#I am hoping in 2 more years things are good enough I'm not as suicidal in the least though

[suncaptor]

when I was 20 I kind of realised that my 20s would suck but I might have better luck if I could survive until I was 30 just because of the level of trauma I was trying to cope with & the amount of insecurity and lack of support I was struggling through. however the thing with your 20s is that the colours of the numbers are way more likely great. like 27? 29? no age in your entire 30s are going to be as beautiful in colour at that. in fact none in your 40s either so on. 2 just adds something when it's first. luckily I still do have the beautiful 27 to hopefully live through.

[artist-issues]

You're my new favorite blog! You have no idea how I wish I could peck inside your brain like a chicken. 😭😂😂 I am a Catholic and a recovering agnostic. I struggle with letting go of my old way of life and philosophy constantly, I have been struggling with it since the day I decided to revert - that was back in 2017. (I think you would like to know my journey back to the Faith started after watching HBO's The Young Pope! 👌🏼) At this point I don't know if I'll ever be the person the Lord wants me to be, oh well, I'll die trying and I know that will mean something.

I just know I can't go back to being a non-believer, because as Carl Young said, now I don't just believe, I know. The irony is my struggle to believe in something I know to be objectively the Truth.

I have a question for you though, actually I hope for some advice from you. How do I reconcile with the reality that I haven't become who I dreamed to become (like career wise), but now that a new career has been shoved upon me (a career my parents wanted for me - and they valued safety and stability over "following my dreams" I suppose)? ...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it is an extremely noble profession and it pays quite well.

The thing is, as much as I try to accept my new career, I keep telling myself and to others that I'm doing this for my parents and not because I want to be here. I feel terrible about it. But, again, it's not like I am unfulfilled (I am unhappy though, but that comes with the work culture/environment, I feel like I am surrounded by 40+ year old teenagers); as a matter of fact, I do think I know - objectively - in my heart that this is exactly where the Lord wants me to be? But I keep fighting against it, keep struggling against this sense of vocational calling that I'm feeling towards my new job, instead I desperately wanna give into my want to go "live the life I want." Like throw this all away, get new training and start all over with the career I wanted all those years ago.

I want to be better, to be sacrificial like Christ on the Cross. I've always known I had a little depression (comes with my disability from a young age and this whole dream thing); I have been suicidal over this, I actually used to joke with myself that I'd kill myself if I don't achieve my professional goals by the time I turned 25. I will turn 30 this September and even though I haven't been literally dead, I feel like I've been in a vegetative state - mentally - ever since the day I turned 25. I hope that makes sense.

I started seeing a therapist 2 weeks ago since my mental health started affecting my new job - she did say I have depression and is trying to help me but I just don't know if I want to be helped at all, because I am unable to do the exercises she tells me (like create a routine, exercise well, write down good thoughts, etc.) I feel like I'm failing myself, my parents and, most importantly, my Heavenly Father.

I apologise if this is nonsensical, I apologise for dumping all of this on you - random stranger on the internet - but idk I felt like maybe you'd have something wise to tell me to knock some sense into me (without a bump to prove it hehe).

Thank you and God bless! 🥰

You’re very kind, and I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to share all this with me! I really never have anything good of my own to say, or any wisdom to offer, except what I “steal” from God…and I guess what I mean is, if I ever say anything helpful or good or true, I’m just the messenger. I didn’t come up with it. On my own I have zero wisdom or good things to offer.

Anyway, I was surprised reading this because I have gone through (been going through) a similar sort of mindset. I went to school for the career I dreamed about (still dream about) and I worked hard and I wanted it more than anybody around me (very Mike Wasowski in MU of me) and it hasn’t happened the way I planned, or in my timetable.

I mean, in all humility: I work with a studio making a tv show, but it hasn’t got off the ground yet, and I work for a company that writes movie reviews, but neither of those things pay my bills. I have a third job, working with therapists, that’s nothing like what I always wanted to do. That’s my “career,” but it’s not the career I’m passionate about and working toward. And I wonder if I’ll ever do anything “major” in the line of work I love and went to school for. And when I do, I have gotten into some really dark mental places.

Forgive me for not using the words “depression” or “suicidal.” I hate using those words because they’re overused and romanticized and flooding the culture. But more importantly I hate using them because the only thing I identify with is Christ, not any mental struggle I try to slither back into, like a snake trying to put back on old skin. I’m not my overthinking—I’m not my depression—I’m not my suicidal thoughts or emotions—I am one with Christ. Those are things inside me that are defeated and dead—the teeth have been knocked out of them. They just gum me from time to time. So I want you to know I empathize with you, but that’s my point and that’s how I want to answer you:

The only thing about you that really matters is Christ.

Who He says you are, what He has done and how He lived, which is applied to you because He said it is, by grace alone, through faith alone. No matter how you feel.

And I say that to you, as the answer, because I think you and I focus too much on what could be and what “should be” as if God has a set path for us, and if we don’t figure out what it is and walk it, we’ll have a less-fulfilling life. “If I stay at my therapy job and just work with teenagers and write on my blog for the rest of my life, I’ll be fine, but I won’t be as good as I could be.” Or for you. “If I stay in this career I’m in, the one my parents backed me into, I’ll make it, I’ll be fine, but I’ll never be as happy as I want to be.” We’re both thinking, every once in a while, “This is career is what God wants for me, and all my misery is coming from not submitting to it, and if I could just wrestle my contentment into place and give up the thing I want, and submit to what God wants, I’d be fulfilled.”

But how do we know any of those thoughts are true? How do we know God wants us in these boring old careers we wouldn’t have chosen—didn’t choose? Or, how do we know these boring old careers are what we’re stuck in because we didn’t take the plunge and work harder for our “dreams,” which were what He really wanted us to do? How do we know either of those things?

We don’t. We don’t get to know. That’s the point.

Because that’s not how God works. Not from what I can tell in the Bible.

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”. Colossians 3:17.

Whatever you do. Not “the one specific thing you figure out He wants you to do.”

My mom described it to me once when I was in a really dark place trying to figure out what He wanted me to do, paralyzed with indecision, afraid He wanted me to do something I just didn’t want to do, like this: “God doesn’t hold out one flower and say, ‘this is the one I want you to have, so you can either take it or take something worse.’ God makes a field of flowers, and He says, ‘Which one do you want? Pick one, and do it with excellence for Me.’ Then just trust Him to make it good.”

It sounds like you’re in a career, but you are wrestling with whether or not to pick it, now that you have some autonomy as an adult, or to pick starting over. Well. Pick one. Just pick one. And trust God to take care of you. Trusting God looks like thinking it through with excellence, then making the decision—and making the decision means letting go of worrying about the thing you didn’t pick. “Take every thought captive in obedience to Christ.” Once you make a choice, make it all the way, and don’t let your mind wander anymore to “what if this blows up in my face? What if I should’ve stayed back there at the crossroads, or gone down the other path?” It’s going to be hard and God is going to take care of you, no matter what you pick. So don’t let your mind go to those places where you worry; acknowledge the worry, and every time, ask God to help you remember that He’s got you.

Because here’s the point, here’s the thing: He does have you. Because ultimately, your career really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Neither does your dream. Not ultimately. And now I’ll say “our” because I need to hear it too. Our dreams and careers are not the point of us, and our dreams and careers are not what God means when He says “I’ll take care of you.”

What He means is, “I’ve already taken care of you.” Because the most important thing isn’t our job or our dream. The most important thing is, we’ve been rescued out of eternally being trapped in our broken desires, and now we get to live for Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That’s the major. And that truth is where our fulfillment is supposed to come from, what our lives are meant for, our purpose. As long as we pick one, and do it with excellence to make the name of Jesus famous, with that goal in mind, we’ll be emotionally fulfilled. We’ll be satisfied. Because that’s the goal. Not making movies, or whatever it is you want to do. Not having secure means of living. Just…living our lives to make who Jesus is famous. We can do that wherever.

So then the choice? It becomes a minor, not a major, and the pressure of “will I be happy?” is off, because happiness isn’t found in that stuff. And whenever I forget, and start looking for happiness in my dreams, goals, career, that’s when it all starts to feel dark and stressful and hard and crushing. Because it was never meant to give me happiness or fulfillment—that’s a need only Christ can fulfill.

Don’t misunderstand me. He cares what you do. He cared about every decision you make, and He does have a plan. But that’s going to happen anyway. So just pray, consider which option is a) wise to go for and takes care of the responsibilities God has entrusted you with, b) which option you genuinely want, when your wants are not influenced by fears, and then c) step out and do it in faith. And do it with the mindset of, “I’m doing this, and I’m not thinking about the alternative if I can help it, and I’m also not putting all my happiness-eggs in this basket, because even if it crashes and burns, hey, I’m still one with Christ and I can still make Him famous no matter what road my career goes down.”

I hope this helps. It’s a subject I’m hamster-wheeling around in my mind right now a lot—but when I just fix my eyes on Christ and think about how the most important things, the things that give real joy and happiness, are already and forever taken care of and I can’t mess them up—then can get off the hamster wheel and enjoy the life He’s given me, right now, today, without worrying about the future.

[redfoxwritesstuff]

Another Day in Paradise- Chapter 1

Pairing: Eventually Alastor x OFC, later- Alastor x ofc x Lucifer Rated: E for eventual smut Content warnings: It's Hazbin Hotel- this feels redundant. Sex, eventual smut, referenced implied suicide to be discussed in more detail later, drugs, drinking, poor coping, toxic behavior, controlling behavior, cannibalism, idk, it's fucking Hazbin Hotel, if it's worth a content warning it's probably going to come up at some point?

AN: Coping with mental heal spirals with new fandom crack? Fuck yes we are. Did I think I was over simping for cartoons at 33? Also fuck yes, but here we are. Idk how long this will be but hey, it'll get finished eventually if there's interest in it. I'm playing some with the timeline, starting off prior to season 1 and we're running through it.

Chapter 2

Summery: Amber hated her life but she smiled and took what it gave her. She had tried to be a good Christian wife. She tried to give the to God everything he was due. She tried to be devoted enough. She tried to survive the cult she was raised in. She tried until the day she couldn't try anymore and then, she had hoped to never have to try again.

Instead of an eternal sleep as her punishment for not trying hard enough, she woke in the very place she had been taught was a lie fed by false Christians- Hell. With her body changed, her resilience gone and no way to get her feet under her in her new afterlife, she pulled herself up the hill to the newly renamed Hazbin Hotel, tail between her legs and without anything to offer in exchange for mercy and charity.

Could the safety of the hotel provide her what she needs to finally blossom? And what, if anything, could she blossom into? And why is Alastor interested? And what role could she fill for the King of Hell himself?

~~~~~~~~~~<3~~~~~~~~~~<3

Amber opened her eyes, which was something she shouldn’t be able to do. It was supposed to be over. Everything was supposed to be over. It was supposed to have ended. So why was she still alive? 

Sounds flooded her ears as she regained her faculties. That was another thing she was never supposed to do again. Yelling, screaming, explosions, engines and the simple sounds of city life which made no sense. She didn’t live in a city, she lived in bum fuck rural ass no where and more pressingly, she was dead. Or she should have been. 

That was something she had personal seen to, for fucks sake. 

“Good, you’re awake.” A voice that was soft as velvet spoke from a distance. The voice sounded like bells, musicale. 

“Where am I?” She pushed herself up against the wall. 

The room she was in looked to be abandoned, a thick layer of dust covered the ground and trash had gathered in the corners. There was an open exterior door, giving way to what looked like a busy street and the source of the trash. Next to her was a golden office door that looked like it hadn’t been opened in years. Another wall housed a closing elevator door. 

It was from the elevator that the voice seemed to come. 

“For your sins, you’ve been sentenced to an afterlife in hell. Sorry, that sucks.” 

“What?” 

~~~~~<3

That was how her first day in hell went. She had woken up, dumped on a dirty old office floor with a tank top and cargo pants that didn’t belong to her. She didn’t even have shoes on her feet. 

It took less than a month for her to end up exhausted in front of the hotel that promised to rehabilitate sinners. Amber didn’t know if she wanted to ascend to heaven but she did know she wasn’t going to survive on the streets of Pentagram City for much longer. 

She was weak. she was tired. Her body was starved. In her short time in hell she had learned that she like many of her fellow residents, didn’t have fuck all for powers and no way to defend herself. Unlike many of the others however, she struggled to find the fight to gain a foothold. 

After spending a lifetime being told to be smaller, meeker, and weaker, she simply had no bite to her. No one wanted to hire a girl who was too timid to keep their shop from being robbed. No one would rent a flat to a girl who couldn’t manage the income to afford food, let alone the rent. 

Sleeping on the streets, on benches and in whatever alley she could find provided little rest. More often than not she’d wake with a start, hands on her. When she was lucky, they’d just take what little things she had managed to acquire. Other things it was her body itself they wanted. 

Those that bothered her were so much like her though, weak. Powerless. Timid. Easy to frighten. She easy target for them when she was asleep but as soon as she woke, like cockroaches they would scatter. It was better to not sleep.

Refocusing on the present, she took a deep breath and tried to gather the courage she needed. Her heart was in her throat as she stood at the door. 

In life, you didn’t knock on hotel doors and wait to be let in. It was weird. This was weird. She had almost convinced herself to walk back down the hill when the door opened. 

“Hello~” The tall woman swept the door open with such cheer and energy, attention focusing on Amber in a instant. “Are you here for a chance at redemption?” 

“I don’t know.” Amber answered reflexively, honestly. She had heard tell of how kind the Princess of Hell was but being faced with the first ounce of kindness in her afterlife left her speechless and feeling the urge to run just as much as she would have if faced with aggression. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.”

The Princess watched her as she turns to leave and though Amber couldn’t explain it, it was like a switch flipped in the tall woman. The kindness and warmth remained but it subdued as she took in Amber’s appearance. 

The Princess’s eyes took stock of the girl in front of her. She was wearing much the same clothes she would have arrived in hell in, if not the very same- it was near standard issue. The girl outside the hotel looked simply rough, hair dirty and tangled. 

“Are you alright?” Amber flinched as the Princess reached out, snagging her fingers. Amber jerked away from the contact on reflex, sure she was going to be hurt. 

“I don’t- I’m not- redemption isn’t for me.” She settled as she backed away a few more steps.”

“You’re new, aren’t you?” Stepping outside of the hotel, the Princess allowed the door to close behind her before she continued. Amber didn’t know it at the time but she was seeing something few had gotten the chance to see- Princess Charlotte caring for one of her people, not Charlie the over energetic dreamer. 

“I’m Charlie. It looks like you’ve had a rough start to your life here. I’m sorry for that. Mom used to have staff that greeted new sinners, helped them find their feet but Dad- He’s fallen away from that. It makes for a rough landing, I bet. Why don’t you come in?” 

~~~~~<3

The princess of hell was in possession of a bleeding heart that made her eager to collect the stray fox regardless of her weak protests at the door.

The reality was, Amber didn’t have the strength to offer much protest at all, though she did try. Trusting in theory was a lot less scary than trusting in reality, she discovered as the Princess dragged her inside the hotel. There were eyes on her as she walked, head down and shoulders slumped but Amber didn’t dare face them. Bitter tears stung at her eyes.

Charlie led her through the halls and to a room to call her own. It was a modest room, though mainly at Amber’s insistence. She had no money to pay for her stay, no hope for redemption and nothing to offer. She wouldn’t take a nice room that they could give to someone better deserving.

“Stay as long as you want. All I ask in return is that you help or participate, even if you don’t think anything will come of it.” Charlie said, as she stood just inside the room. 

“Why?” Amber hated that her eyes stung with emotion she didn’t want to name. “Why are you letting me stay?”

“Because you came for help and this place; it’s about helping people. Clean up, take some time for yourself and when you’re ready, come down. We have dinner at six, if you want you’re welcome to join. You’re safe here.” 

~~~~~<3

Amber didn’t have anything to store in her room. It wasn’t like she could unpack to kill time. She’d have to make do with what she had been ever so generously provided, and she would, without complaint. 

The bed called to her. She was so tired. The call of the shower, of being clean was stronger though. She wouldn’t dirty the bed with the mess that was her clothes, hair and body. 

Dragging herself to the bathroom, she stripped and started washing out her clothes in the bathtub. Dirt, blood and god knows what else dislodged from the fabric while she did the best she could to clean it. It was disgusting.

It was humiliating but she reminded herself that this wasn’t the first time she had washed her laundry in a bathtub. It wasn’t as uncommon as it should have been in her living life. It wasn’t like she had another option, anyway. She didn’t have any other clothes.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a knock at her room door. “Hold on!” Amber called, searching for something to cover herself with. 

“It’s me again.” Charlie’s voice came through the door, “Can I come in?” 

Amber wrapped a towel around her and left the soaked clothes in the bottom of the tub where they made a dirty puddle of water as she made her way to the door. Opening it, she peeked out at the tall woman. 

“I brought you a change of clothes.” She said, passing the bundle to Amber. “They’re some of my girlfriend’s old stuff, she doesn’t really wear them anymore and she’s shorter than me so they’ll fit you better than anything I have. I hope that’s okay?” 

“Why?” Amber could feel the way her ears sagged, nearly flat against the crown of her head. 

“It’s okay.” Charlie smiled down at the little fox demon, so beaten down by the world she was sentenced into. How could someone so meek and timid manage enough sin to end up down here? “I want to help you.”

Amber nodded, shoulders sagging as she tried to will the burning from her eyes. 

“What’s your name?” Charlie asked as she rested her hand on a bare shoulder, softly rubbing while she watched the girl try to hold herself together. 

“Amber.” Her voice was hardly more than a whimper.

“Do you want a hug, Amber?” 

Amber nodded weakly and stepped into the Princess of Hell’s embrace. Charlie’s arms wrapped around her and held her tight. Amber nuzzled her head under Charlie’s chin as the tall woman stroked her hand down the waves of red hair. 

At first, Amber didn’t realize she was crying. She hadn’t had a chance to grieve until now, the life she had lived and all that she had lost. When death encroached on her, she had thought it was over and she could rest. 

Sobs ripped through her chest as she clung to Charlie’s jacket, trusting the towel to stay in place where it was tucked into itself. Amber grieved for the life she had lived and the sins she had committed. She cried for the bodies she saw ripped apart in the streets over the last few weeks. Her shoulders shook with the power of her grief until the tears finally tapered off, soothed away by the soft weight of the Princess’ hand running down the length of her hair. 

“Go get yourself a hot shower, okay? Throw out those ‘welcome to hell’ issued spawn clothes. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but you can start your life over. You can have happy days in hell.” Charlie spoke softly, glancing down the hall and locking eyes with her worried girlfriend before returning her attention to the small girl in her arms. Amber hadn’t realized she never let the woman in, instead stepping out in just a towel. 

“Okay.” Amber sniffled before forcing a smile that felt as weak as it was forced. “I’m sorry for crying on you. So much for everyone being tough in hell.” 

“It’s okay. It’s hell, not everyone’s big bad and tough but everyone is broken.” Charlie smiled down at her and couldn’t resist resting her hand on Amber’s head, fingers stretching between the soft ears. 

~~~~~<3

Soaked clothes were left to drain in the sink while Amber sat in the tub under the burning spray of hot water. Pain, lovely sweet pain she could control filled her senses as she continued to grieve. She had thought she had run out of tears in the Princess’ arms but she had found a new well to tap when the hot water hit her skin. 

Eventually, the tears stopped and she pulled herself off the floor. Mechanically she used the complementary soaps to wash her body. Washing her hair was a struggle, she accidentally sent water and suds into her ears more than once. It wasn’t a great experience but it did manage to shake her out of her sadness and replace it with indignant annoyance. 

“How the fuck do I do this?!” Amber grumbled to herself, pinching an ear between her fingers and pulling it painfully down, trying to block the water from entering the stupid tall ear while trying to rinse suds from the fur and hair around it. 

It took a her a moment to decide what was the proper thing to wash a tail with, a debate that felt surreal. Did you wash a fur covered body part with shampoo or a body wash bar? Dogs were washed with shampoos, she decided, so that was what she would use but God above, she’s never felt so uncertain on how to clean her body in her life. 

It felt weird to her still, to touch her tail. The changes her body had undergone upon her death were strange but easy enough to forget about as long as she didn’t touch them or look at them too long. She could pretend her nails were just freshly manicured for Halloween into claws. While running, hiding and scavenging, it was easy to not see herself and forget about the new form of her body. 

This was the first time she had a chance to come to terms with the changes. It was also the first the she had no choice but to acknowledge them. Still, it was weird. 

In a way, she was thankful all in all. She’d seen imps that look more like monsters and people that looked like massive bugs. She’d seen ogres and people that looked more beast than man. There were people with more than two arms or legs, only one eye or far more than two eyes. Things walked the streets covered in scales and fur and yet she looked oh so similar to what she had in life. 

Why was that? Why did she seem to look so human? Amber wasn’t sure there was a rhyme or reason to anything in hell. 

She squeezed the water out of her tail after wringing out her hair. This was the most she had handled her tail since realizing it existed. Thick dark red fur ran down the length until it gave way to white at the tip. The fucking thing could hold a lot of water in all that fur, that was for sure. When it was wet, it was heavy and uncomfortable.

Wrapping herself in a towel and stepping out of the tub, she prepared to properly face her reflection for the first time. Glimpses in mirrors, glass and puddles had been the most she had braved looking until now. 

There wasn’t a reason to put herself through that stress while trying to survive in a world of monsters. She’d seen people stabbed to death and some man with a dog’s head step over the still warm body as if it was nothing. 

Now she was safe. Or at least, Charlie said she was and it seemed like she could be trusted. What a world Amber had woken up in, where she drags herself to the devil’s daughter’s hotel for charity. And gets it! 

A giggle at the thought threatened to spill from her throat. It was misplaced, a reaction to stress and anxiety. Wiping off the steam from the mirror as the giggle died down, she took a deep breath and faced herself. 

In life, her skin had been olive and kissed by the sun. Now she looked washed out, pale as a corpse. That was a common skin tone, she had noticed in the last few weeks. Everyone looked pale as the dead if their skin wasn’t covered in fur, even those with darker skin tones were washed out and ashen.

Curly brown hair had been replaced by bright red waves. The eyes that looked back at her should have been rich chocolate brown and instead they were inhumanly green. That wasn’t the only inhuman feature about her. Her face was more angular and her teeth sharp points in her mouth. 

On top of her head sat tall red ears, tipped with black. She watched as they twitched, seeming to communicate her curiosity. It reminded her of how the husky she had as a child would express himself with his ears, always flicking and flattening to tell his mood. It wasn’t something she was very good at controlling but she found she could intentionally move them. 

It was weird. Lifting the hair at the side of her head, she looked at where her ears should have been. It wasn’t just that the ears were missing, the hairline was shifted, going to her neck in a smooth curve rather than dipping back around where the ear would have been. 

Weird. This was so fucking weird. 

She was just thankful looking at herself in the mirror didn’t add much to her trauma or make herself vomit. It was more of a curiosity than anything. The woman looking back at her was so much like herself and yet in every way, wrong. 

She had no bra but thankfully her new body didn’t come equipped with a particularly sizable bust. She would have liked the support and security of a bra for the normalcy the feeling would have provided but beggars and all that shit. The shirt was long and thin, a pretty basic tee shirt that was almost a dress, reaching to her upper thighs.

That was good because Amber didn’t know if these clothes were to keep or to be returned. She tried stuffing her tail in the pants but decided quickly that it didn’t work. There wasn’t a way to fold it up so the pants could rest where they should have. 

It was painful to try. 

The pants were very much like leggings and she rolled the top down so it rest low on her hips. 

“Welcome back to the 2000s,” Amber mumbled to herself as she looked at how dangerously low the pants sat. This allowed the pants to sit so that her tail could hang out overtop. 

It wasn’t comfortable but if she stuck her tail out a good bit but it worked. 

[spot-the-antisemitism]

anon again (IT WAS ME POP)

https://www.tumblr.com/spot-the-antisemitism/756918984897708032/urhgghgh-i-know-a-user-whos-getting-pretty?source=share

I think I;m just going to tell you guys who the person is, they honestly are pretty fucked up.

(I tried to tell them on anon ages ago, but I wasn't as well versed as I am now. they are PROBABLY going to find this and get mad at me, so be it I've been through worse. being mentally ill is not a fucking excuse for anything, but an explanation on why you should do better in the future. I've had the same thoughts and was told similar shit I'm fucked in the head too, and you don't see me being actively horrible or death threaten people. there are lines and you crossed them I waited to see if it got better and it didn't, so yeah I'm snitching.)

but it’s just not a freaking excuse, this shit is never an excuse and they should get flack.

I'm probably going to do this in multiple parts fml

yeah I sent the anon, it basically went like

"hey zionism isn't bad, here's some Palestinian blogs I suggest-

(yk some of the popular ones before I knew they were dicks to jewish people and "zionists" forgive me I went through like 7 character arcs this year)

-I don't think Aaron self immolating was good and I think it encourages people to do similar things and as a suicidal person I think thats pretty bad, I think he should have had help. also that he was doing it for pretty antisemitic reasons? and he followed alot of conspiracy theories? and he should have gotten help and not self emulated."

again they went through some horrible abuse at fundie churches, KEEP IT IN MIND.

but yeah I think that anon is Bleh.

that's why the anon I sent was deleted, they answered actually pretty nicely the first time then came back and reblogged it and was like "HOPE YOU FUCK OFF AND DIE GENOCIDE SUPPORTER" yada yada.

I have thick skin, but yeah it wasn't okay.

<3 happiest "genocide apologist" around <3

(yeah guys forgive me I still believed most of the popular Palestine bloggers were normal about people, they weren't :P)

again, I'm suicidal.

I've almost fallen for TOO MANY acceleratist death cult shit, just in general.

I am motherfucking disabled both physically and developmentally, as well as mentally ill.

(I will bitch and moan about it til the day I fucking die)

I have as much of a right as them to talk about it "oh your being ableist" for fucks sake your telling me the guy who has consoled my friends, mentally ill kids, and more that I'M? not a mental health ally and that I'm a saneist fuck?

thanks but no thanks, I don't think anyone should kill themselves needlessly.

there's like 2 more posts these ones

https://www.tumblr.com/impunkster-syndrome/739038334941265920/self-admitted-zionists-everyone-eat-shit-and-fuck?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/impunkster-syndrome/744575996443885568/thank-you-for-exposing-that-one-blog-as-zionists?source=share

I don't have enough space to include screenshots and I will get blocked after I post this ask probably.

anyway, I can't stop them from doing this and they have already harassed some Israelis

so BLOCKLIST THEY GO

I want to help them change but they aren't that type of person.

anyway, love you all sorry for the horrors.

-pop

Should have ditched them earlier honestly

they used to a literal nazi?

like Pop my friend that's a red flag no.

I don't trust former nazis not to revert to their ways these days

love

Cecil

[that-starry-freak]

Welp the one of these last night (that I wrote like half asleep) was decently received so im taking this as a sign to rant more about how I dont trust Old Moon-

Or at least this time its how Solar had every right to immediately be suspicious of Old Moon and his intentions.

I mean, look at it this way? You have a best friend for like a year, who took you in from his abusive doppelganger, and cared for you and loved you. Who trusted you so much, and screamed and cried when you died. Who was known to have an infeority complex with his "old self", feeling like he isn't good enough

And then when you come back from the dead and he's gone? He's "evil"? All of a sudden? And he's replaced by that old self, who you've been told abused Sun just like your Moon abused you? Yelling and hitting and calling you stupid?

And he got a new house and just completely erased your old best friend after he left? There's no trace of him, not the house that he bot, or any of his stuff probably. But you find out that he left because he went crazy because you died? But you know he would never hurt the family, he wanted to protect it, and of course you don't trust this Old Moon because all you've known about him is that he was the abusive one, the one that your best friend had to be better than.

Thats Solar's situation. He has every single right to be suspicious of old moon, and tbh i hope his ass yells at him. Old Moon tried to deny the idea of a virus in Nexus's systems, even telling Solar that Nexus wasn't crazy by the end. What do I think of that? Bullshit. I dont trust Old Moon one bit. Because he benefits from Nexus being gone. If he's not there, there's no other Moon to share Sun with. If he's not there, you can get close with his ex best friend. If he's not there, no one can see how he's so much nicer and always was so much better with social interaction.

And he rules out the virus, even though he knows dark sun has something to do with Nexus leaving. Like??? You're supposed to be the smart one Moon, stop being fucking stupid.

Also im pissed Solar is getting close to Old Moon, and hope he calls him out on his bullshit.

Anyway, I feel like the stupid ass, awful dialogue thing I made for the two a few weeks ago when i was like half asleep summarizes it pretty well:

(cw, mention of suicide at the end)

"You left him to rot! He was mourning me, he was hallucinating! And you've thrown him away like he's trash!"

"Sun has-"

"IM NOT TALKING ABOUT SUN! Sun and Earth have too much shit to deal with! Im talking about you! You left him! You didn't try to help him! And you've encouraged Sun to not forgive him, ever! And I know why. Because without him in the picture, you can be the perfect brother, right? If hes not here, they can't notice how he was so much nicer! How he cared about Sun so much more! No, you came back and you bought a new house and tried to get rid of Nexus as much as you could because he's your replacement and you're scared of people leaving you! Go to he'll, Moon. Fuck you"

"Listen here you-"

"No, you listen here. Go kill yourself again- Actually, no, because then you'll just hurt Sun again. Because that's all you do, hurt people! Now fuck off, I'm going to find Nexus and fix things."

(This also ties into my last post about old Moon)

Anyway yeah, as much as I love him becuase he's charismatic and sassy and sarcastic and funny (and I was raised to like sarcastic humor), I cant stand the bitch when I really thing about it for more than 2 seconds.

Next I honestly may just rant why I hate him- the last 2 things have also been about Solar and Nexus and that sutuation, but I genuinely may just make a whole post talking about how I hate him-

ALSO THIS IS NOT FOR DEBATE. I AM RANTING ABOUT MY OPINION, IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, PLEASE JUST SCROLL PAST I DONT HAVE THE ENERGY TO ARGUE. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO YOUR OWN OPINION AND SO AM I ♡♡

[misscammiedawn]

On trauma anniversaries

Personal (and a little oversharing) post but I thought I'd speak out, even if it's just an excuse to type to myself.

Original was written October 2023. It has been sitting in our drafts ever since then. 6/22/2024 Dawn edit - Given we eventually posted the suicidality draft, I thought I'd finally share this. Especially given how much my mind has been on the end of June 2022 this week, both the good and the bad.

12/26 Dawn edit- this was originally written just after our birthday and then left in drafts. It is posted now due to the December holiday passing with no attempted intrusion from our No Contact family.

Plus I am in the middle of creating a self-harm safety plan with my therapist and wanted to see what we typed last time we were fucked up to reference for this project.

This is all from my perspective and my advice may not be useful to all. My therapist always says "take what you need and leave what you don't" when reading mental health advice. I hope there are things that will help on your end.

I've been finding a lot of joy recently in trying to write educational resources when I'm feeling a certain way and I'm feeling a certain way right now.

To those who don't know a trauma anniversary is a recognized within PTSD treatment as a sensitivity to emotional reactions brought about by the annual reminder of a particularly traumatic memory. A widely understood one is 9/11 though birthdays, Thanksgiving and annual family holidays tend to come up in the conversations too.

I suppose there is a little "chicken or the egg" back and forth on if the anniversary reminds the individual, summoning the symptoms or the symptoms of the disorder provide the reminder. My reading has said that in traumatic situations our minds become keenly aware of the circumstances and build an aversion to the situation as a survival mechanism and even the smallest hints of familiarity can activate those defenses.

Either way it is commonly experienced enough to be considered a sensitivity when performing trauma therapy. It commonly manifests via nightmares, excessive moodiness or defensiveness, avoidant behavior, social withdrawal or to put more plainly an exacerbation of existing symptoms. Danger of relapse goes up during these periods.

I know that very well. I try really hard not to let my negative instincts take over when I get this way.

October 23rd and 24th are bad days for me. One is a birthday and the other is the anniversary of the day my marriage ended and subsequently started the chain reaction that made the family I built for myself in the USA outright tell me they do not consider me family any longer, something which I am still not even remotely over. Bio-Fam can reject me, that's fine... but when the Found Family reject you? How the fuck do you recover from that? How are you capable of rationalizing that in a way that does not hold all of the blame to your own throat?

Both days represent the act of willingly burning my entire life to the ground and letting the fires consume every relationship and piece of familiarity I had built in 2 previous lives.

A little hyperbolic but that's the impact and fuck I am devastated by guilt and regret for having done it and a terror that I will do it again someday.

Prior to this year's birthday I had even made a post where I joked about how I wasn't dreading it this year but as the weekend went on the emotions started to fade in and then The Reminders kicked in via emails and IMs saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY. The sources were as innocuous as companies with my details who email coupons or work colleagues or even loved ones and people who I do not want contact from.

I've learned one thing this year and that is "you can't ignore this shit". I was arrogant and thought my progress through therapy and my recent stability would usher me through without incident. I was wrong. Luckily my ability to communicate is better than it was so I was able to warn people and ask for reassurance and care from loved ones and have them tell me that I haven't hurt them and am not alienating them and they aren't upset with me.

So, here's my handy guide (from me and to me) for how to survive this shit for future.

Get Distracted

The best moments of my past 48 hours were when I was busy doing things. Work was useful for me. My girlfriend wanted to go on a shopping trip so I forced myself to get out of the house even when I was feeling like shit and wanted to scream and cry.

The shopping trip was more annoying than it was fun but the chore got me doing something and that got me out of my own head for a little. Sometimes having something to be annoyed about, even if it's a stress, is better than being left to fester.

Communicate

I fluctuated between "I don't want to be alone" and "I want to never speak to another human ever again" about 4 times a minute during the worst of it. I was upfront with everyone in my surroundings that my affect would be off and that it was temporary and fretting over me would stress me out more. Everyone was kind and sweet to me. Also everyone at home knows NEVER CELEBRATE MY BIRTHDAY and so getting full compliance from the people in my life helped a lot.

Limit Decision Making and Stress Intake

When work started piling on I started to get a pit in my stomach that created "we're going to get fired!" thoughts that spiraled rapidly. I almost lost my composure with the screen, with myself, with my girlfriend, with the cat over the stupidest things because no matter how much I wanted to admit it, my threshold was in the toilet and I couldn't control it or will myself out of it. This isn't just anger, it's any and all emotion in excess.

Likewise I felt completely incapable of making even minor decisions during this period. Ensuring I had meals planned in advance helped when I would rather starve myself than commit to even buying food.

Commune with the grief instead

We are all quilts patched from every person who has ever loved us. It's okay to accept that there are complicated emotions. Life cannot be as black and white as we force it to be in order to survive. Part of healing is communing with the pain in a way that neither outright rejects it nor fetishizes pain to the point of which you are intentionally triggering yourself. I found a lot of comfort in watching the shows/playing the games that people from before always wanted me to. It's like doing a little bit of finished business, getting to share something with the living memory. It doesn't change the past but it lets you feel a positive connection. It gives positive momentum when the old scars itch and you want to scratch them. Growth off of the scorched Earth without interacting with the past itself and allowing it to intrude on the present.

So whether I support my dad's football team, watch something with the knowledge that she would have loved it or finally see the inspiration for the character he tailor made to be your character's villain in TTRPG, see that game they always talked about liking; I like doing this as something I can DO with the emotional build-up that depends a reaction.

Be Grateful and Show Love To Those Who Stand By You

I have spoken to every partner today just thanking them for dealing with me while I'm like this. I'll talk to my therapist tomorrow. Guilt and paranoia are ruining me at the moment. Assuring people what I lucidly think and feel helps.

Be Open to the Idea That You May Be Wrong

Just... I can tell I'm off. I know I have warned people I am off. I may actually be off. Communicate and offer love and understanding and apologies if needed. It will pass.

It's healthy to understand that while you're compromised you may not be fully yourself. Tread with caution. Do not make impulsive decisions, ask for outside opinions when you need grounding. Allow yourself to not feel guilt when you act in ways you're not proud of.

Help Others

Gotta admit doing the shopping trip with local girlfriend and being love and care for long distance one helped get me out of my own head. I find this one is actually really useful for me and I should think about how I can do it more in the future.

It's extra energy and costs spoons when you're not doing great, but it's applying effort in a positive regard.

Forgive Yourself

If I know myself I will be reading this in a year's time. That's why this post exists after all.

Just... forgive yourself. For abandoning people. For running away. For being imperfect. For choosing to be a woman. For not fighting harder. For not being who everyone needed you to be.

Don't seek to rationalize, don't seek to minimize. Do not even seek to accept what you did.

Just forgive. We are okay. We hurt people and ourselves. We handled things poorly. We broke contracts of the heart and shatters dreams of the future.

But we're alive. We have a chance to be happy again. It's okay to be the villain in other stories. It's okay to not be a perfect victim.

Forgive yourself.

Find something to look forward to

There is always "the next event". Plan for it. Get out of the present and the past. The future is there and it is waiting for you.

It'll be okay. The danger has passed. This week will pass.

It will be okay.

[sillimancer]

okay so I'm another year older. what have I learned?

It is not illegal to ask for help and sometimes people will even actually give it to you.

HRT has in fact made me happier if only because it's showing me that I have at least some control over my body and appearance.

I cannot sustainably manage a household and work full-time by myself in my current condition.

there is no ceiling for how much worse weight discrimination can get at the doctor's office; if you get fatter, it gets worse.

having a compatible therapist does actually make a difference but it doesn't make all the struggles of talk therapy magically vanish either.

you can work with nice people and still be really unhappy at your job.

I am really not that different from a stray cat you would find on the streets somewhere.

the fear holding me back from like, living a life and being happy is way worse than I ever could have imagined.

having friends is not at all the same as having good friends.

isolation makes you weird and if you're not careful it'll make you unlikable.

I had my first suicidal thought when I was 14 and assumed I'd go through with it before I turned 18. Today I turned 33.

"it gets better" has always felt like a bit of a stretch to me. It hasn't really gotten better, not at the high level. I'm battling a lot of the same bullshit I was back then. Some of that bullshit will probably stick around forever. So I can't promise that it gets better. A lot of it actually got worse.

but I would have missed out on a lot if I hadn't stuck around. A lot of the things that made me feel (at least in those moments) that staying alive was a good choice. I had to learn to look for those moments (like no really they had to teach me in the psych ward) and it's a skill I'm still working on. the secret for me was realizing that those things can be mundane, stupid, childish, or anything else, as long as it keeps you going. I had a whole period in my late teens and early 20s where the thing keeping me alive was "if I killed myself my online friends would never know what happened to me and I can't do that to them". Another time in my late 20s I bought a fern cuz I knew if I killed myself no one else would water it so I had to stay alive. for the fern. I stayed alive (Lucifern tragically did not survive, rip Lucifern). Crab rangoons kept me from killing myself. 6 uninterrupted hours of scrolling on Tiktok has kept me from killing myself.

sometimes you watch all of Steven Universe in like 2 weeks so you can live long enough to take your sister to Ireland to finally meet her grandparents for the first and last time and other times you begrudgingly stick around to see what the Breath of the Wild sequel is going to be like and that's okay cuz you wouldn't have gotten to enjoy a really good cartoon or take your favorite person on a once-in-a-lifetime overseas adventure or play what would end up being one of your most favorite video games ever if you'd killed yourself while hiding in your bedroom closet that night 19 years ago.

plus I wouldn't have lived to see my dad die, so. thank god for small favors. here's to 19 more years of stuff I'd regret missing out on if I was dead.

(seriously though I hope it gets objectively better in the next 19 years)

[crush-zombie]

Where I am in life? Things that have happened. The continuing circus of the wild west of my existence. It's a long post ;

I lived in Ontario for three years, from 2018 to 2022, in a couple of places.

The friend I was supposed to move in with, to ease my spiralling depression, backed out at the last moment with threats. The "you're lucky I'm not around or I'd beat your ass" kind of threats, because I refused to give up and let despair engulf me.

I ended up in the basement of a friend of my mother's for a year. For apartment-finding (and legal) reasons I had my sister (and her partner) come as well, and after a year of searching and filling out applications the three of us got kicked out. We stayed in the woods by a highway for a week before getting sent to a homeless shelter.

2 months there was bad. The details probably aren't necessary, but it was dehumanizing.

After that we ended up in one of Canada's "hot spots" for Covid when the pandemic broke out. It took about a month there before my sister's partner started (continuing to) abuse me. My sister didn't care. My illness(es) had been intensifying all throughout those years, but they really hit a fever pitch at this time. I spent a lot of time gasping on the floor.

Along with my illness(es), during all this time I was struggling with suicidal feelings and urges. That's why I moved to Ontario to begin with-- I hoped things would be better there somehow, like a complete idiot ;

After threats from my sister and her partner a friend back in Newfoundland offered me an out. I returned, tail between my legs and my dog, who I dragged through all this chaos, was getting so old he can barely walk. My energy was so, so low and I put just about all of it into caring for him.

About 6 months into living with my friend she unloaded all her issues with me (that I studied like a motherfucker, because I am and always am convinced that I'm the problem in everything)-- that I eat too much, I don't clean the house enough, I'm "disrespectful" (conversely another friend often tells me I'm "too polite"), I "over parent" her daughter (this still confuses me), that she didn't believe I was disabled, that covering for my old, sickly dog was disgusting. I spiralled very hard, and got brought out to the dining room table to be told all the things I should be doing and what I was doing wrong. Immediately afterwards I started planning my suicide. My dearest (internet) friend kept me from death, but in its place I started developing an eating disorder, eating nothing but one meal a day (which sometimes didn't happen) and being nearly bedbound with hunger and exhaustion every day. I started cleaning the house, sweeping, tidying, doing the dishes and folding laundry for the two other adults and one child in the house. No-one complained. I'm convinced everyone in the world would be flattered to have someone bend to their neuroses.

When I forced myself to stop believing I was disabled I lost the language to describe my experiences. I ended up with a counselor in a matter of a week because of my mental state, and he had the unfortunate and arduous job of piecing my shattered mind back together. It's still missing bits... rough in a lot of places.

April of last year, I had to put my dog down. I was spending all my time taking care of him because he couldn't even stand anymore, and the vet really laid it down for me: this was it. So... Even just writing about it puts a lump in my throat and hot tears in my eyes. Grief is hellish agony, maybe the worst I've ever experienced. "I wouldn't be surprised," my counselor said, "you loved that dog more than most people love their own children."

In June I moved again. Currently I'm renting a room with a bunch of dirty 20-something-year-olds who do nothing but smoke weed all day every day and spend 8 AM every morning coughing until they urge, so I roll over and stuff ear plugs in my ears. At least they seem to be good people, and they know to keep their noses out of my business. And $600 for a single room and access to a (disgusting) bathroom, a (disgusting) kitchen and a (disgusting) laundry room with everything included is far, far from the worst I've had. I'm poor, but... it's something, and something isn't nothing.

[mcalhenwrites]

Personal update, because... I don't know how things are going to go. I don't know when I'll update things. I don't know when I'll sleep properly and get any writing done. This hit when I was having a bit of a lapse in mental health, and I was discouraged about writing (but trying to keep myself from being pulled under!). I spent about 30 minutes pacing around my bathroom since it's further inside the building, trying to figure out if we were in the path of another tornado while the sirens blared. We were not. My town didn't get hit this time, like it did two weeks ago. Anyway. Two hours later, I'm face to face with a bed bug for the first time, and that fucked me up.

I broke down crying in a panic when I realized what it was and what it might meant for us. We're still searching through belongings because guess how much stuff we own? A LOT! (Someone advised me to go through each of my hundreds of books, page by page, to look for any hidden in them. I'm going to die.) But so far, it has only been the one. I haven't been mentally well. We're not rich over here, money is tight for my roommate and they're paying for all the bills. I just try to keep the place moderately clean, cook a few meals, and write my stories and hope they might sell a bit so I can make a little money to help out. I have been job searching and put in an application to one job that would've worked well for my disabilities, but I didn't get the job. I'm still waiting another month until my appointment to see a specialist about one of my severe health issues. One that can be treated and dealt with! But it's pretty bad! Things have been awful. Like seriously, I cannot catch a break. I don't know how to find the spoons I barely have to do all the work that needs done. I wanted to make progress on Seasons - and I still will, but I don't know how much this will slow that down - and I plan to finish up all those short stories for Geckos so I can publish them together. Geckos isn't really selling, but I am grateful it has sold a few copies. The apartment manager is aware of our situation. My library books are in gallon ziplocs to return in person Thursday and notify them that they might want to treat them or hold them back until they're certain they're safe for circulation again. Can't hurt. I just don't want anyone else to deal with this. I vacuumed this morning but I'm so sore and I can't sleep... tomorrow we are going to buy some things to help deal with this, like storage containers and bags and covers and whatnot. Seeing a lot of people mention steamers. I don't know how to live with this. Scabies during the beginning of covid was bad enough. Scabies being immediately followed by a fucking brown recluse bite that got badly infected and required me seeing a surgeon REALLY fucking sucked. Brown recluse infestatinos are awful! We left our shit apartment and broke lease to move here. It was decently good. Not the perfect place, but y'know. So seeing a bed bug in a building that's only about 2 years old... I worry we have neighbors who are dealing with it and won't say anything. It's a concern. I really don't want to live like this. The problem is I don't want to live at all now, because nothing ever lets up. My roommate is worried about me, so I have agreed this week to do some calling around for psychological help, but I am afraid to go to urgent care and pass along little fucking hell creatures. I'm afraid I might GET MORE OF THEM. Also, the one time I was in a psychiatric hospital was so bad, I had nightmares consistently about having to go back to one for over a year. I still get them sometimes. But I'm feeling suicidal in a "I can't deal with bed bugs" kind of way. I need help. I don't know how to get it. I'm mad that there are millions of other people in this same state. Why is our fucking country so into weapons and selling them to countries that blow up innocent people and starve them to death, so into guns it's appalling, but like... developing new antibiotics and housing people and looking for ways to take care of bed bugs? Nah. Why do that? Fuck the little people I guess.

[shouldprobablybereading]

SA5 and beyond character predictions and opinions: Kaladin

Decided to write this down now so I can laugh at it next year when the book is out.

Death possibility

I actually can't see this happening. For obvious reasons, he's been suicidal for big parts of the series and killing him would ruin all that previous work on keeping him alive. Especially if it's a sacrifice or last stand, since his entire character arc is currently based on coming to terms with not being able to save everyone.

2. Kowt thoughts

Kaladin is overall in somewhat of a weird place for kowt where despite being THE main character he's not directly involved in the main conflict. Like currently shallan is dealing with the ghostbloods and the cosmere at large, expanding the lore. And dalinar is the one who is about to battle the villain

I assume the ishar plot is going to be extremely relevant and intersect with the others. But for the longest time I assumed kaladin would be dalinars champion which would have put the two of them in what seems like THE big confrontation of the first arc. which almost makes me think the duel is not going to be as big of a deal as it seems. I also can't actually see him helping ishar that much in only 10 days. So in short I'm just really confused and hoping sanderson knows what he's doing

3. Presence in the back 5

As said I assume he is going to be around. But going a little controversial here for a second, I am fine with and almost find it necessary for him to have a significant decrease in povs going forward. Which is not saying that I don't love his character. I just think that if they try to keep up his 100k per book wordcount average there isn't going to be enough character arc left to tell unless significant changes happen to his circumstances, which to be fair is possible given how fucked roshar seems to be in tlm

4. Actual ideas

It's pretty predictable but I kinda like the idea of keeping up his whole inventing therapy thing, his story feels like its leaning away from combat and I think this is a really good and more healthy way for him to still be able to try and look after others and help them. Maybe act somewhat of a mentor to oroden and gavinor to keep him relevant, if that type of plotline can be done without feeling to cliche.

5. Possibilty of godhood?

Didn't even think about this until I saw someone suggest he would take up honor or become a herald. I'm not fond of this at all for actually the same reason I don't want him to die. Dude who is scared of losing people becoming immortal? That just seems like a punishment and he doesn't deserve that

[silkflovvers]

Below the cut are my personal thoughts on the whole Nijisanji situation, as a fan of 3+ years and as someone with depression who has multiple friends who have committed suicide and are no longer with us.

If you don't care about this situation or find this topic triggering, please keep scrolling.

To start, I am a fan of the Nijisanji livers and have been since about 2021. I found them when I was home with a work-related injury and feeling incredibly frustrated and depressed. I relied on them for positivity and a reason to get out of bed each day throughout the time I spent off work, suffering at work in a position I didn't want but was the only thing I could do while injured, and then later as I was unemployed and desperately searching for a new job that would not leave me irreparably physically and mentally damaged by age 25.

Their jobs are incredibly difficult as livers and content creators despite what viewers see on the outside and I respected them for their hard work and passion.

So with that being said, I'm not coming from a place of malice when I say any of this. I'm not one of those people that hate-watch them or harass them online.

Now, for my main point:

I have had at least three good friends (that I know of, but there are likely more who have simply kept it to themselves) attempt to take their own lives. Two of them are no longer with us. I myself have been in such a low point in life that I considered following suit. I thought all hope for a future was gone, but I held on because I knew what the aftermath felt like as the loved one of someone who succeeded in their attempt. Even in death, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself for causing such pain to people who cared about me. Guilt kept me here. I'm thankful each day that it did, because my life really did get so much better. Things do improve if you hang on. It's not perfect, but it's so much better than it was.

In the statement posted to Elira's youtube channel, she, Vox, and Ike not only painted themselves as victims, but painted Selen as the villain. The girl who made two separate attempts on her life was thrown under the bus by her former coworkers and people she likely viewed as friends at one point in her career.

I am wholly willing to believe the Nijisanji staff had a hand in this and that their words were scripted. I also wouldn't put it past the staff to have threatened their jobs if they did not comply, simply because it would not surprise me at this point after the petty things others have been terminated for in the past couple years. However, this only leads me to believe two things: 1. they viewed their jobs as more important than the life of someone they once called a friend and 2. they were willing to sabotage their own reputation in the name of the company. I'm more than certain they had the option to simply walk out. Yeah, those three are probably the best performing talents under the En branch after all the recent graduations, but they are talented enough to find success elsewhere. With this statement, they have tarnished their reputation in such a way, I'm not sure they will have the kind of success they would have prior to the statement if they choose to leave the company. Fans and businesses will remember these actions.

This is incredibly upsetting to me. I loved Elira. I followed her channel, her twitter, watched her streams, supported her despite really only lurking in chat or watching VODs. In the silly Vtuber lore for her character, she was Selen's sister. She chose to betray her sister, fictional or not. With that, she chose to betray her fans as well. At least in my opinion. After the statement, I felt that Elira did not take suicidal ideation or intentions as seriously as she should and proceeded to unsubscribe, unfollow, and block her on every platform I once used to keep up with her activities. Knowing she would rather play victim than be there for her former-friend dealing with the mental turmoil of wanting to take her own life obliterated any respect I once had for her. As someone who's considered ending things, I don't feel comfortable supporting someone who is too selfish to be there and stand up for her friend. Even if they weren't as close as they pretended to be, that's her coworker. This is my own opinion, but a decent human being would at least be concerned. A decent person would not have made this kind of statement, even if their career was on the line. She is so lucky that Selen failed twice. If she had succeeded, Elira would have had that guilt in her heart for the rest of her life. Unless she truly never cared for Selen in the first place. If I was her, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

As for Vox and Ike, I wasn't a huge fan of their content, but respected the work they put into it. I'll admit Vox's recent actions have left a bitter taste in my mouth, so I was already losing respect for him. I understand he is under lots of pressure, constant stress, even living in fear of people bringing harm to him and his loved ones. But for someone who hosted and entire charity stream in support of suicide prevention, how can he be so tone deaf as to follow through with this kind of statement? He, out of the three of them, upset me the most despite following him the least closely. He did nearly every single thing you are NOT supposed to do when addressing a person who attempted to take their own life. If I was in Selen's position, I would not have had the strength to be as mature and calm as she was. Vox's statement would have probably been my last straw. Pulling out screenshots like he was making a twitter call out post was so... immature, in my opinion. Everyone understood the video was likely taken down due to including graduated livers. That was pretty easy to guess. But we also knew it had been completed for a while. Staff had plenty of time to review it and get approvals. Yes, Selen should have waited for approval, I will not deny that. But Staff had time. They drug their feet and she was sick of it. I don't blame her for posting it. If she was that frustrate, I would have done the same thing.

After the other two, there probably wasn't much left for Ike to say, but he was still there, still participated. I see him just as complacent as the other two. By the time he spoke, I was too stunned to really even register his words. I felt Vox had been out for Selen's head despite asking people not to harass her before and after his statement. Vox had done enough damage.

In the end... just... Throwing a friend who made an attempt on their life under the bus whether you were ordered by your company to do so or not and then have the guts to play victim??? is so unbelievably scummy. It doesn't matter what the consequences may have been had they refused. They claimed they volunteered for the statement.

It tears me up inside that anyone can reach a point that they truly believe that their best option is to die. My friends have been there. I myself have been there. I don't know a feeling comparable to how horrible it is. I don't wish that level of despair onto anyone. It's not a joke. It's not a meme. It is serious and leaves life-long scars on everyone involved. Because of this, I personally cannot forgive those three for making such a statement, voluntary or not.

From here on, I will no longer hold respect for nor support Elira Pendora, Vox Akuma, or Ike Eveland of Nijisanji English.

I want to believe that not all the livers are complacent in this. Some have openly shown dissatisfaction and upset at this situation, some in ways that don't openly put their careers at risk, but still, there is an attempt at solidarity there. I will continue to support those that I still have some respect for that I previously supported, but I will immediately cut ties if they are not careful with how they proceed. I truly want to hope that the majority of talents under Niji EN are decent people form they way they have comforted fans through hard times and for sticking up for others in the past, but I'm aware everyone on the internet wears a mask. Vtubers especially have the blessing of an extra layer of anonymity and charm thanks to their avatars.

I'm still a Comfydant, still a Takaradachi. I'll still make fanart and watch their streams. But I'm going to be wary for a good while. I've lost trust for the company entirely, but I want to hold onto the small amount of hope I have that the livers I enjoyed from the start are as kind as they outwardly convey in their streams. I also just.. don't want any of them to go through what Yugo, Zaion, and Selen have been through... No one deserved that and no one deserves to go through it. Shame on Nijisanji.

Next day edit/addition:

I don't think either party in this case is perfect and I don't doubt that Selen was better suited as an indie vs a corpo vtuber. I just take suicide incredibly seriously and personally and treating it lightly or playing a victim even if the people playing victim were in fact harmed in some way feels... wrong. I don' t know. Both parties can be victims. Both parties can be hurt. It's just... one tried to end their life. And reactions speak very loudly in the aftermath. I just. I do NOT like the way Vox worded or delivered his portion of the statement. Whether he was defending himself or not it felt very. It was very in line with his reactionary statements he's made in the past where it did not feel as thoughtful as it should. It felt like something he would later back track on and feel regret over.

[moibakadesu]

questions for Haruka,Fuuta and Muu

favorite song lyrics?

favorite mv moment/frame?

do you forgive/not forgive their crime on its own?

do you have any similarities with them/relate to something in them?what do you think their childhood/teenage years were like?

favorite relationships with another character in the prison?

what do you wish would be discussed more often about them in the fandom?

I'm rolling these up bit by bit now, they had been marinating in my inbox for a while.

Haruka

1. Favorite song lyrics?

Let’s pick one from both Weakness as well as AKAA, shall we?

“It’s fine, though it’s really not 

It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so”

Haruka so often gives off the impression that he doesn’t care about being treated badly, if it does mean attention, but these lyrics show so clearly that in actuality he doesn’t feel that way.

“Mommy, look,

I’ve done great

“There there, my good boy!””

The delivery on this is just so good, I love how he switches up his voice so smoothly there.

2. Favorite MV moment/frame? 

I don’t have to pick only one, right? Because I can’t decide, waha. (Every frame of Haruka is my favourite frame.)

6. Favorite relationships with another character in the prison?

That should be obvious, right? Of course Fuuta. I had gone into detail with that often enough, so I will keep it simple, but the way Fuuta is so protective over Haruka is what captured my heart. And in turn how Haruka started approaching Fuuta on his own, despite the first impression that he is scary. I’m pretty sure these two could have been very good and even healing for each other if things would have gone differently with the t1 verdicts, but well, can’t change that anymore. Right now I just hope that Fuuta will be there to catch Haruka in t3, because they made sure that it is clear that he still cares deeply.

9. Do you forgive/not forgive their crime on its own? 

I absolutely do forgive him. Especially if it really turned out to be suicide. Even if it wasn’t, in my eyes Haruka is the biggest victim in his case, and his mother the true culprit. If Haruka would have gotten the care and love he needed and deserved it would have never gotten to this tragedy, and I think that is the saddest part.

12. What do you wish would be discussed more often about them in the fandom?

Hmm, probably his own urgency as a character, without attaching him to Muu or anything, because that is annoying as hell. As interesting as it sort of is for the overall storyline and giving different incentives to vote different ways, I was never a fan of having outside factors influence the fate of a character so strongly if the thing we are meant to judge is their sin.

I also would love it if people would take more note of the fact that being overly infantilized and babyed is not what Haruka wants at all. Yes, he wants someone to give affection and attention to him, but he also has voiced on multiple occasions that he just wants a normal life, he wants to be strong and interesting … he does not want to be defined by his disabilities and I think a lot of people misunderstand that about Haruka.

19. What do you think their childhood/teenage years were like? 

Pppfff, definitely not as good as he likes to make us think. I think his mother was already not that great to him even before his disabilities became more apparent. He probably had an extremely isolated life. I am also always torn between him getting locked up at home or maybe even having been at a mental institution. 

21. Do you have any similarities with them/relate to something in them?

Ahahah.

Crippling abandonment issues and autism. Getting attached to people quickly if they are nice and then not caring enough for my own wellbeing.

Fuuta

1. Favorite song lyrics?

You just gotta love how Bring it on’s lyrics are already so full of regret and self-loathing if you look at them properly.

“You already knew, the whole time

You can’t escape, how do you like the taste of punishment

You already noticed, right? What you gonna do

Bring it on! Those who believe in justice assemble!

You gotta be kidding, I’m an undead hero”

I have a hard time not quoting all of Backdraft here, because the lyrics are just so good, and I love the delivery of a lot of them a lot.

But I will pick this here, because it is so descriptive of Fuuta trying to put up a strong act and also some clever play of words:

“Pick up your mouth-piece

Grind your teeth and strike a pose

Just like O2, burn yourselves into oblivion”

2. Favorite MV moment/frame? 

Like with Haruka I have a very hard time picking here, because I love all the Fuutas …

Shoutout to this exact Undercover frame tho, because I think he is just incredibly handsome in that one (I love Fuuta dearly, but I don’t call him handsome in a lot of situations, waha)

6. Favorite relationships with another character in the prison?

See above at Haruka’s answer. But I also think it is cute how he warmed up to Kazui and Shidou after getting help from them, after only seeing them as “useless adults” before.

9. Do you forgive/not forgive their crime on its own? 

Cancel culture is terrible and Fuuta knows damn well that he fucked up and took his SJW shit way too far, so yeah, I doubt he would ever repeat anything like that again, so I do forgive it. People like him can change, I did see it a few times. (Antis that were assholes towards me and ended up coming around and getting rid of that mindset.)

12. What do you wish would be discussed more often about them in the fandom?

There are so many people treating the “Fuuta doxxed the girl” as canon fact, even though we don’t have any confirmation of that? It is just blatant misinformation born from western fans misinterpreting his Undercover shot where he is seen with his phone at the funeral of the victim as him taking a picture of her home. We know that he was aware where she lived, but we don’t know if there ever was something done from his side with that information.

I’d also love it if people would see him as more than an angry gamer or one-dimensional tsundere, because there is sooo much more to him.

19. What do you think their childhood/teenage years were like? 

I am pretty sure Fuuta was not a popular kid and was most likely also bullied in school. To me his black and white view on justice and need for validation very much feels like that. 

I also have this thought that he might have aspired to a career with soccer, but that dream didn’t work out, adding to his “whatever”-stance on work and the future.

21. Do you have any similarities with them/relate to something in them?

Sadly I am a bit of a Fuuta kinnie. /hj

I am a ball of insecurities and try to hide that a lot with tough behavior. Bleak outlook at society and the future as a whole, but gotta make it work. Gender very much “is what it is”. Small redhead.

At least I am very much the opposite of a SJW.

Muu:

1. Favorite song lyrics?

I have to say, the “rap” part of AP is pretty neat (I do like both of her songs quite a lot, I give her that), and I think that part also shows a lot of her victim mentality:

“Let’s meet up inside the pain, a place just for me

Postmortem makeup to hide my heart, how to solve it is a secret

The stabbing of the little devil’s voice, counterattack being a suicide note”

And controversial take, but:

“I am relieved, I am always the drama queen”

To be exact the time where she screams that at the viewer, I hate-love that part. And in my opinion “drama queen” is the perfect translation for “I am always to be pitied”, it is in essence really the same. Just a lot more of her victim complex at display.

2. Favorite MV moment/frame? 

I cannot stand the girl, but she has plenty of good scenes. I also just really like her bee design.

And special mention for Rei looking disgusted, because she is best girl and that is how I look at Muu most of the time as well.

6. Favorite relationships with another character in the prison?

None? Wahaha, I like how openly Yuno shows her disdain for Muu though, because same.

9. Do you forgive/not forgive their crime on its own? 

Girl started the bullying, acted like a victim and then murdered someone without feeling remorse or feeling wrong about it in any way … honestly, Muu is pretty much my top candidate for a t3 guilty, I have not a shred of sympathy for her.

12. What do you wish would be discussed more often about them in the fandom?

I honestly keep away from a lot of corners of the fandom, so I’m not sure which parts of her haven’t been discussed that much, but probably the fact that she is a pretty obvious case of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and a gigantic victim complex. I found that a lot of Muu fans try to frame her as a perfect little angel who has suffered so much and has a slightly wonky view of friendships, but in my eyes that is not her at all? It is okay to embrace the bad sides of a character as well, you don’t have to justify everything. The characters in Milgram are written very “real” and it is not surprising if some have a personality that is not very pleasant.

So taking all of this into account I suspect that Muu did not experience the extent of bullying that she likes to make us believe. We never see her disheveled or wet in her MVs, contrary to Rei. The prisoners cannot lie in their MVs, but they are 

19. What do you think their childhood/teenage years were like? 

Pampered. Mommy and daddy’s little darling. Always got everything she ever wanted from everyone. Just a spoiled little princess from the moment she was born, basically.

21. Do you have any similarities with them/relate to something in them?

Thankfully not.

[moonlit-tulip]

Tsukihime Remake Liveblog Archive, Part 2: Ciel Route

The newly-translated route! Which I finished last night. I had been thinking I'd wait a couple extra days before posting it, just in case I developed more to say, but on consideration… nah, I'm impatient, I'll just post it now. If I say additional things later I'll… I don't know, edit them onto the end and post a notice-of-something-having-been-added, or put them in a reblog, or something.

Below the cut: the Ciel-route segment of the liveblog, featuring spoilers for all of both the original Tsukihime and Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-.

June 17, 2023

[4:14 PM] Knowing that everyone’s memories of Ciel are fake, it’s very funny going through the opening segments of her being widely known as The Perfect Senpai So Good That Even The Teachers Rely On Her. Like, sure, useful cover, but also, that sure is a reputation to have given herself! (And to then, in proper Perfect Senpai fashion, deny when it’s mentioned to her face.)

[6:36 PM] The “dreaming of a story that has already passed” scene at the start of the second day has me wondering, now, whether this remake is yet another of the ‘remake’-as-stealth-sequel setups that seem to be popular nowadays. I somewhat hope not—I find that pattern somewhat frustrating—but it is a possibility I should maybe keep in mind, given that scene.

[6:59 PM] …especially, it now occurs to me, in the context of Day 2 being called ‘Day that Wasn’t’. That’s a name whose significance-to-the-local-narrative I was never able to figure out, last year; the only meaning I could ever get out of it was the “this day wasn’t in the original, only in the remake” meaning, and while that’s definitely part of the meaning I’d assumed it was just one half of a double-meaning. But, if the remake is doing the stealth-sequel thing, that assumption suddenly seems much less well-founded; it could, easily, just be the reference-to-this-being-different-from-the-original that I first read it as.

[7:04 PM] In other news… so, last time, I talked about how the mansion feels less isolated in the remake than in the original, with Saiki Gouto and Arach showing up early on. This remains true. But the flip side of this, which I didn’t consciously register last time, is: while the mansion itself is less isolated, Shiki is more isolated within it. There’s much more emphasis on his status as the Ill-Fitting Outsider, with Saiki’s “your getting injured and disowned about it was an Unvirtuous Desertion Of Family Obligations” monologue and then with Akiha’s generally-more-emphasized-in-the-remake degree of Pointedly Overbearing Demandingness towards Shiki. So it’s actually more of a change to the mansion’s tone than I’d realized; minus one thing and plus another, rather than just the minus.

[10:13 PM] Day 3 complete! I am now Solidly On Ciel's Route, I think. Or at the very least I've made it past the point which (a) was the final point-of-no-return for onboarding to Ciel's route in the original and (b) is where I ran into Japanese text when I found my way onto it under the old Arcueid-route-only patch-version. The "Ciel talks Shiki down from suicide-via-exposure and gets him into a state of thinking and engaging with the world again" scene was very good, as it was in the original, although it's been long enough since I've read the original that I can't easily do detailed comparison of content beyond "very good", or of fine details of how very-good they were relative to one another. And I look forward to seeing how things diverge from here! I strongly suspect that one of the things the remake is going to change is the degree to which Arcueid and Ciel's routes overlap one another, since that was one of the more awkward structural elements of the original; but I'm not sure how much earlier to expect the divergence this time. The one Arcueid-route Bad End with the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair, where Ciel-sensei strongly hints that that it'll be safer to do that in Ciel's route, could be interpreted as meaning that it'll still re-merge at least for the initial adventures-with-Arcueid section—especially in combination with the game UI suggesting we're still in common-route territory, with Day 4 having the same name even after the big heartfelt moment with Ciel and with the save still not being marked with any particular route—but also could be compatible, potentially, with "things continue diverging and the investigation-of-Vlov's-lair happens in some other different context". I look forward to finding out!

[10:39 PM] Also, off in the realm of Parallels Which Were There All Along But Which I’m Only Now Managing To Catch: it Sure Does Hit A Way, seeing Ciel give Shiki the “don’t just sit there and drown in suicidal guilt about the murder-you-did-while-not-yourself, instead figure out how to atone” speech given the knowledge of her own position having (a) done way more of those than he did and (b) being pretty suicidal about it. Giving him the maximally-optimistic form of advice which she refuses to accept in that form from herself. :(

June 18, 2023

[1:10 PM] …so Shiki was explicitly noted, during the stalking-Arcueid sequence, to have hidden away his jacket before breaking into the apartment building. But then, the next morning, Ciel implies that she’s washed it. This suggests that either (a) he had the presence-of-mind to retrieve it on exit even while in full barely-coherent-despair-and-guilt mode or (b) Ciel managed to figure out where he’d left it. (More likely (a), since he presumably retained his jacket in the non-Ciel branch too? I don’t specifically remember it, but I assume I’d remember if his school uniform had been incomplete the next day.) Both of these branches are Interesting, from an “implying things-not-otherwise-shown about characters’ mental stated” standpoint!

[1:13 PM] …or never mind that parenthetical! Since apparently they’ve got spare jackets at the Tohno household.

[2:59 PM] …huh. So this time I noticed: Arcueid gave the “only one vampire ever took in more than one beast as a familiar, and he’s already gone” line that makes Nrvnqsr’s nonexistence in the remake-timeline clear and that left me-a-year-ago Confused by the two dogs accompanying Vlov in his attack on the hotel. But then, on the whiteboard behind her, she’s written “Usually 1-3 animals”. So… only Nrvnqsr has taken in more than one kind of beast but others have taken in e.g. more than one dog? Or they can take in a single dog but then release multiple copies? It’s a bit unclear, but does make me lean towards “there’s something hard-to-translate in the thing Arcueid says there” as a more likely hypothesis over the “Vlov’s two dogs are an Actual Mystery” reading I’d taken last time.

June 19, 2023

[3:01 PM] …huh, apparently Vlov’s gang got a girl from Shiki’s school some time before they got Shiki. I wonder if, in the remake, Satsuki got vampirified by Vlov rather than by Roa? Relevance-to-Satsuki’s-route could certainly explain the otherwise-mysterious thing where the remake inserted Vlov in place of Nrvnqsr, if for whatever reason Nrvnqsr’s personality and habits would be incompatible with the route’s happenings. (Although also plausibly it was just some other not-Satsuki girl; after all, we already have had very strong implications of at least one non-Satsuki victim of Vlov’s gang from Souya High, namely the teacher who Noel replaced.)

[3:27 PM] …ah, nope, at least the most recent one they were talking about is Not Satsuki.

[4:49 PM] Ciel with a gun! :o

[5:50 PM] It's interesting how much worse Shiki's mental state is in Ciel's route, compared with in Arcueid's. During Day 5 he had two internal monologues with "well, the only thing I'm good for is Doing Murder" as a core component, compared with zero similar ones that I recall in the Arcueid branch. Apparently the combination of "be less in denial about having killed Arcueid" plus "encounter the Deeply Unpleasant Environment of Vlov's basement" was Not Good For Him!

[5:52 PM] (Or possibly just the former? I haven't yet checked what happens if, at the apparent point-of-no-return of "set out to attack Vlov in his lair during the day", I instead choose the other option of waiting for night, whether that merges into Arcueid's route or whether it leads to some sort of death instead. If the latter, then perhaps it's just the being-less-in-denial part which leads to the worse mental state.)

[6:14 PM] Also: Vlov has a grudge against Roa, apparently! There won't be much more chance to explore it from Vlov's perspective this route, given the thing where he's now dead, but I'm curious if we're going to get anything on it from Roa's perspective, once he starts leaking more into Shiki.

[6:37 PM] (I say 'leaking more', as opposed to just 'leaking', because, while popular interpretation of Shiki's big moment of Suddenly Stalking And Murdering Arcueid In A Fashion Laden With Blatant Sexual Overtones seems to be that it's just a Nanaya-family-instincts thing, I myself have always taken that moment to be at least partially leakage of Roa's influence. For one thing because that is very much in-character as a direction for Roa's influence to point—he is far more obsessed with Arcueid than with anyone else, it makes sense for him to reach through more strongly to Shiki about her than about anyone else—and for another thing because, as I recall (it having, admittedly, been a while since I last read Tsukihime), Shiki-running-on-Nanaya-instincts usually doesn't have those sorts of sexual overtones around killing, whereas Shiki-influenced-by-Roa consistently does.)

June 20, 2023

[1:49 PM] Well! Things sure did just diverge much harder than expected, the night of Day 6! Roa dead already thanks to Arcueid not burning as much energy against Vlov, and Arcueid herself possibly lining up to take over as Chief Antagonist, even before realizing that Roa has moved into Shiki Specifically, just for Difficultly Keeping Her Bloodlust Under Control Post-Being-Murdered reasons??? We’ve still got so many days left! Well, then. I guess it’s time for Lots Of New Things to happen!

[1:55 PM] (Notably, this feels like a much more… Fate/stay night-shaped way for the route-structuring to go. Less routes-hugging-one-another-closely-until-towards-the-end like in the original Tsukihime, more “okay, you’ve done the previous route, you’ve had all the exposition on who these people are and what they can do, now time to Elaborate and Explore New Ground From That Baseline Of Knowledge”. I hadn’t been sure, before, whether the Arcueid-and-then-Ciel route order would be enforced in the remake—it wasn’t enforced in the original, just recommended, and I didn’t think to test “try to get on Ciel’s route” in the remake last year before finishing Arcueid’s route, partially for “already knew that recommendation” reasons and partially for “it was untranslated so there wouldn’t be much point” reasons—but I now strongly suspect that we’re doing FSN-style route-order-enforcement here, because I don’t think the exposition-structures at play here would work otherwise.)

[1:57 PM] (Once I’ve finished the route and don’t need to worry about spoilers, I should go look this up and see whether this prediction actually holds up. :p)

[9:59 PM] > "I never said that Vlov was my target, did I?" Actually you did! I missed it in my run of your own route, but with more context I managed to catch it on this pass! You said the burning Dead in the alleyway had been created by your target. You were mistaken about that, but it still sure was a thing you said!

[10:03 PM] …also apparently Arcueid is running the same “bring Shiki in to hunt down Roa” maneuver this route as last route despite Roa already being dead! This is Suspicious, and I don’t think it’s being driven by Ciel-style suspicion-he’s-in-Shiki, I think it’s relatively pure “she likes Shiki and wants an excuse to spend time with him (plus bonus Growing Bloodlust Problems which seem noticeably less under-control this route compared with the last).

[10:06 PM] …ah, no, she is being open about having already killed Roa and is just bringing Shiki in for subsequent cleanup, never mind.

[10:42 PM] Arcueid is being So Worrying here, wow.

[10:47 PM] (Her reaction to Shiki’s headache-spike in the park. Not the hostility I’d expect if she’d realized Roa was working on possessing him, but she sure did realize Something. (Or maybe it was the Roa thing, just with bonus “aha, he’s not really in control yet and this is an Exploitable Opportunity of some sort”?))

[10:50 PM] …also. Wait a minute. Vlov has a grudge against Roa. Vlov stated his intention in town as being revenge, and expressed disgust for the overall state of the town. Arcueid doesn’t know what brought Vlov to the town in the first place. Did Vlov come by for purposes of launching some sort of attack on Roa?

June 21, 2023

[4:28 PM] Oh wow Noel has So Many Issues. That interlude was great. And I spent the first half of it wondering if she’s always like this by default or if this was the lingering-influence-from-Vlov’s-bite that Ciel and Mario had been discussing as a possibility, but after that second half… yeah, definitely some lingering (and escalating) influence. (Parallel with Shiki and his slowly-accumulating Roa-derived issues!) Although that doesn’t actually, on consideration, preclude that sort of vampire-mass-murder-with-bonus-torture having been among her habits even pre-Vlov! Since she sure did imply having pulled similar stunts previously in Europe, albeit to less effect.

[4:30 PM] Also: something happened thirteen years ago, apparently! It got mentioned once earlier, and again now this time. Roa’s pre-Ciel incarnation, maybe? But, mostly, Not Enough Information, for now. Something to keep an eye on as things continue developing.

[4:49 PM] ...hmm. Timeline. So. 1989, start of the Ciel-and-Roa flashback. Age 12, presumably 2001, the point where Roa-derived intrusive thoughts started hitting her. Age ???, the point where hiding in her room broke down as a strategy and Roa grabbed more substantial influence. Main story takes place... I'm not sure it's been stated directly, but probably 2020ish. Which would line up, given Ciel's outwardly-visible age, with that particular round of Roa-causing-trouble actually being the thirteen-years-ago one? Except in that case I'm not sure what would have happened seven years ago to set SHIKI off; Ciel had a Moment Of Horrified Realization about whatever-it-was, in the restaurant, but apparently in the remake it's not as simple as "Roa jumping into SHIKI set him off ~instantaneously upon Roa's arrival" the way I recall it was in the original, and I lack alternative hypotheses.

[4:52 PM] And apparently Roa has Plans To Make Arcueid His, beyond just "keep fighting her forever because he doesn't know how to deconflate lust from hatred" as in the original. I'm not sure what plans those might be, but whatever they are, they seem Worrying probably!

June 22, 2023

[5:25 PM] I am now re-confused! Ciel was 13 years old when she became an Executor? That doesn’t line up at all with Roa getting to her 13 years ago! And there’s a tempting alternate theory of “1989 was when Roa got to her, not her birth-year”, but in that case we run into the problem of why it would be the 13-years-ago incident that Noel is particularly traumatized about, as opposed to the ~31-years-ago one. My best guess is that the 13-years-old thing was just a cover story? Second-best guess is that the 13-years-ago Roa was somehow so bad that he managed to traumatize Noel even harder than the Roa who destroyed her hometown ~31 years ago? But I’ve got decently large piles of probability-mass on “neither of these, something weirder (or at least harder-for-me-to-predict) is going on”.

[6:38 PM] ...and Day 9 complete! That was very good. And now Ciel has said her goodbye. Which... if I'm remembering the trajectory of the original right, at that point she disappeared from everyone but Shiki's memories at school, and only reappeared to save Shiki from Roa. Which means it's time for the derailedness to progress still farther! What will drive Ciel to return this time, given the lack of external Roa to threaten Shiki? My best guess is Noel doing... something? Deciding to try to kill Shiki on the off-chance he's Roa? But low confidence in that, for now.

June 23, 2023

[5:35 PM] Well! Arach finally interacting with plot-significant events in a more substantial way than just "exist next to them"! I... expect that the references to her having eight legs were metaphorical, Nasu doing his usual animal-metaphors thing, rather than her being Literally Spider-Shaped? Given the lack of spideriness on her sprite that scene. But as for her actions... well. She claims that her 'helping' Noel is just charity; I find that I don't particularly believe her about that. Nor do I think it's likely to be as trivial as just "finally get to do a clinical trial of her Vampire Juice". She's up to something bigger. The question is whether we're going to actually learn anything about what that thing is, this route; I'm expecting her to be mostly involved in far-side events, even if she's unexpectedly poked her head into the near side—she was tied up with Makihisa, and is a regular at the mansion, and both of those are points far-side-ward—and as such it wouldn't shock me if she were to mostly just Not Involve Herself Farther in things for now.

[5:36 PM] Plus bonus "turns out Noel wasn't turning into a Dead Apostle to begin with, prior to Arach's intervention" irony!

[5:41 PM] ...and, for all her talk about how it's better to die than to become a vampire, it's kind of striking how definitively Noel chooses to live even when this entails turning-into-a-vampire. When she gave that die-rather-than-being-a-vampire speech to Shiki, I'd assumed this was her projecting, that her plan was to kill Shiki-who-she-Gettiered-herself-into-'know'ing-was-possessed-by-Roa and then to kill herself before her transformation was done. But then not only did she not do that but she also deliberately avoided letting the church find out about her transformation-in-progress, thus ensuring that they wouldn't kill her and she would (on her world-model) become a vampire. (And thus, because Cruel Irony, losing her chance to discover that she was Not Actually Becoming A Vampire before Arach got her.)

[5:51 PM] Also: Yet More Timeline Confusion! Ciel has affirmed the 'joined the church at age twelve' story, and apparently has been an Executor for six years. Which doesn't fit any of my projected timelines! If Ciel snapped quicker-than-I-initially-thought under pressure from Roa, got fully possessed and destroyed her hometown and got killed and joined the church at age 12, became an Executor at age 13, and has been at it for six years, then... well, that does line up with SHIKI's incident seven years ago, but then in that case what's going on with 1989 and with 13-years-ago? (Which aren't the same year, because this version of Tsukihime is set in The Era Of Smartphones and that era started post-2002.) Let's see. Suppose Ciel was born 1989, Roa possessed her in 2001, and now it's 2008. That's... unlikely, unless smartphones reached fixation a few years earlier in Japan than in the US? But the first iPhone was only 2007, so I doubt it. Overall, I continue to not see any plausible timeline in which Noel-and-now-Ciel's claims around Ciel's age-at-which-she-got-tied-up-with-the-church line up.

[11:17 PM] ...am I wrong about when the present day is? Is it actually 2014, rather than 2020ish? If the present is 2014, then smartphones are plausibly already reasonably at-fixation in a way they wouldn't have been in 2008, and that lines up with the 13-years-ago number. But then that doesn't line up with her supposed 7-year timeline in the church, and so yet again I'm forced to conclude that that has to be some sort of lie unless there's something weird going on that I'm failing to consider.

June 24, 2023

[1:09 PM] !!! Satsuki is here at school on Day 11! Alive, to all appearances! I’d thought she was one of the unnamed-at-the-time missing students who got mentioned on Day 3, but apparently not!

[1:14 PM] …or, no, apparently she was out for a few days for reasons related to the serial killings, she’s just back now! I’m not sure what to make of that, but it’s definitely Interesting! Either she’s been vampirized but found some very-exceptionally-effective way of hiding it and avoiding sun-related problems and continuing to act like herself-as-she-was-pre-turning, or her run-in with the serial killer in this route somehow got derailed such that she didn’t end up vampirized by it! Interesting either way; I’m curious to see how her thread gets developed, when the far side comes around!

[2:43 PM] Huh, interesting that Shiki still pulls the “escape to the park” maneuver after The Incident With Kohaku, despite this involving running through a residential area a ways and despite the largeness of the Tohno mansion-grounds-forest! I suppose distance-from-the-targets-he’s-been-most-fixated-on was a higher priority for him, in his escape-panic, than more general distance-from-the-nearest-people. (Or perhaps the park is bigger than I’m envisioning it as being from the art, enough to beat out even the 40-acre-if-I’m-remembering-right Tohno forest. Or perhaps he’s thinking strategically enough to realize that he’s more likely to be successfully chased after in the Tohno forest than in the public park. There are lots of options, just all of those options Imply Things Not (Yet?) Stated Directly.)

[6:49 PM] Day 13 complete! Wow that was A Lot.

[6:53 PM] So, the timeline-mystery is now resolved, via a six-year gap in which it was in fact very reasonable to count her as not-aging, because she was dead throughout that time. (Placing us, then, in 2014.) Meaning that Ciel is actually substantially younger in the remake, 19 rather than ~25! And also meaning that she Just So Happened to wake up the same year that Roa got to SHIKI, which seems like very much Not A Coincidence, even if it's not quite as direct a connection as the original's "SHIKI inverted ~immediately upon Roa!Ciel's death" one. Something something world didn't consider Roa to be alive until he was back re-active something something, maybe, and thus didn't see the need to enforce aliveness on 'Roa'-who-was-actually-Ciel?

[6:56 PM] (I don't recall any explanation from the original, and am somewhat unclear in the remake too, regarding why it is that Ciel alone seems to have immortality-for-as-long-as-Roa-lives, from among his many castoffs over the centuries. Presumably the same bug-in-the-world with her soul being bound to his also applied to everyone else's? I suppose possibly there are, in fact, a bunch of other immortal Roa-castoffs running around, and they just lack the rest of Ciel's exceptional ability-set and as such aren't Doing Big Things with their immortality the way Ciel is. (After all, someone at the Church needed to have enough idea what was going on to give Ciel the authentication-error metaphor.))

[7:02 PM] The remake version of the Ciel-versus-Shiki showdown was, as the original was, Thoroughly Excellent. Even with my faded-at-this-point memories of the original, I feel reasonably confident this time in proclaiming that the remake version is at least comparable in quality, if not better. Because it successfully brought me near-to-crying, towards the end, and crying is a rare-and-prized thing for me which I would remember had I done it during the original Tsukihime; thus I infer that, while the original plausibly brought me near-to-crying too (the memory is fuzzy enough that I'm not confident it did, but it's at least plausible), it didn't bring me to Actual Crying, meaning plausibly-comparable quality but probably-not-substantially-higher quality.

[7:06 PM] (I am somewhat unclear on where Ciel's information-source is, as far as backtracing the Shiki-Adoption Switcheroo goes. Records-investigation could get her as far as learning of the existence of two Shikis, if the records were erased sloppily, but at the time when she found Roa's coffin she'd gotten that investigation done and inferred SHIKI, rather than Shiki, to have been the adopted one, and I'm not sure what additional records she could have found to make her realize that she had it backwards. But this is the sort of minor thing which will plausibly not be returned to; the details aren't hugely plot-essential, even if I happen to be idly curious about them.)

[7:08 PM] (And I don't think she was lying, at the coffin scene, about getting it backwards, because it wouldn't really have... helped? It wasn't like exactly which of the Shikis was which particularly factored into her cover-story for continuing to hang around him, or anything. I think she just... got additional information, somehow, afterwards?)

[7:24 PM] Then we had the Noel showdown. Which was... not nearly as intensely good as the Ciel showdown? But it was still interesting; it felt much less out-of-place than e.g. the Ciel-versus-random-monster-of-Roa's fight in the finale of Arcueid's route, much more like it was actually about the characters rather than just a new fight scene for its own sake. Overall, I like Noel a lot as a villain! I'm not sure where I'm ultimately going to fall on whether her finale taking the form it did was to the benefit or the detriment of the remake, relative to the original—it involved... a lot of Flashy Fighting With Less Emotional Baggage Than The Fight It Immediately Followed?, where I found Noel at her most interesting during the earlier sections of the route where she was less about the Direct Fair-Ish Combat (which she was, after all, not hugely good at) and more about the Preying Upon Those Weaker Than Her—but it was, at the very least, Interesting.

[7:29 PM] And, as a subcomponent of the Noel showdown, we got the big flashback to Roa!Ciel! Which was both effective-in-its-own-right, as an establishment-of-how-horrible-Roa-can-get and as a contextualization for Noel and why she's a mess in some of the specific ways that she is, and also interesting from a standpoint of there sure did seem to be some familiar figures there. There was the spidery one who was monologuing in a very recognizably Arach-like manner, and there was also, I'm pretty sure, Vlov's silhouette! Which, coupled with the mention of an unexpected sixth person showing up and throwing off Roa's plans, has me very much suspecting that this isn't the last we're going to see of this particular event, that it's going to be unveiled still farther either over the remaining day(-or-maybe-days-if-the-remake-adds-an-extra) or somewhere in the Far Side. (More likely the latter, for previously-mentioned "Arach seems Far Side-flavored" reasons.)

[7:32 PM] (And also: Vlov seemed to really hate Roa, during his fight with Shiki and Ciel, to the point of there being some implication that he'd come to town specifically in order to get some sort of revenge on him. Vlov's silhouette seemed, in Noel's flashback, to be not actively attacking. So what happened, to flip Vlov's opinions on Roa as hard into antagonism as they ultimately got flipped? This also points in the direction that probably Vlov will have more revealed about him in the Far Side, that he won't be relegated to Offscreen Irrelevance the way Nrvnqsr did in the original Far Side.)

[7:37 PM] And then Ciel made her very interesting comment, that since Shiki and Roa are merging into one Shiki would be able to remember anything Roa had done, and thus definitely hadn't killed anyone. Which leads to the question: where, then, did Shiki's two days of missing memories disappear to? He jumped straight from Friday to Sunday. At first I'd been leaning towards mostly Roa with some outside chance that it had been Ciel doing her memory-wiping thing repeatedly, but at this point if Ciel had done it she'd have admitted it, and apparently it can't have been Roa either. So who can it have been? It seems like not-Arcueid's-style, so I'm leaning towards not-her; and, while it seems like it might have served Mario's goals somehow (...not that I've got the best read on what his goals are, even now), it doesn't seem like it's within his capabilities, relative to my current model of them. So I'm not sure! One more Lingering Mystery for the collection.

[7:41 PM] One place where I find the remake to suffer a bit relative to the original, here: it loses the feeling of Repeated Finale-Fakeouts. In the original, Roa is killed, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got Happy Epilogue to go! And then he starts possessing Shiki. And then Shiki and Ciel have their big showdown, and at the end of it they're closer to one another than ever and have a plausible-sounding plan for his defeat, and this initially appears like, okay, the protagonists have won, now we've just got the Happy Epilogue to go! And then Roa is stronger-than-planned and takes Shiki outside and Arcueid is there waiting, and only then does the true finale happen. Whereas, here, Roa's death happens early enough to be very clearly a start-of-tension-building rather than a finale, and then the narrative pointedly brings back all its hooks of Future Antagonists after the Shiki-and-Ciel showdown rather than doing any sort of fakeout, with Noel showing up immediately and then with Arcueid getting her interlude-to-remind-everyone-that-she's-still-active before the Shiki-and-Ciel-in-Ciel's-apartment scene. And I liked the original's finale-fakeouts, so I feel a bit sad about their absence in the remake.

[7:49 PM] Also I was somewhat surprised at how non-awful Roa!Shiki's attack on Kohaku ended up being, in this version. Still bad, certainly—and presumably worse, in the Bad End branch I have yet to explore—but much less specifically hitting her right in the yet-to-be-revealed Deep Backstory Traumas, compared to how it went in the original. Which... probably wouldn't have been surprising to me if Arcueid's route were different, but since Arcueid's route did still keep the sexual elements of Shiki's attack on her in the alleyway the one night (albeit in toned-down form), I was kind of expecting something similar here? But instead the thing of Roa-instilled aggression taking on a specifically-sexual shape is mostly left very understated, mostly only visible (at least so far) in Shiki's somewhat-more-active flirtation in the days before things come to a head and in Flashback!Roa!Ciel's state of nudity. Which is interesting! I wonder what led Nasu to tone that down as far as he did in the rewrite, while still leaving the Arcueid-route bit relatively un-toned-down; in my mind, the two had seemed more of-a-kind with one another, more "probably either both go or neither goes"-shaped.

June 25, 2023

[11:22 AM] Well! Normal end get! Which is not the true end, because apparently the endings have been rearranged this time around! :o

[3:40 PM] ...and true end get! In unexpectedly-actionized form!

[3:46 PM] This is much more the sort of thing I was semi-expecting back in Arcueid's route, after the Vlov fight proved Unexpectedly Escalatory relative to anything in the original. But was nonetheless unexpected here, because after the way Arcueid's route was in fact not ever re-actionized to that degree of intensity post-Vlov I expected the same to hold of Ciel's route. But nope! Big Apocalyptic Setpiece-Battle Finale! Which it's going to take me a while to settle my feelings on, probably; but it does definitely drive me in the direction of more substantially internally differentiating the remake from the original, thinking of it more as a different story which happens to contain many overlapping components from the original, rather than as the-original-but-with-extra-budget. (Much moreso than e.g. Noel did; Noel felt like she was still basically running on standard Tsukihime-ish narrative stakes and standard-for-the-remake-ish power scales, being an extra wrinkle in the plot and character arcs but being mostly tonally in-line with the original; whereas the Big Arcueid Fight was very dramatically outside of the tone-space covered at any point in the original.)

[3:48 PM] (I remain confused about what That One Monster Of Roa's was doing, in the finale. Like, it felt like much less of a tonal/pacing hiccup this time around, a much briefer fight which did some work in showing Ciel's mental state in a route where her mental state is a core focus in a way it wasn't nearly as much in Arcueid's route; but it's still weird, from an "I don't understand why Nasu included it at all" standpoint. Given its spideriness, maybe it's going to be related somehow to whatever-is-going-on-with-Arach, once the far side comes around, and so it's here for purposes of Early Foreshadowing?)

[4:05 PM] ...I feel like Nasu's action-scene-writing has grown increasingly extravagant over time in a not-unambiguously-positive way. Like, the original Tsukihime's action scenes were generally pretty lightweight; Fate/stay night's were a lot more intense, but were still mostly pretty grounded scale-wise, even despite all the overpowered abilities being thrown around; but then Mahoyo had [rot13 for Mahoyo spoilers]gur ovt nzhfrzrag-cnex frdhrapr[/rot13] which dwarfed even the biggest Fate/stay night fights scale-wise, and the Tsukihime remake escalated still farther from there, with both Vlov and Arcueid escalating to attacks which straight-up would have destroyed the whole city had they not been stopped. And, like, the scenes are cool? But I feel like they're also... tipping increasingly in the direction of feeling out-of-place relative to their surrounding works, over time, tonally, in some way that's hard to articulate. Or... no, not quite that. Shaping the tone of their surrounding works, let's say. It's very hard to hold onto an original-Tsukihime-ish relatively-small-scale-storytelling mood amid a Big Fight Scene Where The City Is At Risk Of Being Casually Squished As A Side-Casualty; that those sorts of big fights happen anyway is one of the key elements tonally differentiating the remake from the original. And that's fine as long as one is aiming to write stories with the sort of tone that those fight scenes bring about; but it seems like a... loss of versatility? It reduces his ability to do other sorts of tone. I'm not sure that the modern-day Nasu would be capable of writing the sorts of relatively-smaller-scale stories that he started his career with, with Kara no Kyoukai and with the original Tsukihime, and that seems kind of sad, because I liked those stories. And, like, I like his more recent stuff too! But there's still something sad in the feeling that he couldn't go back to doing things-like-the-older-stuff even if he tried.

[4:11 PM] Anyway! Big Action Setpiece. Cool novel way of killing off Roa, which I found very elegant. And then a nice epilogue, mostly pretty similar to the original Ciel true-end epilogue as far as I'm managing to recall it. (...although it felt a bit more repetitive after the normal-end epilogue, here, since they covered a lot of the same ground as one another.) I didn't find the epilogue this time around to be as emotionally-impactful as I recall having found the Arcueid true-end epilogue—the big moments of emotional impact this route were mostly earlier, the various Big Moments Of Catharsis between Shiki and Ciel and between Shiki and Arcueid—but it still closed things off well enough in its own right, and was generally enjoyable.

[4:12 PM] ...and now all that's left is branch-exploration! And then the final accounting of my thoughts and of whatever lingering mysteries-from-this-route have yet to be resolved.

[4:17 PM] (Also I don't 100% understand the divergence between the normal-end branch and the true-end branch. Or, like, I get that Shiki trying harder to let Arcueid down gently in the true-end branch leads her to have more brainpower to spare on continuing to think while being All-Consumingly Mad At Him, thus leading her to invoke Serious Large-Scale Reality-Warping against him rather than simpler-and-more-direct "regenerate and then apply Large Quantities Of Violence"-shaped actions like she uses in the normal-end branch; but I don't get the divergence on Ciel's end, why normal-end!Ciel has the Seventh Scripture but true-end!Ciel delays getting it and instead rushes to grab Shiki first. It seems like they diverge even before the reality-warping comes out, based on some other factor I have yet to discern?)

[10:51 PM] 100% completion done! At least to the best of my ability to discern via lack of non-viewed flowchart-entries, via lack of non-unlocked music-player tracks, and in general based on gallery-completion. 44 hours logged total for Ciel's-route-counting-branch-exploration, apparently. I'd be curious to see how that compares with my time on Arcueid's route, but unfortunately I didn't have game-time-logging set up for my Switch emulator last year the way I do now, so I suppose that will remain forever a mystery.

[11:02 PM] Thoughts from branch-exploration: - The "Shiki-under-Roa's-influence kills everyone in the mansion" bad-end-branch was High-Quality Horror. Very effective slow unveiling. Also I am very curious what Kohaku was thinking, in that one, with her continuing to pretend everything was normal even after both Akiha and Hisui were dead. I mean, presumably she was thinking "it would be undollish to have feelings about this, so I'm going to Not"; but it's still somewhat surprising to me that she was so blase about Hisui's death specifically, as opposed to e.g. adding Shiki more unambiguously to her revenge-target-pile and then being more cautious around him. I suppose possibly she intended to lace his food with Interesting Substances next time she fed him, and was foiled only by his un-accounted-for change of diet, or something? - Meanwhile, in the branch where everything isn't quite as terrible, we've got a very interesting interaction between Kohaku and Hisui around carrying Shiki up to his room, wherein Kohaku asks Hisui to do it (despite knowing about Hisui's issues around physical-contact-with-men), Hisui objects, and then Kohaku proceeds to formally give Hisui permission to make an exception to her usual patterns, after which Hisui does it without further objection (albeit while still pretty clearly feeling uncomfortable about it.) This is interesting. This is a wrinkle in the Kohaku-Hisui dynamic that I don't recall seeing in the original; in the original, as I recall, Hisui's issue-pile is more purely her own, influenced by her knowledge of Kohaku's history but never indicated as far as I recall to be a product of any sort of, like, explicit understanding between the two of them, as opposed to just Hisui reacting in her own way to the knowledge of what Kohaku went through for her sake. But apparently there's more to it, in the remake! - ...and then we had the Big Moment in the other side of red garden trailer, with Satsuki. The trailer as a whole was Very Pretty, but also more specifically I am so interested to see what's going on with the Satsuki route, and that single few-second patch of trailer is probably the biggest indicator I've seen to date of its likely shape.

[11:17 PM] Lingering mysteries: - Whence the missing memories? I would think Roa even more, now, after the everyone-in-the-mansion-dies branch, except once again that contradicts Ciel's statement that, if one does a thing under Roa's influence, one will remember that. And, indeed, even when Shiki is temporarily forgetting / not turning his mind towards Roa's activities, as in the scene with Mario and Shiki's lack of thinking-about-it-afterwards, it's pretty consistently the case that those moments are still followed by the eye of the narrative, indicating at least some degree of theoretical accessibility-to-Shiki probably. Whereas for the two missing days there's just nothing. So I'm not sure what's going on there. - Speaking of which: Mario! What's his deal? After this route we've got probably-close-to-everything-we're-going-to-get on Noel—she seemed like she had a pretty complete arc, here, and while I expect her to still feature in the far side I don't specifically expect her to be a big player in it—and I've updated towards Mario's two less-in-focus minions (Karius and the other one) being probably Actually Genuinely Unimportant Side Characters, but Mario himself has taken a big step up in Mysteriousness, similarly to Arach albeit less immediately plot-affectingly. It sure does seem like there's some sort of hivemind or body-transference or something along those lines going on, in the Laurentis family, and apparently they-via-Mario are looking for the secrets of immortality, but we've got very little in the way of detail, so far. Little enough that I find myself wondering if we're going to get more church-focus in The Other Side of Red Garden than we did in the original Far Side, to go more into this. - What's up with the variable stopping power of Shiki's eyes? The story specifically makes a point of noting that even just tracing a line, on one of Vlov's dogs, is enough to stop it in its tracks and render it sufficiently definitively Dead that it can't even take purely-reflexive final actions like Bite Down Harder On Shiki; and yet, in the Roa!Shiki-and-Ciel-kill-each-other ending, Ciel manages to remain functional enough to stab through Roa!Shiki even after he stabs a point on her, which naively I'd expect to have even more stopping power than tracing a line. (And I half-recall that Roa similarly managed Action In His Final Moments in Arcueid's route, even if it's been long enough that I no longer remember the precise details.) Something something Lifescale something something, higher Lifescale leads to increased ability to continue acting after getting got with Mystic Eyes of Death Perception? (This would also line up with Arcueid being able to straight-up keep on fighting him, when he slashes her lines in the normal-end branch, only being somewhat slowed down rather than anything more serious.) - ...plus everything already discussed earlier, Vlov's feelings towards Roa and Arach's deal and so forth.

[11:18 PM] ...oh, also, the bit in the Black Key exposition-branch where Ciel starts out trying to replace all references to magecraft with prayer only to give up midway through was Very Funny. One of my favorite comedic moments in the whole VN, I think.

[11:20 PM] And that's everything, I think! It's been fun. I look forward to The Other Side of Red Garden coming out, whenever it does that.

[11:23 PM] (It sounds, from Ciel-sensei's lesson with the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, like plausibly it'll be less action-y; it was described there as being more mystery-shaped instead. I'm curious to see whether that means the Fights With Apocalyptically Powerful Abilities Being Thrown Around Endangering Everyone are less present in the far side than in the near side; my current guess is no, that we'll see similar sorts of stakes-escalation around e.g. the big Akiha fight, plausibly whatever is going on with Arach, et cetera, because as mentioned earlier I'm not convinced Nasu is really capable any more of not doing that sort of thing.)

[11:30 PM] ...also I wonder if Satsuki's route is going to end up being sort of a bridge between the near side and the far side. Because we keep getting all these hints of far-side-content hooking back in with Roa's schemes, with the person-who-sounded-like-Arach in Noel's flashback (and, for that matter, more generally with the nature of whatever Roa was trying to do against Arcueid in that incarnation being repeatedly teased-but-not-revealed), and with whatever is going on between Roa and Vlov that hasn't been discussed much yet, and so forth; and, in the Other Side of Red Garden trailer, Satsuki was the one character to be shown against the backdrop of the broader city rather than specifically of the Tohno mansion; and, of course, Satsuki herself has a connection with Roa, on account of his being the one who turns her. So... possibly that route is going to be some sort of grand-finale blend-of-the-two-halves'-respective-tones-and-casts, or something? And if the remake were following original-Tsukihime-tone then I'd expect not-that, because the near-side/far-side split in the original is pretty sharp and never really gets blended like that; but the remake has at this point established itself as fully willing to handle tonal things differently, compared with the original, so I'm less confident in that and as such this seems a lot more plausible.

[11:34 PM] ...oh, also another lingering mystery I forgot to list earlier: what's up with Satsuki's apparent survival, in Ciel's route? Being attacked and then making it through well enough to be able to attend school in daylight, which is even more mysterious than if she'd just been butterflied into not-being-attacked. I have very little idea, right now, what to make of that, but it's definitely Interesting and something to keep an eye on.

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

EVERY WEEK I WILL POST VARIOUS REVIEWS I’VE WRITTEN SO FAR IN 2024. YOU CAN CHECK OUT MY GOODREADS FOR MORE UP-TO-DATE REVIEWS HERE.

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87. Sidekicked by John David Anderson--⭐️⭐️⭐️

SIDEKICKED was a fun adventure following a kid who has extra strength in his senses (sight, smell, etc). He was paired up with a less than interested mentor who is never really there to save him when he needs it the most. While there is definitely an emphasis on the idea of good vs. evil and what that entails (and the black and white levels of moralities that come with these two terms), we also get a pretty good insight into a middle school young teen boy and his varying emotions about his crush and the new kid in his secret sidekick program.

I honestly thought the concept of this book was fun, especially because we got to see the world of superheroes from the perspective of a younger kid. And because I've always been a fan of superheroes and stuff, so that's always a fun thing for me to read. But the tone of this book felt...older? The main character was sassy (which I loved), but his thought processes also felt like this book would have been better set in high school.

But that being said, this was fun for what it was. I felt really bad for him and the hand he was dealt in the mentor department. But I did enjoy seeing how everything came together. I can see 11+ year-olds really enjoying this. I think it would make a good movie too, tbh, made me think of Sky High a bit, too!

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88. Cherry Magic! Vol. 2 by Yuu Toyota , Taylor Engel (Translator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Okay, I'm officially obsessed with this series. I know this is only volume 2, but sometimes I just know when I'm going to devour a series and this volume is it for me.

Still not the biggest fan of the artwork, but I love these two characters and the hilarious thoughts and commentary. I also love this idea of a character who isn't popular being romanced by another character that everyone else wants. I love this and need more!!

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89. Stay Gold by Tobly McSmith--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It took me a while to pick up STAY GOLD even though I knew I was going to love it (I was right). From the very beginning, I was pulled in by the personalities of these characters and how well they worked off each other. I also felt their emotions and frustrations as they navigated the difficult and sometimes dangerous halls of high school. I also appreciated how McSmith navigated the complex emotions teens have of how they are perceived by the people around them.

This was such an emotional punch and I think that some trigger warnings will need to be read by those who are sensitive to suicidal thoughts, misgendering, dead-naming, and homophobic violence. The way McSmith wrote on these topics also showed me how having people who love you surround you is so incredibly important. It was also a great insight into how one's experience can't be seen as everyone's experiences. There was one character who was pushing the MMC to do something that though could be helpful to a group of people, it could be incredibly dangerous for the MMC.

I'm cis, so I am privileged enough to never have to deal with this level of danger, but it broke my heart to see the MMC torn between what others believed to be right and what was right for him.

The FMC had such great character growth and is proof that sometimes patience is a virtue--but also hope.

I just really loved this book and I'm so glad I finally picked it up! Now I have to read McSmith's other book!

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90. Cherry Magic! Vol. 3 by Yuu Toyota , Taylor Engel (Translator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ugh the cuteness. I can't. Watching the MMC slowly fall and realize his feelings? Please.

I remember finishing this book and immediately cursing myself for not having Volume 4 readily available to read right after. I'm excited to see how those around them react to their slowly forming love. I also love seeing the jealousy and how intense the love interest is with the MMC.

Also, something I noticed is that the volumes have a content advisory but these are pretty clean (so far). Gay manga must equal parental advisory, I guess LOL. Please.

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91. The Haunted Forest Tour by James A. Moore & Jeff Strand--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Holy crap, THE HAUNTED FOREST TOUR was such a fun and bloody horror. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. The brutality and blasé way that the authors killed off characters was actually amusing. I don't think there was a heck of a lot of depth into this book, but I honestly just had such a good time reading this.

The one thing I wasn't a fan off and why the one star was taken off was the unnecessary mentions of these creepy men wanting to bend over certain women to have sex with them. It just felt predatory. Like the dude who had to constantly remind himself he was married. Or the ones who were always thinking about having sex with women who had no idea they were thinking these thoughts. It was creepy and unnecessary. God forbid we have a horror book where women aren't sexualized for the sake of making the reader either uncomfortable or just...because male authors can't help but comment on women who are "do-able".

Anyway, other than that, this story was pretty original and so, so bloody. It's a perfect October read tbh. Surprised the hell out of me. Would also make a great movie.

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92. The Escape by Katherine Applegate--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'm starting to find that I really like the story told from this perspective. I think this character is one of the more underestimated ones because when we see him from other characters' POVs, we see someone who is one way, but from his perspective, we see his true depths. Which is something he touches on here: he's the funny friend; the one who never seems to take anything too seriously, but this kid wears the humour mask as a survival thing.

This was a great addition to the series because of the emotional aspect. And THE ESCAPE also makes me want to read more of the series just so I can see this character get his greatest wish granted.

Also, loved how great they all worked together!

Will hopefully read the next one soon!

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93. Cherry Magic! Vol. 4 by Yuu Toyota , Taylor Engel (Translator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Stop, I can't with this adorableness.

The fact that these two characters are so different but not at the same time kills me. One is very good at hiding their nerves and if it wasn't for these powers, the MMC wouldn't even know it. Sigh, both a gift and a curse.

I love that the character growth in this one--especially as someone with social anxiety--happened so organically. The MMC is going at his own pace but is still keeping the love interest's feelings in mind. I seriously can't wait to see how this all develops over the next few volumes!

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94. Dick Fight Island by Reibun Ike--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My adventures in Boy Love Manga has led me to this interesting work of art.

While yes, the majority of this is definitely porn, the storyline was actually really interesting and unique. And the artwork is freaking stunning. My friend told me that he didn't finish volume 2, so I'll probably just stay with this one and remember the story (cough) fondly.

I'm happy I read this because it was truly something else, but if you're thinking of reading this, be prepared. I don't think I'd recommend reading this on the bus.

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95. Dread Detention by Jennifer Killick--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I read this book under a different name and I was so surprised to see it was the same book (I just bought a physical copy of this book and the other books in this series, so that was a nice surprised.)

I genuinely really enjoyed DREAD WOOD (or DREAD DETENTION). It definitely gave me EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS vibes, especially with some of the scarier scenes. I love middle grade horror books like this one because it's just pure story--sometimes, older books have too much focus on the characters themselves rather than the scary side of a horror book. I thought there was a good moral story behind this and I think it's great kids will (hopefully) get this message.

I also was reminded of the Katherine Arden middle grade horror books where kids work together to solve monster and scary mysteries.

DREAD WOOD did have moments where it felt older than its intended audience, so I'd probably recommend this to the older side of middle grade.

If you're scared of spiders, you'll either have to miss out on this one or you'll have to find your bravery!

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Have you read any of these titles? What were your thoughts?

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Happy reading!

[studiousbotanist]

having a good night got some important stuff done and about to lay down but also under read more is some grief talk and theres pics of AJ so pleas be careful thanks . #grief #suicide m (IM SAFE ! LOL . MENTIONED IN PASSING !)

i was looking at my friend folder finding somethign goofy to send a pal and i saw this and ;_; i never added my damn image on here ..... this card means everything 2 me still . a really funny bit thats transformed adn i think i would like to print it out . also this comic but this one really just tore me open ! lol !

im carrying it in my heart . AJ was really right with this comic . i miss you hon . it's weird right . like i just go days and days feeling like i'm non existent and i'm not even here the dissasociation is so bad and the only thing tahts helped ground me is talking about the good or bad of how im feeling with everything . im trying to hold it in and move but i mean . i just have no self awareness whether i'm actually Doing the job im trying to (shell everything inside) or if i'm just a mess and its spilling everywhere . i am trying to be more open and concise but its hard when i cant grasp !!! the concept of time LOL and shit ive said ! anyway . anyway . i love my friends . we were put on this earth to hang out and love . i miss AJ and its hard trying to find silver linings to 2023, like . meeting kitt and lynn ! fun birthday ! silverscream con ! got one of the best jobs ive ever had ! but i would trade all of it for march 23rd to have never happened .

it does not feel right trying to find a positive for last year, to be honest . i wish i could just let myself admit it was a horrible year . we lost AJ . i nearly got stabbed again, i was in an awful mental state and i felt drifted further apart from my sis and sil than i had in a while . while a lot of it got better, thankfully, there was just so much rotten there . i nearly attempted again, but i have a wonderful support system irl that i really need to use more . (love you ari and ide and naomh) with all of this said, i can only hope 2024 will be kinder . ive had a couple friends already get terrible news . 11 days in i've got some shaky things going on but man . man . lol enough trying to make positive out of it i just want to cry !!!!!! last year sucked !!!!! last year suuuuuucked ! FUCK last year !!!! THROWING A TANTRUM !!!!!! phew . okay . thank you for reading . i miss my friend . im grateful for the friends that are still around and understand the feeling .

[imhereforscm]

You have an natural talent for writing ♥️. The Karno angst fic is fabulous. So here i am requesting two fics linked together. Please make this fic a continuation of ' new '. Where a goddess reader dies and gets reborn as a human girl and falls in love with Scorpio in her teenage years; but Scorpio rejects her. They both die and are reborn as a God and Goddesses. But reader has no memory of her past life and she starts dating Tauxolouve but Scorpio still has feelings for her. Please give this two ending -

• Where she regains her memories and falls for Scorpio.

• She doesn't remember her past life and she is happily married to Tauxolouve.

Another thing I am typing this half asleep, so I hope you can understand what i am trying to say. Take care of yourself, do not worry. You are a talented writer. You are my inspiration ❤.

"New" part 2

Genre: angst

Warnings: graphic death scenes, a lot of blood, heavy language at some points, mentions of attempted suicide

A/N: I feel like you've been waiting so much, I'm so sorry.(⁠｡⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠) Also, thank you thank thank you so much for the beautiful words!!｡⁠:ﾟ⁠(⁠;⁠´⁠∩⁠`⁠;⁠)ﾟ⁠:⁠｡

Tauxolouve's screams made his vocal chords feel ready to snap, his head about to split in two and his veins to rip through his skin by the boiling blood flowing through them.

The god on the receiving end of his hatred shrunk back into himself, horror overtaking him at Tauxolouve's enraged state.

Tauxolouve was always known for his kindness, his tranquility and patience, along with his soft-spoken nature. But now, with the crimson red of your blood drenching his white uniform, like spilt paint on a canvas, everything became a memory, his eyes piercing the lower ranking god, filled with loathing. "You were supposed to protect her!" Tauxolouve's voice cracked as his volume rose more and more. "She picked you for that reason! Because she relied on you! She believed your love was enough to provide her a good life and you just allowed her to die like this!" He looked down at your steeled form, blood staining your tunic through the broad wound across your chest, were your ribs got crashed by the pillar that had crumbled a few minutes ago.

The god felt ashamed, having all the eyes on him like this. As if the swarming deities in the grand hall were crows, ready to eat his corpse. He slowly rose to his feet, his golden sandals and knees stained with your blood and then he ran away. Away from the stains he could've prevented if he hadn't abandoned you and ran away first. If he hadn't betrayed your blind and devoted trust, yet he couldn't run away from them completely. The blood was on his clothes and would always follow him.

Tauxolouve hugged your broken body close and with his face buried into the crook of your neck, he sobbed and the tears created wet trails down your collarbones, before mixing with the traumatizing amount of blood across your chest.

Your ribs had broken and your heart was the next victim, leaving you with nothing but hushed lips and eyes that harbored no real meaning in their attention, as they were left half lidded and dull.

Tauxolouve didn't care about the pitiful stares that were present only for the sake of susurrus, as he cried like a small child against your body, not leaving your side once even when he felt your body growing cold beneath his palms. "My little lady... My sweet angel..." He mourned against your lifeless skin. "Why did you have to leave me? If only I was there sooner. If only I could prevent it all...!" He cried out, the pain so intense he swore it would slice his chest open, just like yours.

That day was the day Tauxolouve lost himself. He became distant, living his torture by himself every waking moment of his terribly long life. And how he wished he could just die, but he couldn't simply do that. The time he tried to rip the stars out of his eyes, the king had to intervene and for a long time afterwards, he had to be supervised at all times. Some days by Karno, some by Huedhaut, some by Leon. He wasn't trusted to be alone for many years afterwards, everyone in fear, thinking he might try something like that again.

"Feeling romantic tonight?" Leon addressed him, striding up to Tauxolouve, whose eyes were casted high upon the night sky.

"Why are you here?" He asked and even Leon's heart twitched uncomfortably at the lifeless tone. No matter how much time went by, he refused to get used to this new, broken Tauxolouve. "You don't need to watch me anymore."

"Who said I'm obeying orders?" Leon scoffed, deciding to hide his true feelings under his usual cocky mask and came to stand beside Tauxolouve, who was leaning onto the flinty edge of the top of the glorious palace. Leon's whiskey eyes wandered around the sky, searching through the countless constellations, until he spotted a certain one, shinning exceptionally brightly tonight. "So that's why you're here..."

Tauxolouve remained wordless, his own hurtful turmoil swirling like a ravaging hurricane within his mind.

"Lou..."

Tauxolouve hummed and even that tiny indicator that he was listening was enough to satisfy Leon.

"She hasn't lost her stars."

Tauxolouve's dark irises, slowly turned to his minister, his eyebrows furrowing suspiciously. "What are you saying...?" His voice came out a little hoarse, given how this was his first conversation for the day.

"Lou..." Leon averted his eyes from the endless starry sky and looked deep within Tauxolouve's. "She's out there."

Tauxolouve's fingers twitched against the flinty build of the top of the palace at the sound of those words. Could he really hope? He honestly feared that. He feared being wrong and reliving the loss all over again. "If you're playing with my feelings, stop this instant."

"I'm not fooling you." Leon contradicted him, almost insulted he was suspected of such a thing.

"I know your sense of humor can be twisted." Tauxolouve pushed some more verbally.

"I won't lie, it can." He snorted. "But not now. Now I'm being honest."

Tauxolouve pursed his lips and stared at the far off sky's horizon. Could he really hope...?

Maybe he could, if he looked lower. Much much lower, away from the Heavens and down on Earth.

Hair were swaying in the breeze and eyes looked up at the sky. If only they knew they were admiring the same constellation.

You looked up and your lips naturally curled into a smile. "You're here, good." You sat up straight and made room for Scorpio to join you on the bench.

"You said you needed me, so make it quick, I'm busy." He started coldly as he took a seat beside you, but still keeping a certain distance from you.

Your smile twisted into a nervous one, your fingers fidgeting with each other and you looked down at them, searching for the correct words.

"Hurry it up, woman." Scorpio complained impatiently. "I don't have all night." It wasn't that he didn't want to spend time with you and you didn't know that, but neither was homework the reason. He just wanted to run away from his feelings... Scorpio loved you, but held back. Looking into your eyes, he identified the righteous thing that needed to be done immediately.

His life was intense and he meant that in a negative way. He had to deal with things people his age—or literally anyone—shouldn't. The most dangerous kinds of people would often chase him down for illegal negotiations of his father and the money he owes these sick people.

"Scorpio, I..." You paused, your voice lowering as you shrunk into yourself, your shoulders rising as if to hide you between them. "I love you...!"

Your words were only three, but how they made Scorpio feel... It was indescribable. The dilemma was stabbing him repeatedly. One half of him was ushering him to take you into his arms and kiss you deeply, yet the other dragged him away, saying how it would be cruel to put you in danger by mixing with him. You deserved to be safe and by his side, you couldn't, since anything dear to him could be used as bait to get him to do anything they wanted.

"What... Do you say...?" You asked timidly, every terrible scenario racing through your head at once at the sight of his shocked expression. You swallowed thickly as his deep voice tumbled out of his throat and one of those feared scenarios turned to reality, throwing your heart onto the ground and hearing it break like glass.

"Let's forget this conversation ever occurred." Scorpio's dark eyes shifted to the side, uncomfortably. He got up from the bench and took a few steps away from you, before pausing and with his back still facing you, he spoke words that hurt you both. "Nothing can exist between us." Walking away from you and crossing the dark street, Scorpio clenched his jaw and his fingers curled into fists. The half of him he just denied screamed at him to turn around and apologize. Explain everything and love you. But he didn't...

The next day, you avoided each other at all times and places. You, because the sight of his face reminded you of your heartbreak and him, because the sight of you reminded him of the feelings he had to deny.

School was finally over and the crowd previously stuffed into the building began swarming out on the streets, everyone huffing and groaning, finally free of their boredom and all the irritating people they had to deal with.

You were about to walk back home too, when you spotted Scorpio standing just below the stairs, looking down at his phone with a disturbed expression.

He was about to leave, when you rushed up to him and called out his name, but to no avail, since he hadn't heard you. You respected his declination from yesterday night and you only wanted to ask him to forget all about last night and see if you could remain friends, like before.

Scorpio kept walking forward fast and with rather aggressive and determined footsteps and you found yourself practically jogging to catch up to him. He took a turn into a narrow alley and you were finally able to reach him.

"Scorpio..." You spoke with slightly ragged breaths.

His inky eyes opened widely and he turned around to face you. "What the hell are you doing here, stupid?!"

You were surprised by his sudden outburst, seeming eager to shoo you away.

"I'm not here to bother you, really! I just-"

"No, that not it, you don't get it. You need to fucking leave now!" He demanded and knowing you shouldn't push your luck, you were about to comply and leave, when another voice joined the two of you.

"You got a girlfriend? Well now, that makes the job easier for us." A man with a scar across his face stepped into view and gave Scorpio a twisted grin.

"She's not my girlfriend. I just found her wandering here." Scorpio contradicted him, doing his best to come out unbothered by your presence and convince him he's never seen you before.

"Oh, really?" The man seemed to see through that lie and pressed on for answers. "You certainly seemed really passionate about getting her to run away. If she was a mere passerby, she'd walk away eventually, but you ordering her to leave...? That means she would've stayed."

Another man, taller than the first one came behind you and grabbed your arms tightly and making you wince in pain.

"I told you she doesn't have anything to do with me! Get that shit through your thick skull!" Scorpio raised his voice and the man laughed with a hoarse tone, which sounded like he had been smoking for years.

"You know your bastard old man owes us a shit tone of money." He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a small, but sharp knife.

"Not my business anymore. He threw me out and disowned me." Scorpio clicked his tongue and took out his own knife.

You were left breathless, watching the scene unfold before you. You never heard of that part of Scorpio's life before, even though you had assumed you were close.

The man lashed out at Scorpio with the knife pointed to his throat and you screamed out his name in fear, thinking Scorpio was done for. But your heart raced in a somewhat relief, when Scorpio grabbed his wrist and twisted it unapologetically, proceeding to brake it in the process.

The man with the scar hissed and groaned in pain, holding his broken wrist close to his stomach and glaring at Scorpio, his knife falling to the dirty ground of the alley. "You bastard... You're quite reckless when we have your woman."

Scorpio's gaze shifted to you and then into one of horror and regret, seeing your face twist in pain and your vocal chords squeezing out a scream of agony, when the tall man holding you plunged a knife into you.

Your world darkened before your eyes, with the last sight being Scorpio's enraged and devastated face and the hot feeling of your own blood, dripping from your open wound and staining your clothes, contrasting your body, which started growing cold.

Around fifty years passed and you waved your hand at Scorpio, from the balcony of your house as he passed by after a late night shift in the department of punishments. "How was work today?" You asked and your smile tugged on his heartstrings.

"The work was fine, the idiots there were the shitty part." He replied and you chuckled at his usual tone and choice of words. "How... Have you been?" He asked bashfully, keeping his casualty with you under a certain point, fearing his true feelings will come out and he'll ruin even those small and peaceful moments with you. You were Tauxolouve's lover and he knew better than to steal another man's woman.

And it was also the fact that your presence was what made Tauxolouve happy again. He heard about your previous divine life and how it ended and as well as the way Tauxolouve's heart was crashed, along with your ribcage and your blood painting both of your clothes. The tragic love story and Tauxolouve's healed heart. Something Scorpio didn't see fair to ruin for his own pleasure, even though it ate out at him every waking moment he considered the possibility of you being in his arms instead of Tauxolouve's.

"I had the day off and so did Lou, so we went out on a date." You responded with an affectionate smile as your memories swirled around your sweet moments and your lover's gentle lips and hands on you.

"I see." Scorpio's reply was curt and he was thankful for his generally surly reputation, since now he didn't need much effort to hide his feelings.

The curtains behind you parted and Scorpio's jaw clenched, when Tauxolouve stepped out onto the balcony. He walked to your side and leaned onto the railings, looking down at Scorpio. "Care to join us for dinner?"

Scorpio found it ironic to see you both standing high above him side by side, staring down at him with such welcoming eyes, he almost believed fate was mocking him in the cruelest way possible.

"Can't. Zyglavis has given me a shit tone of paperwork that I need to get through by sunrise." He declined using lies once again.

"Being a vice minister must be tough." Tauxolouve chuckled and Scorpio swallowed thickly, wishing he didn't have to go through all that play pretend. He was happy for both of you, yet he couldn't help feeling miserable, knowing he was fated to end up alone in the end.

{Ending 1}

You filled the vase with fresh water and dipped the flowers inside, closing your eyes and taking in their delicate floral scent.

The sunlight was basking into the house through the windows and the white curtains swayed with the gentle wind.

You hummed to yourself and with the vase in your hands, you danced slowly around the kitchen table, your hair swaying, fixed into a beautiful hairstyle.

You were about to place the vase on the table, when your vision blurred and figures began forming before your eyes.

At first you saw yourself with Tauxolouve, holding hands and walking side by side through a field of daises, with the sun setting in the background and your smiles sweet and carefree. But then, your hands parted and the sky ripped in two, into a colossal crack, which sucked you in and brought you by the side of a crying Tauxolouve, alone and with a devastated smile seeing you walk off by yourself.

You assumed that was when you left him and if you were not mistaken, the event that followed was...

You swallowed thickly and tightened your hands into fists, seeing as you couldn't look away from this cruel sight, which you wouldn't even wish it upon your worst enemy.

You laid across Tauxolouve's lap, with your ribcage broken and your blood spilling out of you, dipping both of your clothes into a deep crimson, as another god rushed off, with bloodstained knees and sandals.

Your heart couldn't take anymore and yet this merciless higher power refused to let you go just yet.

You found yourself on Earth and you couldn't lie, you were quite intrigued. You hadn't heard anything else apart from the fact that you were a human in the same period with Scorpio and that the two of you lost your lives together. So now, that the truth was revealing itself before you, your mouth was left dry.

You watched everything from Scorpio's perspective and you were able to experience all of his emotional turmoil with your every interaction. He loved you, he truly did. And because he loved you so much was why he denied you. To protect you.

You returned to the present with a loud gasp and the wetness at your feet made you look down, only to find the vase you were about to place on the table earlier, broken to pieces and the flowers scattered around your sandals, dipping the end of your toga into a puddle of water.

The shards hadn't cut you, yet you were bleeding. Internally. Your heart was hurting that you had to hurt Tauxolouve again, because your feelings had shifted. That vision had brought everything back.

"Little lady?!" Tauxolouve rushed into the room, his eyes wide with worry at your shaky form. "Hey hey, what's wrong?!" He came to stand in front of you and cupped your face in his two big hands, tilting your head upwards so you were facing him.

Looking into his eyes, all your feelings came pouring out in the shape of hot tears, your chest jolting with your sobs and you moved your face away from his hold, refusing to face him any longer.

"Little lady-"

"Please, don't call me that. Please... It hurts..."

His fingers grew cold at your plea and his mouth dried. He remembered those words... His hands fell by either side of his hips and he stared down at the top of your head, as you held it low, looking at the ground in guilt. "Is it happening again...?"

You swallowed thickly, looking up at him through wet eyelashes.

"Is history repeating itself...?"

You opened your mouth to speak, but you only cried louder. "I'm so sorry, Tauxolouve!"

He pursed his lips together, his eyelashes resting on his cheeks, trying his best to keep the tears in. "Your feelings for Scorpio... They came back... They did... Right...?"

You nodded, finally managing to quieten down your cries. "I'm so sorry." You created some distance between the two of you and Tauxolouve's hand moved to reach for you instinctively, but he pulled it back, keeping it close to his stomach. "It all happened so suddenly... I... I don't know what else to say, except how sorry I am for hurting you again."

"(Name), tell me something."

You hummed, listening closely to him. "What is it?"

"I didn't do anything wrong, did I?" He asked, his irises swelling with tears. "I want you to be honest with me or else I won't be able to live with myself..." He swallowed thickly. "Did I hurt you or disrespect you in any way?"

"No! No, you didn't do any of that!" You rushed to reassure him, shaking your head in denial towards his statement.

"So I'm just... Not him..." Tauxolouve smiled in such a devastating way, you swore you could hear your heart breaking.

"Tauxolouve... I want to leave." You said, your heart clenching at the cruel fate Tauxolouve had to deal with for a third time, yet it simultaneously yearned for Scorpio.

"And I want you to be happy." He put his hand on top of your head and smiled down at you. "Even if you choose to not include me in your happiness."

You ran out of the house, your lungs begging for oxygen and your heart for a god.

You made your way to the department of punishments and pushed open the double leafed doors, startling Scorpio, who was sitting in his office by himself.

"Why the hell did you just barge in like-"

But his eyes widened, shock and disbelief colouring his face in a vivid red, when you suddenly yelled at him words that almost made him believe he was hallucinating. "I love you! Scorpio, I love you! Do you still love me too?!"

He just jumped from his seat, his shock too much to bear and he grabbed your face, crashing his lips into yours. Oh, how he had been craving this moment for two whole lifetimes now.

Your hair tangled with his fingers and his with yours, your lips connecting and coming apart only to come together again in hunger, not the hunger of lust, but the hunger of two lovers, star-crossed in the eyes of witnesses, but now they were about to prove them wrong.

{Ending 2}

The music played on loudly and happily and even though you were feeling quite shy, today was a day you'd only be happy.

Your snowy white dress swirled around you as Tauxolouve guided you around the dance floor, which was empty, reserved just for the two of you.

"You look absolutely beautiful, my wife." Tauxolouve's smile was one of the sweetest a man's lips could ever form and the love in his eyes was visible and obvious to everyone watching you two waltzing in circles around the ballroom.

"I love you, Lou." You said and your bright grin captivated everyone present. You were so beautiful in your wedding dress and your elaborate hairstyle, you could be the prettiest goddess in the Heavens.

"I love you more."

"No, I love you more!" You giggled.

"I told you, I love you more!" He laughed along and your bright smiles had successfully outdone all the jewellery in the ballroom by their vibrance.

The dance came to an end and the deities approached you one by one, giving you their most heartfelt blessings and sharing your indescribable happiness with you.

Scorpio stepped into view and his lips formed a rare smile. "I'm sure you'll be happy, so my wishes are pointless." It shattered his heart, but he knew you'd be happy, so maybe he could hold his pieces together for some more time.

"Thank you." You smiled and his breath hitched, the time stopping in his mind, not wanting to miss a second of your beauty.

"Well..." Seeing a few pairs of eyes on him, his face stiffened again and he bowed his head at you. "If he hurts you, tell me and I'll beat him up."

You chuckled and butterflies flapped their wings in his stomach. "Don't worry, he'll treat me wonderfully."

His eyes trailed to the wedding ring on your finger for a split second, before returning to your eyes. "I know... I'm sure of that." And with a nod of his head towards your husband, he stepped aside and leaned against a pillar, blinking a few times to keep the tears inside. He was happy for you, that was something he could never deny... But he'd prefer if he was the one who got to be by your side like this and share rings and vows with you. But he did make a vow that night.

If you didn't want him by your side as your lover or your husband, he'd make sure to be the best friend you could ever have.