo of Toji and he gets freaked out? So has this ever happened in the Gojo household? If yes, how dramatic does Satoru act?

Secondly, I have a request, It would absolutely make my day to see Satoru jealous. (Yes, I know we saw a it with Nanami, but can you blame a girl to want more?) Like if the reader got hit on, I am sure he'll pull something like he did to Megumi with Nobara and Yuji.

Thank you for reading this,

You are amazing and I love you.

(I'll do anything you ask me to.)

no doubt, for the first couple of months (two years) megumi lived with satoru, every time the boy woke up in the morning with his hair deflated, or walked in the room scratching his head, or sat on the couch, or went into the bathroom—satoru had to refrain a wince.

it’s not that the likeness was uncanny… but… well, the attitude was.

when megumi had on that evil smirk—usually when one of his many plots against satoru came to fathom—it was clear that the very man satoru had erased from existence had shared some of his more… admirable qualities with the boy.

sometimes it was the way megumi spoke. the tiny little inflections that satoru was probably making up, but were also definitely there. the little sigh when he asked the boy a question or the clearing of a throat when megumi was confused.

and the eyes.

megumi’s eyes were always cold, always hesitant, always moving around, constantly looking for some problem to focus on. and his glares, and his eyebrows, and uuugch.

sometimes satoru had to run into the bathroom just to cower himself away for a moment.

and if megumi happened to knock on the door, already scowling when satoru opened it a crack, really, the gasp that came next was unavoidable.

“what’s up with you?” megumi demands, shaking his head at the older, very immature man. “can you move?”

said man would open the door as little as possible as he squeezed by, trying and failing not to stare at the little boy—who has very dark hair, dark eyes, and dark intent specifically when it comes to satoru.

none of it goes unnoticed.

so if satoru is leaning over the counter, his eyes pleading with yours, you already know what it’s about.

(you’d learned about satoru’s weird superstition about two days into becoming his co-parent).

“no,” you say immediately, going back to making both of the children’s lunch.

“i didn’t say anything.”

“still no, satoru.”

“but, please,” he falls against the counter dramatically, wide blue (alien) eyes basically perfect spheres as he widens them. “just this once?”

“it’s a supply store.”

he shakes his head intently. “that’s not the issue.”

you give him a bland look, unamused with his stupid qualms, and put the lid on a container.

“he looks freaky,” satoru whispers, conspiring. “there’s something off.”

you look over to megumi who is sitting at the table, swinging his legs and chewing on some cut up ginger.

he looks as pleasant (frowning) and sweet (irritated) as always to you.

you raise a brow at satoru, choosing not to argue with him about this. god knows you do it enough.

“do you want me to cry?” satoru asks, pouting. “i have ptsd.”

you roll your eyes. “ever heard of exposure therapy?“

so satoru takes megumi to the store to get markers and papers for a school project, giving him questionable glances from beneath his glasses, and making weird comments under his breath about psychopaths and plastic surgery.

when they get home megumi is annoyed as ever, attempting to slam the door in satoru’s face before he can walk through.

you’re, of course, sitting with tsumiki at the table and watch as this interaction happens.

megumi stomps by and tells you, “please kick him out. he’s being weird again.”

and satoru just opens the door, red faced, finger pointing at the little boy, demanding: “see?”

so, yeah. satoru suffers with the memory of toji, and his biggest ideation (hurting the six-eyes user) comes to life in the form of a little boy who now lives in his home. just two rooms down the hall.

seriously, who really won that fight?

but as the months (years) go on, satoru learns to mostly ignore the resemblance between the two. sure, when megumi wears his hair differently or says anything in that rough, angry voice satoru gets a little freaked, but so what?

(if he has to go sit in his closet for a couple of minutes it’s just because he’s tired, okay? it has nothing to do with being afraid of a six year old or anything of the sort).

still, things slowly begin to change as megumi grows accustomed to satoru’s antics, and satoru becomes accustomed to being called out for them.

(you do it occasionally, but satoru knows you’re mostly joking. you’re nothing if not the benefactor of his schemes.

on the other hand, the only other person to ever seriously call him out about his ego was… suguru.

so. there’s that.)

and eventually, satoru doesn’t even notice if megumi is looking at him with devious intent. he’s well prepared and not afraid of some whiny little kid who can’t even reach the top shelf in the fridge.

(he hides behind you, usually.)

but even satoru can’t ignore the way megumi begins to change as he grows. literally, several inches by the time he’s eight.

and then there’s the way his eyes—his cold, evil eyes—change when he’s talking to tsumiki, or you. the way he softens when you’re trying to tell him something, or when he needs help. the tiny, affectionate grin that grows on his face when tsumiki is bouncing around, so full of energy that she can’t sit still.

satoru looks at him sometimes, and he doesn’t see the gifted sorcerer killer that the boy comes from, but a brother. a son that gets to be adored by the best person in the world (him you)

that is, of course, until megumi looks satoru’s way and the scowl is back, even harsher than before.

and then theres the learned attitudes, the things that you all shared—you, satoru, and the kids—just as a result of being together for so long.

isn’t there something about developing the traits of the people closest to you?

so, even though megumi is a photo copy of his father, satoru begins to see other things in the boy.

like the crinkles by his eyes, matching tsumiki’s.

or the way that his eyebrows go up when he’s trying not to smile, and the eventual twitch of his lip when he can’t help but laugh at something. satoru’s dreamed of that sight since he was seventeen and first set his eyes on you.

and then the eventual pout that megumi develops when he’s giving everyone a hard time. the pout that satoru practices in the mirror, making sure to save for only the most dire of occasions.

(also, satoru can’t help but think of megumi as the thing that keeps him… humble, in the face of everything. that question that continuously reminds satoru to keep growing, keep getting stronger, just so he can protect everything that matters.

he won’t admit it, but satoru knows that someone had to do it. someone had to be a replacement for the only other person who could ever compare to the strongest sorcerer.

and if suguru could meet megumi, satoru thinks, sometimes, when no one else is around to hear it, they would get along.

they have a lot in common, after all).

sure, megumi might have the same face, and same smirk as toji. he might as well be a literal clone of the man, just waiting to age into his skin.

but, satoru decides, one day a couple of years in, when there’s that innate protective feeling as he observes the boy—one that satoru never thought he had, much less be able to feel—maybe it’s more that toji resembles megumi, and not the other way around.

so satoru doesn’t flinch anymore because megumi’s face brings up memories he’d prefer to keep locked away—he flinches because megumi was waiting in the shadows.

just to scare him.

(secaond idea is here)

[twistedwonderlandsimps]

Shapeshifter!Yuu

I'm just here to mix-and-match different kinds of Yuus with different kinds of personalities to see what monstrosity I can make. That being said,,, Shapeshifter!Yuu brainrot! 

Basically like Penny from The Amazing World of Gumball after she broke out of her shell (literally) after Gumball confessed to her, but in a bit of an uncanny valley sort of way (at first, that is). 

So anyway, Yuu’s a shapeshifter but when they first arrived in Twisted Wonderland, their presence was basically nonexistent and they almost always blended into the background, if not for Grim who constantly brought attention to them. 

To those who paid attention closely, they could tell there was something weird about Yuu. 

They were almost eldritch-like, in an uncanny valley kind of way, like their body didn’t quite fit them but they were trying to force themselves to fit it even when it couldn’t. 

Especially with the behaviors they exhibited, how their smiles seem a bit too forced and too wide to be considered normal, how often they blink their eyes a little too late, or how their chest slows to a stop as if they forgot how to breathe that people have to literally ask them if they’re still even alive.

They just seemed too much that it was like they were manually controlling every single thing in their body, from their nerves to their heartbeat, just to be seen as normal yet still somehow failing at it. 

Sometimes, Grim has to stay awake at night and watch Yuu because he’s worried of how still and lifeless they look while sleeping, and the fact that their heartbeat slows down a little too much scares him.

But of course this doesn’t last long. 

Being in Twisted Wonderland was too emotionally stimulating for them and it didn’t take long for them to snap.

It first happened with Riddle, when he overblotted. 

Getting insulted and looked down on was the last straw for Yuu. 

They stood in place, a smile frozen on their face as they stared at Riddle. 

Then, the corner of their eyes twitched, their smile straining as their facade slowly broke. 

But no one noticed this, not when everybody was too focused on Ace who was verbally challenging Riddle who was starting to show signs of blotting.

It was delayed, Yuu’s reaction that is. 

From a very young age, they were told that their emotions were both a blessing and a curse. 

That was why they were taught and encouraged by their family to conceal it as best as they could while they were still young. 

Emotions were… complicated, so to say. 

When a child from their family becomes too emotionally stimulated, it would often lead to destruction. 

They were just too unstable and the elders in their family were worried that everyone would see them as monsters if they ever went out of control so they believed that it was for everyone’s best interest if they conceal, don’t feel (lmao, Elsa logic) as per their family’s tradition. 

But of course not every family tradition was exactly the healthiest, and Yuu’s whole family has got to be the most emotionally constipated family there ever was in their world. 

Being sent into an unknown world? Yes, that was scary, but Yuu had to control themselves and they tried their best not to burden others.

When they stood in front of the mirror that told them that their home didn’t exist, their nails sharpened under their robes (a self-defense reaction, unavoidable, really) but at least they stopped themselves right there and didn’t shift into something monstrous. 

When they were left all alone in a rundown dorm, they had to force themselves to not breakdown and cry.

When they were threatened by Leona in the botanical garden, they held their form as normal as it could. 

But they had always been tipping over the edge ever since they arrived in this unknown world. 

Like a glass of water ready to spill or a dam ready to break. 

They just had so many emotions but no idea how to show it.

However, faced with this– this! Being insulted and then getting attacked! 

It was… unforgivable! 

Unforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivableunforgivable–!

Well anyway, basically both Riddle and Yuu had a mental breakdown at the same time and everyone got to see Yuu turn into this gargantuan creature and deck the overblot monster, that eerily held a resemblance to the Queen of Hearts, hovering behind Riddle while Trey and the others focused on trying to knock Riddle out.

Once it was over, Yuu seemingly disappeared out of nowhere. 

Except, not really. They were still in the Rose Maze. 

Yuu just turned into this very small, translucent blob that fit perfectly in Deuce’s palm. 

Grim found them on the ground next to this black stone that smelled really delicious. 

“Y-Yuu…? It’s you, right?” Deuce hesitantly asks in a low voice as he stares at Yuu’s small form, careful not to jostle them around too much. “Are you alright? Do you feel okay?”

“Oh no, I broke it…” Yuu doesn’t answer him and wails instead, voice small and squeaky.

“What broke? Are you hurt? Did you break your bones? Do you even have bones when you’re like this?” Ace chimed from Deuce’s side, relentlessly poking Yuu’s wispy form. Yuu just wails even louder.

They weren’t hurt, physically at least. They just felt very sad, guilty, and upset that they broke their promise with their family to not shapeshift. 

But ever since the first time they shapeshifted, it felt as if a huge burden was taken off of their shoulders. They felt… lighter. 

This doesn’t mean that they approved themselves suddenly shifting. 

In fact, they still feel guilty every time they do it due to their upbringing but they’re finding it harder and harder to control. 

It took them some time before they accepted that this part of them was normal, that it was normal to feel this way and they were just shapeshifting according to how they felt and that was fine. 

Sure, there were some lingering feelings, especially fear because Yuu’s scared that what they were doing was wrong, that they were letting their family down.

There are days when they think that breaking free from their family’s teachings felt wonderful, and there are days when they just felt downright awful for not heeding their words.

Afterall, their family constantly taught from a very young age that they weren’t allowed to show their emotions so would it be really easy to get rid of such a teaching when they grew up? 

No, it wasn’t, but at least they’re gradually learning.

For the meantime, Yuu’s very emotionally constipated, more so than the others who lived in Twisted Wonderland.

The first time Yuu met Malleus, they shifted into a rabbit because they got scared by the sounds of footsteps heading towards them in the middle of the night. 

Malleus found this amusing, especially when Yuu shifted back to their normal form to show that they weren’t scared of Malleus.

And then the Diasomnia student proceeded to talk about gargoyles.

Every chapter arc probably has had Yuu shapeshift into a new form. 

Each one is different and unique since there’s a lot of emotions that can mix together and form something new.

Yuu’s shapeshifting abilities aren't limited to what Penny can only transform into. They’re more flexible so there’s a lot of combinations possible they can shapeshift into.

Am I going to make a description of those transformations? Nnnnooo. Maybe some other time. It’s 3 am, it’s honestly surprising how my brain’s even still working at this point.

Anyway, Yuu in their normal human form starts to become less uncanny and more human the more they shapeshift since they’ve become less worried about controlling and maintaining their form so they look normal.

Their movements become more natural and their expressions more lively, so unlike before when they first stepped into Twisted Wonderland.

Also someone telling Yuu: “That’s not what you are. It’s just how you feel.” 

And it’s most probably going to be Grim.

Smh smh, the boys failed to score some extra brownie points from Yuu, too bad for them.

Anyway, time to pass out, lmao.

[plaidos]

Adding onto the gaggle of transfems getting treated like shit asks; I've had a string of bad luck a few weeks back of getting kicked from THREE social groups!

The first was from another transfem buddy of mine who's vocally not a transfeminist, dismisses any time me or any of her other friends bring up any transfeminist theory or critique as being too online. We'd been friends for a few years despite that, until she decided to yank me from her friend discord because apparently the entire time her friends had, without ever vocalizing it, been just quietly tolerating my presence without ever giving me feedback on how my behavior, which I was deliberately taking cues from them on, was upsetting or discomforting them, and relied on her to be the messenger of it.

She'd constantly reiterate that they were HER friends and not mine, like there was simply never going to be a threshold I could pass to become their friends, the distance in time between her and me to them would always fundamentally leave me as an outsider via relativity.

The second was me getting banned from a discord wherein, basically, any time I'd tell someone their weird, conservative, misanthropic bitching was all of those things - they'd go cry to the mods who would immediately take their side because I was being disruptive, and I apparently accrued too many dings and got permabanned.

The third was arguably the most hurtful. I made an offhand joke about how the author of a manga about girls homoerotically beating the shit out of each other (Teppu, for anyone who's interest that piqued) was an egg.

ANOTHER TRANSFEM jumped down my throat about how this was basically forced outing because that author (who lives on the other side of the planet, and is almost certainly not hanging around a rinky dink english speaking discord server) might be grappling with their gender, and maybe hypothetically through six degrees of separation that my little joke could reach the ears of someone with authority over him, get taken as fact, and subject him to social violence which would then be my fault. I was so hurt and stunned by the sheer stupidity and bad faith of the argument that I just didn't even want to bother arguing or defending myself, even when someone else stepped in to tell her it was a harmless joke.

Anyway, happy ending is that at this point I basically only socialize in groups that are either run by me with a bunch of hand picked TMEs who can take a transfem joke, or exclusively weird horny kinkster transfems, so I don't have to worry about walking on eggshells or curtailing my opinions. It's been very freeing, but all this happening within like a fucking two week timeframe definitely left me in a bit of a frenzy before I took the rose tinted glasses off and realized how much I was censoring myself and walking on eggshells in these groups.

So, I guess to any transfem going through the fucking ringer; just bounce. Transfems doing it to you doesn't make it better - get the fuck outta there, salvage any of the people you're interested in continuing to hang out with, and make your own space.

all of these experiences ring true to me and all of the trans girls im close to. im sorry that this all happened in such a short space of time — this is indeed why i don’t spend much time joining “lgbt discord servers” or even fandom discord servers i see posted on here; the norm is to treat transfeminists as instant pariahs, and it’s so unavoidable that even transfems are becoming the lackeys of transmisogyny.

[eluxcastar]

The little brotherfication of Pantalone

── ୨୧：pantalone & reader

୨୧﹑synopsis :: sibling headcanons pantalone edition lets goo

୨୧﹑genre :: fluff

୨୧﹑content :: gn reader, child pantalone, reader is a few years older, they also basically raised him

୨୧﹑words :: 1.1k

more older sibling reader this one is blood relatives though, continue to expect more of these because I'm having a lot of fun writing themeven with the big gap between them. next one I think is Signora but that could change and I gotta finish the Dottore thing I'm working on rn which I expect to be long (not too long but longer)

all little siblingification posts

Many nights spent snuggled up in blankets together for warmth cannot simply be erased by money, nor can the years of malnourishment and sickness. In his mind, that's ok with him, as there's a fondness to it. It's just irritating when others can see it in his face and whisper. Whispers everywhere from those who know he is not an old money aristocrat.

Strangely he wouldn't wish for anything else. He wants the cheeks you used to kiss, the imperfect skin you ran your hands over, the frail boney body you would hug tightly. He treasures the memories he has of you, tracing his features, telling him how much he looks like his Mother. He cherishes that you shared those features with him.

He much prefers you now, healthier weight and beautiful clothes to flatter you that he could spend all day spoiling you with. You have the luxury to do what you want and he wouldn't want you to have to go back to living any other way, even if you're still cautious.

Pantalone does still adore his childhood memories, the times you provided him food and cared enough to feign sickness just to make sure he ate as much as he wanted, all without him realising what was going on. He wishes you hadn't, in retrospect, but making sure you had eaten enough didn't matter when he was right there, always hungry. You took him out to fish with him in the afternoons, and the two of you would share whatever you could catch. You never got to go out, and food was few and far between sometimes, but it was alright.

He loved all the stories you had to tell him, all of which you could make up on the spot, and you'd spoil him in your own way. Pantalone doesn't remember, but he knows you took care of him as a baby while his parents worked, then again as a toddler continuing on until he was a child, and you were still dressing him and making sure he ate during the day and kept him entertained. You tell him the many stories of how you would sleep with him even in infancy to keep him warm and gave him all your blankets as a toddler because he was always cold, with cold hands, a cold head and cold feet, which you would tuck into the bundle he would be wrapped in to go to sleep.

You claim you really had no idea what you were doing when he was barely a few years old, but he lived long enough to become the richest man in Teyvat and spoil you to death despite your objections. He considers it to be treating you as the treasure you are.

Supposedly, the only heartbeat he was willing to hear was yours, not even your Mother's, and he remembers he would fuss for you and cry whenever you had to leave. He wanted to play with you constantly and clung so severely that you sometimes took him out with you. Of course, you weren't perfect and admittedly left him home alone several times once he had reached an age that felt right enough, but it was usually an unavoidable thing. You never particularly wanted to and barely wanted to leave him either.

He doesn't hold you to any of it because, at the time, Pantalone was happy to wander around with you and run to you when he got scared or upset. He loves his parents too, but you were more special than that, somehow. He's not sure why or even what prompted it. He just picked you over everyone and stuck to that for as many years as you would let him, and you let him for a very long time.

Even his clothes, which you would sew with him in your lap, were fixed by your hand. He tried his hardest not to damage them, but whenever he did, you'd tut at him and wander off to find your needle and thread before pulling him into your lap. It was an awkward arrangement, letting him watch from your perspective to try and get him used to what correct looks like. You valued his ability to care for himself.

He would watch the careful stitches into his garments and the way you'd shake your hands when you'd accidentally prick yourself. The final clothes, fixed and back to new, were always so enamouring to him because it seemed like the world was ending just minutes ago before all was fixed by his older sibling.

Constantly he would want your attention and approval, and you would give it to him in droves. Everything he did was so impressive to you, and it pushed him to do even better to make you proud of him. He wanted you to smile when he showed you how far he was getting and to feel your hands run through his hair and congratulate him.

It was part of why he went to Snezhnaya, thinking he could find a job there and save a bit to send his spare money back to you, or move you out to live with him there. For years, you wrote letters to him back and forth, and he would include what little money he had only to find it sent back to him with extra in the following letter that reached him. Every attempt was not only sabotaged but also beaten, and he knew he needed you even if he didn't want you to give him your money. He wished you were spoiling yourself instead of having to support him.

Then suddenly, he had the best possible job in Snezhnaya and made the dumbest decision of his life, sending the whole of his first paycheck to you, telling you to spoil yourself. He hadn't considered how he was going to eat. He was just delighted to think that you might finally be able to eat in luxury and go out to one of those fancy restaurants you could never afford to visit.

Buy a new outfit, eat the food you always wanted from the chef everyone always fawned over, have dessert, go out, buy yourself new sewing supplies, and treat yourself nicely because the moment you're in Snezhnaya he'll be taking you to the best place he can find and buying you anything you want regardless of the price. You leave with a bunch of little trinkets and gifts that he wanted to give to you.

He loves the way you stroke his cheek with those hands that are starting to look like his again.

CROSSPOSTED ON AO3

[williamrikers]

holy shit. THEY WENT THERE. literally every week they keep blowing my mind, this is THEE best show i have ever seen and i am in absolute awe of that writing.

this episode, they followed up a substantial critique of celebrity culture and how it affects people's personal lives by not one but TWO speeches about queer rights (one of which made me cry btw), kawi having to deal with his dad's death which was unavoidable in every timeline, and him finally getting to terms with and honestly telling pisaeng about his feelings.

this whole episode was basically kawi struggling against his own fears because being openly queer means facing hardships he wouldn't have faced being with pear versus pisaeng who is struggling against his mother's homophobia. the fucking LAYERS. you could write an academic paper about this show it's so fucking nuanced and smart, HOLY SHIT.

anyway, watch be my favorite

[transparentkinks]

Continuing my Vulpes Fic

TW: Legion bullshit, Violence, Human Sacrifice, Smut.

Nothing in this is consensual. Vulpes is drinking the Legion coolaid. Also honestly the only way I realistically see things turning out for a legion aligned female courier is some level of codification to their pantheon to maintain divine right after Caesar kicks the bucket and/or permanent removal to some sort of pedestal as an excuse for how the Legion treats women. When the fighting's over she's basically just a useful political figure with no power.

Seriously this one is worse than the first dead dove do not eat this was written by a degenerate that probably does belong on a cross.

“Tempus est surgere, uxor.” She woke with a start, and a sticky pressure inside her. Her previously relaxed body now tense. Vulpes groaned and pressed into her more. She was suddenly all too aware of her surroundings, and the events of the previous day. Her hands were not tied, and she used the opportunity to try and get him off her, but he was pressed close and into her with all his weight. 

“Get the fuck off me!” She screamed, and he tisked and swifty trapped one hand, and then the other above her head. 

“Tu, amans meus, loqueris latinam, Docebo vos quomodo.” He thrust into her and she groaned, leaned back into the bed. She didn’t want to be here. She should be on her way back to Vegas by now. She wished she could just disappear. She felt him lean his weight onto the hand pinning hers, before the other flew to her jaw. “You will look at me when I am taking you.”

“You’re a disgusting prick” He smiled with much too much glee down at her. She hated his fucking face. She wished she could gouge those eyes out. He shuddered over her rather unexpectedly and fucked into her harder. 

“I love that look in your eyes-” He panted, that disgusting soft face from the night before. “Never stop looking at me like that” He leaned down and smothered her with a kiss. 

“I hate you!” She spat the second he let go of her lips, and she felt him shudder again between her legs. 

“Yes” He sighed. “You hate me with every ounce of your being.” He kissed her again, deep despite her attempts to bite his lip off. “Hate me harder” He moaned.

“You’re sick” She spoke short and dry and full of spite.

“You want to kill me” He spoke with far too much joy between his thrusts. “My love, you have no clue how beautiful you are bathed in bloodlust.” Every thrust felt much too forceful, every thrust shaking her to her core. The groans she tried to stifle became unavoidable as they rattled through her chest. 

“There’s something wrong with you” she grit out. He chuckled, busied himself with marking up her neck with his lips. It was only after he bit hard enough to earn a yelp that he deemed to lean away. A tug at her neck and a rattle allerted her to the loop of iron currently around her neck, just a touch looser than a choker, attached to a chain he had currently tied to the bed.

“You’re perfect for me” He sighed. “Even when you hate me you take me perfectly” The second he finished speaking, his lips were on hers. It was aggressive, a bruising encounter of lips and tongue and teeth. He was absolutely suffocating, he would not lean away until they were both gasping for breathe. 

“Stop!” She pleaded.

“You don’t get to run from this. You don’t get to run from me. What you want doesn't matter. I will take you and you will feel good. The sooner you accept this the sooner you’ll be able to enjoy what I am giving you.” He spoke too sweetly for what he was telling her, rubbing her face far too softly and full of affection for the situation. “You’re mine” he accentuated this fact with a tug at her chain. “You don’t have to be good, but I will make you obey. Just enough, I think. I will take you to battles with me, and we will have each other’s love and our bloodlust for the rest of our days.” She felt like his eyes were burning through her. He dropped a hand to her clit and she stifled a moan.

“No! I-” She was crying again, She just woke up and she was crying again. 

“You don’t get a choice” he asserted. “It will happen, you are mine” he started kissing down her cheeks,”My goddess” following her tears. “My wife” he groaned against her ear. He released her hands to hike up her hips, slamming into her hard enough to knock the breath out of her with each thrust. She tried to push him off her, push his head away but he just pulled her down harder over him. Her whole body was shaking, it felt so overwhelming. He worked his hand faster and she tried to push his arm away from her. “My Venus”.

“It’s too much!” She gasped out. His motions felt like fire through her nerves. He seemed to move even faster. He just laughed at her. 

“You’re going to cum for me” He grinned down at her relentlessly. Her legs wouldn’t stop shaking. Clawing at his arm did nothing. Shaking her head did nothing. Crying did nothing. She came hard just as he descended to swallow down her moans. His grip on her hips was bruising, and she felt him spill inside her. “Good girl” he practically purred. She just sobbed. He was suffocating, it was like he craved even the air she breathed. He hiked her hips higher in his lap before kissing down her face. 

“Just get off me, leave me alone!” She pleaded. Pushing at his head, pulling at his hair, trying to scratch him, all just resulted in him pushing her hands away. He seemed absolutely unperturbed by her various protests. 

“Never” He kissed her hard again as he pulled out, lifting her hips and grinding her into his lap. He leaned back, seemingly taking her in. “Those eyes should only be looking at me” He grabbed both her hands by her wrists. “This, my love, is how this will go. You will come with me wherever I go. I will do with you and your body as I like. As your husband I will protect and provide for you, and you’ll be afforded luxury reserved only for those valuable to Caesar, honor almost as high as Caesar himself. You will fight by my side and you will bare my children. There is no way for you to change this.” He leaned his face down into her neck, and she heard him inhale deeply. He moved so he was only holding her down with one hand, and she felt him run his hand down her body. She just wanted to disappear. The hand rubbing her stomach made her shiver. 

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She sobbed. 

“Shhhhh amica mea-” He soothed, his hands refusing to leave her. “You’re the only one worthy of me. I knew I would take you the moment I laid eyes on you, for the gods set you aside for me. You have a smart tongue but the most honest eyes. Your strength and intelligence is unmatched among the mongrols of the wasteland. The gods smile upon you, it’s as if you were made just for me. Seeing you fight, hearing you bend others to your will, it thrills me. I’d sooner cut out my own eye than let you slip from my grasp.” He spoke far too frankly. She just sobbed. He turned and pulled her atop him and held her tight, rubbed down her back and shushed her. She hated how comforting it felt to be held. She felt betrayed even by her own body and mind. “Even your tears thrill me” He mused. She sobbed in his arms. She tried to hide her face, but he’d simply grab her collar and force her chin up. “You will not hide your face from me” he demanded. 

“Aquam fero” A voice came from the front of the tent. A glance confirmed a slave placing a steaming bucket of water inside the tent as well as a pile of folded fabric. Just as soon as she arrived, she left. Without warning Vulpes unhooked the chain from the bed and picked her up bridal style, ignoring her yelp of surprise. He pushed her down onto a bench by the front of his tent. She was shaking. He took a cloth from the pile, dipped it in the bucket and knelt in front of her. She leaned away but he still grabbed her face. He started working the cloth down her face and much too gently under her eyes and down the back of her neck. Quickly the cloth roamed over her torso, down her arms, down and between her legs. 

She felt she had to do something. She should do something. She’s just sitting there shaking and crying while this dog wiped down her body. He wiped at her much too gently, and he was far too focused on his task. Her skin crawled as he seemed to examine and attend to every nook and cranny of her body. She felt like she was somewhere else, like she was just watching all this happen to her.

“Intra” He spoke seemingly to no one. Except, two women entered from outside. They took action seemingly without command, gathering items and placing them near her. She tried to cover herself and he slapped her hands away. He seemed to be enjoying this much too much. He was looking over each patch of her skin with glee. He worked the cloth over her again and again, from head to toe before grabbing her by her hair and pulling her forward. She grabbed at his wrists, and he brought her kneeling over the steaming bucket. He forced her hair in the bucket and seemed to work something oily into her hair. The women helped him towel her off before he set to work rubbing her body down with a floral oil. He squeezed down her muscles as he worked, kissing her body as he traced his path. He hefted her back up to her feet. “Tutulus” he spoke to the two women. 

They pulled her to a different chair, seemingly unbothered by her nakedness and Vulpes’s gaze. She on the other hand had her hair standing on end. They braided her hair back and up into a bun. More flowers were woven into her hair, and a sweet smelling paste was rubbed into her face. Another dress much like the one she was made to wear the other day was placed over her. When her attention turned again to Vulpes, he had also washed himself from the bucket. A red veil was woven into her bun to hang long behind her, and Vulpes tied fox pelts around her waist as the women tied his leather skirt over him. 

“Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, nescio. Sed fieri sentior et excrucior.” He mused, pressing more kisses to her face before grabbing at her chain. She simply glared at him. She felt someone grab at her ankle, and looking down she saw one of the women kneeling at her feet with a pair of sandals. Before she could so much as lift her foot Vulpes had lifted her entirely off the floor to allow the woman to place the sandals on her feet once she stopped flailing them. 

“I can dress myself!” She finally found her words. She knew she was still shaking. 

“Not anymore” He chided. “You are a wife, and you couldn’t have a more high ranking husband unless Ceasar himself married you. You have servants now. Your tasks will be less menial. You will be serving the Legion.” He explained, placing her back on her feet once she had sandals on. 

“I’m not helping the Legion” She spat. “And dressing myself isn’t menial” She protested. He immediately grabbed her collar and pulled her to him. 

“It is your job to be a virtuous wife.” He ran a knuckle down her jaw. “You maintain the health of your family. We will serve as the religious heads of our family, and when the empire is passed to our family the religious heads of the Legion. Your role in our empire’s society is particularly necessary.” She glared at him. “Come, we’re to break our fast with Ceasar” He had clothed himself in a tunic and tied her chain to his belt. One of the women handed him his dog hat to don. Fully dressed, he moved to go. All it took was a second of hesitation from her to follow for him to pick her up over his shoulder and continue on. 

“I can walk!” She protested. 

“Not willingly” He amended. “You will not be given opportunities to disobey.” She hit his back, but he seemed entirely unresponsive to her efforts. It was a short and upsetting walk to Caesar's tent. Just as soon as he placed her feet back on the floor she was pushed down by Vulpes so they’d both be bowing to Ceasar. She tried to scramble back to standing, at which point Vulpes grabbed her by her collar and pulled her to him. 

“Welcome, please sit” Caesar greeted, gesturing at the chair and the rather extensive breakfast layout. A table had been set up in front of his throne, another cushioned chair sat opposite him. She could only wonder at the presence of only one other chair briefly, before Vulpes pulled her with him and dragged her sideways into his lap upon taking his seat. He then wrapped his arms around her waist and propped his head on her shoulder. She felt frozen. His hands had not left her for more than a minute since the moment she woke up, she just wanted to crawl out of her skin. 

“You honor us Ceasar” Vulpes spoke with glee. Vulpes waited for Caesar to begin eating before he addressed the food in front of him. 

“May the gods bless your marriage” Caesar answered with a smug smile of his own. “It brings me joy to see the makings of a holy union. I see in you the future of the legion.” He began tucking into his meal.

“I endeavor to make your vision a reality” He spoke happily. Vulpes began to gather some of the grilled meat and toast onto his plate. She was sort of glad the jerks didn’t lay out a plate for her, she felt queasy just thinking of eating. Then Vulpes lifted a slice of meat to her lips. She flinched back, surprised. 

“I-” The second she opened her mouth he tucked the slice of meat between her lips and held his fingers to her lips. She glared at him, and he simply smiled at her. She began to chew, but he didn’t lower his hand till he watched her swallow. Then, he immediately lifted a slice of bread to her lips. She quickly saw where this was going and opted not to open her mouth.

“I believe it will take her a while to be accustomed to her new role, but I will make sure she learns.” He assured. “Even defiant I believe she will be able to serve the legion and myself well.” He lifted his other hand to grab her jaw. She simply glared. He pressed his fingers into the sockets of her jaw and slid them forward harshly, forcing her mouth open to press the bread into her mouth. 

“I see she’s in good hands” Caesar mused from his place at the table as she chewed. 

“Ceasar, in truth I’ve been hoping for this union for a long time. Since I first met her I’ve been smitten, and every moment observing her just made me more determined to have her. I intend to care for her extensively. We will have a large family I think, a good example of a strong legion family.” Caesar grinned and chuckled. She wanted to puke at how they were talking about her, but Vulpes’s intent to hand feed her stopped any protests. 

“Good, you’d better. She landed in our laps for a reason. Don’t find yourself in a succession crisis like I just had to wrap up. I don’t want to hear about any bastards running around mucking things up. If we want you to keep divine right you need to be chosen by Mars, married to Venus. All your kids need to be able to say they’re demigods.” Vulpes was nodding along the whole time, and she was horrified. She felt as frozen as she did when she was pulled out of bed this morning, but the outrage in her insisted she do something. Her arms were shaky, and she jerkily pushed back against Vulpes and his stupid fucking fancy chair. Vulpes was taken unaware enough for her to fall back against the ground. 

“Excuse me?!” She shouted. “This is all some bid to-” She didn't stay on the ground long. Vulpes grabbed her by her upper arm and pulled her back into his lap. 

“You will sit and you will eat.” Vulpes spoke firmly. He no longer held her sitting sideways along his lap, but firmly back against his chest. She made to lift her hands to eat herself when he grabbed her wrists in his hands, pinning them together in front of her in her lap. “Behave.” 

“You’re cra- Mphh!” Her protests were silenced with more bread. 

“She seems restless Vulpes. Perhaps you should take her hunting today. Venus too, has her bloodlust.” Caesar advised. Vulpes chuckled at that. 

“You honor me with the wisdom of your council Ceasar.” She could hear the cheer in Vulpse’s voice. “I trust it will take great effort to properly care for a goddess.” 

“I’m not-mhmp” More sliced meat was pushed past her lips. 

“But you are.” Caesar chided from his end of the table. “It can take time, to understand the flesh expression of the divine, especially for you, but you will understand. Mars chose to create the legion, and Venus deigned to help solidify our new Rome. As I was born unaware but unparalleled in intellect and the building of empire, having to find my way by guidance of Mars, you were born of the desert, unparalleled in beauty and ferocity among men and women to find your way to the legion, and my successor chosen by Mars. You are born of the divine, a gift your children will receive. When I take Vegas to build my new Rome, and when this earthly form fails me, it is Vulpes and your descendants that will lead the Legion to further glory.” 

She’d stopped chewing. She was trying not to cry. She felt like she could be sick. She knew she was glaring at Ceasar. It seems enough time passed for Vulpes to grow impatient, as he moved his hand to cover her mouth and pinch her nose. Leaning away did nothing, he just pushed her head back into his chest. “Chew and swallow” He commanded. She could feel her chest start to burn, and she was helpless to obey. He quickly removed his hand and she gasped for air. Then he lifted a glass of water to her lips. 

She tried to jerk her head to the side. “I can feed my-” Vulpes placed down the glass and used his free hand to turn her head back to center. 

“You are capable of many things.” Vulpes acknowledged. “But it is not for you to decide what you will be doing.” He released her jaw. 

“And who-” He quickly raised the cup to her lips. 

“Amor Meus, you are in my care now. I must make sure you’re eating and drinking enough.” She reluctantly drank down the water as he tipped the cup back. “Good girl.” She frowned and turned her face away at that. Vulpes sighed, placed the cup down and once again lifted a slice of meat to her lips. “It is necessary, I don’t think you eat enough for your activity level. Half the time you’re malnourished and dehydrated.”

“Is that true?” Questioned Caesar. 

“It is, lord Ceasar.” He began rubbing the slice of meat over her lips almost playfully, and it pissed her off enough for her to open her mouth and chew. “She really only drank out of this canteen of hers, and not often, and she seemed to only eat at night when she made camp. It often wasn’t substantial, usually something she caught and some vegetation from the desert. Occasionally some actual food when she was in the strip or another settlement, which I can only assume is what we have to thank for her continued existence.” 

Caesar whistled at that and she grimanced. “That is impressive, but certainly not ideal for a mother-to-be.” He leaned back in his chair, seeming to appraise her as Vulpes continued to leisurely lift food to her lips. “I will have Siri sent to your tent tonight along with some extra milk and food rations. Her health should be monitored regularly.” 

“Thank you, lord Ceasar.” She feels Vulpse’s mouth press shortly to the back of her head before he leaned his chin atop her head. “I will ensure her health so long as I draw breath.” 

“Good.” Ceasar rose from his chair. Vulpes rose as well, lifting her in his arms, both the men ignoring her yelp. “Guard her health like the health of the Legion.” He wiped at his mouth.”Now I have my own medical examinations to tend to. Please eat your fill. Vale.” 

“Vale” Vulpes echoed, taking his seat once Ceasar turned back into the far room of his tent beyond her view.  

“Can I eat on my own no-” Her question was silenced by more bread. 

“Are you so offended that I want to feed you?” Vulpes seemed to tease. She swallowed quickly and rushed to speak. 

“Yes!” A slice of meat quickly met her lips. 

“Too bad” Vulpes replied. “You will only find sustenance in my hands.” 

“What?! Why?” She tried to turn her face away, and more food was pressed to her lips. 

“Because you are mine.” He answered, pressing his mouth again to her hair. “You will not remain malnourished so under my care. You will eat and drink when I say you will whether you like it or not.” He lifted the cup again to her lips and kept it tilted till she started to cough and tried to turn away again. 

“So what, you’re just gonna not eat?” She spat. “Seems tedious.” She felt his chuckle in his chest before she heard it. 

“How sweet of my new little wife to worry for me” He seemed far too pleased. Her cheeks flushed, embarrassed as he squeezed her to him. He could choke for all she cared. “I will eat when I feel you’ve eaten enough.” He spoke with an air of finality. 

“Is there anything I’ll be allowed to do myself?” She spoke irritatedly. 

“No” He spoke shortly, placing more food to her lips. She chewed fast, alarmed at his short answer to her sarcastic question. 

“What about when I use the restro-mph!” The last of the meat he had set on the plate was pushed past her lips. 

“I will escort and monitor you.” He spoke in a clipped voice. 

“You can’t possibly keep that up, why-” He laughed again and swiftly lifted the cup to her lips. 

“Come, little one. Surely you understand the position you’re in.” He chided. She shook her head no the second the cup left her lips. 

“You are the second living person to be codified in our pantheon after Caesar himself.”

“What?!!��� She shouted. 

“Hush, finish your bread.” He pressed the last slice to her lips. “You were reborn, unkillable. You’ve been seen facing down threats no man, never mind woman could survive. The few times you’re able to leave the sight of the Legion legends of your actions spread across the mojave. You’re far too lovely to be denied by man or woman. You are in Venus’s image. You’re far too lucky to not be favored by the gods. Your story tracks across the desert and ends with you killing the man that failed to kill you. You were meant to end up here.”

“You really believe all that?” She asked skeptically. He picked up the cup again. 

“Finish” He commanded. “I knew you were special from the second I saw you in Nipton. Part of me wishes I took you right there, but it had to happen this way. Now Ceasar will train me as his heir. You are canonized as Venus reborn to earth. Our children will be demigods. Caesar will take Vegas, and with him you and I will build Rome.” He pulled away the cup once she finished it. She felt him lean down, and suddenly his lips were right behind her ear. “Good girl.” 

“Stop that!” She shouted. Then he bit her neck. “Hey!” He proceeded to pile more food on the plate, building himself a sandwich of sorts. 

“If you feel like yelling, I’ll give you plenty of reasons to yell.” He bounced her up in his lap and she yelped.

“Bastard.” She muttered. He seemed to devour his sandwich in record time, seemingly content to let her sit and stew on his lap, hands still trapped. Once finished he slid his arms under her knees and behind her back, and before she could try and squirm out of his grip he stood. “Where are we going?” She questioned. 

“I’m taking you hunting.” He smirked down at her, stealing her lips. She tried to lean away from him, but he just followed her lips. The second her lips were free she turned her head to look ahead. The camp seemed abuzz, and now that she was looking she realized everyone was staring at them, heads bowed. It was humiliating, being carried chained and unarmed by Vulpes of all people through the fort down to the broader camp. The women around her looked tired. The men around her looked hungry. Everyone seemed to pause as they went by, some people even kneeling or bowing, a hush falling over crowds as they passed. She could hear pained screams the farther they went into the camp. 

“I don’t like this.” She mumbled. 

“We can always go back to the tent and spend some more time ensuring my seed takes.” He taunted. 

“No.” She spat. She could feel her stomach sink at the implications. He never intended to stop, did he?

“Here we are” Vulpes spoke. Her body filled with dread. 

“This is no place to hunt.” She grit out. 

“Of course it is, we need to be able to train somehow, and these people must serve their purpose.” Vulpes placed her on her feet, and soon after she felt the weight of his hand on the back of her neck, fingers sliding under the collar on her neck. 

“No.” She was crying again. She could feel her teeth grinding together at the indignity. It was just some people crowded together in a cage, bomb collars on their neck looking terrified. “I-I’m not, this isn’t-”

“Nonsense” He nodded to the guards as they opened the gate and pulled out two young women. “My goddess is anxious, what kind of husband would I be if I didn’t help you slake your bloodlust?” He grabbed her wrists and raised her hands up in front of her face. “Look at you, you’re shaking.” He tutted. He led her forward by her wrists. He let go of her left wrist just long enough to take out his dagger and press it into her hand before he gripped her wrist again. 

“No.” She spoke in a shaky, quiet breath. She looked the two girls in the eye. They were the same age as her, but she could see the toll the world has taken on their bodies. The toll the Legion has taken on their bodies. A guard disengaged their collars. They were looking at the knife in her hands. She’s never raised a hand against someone that wasn’t aiming to hurt her or people looking to mind their business. They were surrounded by Legion soldiers. “What’s even the point of this?” 

“You’re too soft hearted sweet one.” Vulpes sighed. “They have failed the Legion. If you do not kill them now, they will be killed some other day. There is no mercy in sparing them, but you will benefit from killing them. You must not hold these emotions in. Let them serve to relieve your sorrows.” 

She just nodded. She understood. They planned to use her from the start, they would never let her leave. They never planned to let her walk away. Even if she defeated Vulpes they’d find a way to drag her back. They’d just trap her and try to brainwash her to be their little pawn to uphold their bizarre mythology. There was no holding on. Her drawing breath benefited the Legion. She could fight and scream and kill and lash out, she could terrify every one of them, and the more noise she made the more they’d say they’d caught themselves a goddess. She wasn’t a human to them, wasn’t a woman. No matter what she did, there’d be no cross for her. 

She’d become a lie used to manipulate more tribes, an exceptional excuse for all their atrocities. She was a way to solve their succession crisis and someone they can point to every time they’re criticized for how they treat women. She’d be guarded her entire life. She was the ideological answer to all their instability. They would never let her walk away alone. Stuck with Vulpes her entire life, what kind of life is that? She looked down at the dagger. She would have to be fast. She brought her hands together, like she was prepared to stab forward. Vulpes walked with her up close to the women. Then, as fast as she could she flipped the knife backward and brought it down into the right of her gut. 

“No!” She heard him scream before she felt the pain. The tip of the blade only went so far, and Vulpes grabbed the blade and pulled it back. “How could you?” She heard him yell. The world seemed to blur. She hopes she hit the artery, she certainly felt woozy enough for it. She registered she’s on the ground, in a kneeling Vulpes’s lap. She heard a clatter when he threw the dagger away from them. He looked terrified. She just smiled up at him, and he scowled, pressing down on her self-inflicted stab wound. She groaned at the pressure and she heard him cuss. He picked her up in his arms and ran. It felt like she was losing a lot of blood. It was getting harder to stay awake, and she hoped she’d bleed out. “Don’t fall asleep.” Vulpes warned. She grinned and closed her eyes. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

She woke up, aching all over and naked on a wooden table. Looking down, she saw her stomach wrapped in bandages. 

“You’re awake.” And there was Vulpes. Letting her head loll to the left, she saw him sat scowling in a chair beside her. “I need you to understand something.” He stood and braced his arms over either side of her body, leaning over her on the table. “I don’t plan to discipline you for most things, but that, hurting yourself is not acceptable. You’re already never leaving my sight, I know every inch of your body, I’ll always know. And every time you try, this is going to get worse.” 

“What will?” She questioned, wary already, lightheaded as she was. Vulpes just leaned away, turning to grab a blanket. Wordlessly he hefted her into a sitting position. “Vulpes, what will?” She felt dread build in her stomach. He climbed on the table behind her and pulled her body flush to his. He wrapped the blanket around her body, adjusting her so that she was wrapped as he wanted her. 

“Introduces eos” Three Legionaries stepped in, dragging the girls from earlier and another behind them. They were sobbing, no collars on. Vulpes wrapped her tightly in his arms, pulling her back against him. Wordlessly, each legionary stepped forward with their girl, stripped off her rags, and dragged their machetes across their stomachs. She wanted to wretch, as their guts spilled out. She was sobbing, the girls were screaming and crying, blood covered the floors. “When I say you will kill, those I tell you to kill will end up dead one way or another. Your killing will always be more merciful. This is the only time you will be able to wield a weapon. Since you clearly cannot be trusted with this privilege for a while, you’ll be given sacrifices.”

“I don’t want sacrifices.” Her voice wavered and cracked as she spoke. 

“I don’t care. You will receive them. Bring in the next.” She looked back at him in shock. 

“No! Vulpes you can’t! I don’t want this, please!” She tried to turn around but his grip was firm on her waist. “They didn’t do anything! Hurt me or kill me but they didn’t-” He gripped a hand over her jaw, silencing her and controlling where her head turned.

“I don’t care. Learn.” He spoke sternly. She sobbed as they brought in three more girls to add to the group bleeding out on the floor. The legionaries seemed completely calm, almost bored as they shoved the women around and slit open their guts. The floor was a mess of blood, organs, and weakened flailing bodies. Vulpes lowered his hand to her throat, resting there. She heard him inhale deeply behind her.

“I want to leave.” She spoke out quietly. She couldn’t handle the screams and dying whimpers, the begging for mercy and help. 

“They’re not dead yet. Watch.” He commanded. She sobbed along with the dying women. Vulpes just pressed her shaking form tight to him and hummed. It seemed to take forever for the noises to stop, even longer for them to stop moving. “Egredior” He spoke finally, and the legionaries left the tent. She couldn’t stop shaking, staring at the still warm bodies on the floor. Vulpes lifted a hand to wipe at her tears and she flinched. “Do you understand now, pretiosum?” He paused, but she could only sob. 

“I will teach you this lesson as often as I have to. Your life is worth more than their lives, your life is worth more than even a highly ranked Legion soldier. They will live and die for you. You get no say in this. Every drop of your blood will be answered for. I will pile body upon body if I need to. You and your soft little heart can understand this, yes? Try again and it will double.” He toyed with her hair. He shushed her quietly as she managed to slowly even her breaths. Then, he picked her up. She just tensed in his arms. 

“I don’t want any sacrifices. I don’t want blood.” She spoke in a small voice. 

“You are shaken now because your kills are clean and merciful. But I’ve seen you fight, I know that look in your eyes. You crave violence. You live by it. It is by its employ you understand. Some festivals will honor you, and you will receive sacrifices.  By any cause have your blood spilled again and you will receive sacrifices.” He spoke as he picked up a new, white dress in the large sheet fashion they keep dressing her in. She held out her hand for the dress. Instead he lifted the dress over her head, much too focused on pulling the dress over her body and adjusting it into place, despite her annoyed squirming. 

“I'm not a fucking goddess.” She spat as he dressed her. “Or some reincarnation or whatever bullshit you all decide-” He grabbed her hair near the back of her head and forced her head to tilt back. He kissed at her neck and she hit where she could on his side. He seemed to shrug off her hits, grabbing her hands as they struck at him in his free hand. She could feel him suck at her neck, lips leaving her neck with a disgusting wet pop. 

“You don’t understand yet, but you will. It took Caesar years to realize his godhood, I'm sure it could take you much longer, but you were born, and died, and survived, walked the desert and found your way here for a reason.” He looked her dead in the eyes when he spoke. 

“You can’t truly believe that.” She spoke with a glare. This was all clearly a convenient power grab. He just grinned that disgusting grin at her. 

“I believed the moment I saw you. There was just something about you, even covered in the dust of the desert and dressed in men’s clothes. The more I discovered about you the more certain I became. I watched you every night and prayed that when you found your place it would be by my side, and by the will of the gods you are mine. I know now I was the first to find you because I am the one meant to make you realize what you are, to bring you to glory.” He was downright insane. This was a fucking cult. 

“I'm just a person.” She sobbed quietly. 

“I will worship you till you see.” He cupped her face in his hands, wiping at her continually wet cheeks. He leaned down to kiss her. It was invasive and wet and it made her feel even more sick. It felt like his touch was everywhere. He pulled away and shoved her down on the table, pulling her hips to the edge of the table to meet him. She tried to sit up and he leaned to hold her down by the shoulder. 

“I want to leave” She practically pleaded. 

“First, I will have my goddess on her alter.” His face was disgusting, he looked like some lovesick puppy. His smile was downright giddy. He descended upon her form. He pushed away her attempts to hurt him or push him away. He kneeled on the bloody floor and pulled her hips to him in a deathgrip. Her dress was shoved up and with little pretense his tongue descended on her cunt. She shoved and beat at his head and hands and he seemed to respond by sucking at her clit hard. 

“Just stop!” She screamed, head falling back and hands tugging at his hair to try and drag the feeling of his tongue away. It was sudden and overwhelming in a painful way. He didn’t stop. She was shaking throughout her entire body. Her legs flailed and kicked at his back. He sucked at her harder, worked his tongue faster. The pace was unforgiving. She screamed, and she cried, and she bucked on the table, and it continued for what felt like eternity till she came violently, harder than she had in her life. He continued for much too long, groaning into her cunt. She could hardly process what she was seeing when he pulled away from her, pulled down her dress, and forced her legs around his waist. She was woozy when he pulled her up to him, tucking her head into his shoulder. He maneuvered her just now flinching arms around his neck and stood, pulling her tight to him. 

Then suddenly, he was walking and they weren't in the tent anymore. She wasn’t ready to have people look at her. The second they were outside the tent, she could feel the stares on her. She tucked her face in his shoulder, hiding as best she could. She couldn’t control the tears running down her face, or the way her chest shook with her wet heavy breaths. He squeezed her in his arms and she prayed the walk was a quick one. 

Instead he walked into a tent with a large table and several of his frumentari. She leaned away to figure out why he brought her here when he spoke. 

“Drink and rest, I have matters to attend to.” He took a seat at the table, grabbing a glass of water off the table and pressing it to her lips. Once again he refused to let her even lift her own cup, tipping the cup away occasionally to let her breathe and swallow but never removing the cup from her lips till the cup itself was empty. No one said a thing but she could feel the eyes of Vulpes’s men on her as he made her drink. She knew her face was flushed red, humiliated at the strange princess treatment Vulpes seemed to insist on, and she found herself exhausted, annoyed, and confused. 

The moment she was free of the cup she leaned back and the question must have been clear across her face because Vulpes was quick to elaborate. “You go where I go. You can rest in my lap or I can call for a couch to be brought if you cannot sleep sitting.” Damn, he really meant that no out of sight business, jackass. She just sighed, pressed her head into his shoulder and shook her head no. She felt him pet her hair. She didn't want to fall asleep surrounded and in the arms of a Legion spy, but she was tired, and as the meeting started the men around her just kept droning on. Vulpes kept rubbing her back, and she was still lightheaded. 

There was nothing she wanted more than to curl up somewhere private and cry. There was no time to let her mask drop, to let herself be lonely and human as she so loved under the dark starry sky of the Mojave. She couldn't even let herself linger on the events of the day or the one before, to really process what was happening for fear of bursting into tears in front of people who want nothing more than to use her sorrow against her. Every aspect of her situation was exhausting, and despite her best efforts she fell asleep.

Link to part 1:

https://www.tumblr.com/transparentkinks/759933153565638656/a-female-courier-working-with-the-legion-never?source=share

[bloggingboutburgers]

congratulations on getting engaged!! sort of unrelated but i wanted to ask you, what was your experience being in a long-distance qpr and do you have any advice/tips for how to stay connected with your qpp over long distance? i'm in a qpr and my partner is going to move away soon, we haven't really broached the topic yet so i'm hoping to get an opinion from someone who has experienced being in a long distance qpr so i can go into the conversation with some sort of bearings and ideas ^^

Thank you so much!!

Our experience is different because we basically started out long distance, but hopefully this'll help:

Needless to say we text every day, send each other a lot of pictures, we video-call every weekend for hours on end, and we sometimes send each other gift packages for special occasions. We also make regular plans to see each other (though we're oceans apart so that's expensive and sadly it doesn't get too happen too often, but still!) so we have things to look forward to together. There WILL be crying when we part at the airport each time, so we try to have ideas set for our next meeting before the current one finishes, so it's not AS sad! And when we do see each other, traveling this far sorta makes it unavoidable but we take time off, so we have all the time we want with each other while we're together.

So yeah... Hopefully that can be pointers? Either way I wish you guys good luck!

[beecave-blues]

TFW when you’re logging your disorders into a health app, and it reaches over 40 [I am crying]

😀

Is a teen too young to have arthritis, memory loss, dysphoria, and chronic pain?

I don’t think any age is “too young,” for somethin’ that serious, but I do think that if you’re gettin’ those illnesses that early in life you’ve gotta get a handle on them, else they’ll worsen pretty darn quick.

Here’s a link I found on juvenile arthritis on that Google Search Engine I was shown. A few scrolls in shows some treatments to get it under control.

Memory loss is a huge issue in the teenage years, since school is a major part of your life and you have to remember quite a bit. What helped me get through was color coded notebooks, naps, and my mama’s music. If you can get a basic idea to correlate with a song you like, it gets easy to branch off from there. ‘Course, my memory loss was more attributed to puberty than anything, so I ain’t sure if it’ll help with whatever you got personally, but it’s worth a shot!

While I don’t have it myself, I’ve done enough research on dysphoria to know that it absolutely sucks. And you aren’t too young to feel dysphoria, since it only really shows itself when puberty starts, since your body grows differently to how your brain wants it to, or thinks it should. Really no cure, but tryin’ to present yourself the way your brain wants your body to be growin’ does help, even if some ignorant folks say it don’t.

Chronic pain can come with stress; Since your hormones are all over the place tryna find out where they fit in, you’re constantly under some kinda stressor whether you know it or not. That’s why I needed a lot of sleep when I was younger, it’s the only thing that kept me calm enough to not ache. Try exercise when you can, and when you can’t, avoid stressors. Now, that pain can also be your average growin’ pains, which is difficult in itself, and is unfortunately unavoidable. If that’ the cause, nothin’ you can do but wait. It does stop though, eventually!

The reason mental illnesses aren’t always diagnosed as a teen, or teenagers are turned away from diagnosis, is because your mental state is bein’ rushed by all sorts of different hormones all the time, like an onslaught of little people tryin’ to organize themselves by height with blindfolds on and their hands tied behind their backs. By around 25 your brain finishes growin’, and that sorts itself out in some cases. In others, that experience of being a kid with those issues, and them just not getting better on their own, will help to get a better, more clear diagnosis as an adult, which will provide more information necessary for a more accurate treatment.

Sorry this was so long!

[jennifersminds]

bestie what Lana Del Rey songs fit tvd characters or just tvd to you?

my bestie, my love, thank you so much for this ask !!!

as someone who's endlessly obnoxious about both tvd and lana del rey this is quite literally a dream come true so-,

SONGS FITTING TVD AS WHOLE

Video Games

"It's you, it's you, it's all for you. Everything I do, I tell you all the time"

tvd at it's core is about people doing unjustifiable things for 'love'. Whether i choose to read some relationships as more of a predatory obsession, the crux of this show is damaged grieving people sacrificing and further damaging themselves and others in the pursuit of it, see the mikaelsons with eachother and the salvatore's with Elena and Elena with basically everyone. And I've always read Video Games as both one of the most beautiful love songs of all time but also as an acknowledgment of codependence and lost potential. The song romanticises monotony and mundane life, which is fair. but there's a touch of melancholy beneath the surface of picture perfect normalcy. much like tvd itself.

Love

Look at you kids with your vintage music Comin' through satellites while cruisin' You're part of the past, but now you're the future Signals crossing can get confusing

...

Look at you kids, you know you're the coolest The world is yours and you can't refuse it Seen so much, you could get the blues But that don't mean that you should abuse it

following that theme,

"part of the past but now you're the future," Could refer to any of the vampire's in the show but I personally love it when thinking of Elena and the doppelganger's before her. In the background of all of history but with an endless future before her. "You could get the blues, But that don't mean that you should abuse it," EVERY FKN KID ON THAT SHOW. And yes I mean kid, the MF gang were children. And they did, in fact, get the blues and abuse it.

ELENA

Norman Fucking Rockwell

"you're just a man, it's just what you do, you're head in your hands as you colour me blue."

Anyone who's read my endless rambling before knows where I'm going with this but, jfc the salvatore's !!! Both Stefan and Damon (and canon as a whole but wtv) view their mistreatment of Elena as something unavoidable. Following the theme of horrific acts in the name of love from earlier, Stefan didn't have a choice in entering Elena's life. To him, it was his right, his purpose. (he had to know her).

Despite Elena being a grieving child who did not need any more bullshit in her life. He had too. And when that later caused even further turmoil, both from his own actions and indirect, unintended consequences. He metaphorically put his head in his hands, it wasn't just her suffering but him. In fact, if he really thought about it, later in canon, that is. It was almost equally her fault what happened. From his POV atleast.

Damon basically follows all the same beats but is more open about it, bemoaning his own lost chances with Elena as something completely disconnected to his very purposeful and avoidable choices to cause her pain. He's impulsive, it's not his fault.

"Goddamn, man child You act like a kid even though you stand six foot two"

Damon could only dream of being 6'2 but you get it.

Pretty When You Cry

"I'll wait for you, babe, you don't come through, babe You never do, babe, that's just what you do"

For one, she is very pretty when she cries, and two, see above.

ELIJAH (essentially every 'she fucked that old man' song in ldr's discography)

Million Dollar Man

"Someone as dangerous, tainted and flawed as you,"

"You're screwed up and brilliant Look like a million dollar man So why is my heart broke?"

He is screwed up and brilliant and he does break my heart.

BONNIE

Season of the Witch

Obviously, like... (also Davina, I never talk about her but that's my girl)

Pretty When You Cry

"I'll wait for you, babe, you don't come through, babe You never do, babe, that's just what you do"

Similarly too Elena, she's also pretty but the thesis of Bonnie's character is unfortunately being let down by the people around her. If tvd hadn't had jplec as a showrunner we probably would've gotten some proper character arc about that before season eight but...

ELEJAH

Cinnamon Girl

"There's things I wanna say to you But I'll just let you live Like if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did"

kill me. literally fucking kill me like it's them fr.

BEKLENA

Doin' Time (yes it's a cover but Lana owns it tbf)

"Me and my girl, we got this relationship I love her so bad, but she treats me like shit"

The toxic girlfriends I deserved but wtv.

"I'd like to hold her head underwater"

Because she drowned her.

REBEKAH

Old Money

"But if you send for me, you know I'll come And if you call for me, you know I'll run I'll run to you, I'll run to you I'll run, run, run I'll come to you, I'll come to you"

Stuck in an endless cycle of finding freedom and falling back to help Klaus when he needs it.

"The power of youth is on my mind Sunsets, small town, I'm out of time Will you still love me when I shine From words but not from beauty My father's love was always strong My mother's glamour lives on and on Yet still inside, I felt alone For reasons unknown to me"

Never ending quest for humanity and mortality, her eventual fate of taking the cure. The loneliness of her thousand years etc

Honorable mentions for, Young and Beautiful (pretty much everyone's mortal x immortal ships anthem but specifically the Klarolines fuck with it so hard which I repect). Say Yes to Heaven, also works for literally every ship but it's always very Kolvina to me.

[butterflydm]

Started a new playthrough.

spoilers for the whole game below

Immediately had to resist the urge to cry when Varric's narration started.

Oh, man. This is gonna be even more emotional the second time around, isn't it?

I am ready for the pain.

(I am not)

Screaming, crying, throwing up. (not literally but wow the feelings I felt)

You can literally see the exact moment when Solas realizes that Rook doesn't know Varric is dead and decides that he's gonna use that as a way to influence her.

My whole second playthrough is gonna be filled with moments like this; I can tell.

Solas telling you how much he hates blood magic (knowing that you have no way of knowing that he is lying his ass off, because in DAI he tells Inky that he sees blood magic as just another form of magic!) to fool you into believing that he's not using blood magic on you for basically the whole game. I noticed the discrepancy from DAI but dismissed as 'huh, I guess something changed there?' but it was A Clue!

This time around, I'm having Rook be wary around Solas but still let her guard down around 'Varric', because I like causing myself pain, I guess.

Since I have unblocked my DA-related filters, I did read a spoiler that saving Minrathous means you can't romance Lucanis, which tbh is a good thing because it means I'll be forced to romance someone else instead of just romancing the same character again. If Lucanis is an option, I would probably pick him again, so it's good that the game takes him off the table for me in this run-through.

(ironically, saving Treviso wasn't even mostly about Lucanis in my first run! It was because that city seemed more vulnerable than Minrathous, which had mages and a palace with a giant cannon on it)

Anyway I'm kinda getting the feeling that I have not yet processed Varric's death in my mad dash to the ending last weekend and now I will be painfully and slowly doing it over the course of my second playthrough.

I mentioned in my last post that I genuinely love that you can't complete this game without losing someone. And I do love it, even though it hurts.

It fits the themes of the game so well - you WILL have regrets. They are unavoidable. But you can't let them trap you. It's a prison that only you have to key to, and you have to unlock that final door yourself, by both accepting your regrets and knowing that other people made their own choices. You are not responsible for other people's choices. It's their war too and they understood the risks, and made their choice.

(They think she knows. They think she said this knowing that Varric was dead)