#I have this irrational phobia of having bugs crawling on me

[nogchompa]

Good morning

[this-doesnt-endd]

I WENT TO PUT A DISH IN THE SINK AND A ROACH WAS CRAWLING OUT OF IT AND THEN I WALKED BY MY BOOKCASE ABD THERE WAS A FUCKING CRICKET!!!!!!!!!!! I CANNNOT FUCKING DO THIS!!!!!!!!

[gallusrostromegalus]

How does each of the main aeiwam cast react to spiders?

Ichigo: "...Why's my leg itchyyYEAUGH! DAMMIT!" *scoops spider up in piece of paper, opens window and throws it out* "OUTSIDE! SHOO! I hate it when they sneak up and on me...

Orihime: Had an intense close personal friendship with a Joro Spider that had made it's web on her apartment balcony when she was six. It's death at the end of summer was her first real experience with mortal loss, and she mourned it for weeks. She still recalls "Joro-San" fondly.

Uryuu: Secretly dreams of Spiders large enough to spin actual ropes of silk- the stuff is a marvel of chemical engineering, and would be incredibly useful to him as a Doctor or Fashion Designer. He feels like the difficulty of harvesting Spidersilk is the main thing holding back a Golden age of Humanity, and is disturbed to find out he shares ANY opinion with Mayuri Kurotsuichi.

Tatsuki: Paralyticly Phobic of spiders. Understands and appreciates their importance in the ecosystem, knows they can't hurt her and that the phobia is an irrational reflex, and even thinks some of them 'look cool as hell'. The second there's a live one in her presence, she locks up and can't move until someone removes it. (Usually Ichigo, because Orihime will just stare at it, fascinated).

Chad: Has a Pet Kitchen Spider. thought about shooing flies in it's direction, then felt bad for the flies.

Kon: Is a cat, hunts them, and will have nuanced discussions about how different spiders taste with Yuzu, the one person who will tolerate that analysis.

Keigo: Screams theatrically and jumps away and into someone's arms if they're there, but that's just how he reacts to anything that startles him.

Mizuiro: Fascinated by them, will stare at them with Orihime and tell her fun facts about Joro-Gumo Yokai and other lore, which delights her to no end.

Yoruichi: Like Kon, enjoys toying with them before eating them.

Urahara: Curled into the farthest corner, screaming, crying, throwing up, and begging Yoruichi to STOP FUCKING AROUND AND GET RID OF IT!

Rukia: *entirely genuine, with a huge spider crawling on top of her hair* "...what Spider?"

(Seireitei Squad Under The Cut)

Yamamoto: Utterly fails to notice or care. There are so many things he's seen that are so much worse, and honestly? Even when he was a young man he didn't give a shit. He slept rough delivering messages, waking up in the dirt with half a dozen bugs on him was normal.

Sasakibe: Thinks they're delightful. So many elegant designs! Such perfect sense of when to strike! Such patience! He finds out about Diving Spiders and goes Ape Shit. THEY MAKE THEIR ON SCUBA TANKS!!

Soi Fon: Spiders are cool but not as cool as wasps and hornets :)

Omaeda: Also has a Pet Kitchen Spider, but does not feel bad about shooing flies into it's web at all.

Gin: Isn't actually sure what spiders are, or if they're even real. He's seeing sixteen dimensions at once, something that minuscule gets lost in the noise. Still thinks that someone Screaming "SPIDER!" and everyone flailing around in fear or suddenly attacking the walls and furniture is a social game like "The Floor Is Lava"

Rose: Thinks they're cool right up until they're in his personal space and then they are VERY SCARY.

Izuru: Was the designated spider-wrangler for the third from the first day he transferred in, because everyone else is a huge bitch about them. he plays it cool, but he's actually creeped out by the really big ones.

Unohana: Spiders are garden Friends :) often heard verbally encouraging them to destroy her garden pests with calls of "GET HIS ASS!" coming from the Hydrangeas.

Isane: Everyone is sort of surprised how chill Isane is about dealing with spiders- even Yamada's Actually Dangerous Specimens- and she shrugs and tells them that she deals with more dangerous things every day, especially over in Pharmacology. It keeps the focus off the Bug she's actually terrified of: Butterflies.

Hanataro: Do Not Ask The Head Of Toxicology And 11th Division Pocket Medic About Spiders Unless You Are Prepared For A Seven-Hour Lecture With A Pop Quiz At The End.

Aizen: HUGE fan of Spiders. What splendid creatures- look at how carefully the spider selects the anchor points of it's web, the skillfulness with which it weaves. Such incredible patience, waiting for the lines of tension it's woven to snare it's game- though I suppose such patience is easier when the fly's capture is inevitable >:)

Shinji and Hiyori: *Screaming and flailing, hitting things at random (mostly each other) in a blind panic, because they share a braincell and that cell is TERRIFIED of spiders* "It's so fast!" "It was huge! It had to be a tarantula!" "We should burn the division down, just to be sure."

Momo: Escorted the little garden spider outside in a cup like ten minutes ago, and forgot about it because that's such a routine chore, and she was having a more important phone call at the time.

Byakuya: Rarely notices spiders, but sometimes one will scuttle across his desk and he'll stop to watch it for the seven minutes it takes to actually cross his desk with a neutral expression, before resuming whatever he was doing. It's a pleasant diversion for him, not unlike watching the koi fish swim around in the compound pond, and he resumes his duties feeling spiritually refreshed by that chance encounter with nature.

Renji: Not bothered by Spiders. VERY Bothered by his Boss's fucking peculiar-ass reaction to a spider wandering across his desk because to Renji, it looked like Byakuya had never actually seen a spider before and was staring at it with an expression that indicated his higher brain functions had ceased entirely. Is currently making plans to study "The Captain Kuchiki Spider Brain Glitch" by catching a bunch of spiders in a jar and releasing them into his office to see what happens.

Komamura: He's particularly fond of Jumping spiders, because they sing little songs while hunting that he can hear if it's really quiet. They're very cute. Gets very upset when people kill spiders or talk about killing them.

Iba: Not afraid of spiders but doesn't know what to do when they're in his way. Killed one in front of Komamura once when he was a little kid and Komamura was still his babysitter, Sajin gave him a huge and very upset lecture about respecting life in all it's forms... but did not actually teach Iba how to remove them. So every time he sees one he sorta stands there for a minute and hopes it will move, before yelling "BOSS!"

Shunsui: Does not want to admit how much Spiders freak him out. It's not fear, precisely- more of a disgust reaction. All bugs make his skin crawl and he understands how important they are, but can they do all that ecology stuff Far Away From Him, Please And Thank You?

Nanao: Like Unohana, reveres spiders as pest control. She takes it a step further, and actively collects Jumping Spider egg sacs as she finds them in the archives and tends to them over winter so when early spring comes, she can release several hundred thousand spiderlings into the archives to destroy the mites, bookworms, moth larvae and other archive pests before they can get a foothold. She usually does this while dumping out the entire terrarium and cackling manically.

Lisa: Immediately joins in on Nanao's Spider Propagation Project, much to Shunsui's horror.

Tousen: If there is a sudden shriek and burst of profanities and hexes in the ninth division, 90% chance it's because Kaname walked into a spider web again, his LEAST favorite texture in the Universe. Yes, including the curse nails. He'd keep them in his spine if it meant he'd never walk into another spiderweb.

Kensei: Often cracked open a beer while watching the evening news during his exile in the living world. Sometimes it was several beers, or something stronger if he'd had a rough day. One night, it was a bottle of Fireball as he watched the news, and felt too intoxicated to change the channel from the newshour, so he kept watching when PBS Nature came on, and damn near pissed himself laughing when he saw the Peacock Spider's Mating Dance. Full on Howling, tears streaming down his face, barely able to breathe, Pterodactyl-noises laughing. Nothing has been funnier before or since to him, so now whenever he sees a spider he starts guffawing and stop to explain WHY.

Shuuhei: Deeply confused by the fact spiders keep coming indoors. "Why are you all here?" he asks, doing a cobweb patrol with the broom before his boss gets back from the inter-division meeting. "What are you eating? Crumbs? Lint? Is it Lint you eat?"

Mashiro: Has a grasshopper-type Zanpakuto who is not a fan, so she attempts to destroy any spider she sees in solidarity. Usually misses and destroys something else.

Matsumoto: Spiders are cool, but not as cool as snakes :)

Hitsugaya: Grew up on a farm, and shares Momo's total non-reactivity to them. It's even deeper, because his constant ambient chill means spiders never climb on him if they can't help it.

Zaraki: Used to agitate Yumichika and Ikkaku by eating them. Now he agitates them by wandering off the trail during 11th Division Boot Camp or other deployments and coming back with extremely dangerous ones and handing them to Hanataro "fer yer collection". The 11th Division's Pocket Medic has explained toxicology at length to him, and now Zaraki thinks of various medicines as "Spider Pills" and "Scorpion Juice".

Yachiru: Still eats spiders. She's the sole exception to the Wrath of Komamura, because there is no malice or fear in her actions- it's perfectly natural and morally upstanding Carnivory. The rest of you are being irrational and jerks.

Ikkaku: Sometimes regrets his life choices when he sees the freak he's sworn loyalty to walk out of the trees with something venomous enough to kill half the gotei-13 with a single bite crawling over his face, then realizes that's FUCKING BADASS and is assured that he made the right choices.

Yumichika: *currently sneaking up behind Ikkaku with a fake spider on a string to affectionately terrorize him*

Mayuri: Unlike Uuryu, Mayuri isn't a Weenie, and he's making his dreams of Milkable Spiders the Size of Cattle a reality.

Nemu: Helping with that. This one is hers. She named it #47, after it's designation, Specimen Number 47.

Ukitake, *entirely genuine, with a huge spider crawling across his forehead* "...There's a spider in here?"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

hello I just got caught up on the free chapters of tto:u and I just wanna thank you for making it! I had to go on a pretty stressful family trip this past week, and I had to fly (which I'm terrified of, not for logical reasons but for phobia reasons. irrational fear of heights runs in my family) and honestly this story got me THROUGH that week. i can't stop thinking about it, in a good way. it's getting me hooked on sci-fi again, falling in love with the genre all over again. I keep thinking about arborea, about a hacker obsessed with retro-futurism who plays doom on the side of buildings, about bees and sleeping in a nest in a tree. i haven't felt this way about a sci-fi story since I first read the Wayfarer's series, and that story permanently changed my brain chemistry. you write in a way that is so easy, getting across dense exposition in a way that Feels quick and easy and digestible, but grows like a fungus once it's inside my head.

I spent the flight over crying like a baby. I spent the flight home rereading ttou from the start, and all the fears I had about flying seemed so small compared to aspen crawling along the hull of the Courageous hours after waking up from a months/decades long coma. there's this current of teeth-gritted hope and a stubborn will to survive just a little longer, no matter how bleak the future looks, that I cannot get enough of. it's in all your work, but ttou resonates with something in me that's very unique.

basically just wanted to send you a reader's love letter. you did also make me miss SEVERAL buses, because I kept thinking 'ill just read this next paragraph and keep checking the road, there's no way I'll miss this next one by getting too distracted to notice the bus pass me" which honestly, is entirely my own folly. I knew what this story does to ADHD readers. still, getting home late was worth reading more. it's just so damn good.

also (apologies if you've answered this before), does TTO:U have a planned ending? I see the chapters titled but not yet available to read, and I'm not sure if those are available on Patreon or if those are the planned final chapters? I desperately never want to stop reading new chapters of this, but of course I understand that isn't likely Actually feasible. no matter how much is left though, I look forward to reading more, and to finding new things in the previous chapters to fall in love with

I'm so glad you're enjoying it! There's always another bus coming :P

TTOU is 183 chapters long, so you'll be getting the ending pretty soon. Patrons already have the whole thing. After TTOU, there'll be a new story called Child of a Wandering Star, which has bug aliens in it.

[strang3lov3]

Questions tag game!! Ty for the tag @covetyou !! ♡

Do you make your bed? Not very well. I straighten everything out but my barbarian of a fiance sleeps like a tornado so there's really no use in making it actually nice. I also leave most blankets untucked because my cat Jojo loves to sleep under the covers all day so I like to make sure he won't get stuck anywhere, has an easy way in and out. You get it.

Favorite number? 69 obviously. The best number.

What's your job? Full-time student, and later I'll be a teacher!

If you could go back to school, would you? I'm in school, so...I guess I'll just say I don't plan on doing more than getting my bachelor's. And I wouldn't go back to high school ever.

Can you parallel park? Fffffffuck no. Nope. I managed to do it for my driver's test when I was 16, and I haven't done it since. I also can't back into a parking spot.

Do you think aliens are real? Of course. My father in law once said something to me about how he really had a lot of respect for Dave Grohl until he learned he believes in UFOs and I think that's so funny. Also, he's a self-proclaimed music nerd but claims that punk has never been political. He said he misses when Green Day only wrote songs about jerking off instead of politics....Idk. I think he might be the one on another fucking planet LMAO

Can you drive a manual car? I can, actually!! I drove a stick-shift 2008 Honda Civic for two years! The clutch had to be replaced within five months of me driving that car 😬 My fiance says he shudders to think of what I did to that car lol.

What's your guilty pleasure? None!! I'm pretty shameless about everything I find enjoyable and I just don't feel guilt for liking what I like.

Tattoos? 14 now. I'm trying to prioritize getting filler on my arms so my tattoos look nice and connected on my wedding day. I also plan to get a crawling panther and cheetah on my back soon, and cover up my linework tats I got when I was 18.

Favorite color? Light blue.

Do you like puzzles? Depends on the puzzle. I fuck with a jigsaw puzzle but most other puzzles I really fucking hate. Like a Rubik's Cube and those weird metal puzzles make me feel stupid lol.

Any phobias? Mhmmmmm. Three. They're all pretty debilitating because they're all so unavoidable. And also, people can be pretty like, not understanding about these things and they make me feel silly and dramatic. But the nature of phobias is that they're irrational and can't always be helped. I wouldn't choose to be this afraid of things if I had any say in the matter, but I don't so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Emetephobia (fear of vomiting) - Last year, every time I went out to eat for about nine months, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and vomit. These experiences have traumatized me on some level so anytime my stomach feels weird - be it hunger, anxiety, pain, etc. I freak out and panic and cry for hours. Like this kinda happens 1-2 times every week.

Blood Injury Injection (BII) phobia - Pretty much what it sounds like. I do not like to see blood, my own or anyone else's (though period blood is different to me and doesn't make me squeamish). I can't look at injuries no matter how small - like that paper cut scene in Everything Everywhere really bothered me and I had to shut off the movie. Injections really freak me out too and I will avoid having my blood drawn at all costs. I know I have a lot of tattoos but I also have them separated in my mind. It's just a different animal to me.

Entomophobia (fear of bugs) - I can't do it. All bugs, big or small, scare the bejesus out of me. I won't sleep in my bedroom if I find a bug in there. Once, I opened up my jar of peanut butter and found it full of ants which was one of the most disturbing things I've ever experienced in real life. Most of my nightmares are all bug related too. Like centipedes in my hair is a common one

Favorite childhood sport? I was a gymnast and a diver. I didn't like team sports so gymnastics was great for me! At 11 I developed Osgood-Schlatter disease which causes severe pain in the knees which kinda sucks when you're a gymnast and you rely on your knees for a lot. So I quit gymnastics to dive instead, which was great because I could flip and still have fun. But after fucking up a dive, I became really scared of the sport and that was it for me. From then on, I focused on art instead of sports.

Do you talk to yourself? Nope. I talk endlessly to others though.

Full pressure tags - @cum-a-calla @mssalo-main @fungal-rot @ghostlovesbaguettes @ovaryacted

@guiltyasdave @kappasbbgirl @senselessviolets @baronessvonglitter @mountainsandmayhem

[night-creeps]

This! I am paranoid of bugs. Not a phobia of them but an irrational fear nonetheless. When I am in the presence of a bug I get scared that it will somehow hurt me, even when I logically know that there is no way for a fly to hurt me I am still scared of them. Even though I know an ant is easily squashed I am still scared of them. If it's a bug I am uncomfortable existing in its vicinity. I can't even put a cup over a moth or spider because I am so scared that somehow it will escape the cup and start hurting me somehow. Even if it's dead I am scared that it's just playing dead and as soon as I get near it it will climb onto me and crawl into me somehow.

Is this possible? No, for probably 99% of bugs it cannot possibly have that much sentience to actively target me let alone hurt me. But no matter what I can't help but feel this way, which is why I call it a paranoia instead of a fear. I'm not scared of bugs, I'm scared of what if this bug is the bug that hates me specifically and will kill me somehow.

I don't actively wish harm on bugs, and don't think they're gross or bad. I understand their importance and wish them the best. But I am still unable to touch a bug, dead or alive. And on bad days even seeing pictures or videos of them can make me uncomfortable. But on a good day I find them interesting. I like pillbugs and snails a lot. Of all the bugs in the world, those guys are the easiest to reassure myself around. If I'm outside and I see a pillbug on the wall I like to just watch it for a bit. Even if it's just chilling or not moving, it's just a little guy. It's a life that miraculously exists on this earth. When I was younger I couldn't even smack a mosquito if it was sucking my blood, if a bug landed on me or something of mine i had to beg someone to get rid of it. Now I am comfortable flicking or brushing them off if they are invading my space.

When I tell people I'm afraid of bugs they take that statement at face value, and assume I dislike bugs entirely. When I say I have a paranoia of bugs it stadts a conversation, where I can explain my discomfort around bugs without having any ill will towards them. I don't think I'll ever be one of those people comfortable with letting ladybugs crawl on them, or butterflies land on them, or picking up a bug and putting it outside. But I can exist outside without immediately being scared of bugs, and maybe one day I can handle removing dead bugs from my home.

if you learn to love bugs with all your heart the world will feel half as hostile and a thousand times as big

[unknownentry404]

So, I didn’t so much discover but rather confirm an hypothesis today, and that’s the simple fact that the snakes that Luz has are NOT venomous, or frankly dangerous in any real way.

Honestly? It’s crazy how much demonisation (heh, pun unintended. . .by me! 👀) snakes get. It reminds me of the original Unfortunate Events movie in a lot of ways. And even after that, I didn’t realise for the longest time that most snakes aren’t venomous at all.

The venomous snakes are ones you’ve heard about a lot: rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, etc. But snakes aren’t inherently venomous.

And through a simple google search, I can guess that the snake Luz has in episode one is a Smooth Green Snake. Again, non-venomous snake found in the North American Continent, and one that doesn’t even like to bite. Any of the people bitten by it would prolly experience more “the trauma of being bit by a perceived dangerous animal,” than anything else. Like, we don’t see anyone getting carted off to hospital right? Plus Camila, vet on the scene, doesn’t seem particularly stressed out. And they could have easily added either as a comedic gag if they wanted.

Basically, Luz is a veterinarian’s kid who gets on with animals more than people. In the brief opening we see her playing with two species that are famously feared for unjust reasons: spiders and snakes. Neither of which are automatically dangerous. Like sure, venomous ones of both species certainly DO exist, but the spiders here aren’t black widows or anything.

Now, I will admit I might have acted similarly as a dumb kid (and today with the spiders let’s be real; but at least I know it’s an irrational fear, and I would, rather, move to the corner of class and continue talking with Luz, than run away screaming). But I’ve watched enough creators with snakes like Snake Discovery on YouTube, that I’d be more likely to ask the kid what kind of snake it is, and once I knew the species and verified it’s non-lethality, even ask to hold it with her. (As a teacher, if I discovered it WAS lethal, my first priority would be getting the snake away from the kid asap, lbr).

Honestly, this would have been a great opportunity for the staff and faculty to teach kids about how such animals aren’t always dangerous, preventing a few phobias from developing, but also showing students pictures of the species that are, at the same time, so they can identify the difference in the wild. (But school is rarely so kind, lol).

Luz with spiders also really reminds me of Japanese kids. I worked in an elementary school in Japan for four years, and let me say: bugs are such a big thing there. Every class has at least a few tanks in the back of ones kids recently caught. And I’ve been with kindergarteners who’d let ants and the like crawl all over them without a care in the world.

Like, I have severe arachnophobia and hate creepy crawlies myself, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to overcome it at this stage, but it is not a fun way to live in any means. If such exposure in schools can stop at least some people from developing such fears, it would be well worth it.

TLDR: The snake Luz has is most likely a Smooth Green Snake and is both non-venomous and doesn’t like to bite. Both the snakes and spiders in the first few scenes represent unplaced fear, as they are some of the most feared animals, but only a certain number of either species are dangerous in any way to humans. No one would have gotten seriously hurt from Luz’ animal antics. But as a vet’s kid, Luz obviously gets on with animals more than people in the Human Realm. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Addendums and other snakey notes:

The Smooth Greensnake is a very small snake, that is also found in the wild of Connecticut. Hence why I’ve settled on it for the main candidate of being Luz’ snakes. It is very small, and quite docile. Not a very common pet, though, so only found a few videos in it. Still very interesting. There are honestly not that many green coloured snake species, despite it being the default emoji/look for snakes. Isn’t it odd? 🐍

Rough Greensnakes: The only real difference between it and its extremely similar smooth cousin is, well, it’s rough scales. :P I believe they are the same size and look very similar.

Green Tree Pythons: These green beauties have spots, kind of like Luz’ snake. They also have fierce bite, when they do, but are still quite tame once they’ve gotten used to humans. But again, they are non venomous and don’t leave any lasting damage if they bite you. On the surface they look like they might fit as being Luz’ snake species, but they are also a bit larger of a species, and if they are Green Tree Pythons that Luz has, they they are not babies, as I believe most babies start out as red or yellow before turning green in adulthood. They are also not native to America, coming from places like New Guinea. However, there are some in America, but as people’s pets and not in the wild.

Timber Rattlesnakes: so I’m adding this because it is native to Connecticut and because this is a venomous snake. (Though also endangered and not likely to strike out if unprovoked. Admire from a distance and do not kill seems to be the memo here). It’s also, you know, a rattle snake, that makes a very distinct sound, like what can be heard in the opening of the first episode of the owl house. However I believe this to be an oversight at best, by the sound design crew, as true rattlesnakes are both quite big as adults and have very distinctive rattles on the tips of their tails, which Luz’ snakes don’t have. Generally, snakes don’t really make noise, hence why I think the default snake sound tends to be a rattlesnake’s sound.

[asimpforarmin]

AoT Characters When You ask them to Deal With a Bug 💛

Character(s): Armin Arlert, Mikasa Ackerman, Bertholdt Hoover, Connie Springer, Sasha Braus, Jean Kirstein

Genre: Light-hearted, silly, modern!au

Warnings: Bugs, spiders, cursing

A/n: Sorry I’ve taken so long to update, idrk but I’ve just lost some motivation. Sorry to anyone who might have followed me because of the one headcanon I wrote with Eren but it just seems impossible for me to write him 😭

💛 Armin

Very scared, not too much that he can’t deal with it but would much prefer it if you did.

He’s smart about it though. He’ll make a jar with an acetone or rubbing alcohol soaked rag at the bottom and place it up to the bug so it inhales the fumes and dies.

When it’s on the ceiling or high up he will NOT get it. He’s kinda short so he’d have to climb on something to reach it and that would mean if something went wrong, he wouldn’t be able to retreat quickly. He’ll just hit it or leave it to you.

Another reason is because if it’s high up it could fall and get stuck in his hair.

One time he was outside and a June bug stuck to his hair and he didn’t realize it until Eren pointed it out and he freaked out.

By the end of it, even if you are the one who brought it to his attention you’ll probably be comforting him because he’ll be a shaking mess, please hug him.

💛 Mikasa:

If you ask her to deal with a bug, she gladly will.

If it’s something small, she’ll grab a tissue, squish it, and throw it in the trash. If it’s something big, she’ll get a cup and paper and trap it to take it outside.

She’s really good at catching bugs that fly all over the place, like flies or moths. She just uses a cup and something solid and flat like a book and is able to catch it mid-air.

If it’s a spider, she’s not afraid of it. She’ll get a chair or stepstool and a plastic dish and go right up there to grab it.

If it’s venomous she’ll take precautions but will still get it. She’ll get a rolled up newspaper or book and just whack it. If that doesn’t work she’ll just vacuum it up or trap it and take it outside. She wears thick gloves when doing this though so the spider can’t get to her.

If you’re freaked out by the bug she’ll deal with it first then comfort you.

💛 Bertholdt:

As soon as you ask, he’s already got a cup and paper ready to dispose of it.

His height makes it easier to get bugs high up on the wall or ceiling.

Unless it’s something small like a tiny fly or mosquito, he’ll take it outside, he doesn’t like killing bugs for the most part.

One night you two were getting ready for bed when he heard a cricket in the next room. He found it and tried to get it in a cup but it kept jumping away. He was tired and it was in a prime position so he just stomped on it. He cringed at the sound it made then vowed not to kill any big bugs unless he has to.

Spider’s don’t phase him, it’s just any old insect, so he’ll get rid of it like he usually does.

That is, unless it’s venomous. If it is, he won’t be mad if you burn the house down.

In all seriousness, he’ll either vacuum it up or throw stuff at it until he doesn’t miss.

💛 Connie:

This man comes up with very creative ways of killing bugs.

He never just kills them or takes them outside without additional tools. He can’t just walk up to it and kill it.

He’s more scared than he’d like to admit, but not terrified.

Likes to use nerf guns for long range combat.

He learned how to make slime when it was really popular so now always has some in a room close by. When there’s a bug, he goes to grab it and throws it at the wall. Most of the time, he misses or it doesn’t stick, but when it does, he punches the slime with his fist, killing the bug, then throws the whole thing away.

If it’s venomous, he nopes tf out of there. He’d call someone else to take care of it or make you do it.

💛 Sasha:

Terrified™

Will only deal with it if you have a severe fear or phobia.

When she’s forced to, she hits it with something long and broad, like a broom.

She’s utterly horrified at the thought of missing and it crawling up the broom into her shirt, but she knows that’s completely irrational.

Don’t even get her started if it’s venomous, she will flip. She’ll still try to get it over with but will use a vacuum cleaner or spray it with acetone or something that will kill it.

One time she was trying to kill a spider and it landed in the blender she was using so she just put the top on and pressed the button, then cleaned it out afterwards.

💛 Jean

When you ask him to deal with a bug, he agrees and goes into the room but realizes it’s bigger than he expected and starts internally panicking.

He walks up to it with a container and paper to trap it but it falls before he catches it, causing him to drop his tools.

He steps back and takes a deep breath before picking his stuff back up and trying again.

From here, it can go one of two ways. One, being he catches it, and the other being that the bug is too fast so he grabs a bottle of febreeze and continuously sprays it until its dead or incapacitated enough to remove it from the premises.

With venomous bugs, he’ll try to guide them through an open window or trap them. The last thing he wants to do is smash a huge spider’s guts on the counter or get bit, so he uses traps to lure them out and either kills them or moves them far away outside.

He’s definitely gotten better at catching bugs over the years, not being so scared to do it anymore.

[yellowocaballero]

Not Your Queer-Coded Disney Villain: Annabelle & Web!Jon Ficlet

Got bored again today and forced myself to write something that wasn’t gratuitously long. Set in the same universe (or, one of the universes) as The Convention on Chronographer Lane, but it’s completely unnecessary to have read that one before this. 

Content warning for (apparent and fake) predation of a student by a teacher, body horror, and spiders. REVERSE content warning for A PSYCH 101 LECTURE WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO WAS A TA FOR PSYCH 101. ACCURATE SCIENCE, BITCHES. 

“What am I turning into?” Annabelle asked, after a half-second of rapid thought. “Who are you? And what do spiders have to do with any of this?”

Jon smiled again broadly, grey eyes dancing with a barely hidden delight. “You’re fully aware that these are all the same question.”

“Then answer them. You said you’re here to help me. Then help me.” Annabelle narrowed her eyes. “We’ll negotiate a price later.”

“This one is a freebie,” Jon said. He leaned back, face fading into the shadow of the dim yellow light of the hanging light. “You’re turning into something much akin to myself.”

In the darkness, Annabelle saw Jon open his eyes. And his eyes. And his eyes. And his eyes…

Annabelle was sleeping through Psych again.

In her defense, she was really tired. The nightmares had been getting worse every day, and yesterday she hadn’t gotten more than forty minutes of sleep without jolting up in the middle of the night. She had flipped on the light five times during the night, hysterically convinced that bugs were crawling over her and earning the eternal ire of her roommate. Whatever - Irene would forgive her once she bought her an iced coffee from that campus shop she liked. If Annabelle gave it to her later at night, she’d stay up later and would be less likely to bitch when Annabelle inevitably made a stink at three am again.

It didn’t matter. Psych was tediously easy anyway. Not that everything wasn’t tedious, but there were few things more boring than listening to the drone of Mr. Sims’ voice. She had no idea how that guy had a fanclub. Emmanuela Odugawa had asked her if she thought that he recited Piaget’s developmental stages in bed. Barf. 

Thankfully, Annabelle had mastered the art of sleeping with her eyes open in class and barely aware enough to recognize when somebody called her name a decade ago, and she ruthlessly used this skill now. She dropped into a half-doze, and was only startled into awareness when she heard the word that had been running in a nonstop track loop through her mind for the past month. 

“Phobia: an extreme or irrational fear or aversion to something.” Mr. Sims adjusted his glasses, pressing a button on his laptop that advanced the slides. “It’s an interesting definition, in my opinion. Like many things in Psychology, it is almost infuriatingly vague. How do you define ‘extreme’? How do you define ‘irrational’? Oftentimes, that label is determined by society, science, and our therapists. However, I believe you can argue that phobias are the most rational thing of all.”

Annabelle rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. These auditorium classrooms were always freezing. 

“The concept of aversion is heavily rooted in evolution and biology. Anyone here ever eat any bad shrimp?” He didn’t wait for a response. “The smell of seafood probably made you sick for weeks afterwards. Our bodies are primed to detect poison, just as they are to detect danger. Phobias rooted in modern, abstract concepts - clowns, elevators, airplanes - are easy to extinguish. But phobias rooted in real, present, perpetual dangers, the sort of dangers that threatened the lives of cavemen, are far more difficult to ignore.” 

Despite herself, Annabelle found herself awake. She found herself listening. 

“Snakes. Heights. The Dark. Dogs, bears, large animals. Storms, driving, insects.” Mr. Sims’ looked up at the auditorium, and Annabelle could have sworn that he was looking right at her, he was looking at her. Annabelle’s breath caught, her heart thumping in her chest - a little differently than it used to. “Spiders.” 

A horrible clicking echoed in Annabell’s ears. She was afraid that it was her. 

Then he looked away, and the spell was broken. “Phobias are one of the most powerful and motivational forces in human evolution. Like mental illnesses, pack bonds, and emotional needs, the perceived weaknesses of the human mind can frequently be some of the most powerful forces that allow the survival of the human species. It isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. I find that a useful way to think of humanity, and of ourselves: that our weaknesses can make us very strong indeed. Next slide…”

If Mr. Sims said anything after that, Annabelle didn’t hear it.

She didn’t pay any attention to anything he said until the end of class, when she shrugged on her cute little silver backpack and merged into the stream of students filtering out of the classroom. A few students had stayed behind to talk to Mr. Sims, and he appeared wrapped in conversation with the giggling girls, but somehow he picked her out of the thick crowd. 

“Annabelle?” Mr. Sims asked. “Stay after, please.”

So she leaned against the long sweep of desks, left with nothing to do but squint at Mr. Sims as he spoke with another student about the requirements for the upcoming paper, wondering why he looked so familiar. 

All of the other students had assumed he was in his late twenties - “total DILF”, they all inanely assured her - but Annabelle wasn’t so sure. Despite the already graying hair, small glasses, and severe expression, she really wouldn’t put him any older than 23.

Maybe his greying temples were hair dye. Or stress did that to you, right? Annabelle squinted. But when Annabelle looked closer, if she really focused, then she really wasn’t sure it was his hair color at all. 

So she looked closer. Her eyes had been itching for the past week. She had caught her skin flaking and peeling, and instead of pink raw skin underneath there was hard and scratchy black necrosis. Her eyes itched now, as if they were striving to split apart, and if Annabelle only let them then they would burst. And as her eyes itched in a horrible, visceral pain, she thought that maybe the white at Mr. Sims’ temples was the thin, sticky webs of spider-silk. 

“Annabelle? Are you alright?”

She snapped back to attention, fairly embarrassed. She had been zoning out more in the past month than she had her entire life. Her older siblings had said that college would be rough, but she hadn’t known it would be this rough. This wasn’t like her. None of this was like her. 

“I’m great,” Annabelle said reflexively. All of the other students were gone, and Mr. Sims was staring at her over his glasses. “Sorry. Is this about my test…?”

“No. You did quite well on your test. Best in the class, actually.” Mr. Sims smiled at her, as if this was a compliment or important. “Is that why you’ve been so bored in class?”

Ah. Busted. A rare thing for Annabelle. She affected a faux-abashed posture and expression. “Sorry, Mr. Sims. I’ve been staying up ‘til two every morning trying to get my homework done on time. If I’m ever going to go to med school…”

“I thought you were a poli sci major,” Mr. Sims said cheerfully. Annabelle fought a shudder - how did he know so much about her? This class had 200 students.

“Double major,” Annabelle said blithely. “I’m sorry about sleeping in class, I’ll manage my time better. It won’t happen again.”

“Yes, yes.” Mr. Sims waved her apology away, as if that wasn’t what he had been looking for. Then what had he been looking for? “I’m afraid I had somewhat of an ulterior motive for speaking to you today.” He leaned in a little, pulling his glasses down, and his foggy grey eyes - same color as the grey at his temples - focused solely on her. Annabelle made her eyes bigger, and she leaned in too, adjusting her posture so she looked smaller. “You’ve been doing very well in class. I actually wanted to invite you to a meeting. About...oh, your potential for med school. I’m excited to see you succeed. I think you could do quite well in whatever field you choose, and I’d like to help. It would be just us, of course.”

Ding ding ding. Annabelle affected a giggle. “I could totally use the help! Like, in your office? Or, like...lunch, or…?”

“I was thinking dinner, actually,” Mr. Sims smiled. “How’s Bombay Bicycle Club?”

Restaurant and bar, with a casual yet dignified atmosphere. Not formal enough to put up anybody’s guard, but nice enough that a freshman girl could feel treated and be impressed. Most importantly, it was popular among the businessman crowd and almost nobody on campus visited it. Annabelle used it herself to meet up with her sugar daddies all the time. 

For a brief, strange moment, Annabelle felt as if he did - but of course he didn’t. But it wasn’t impossible. But if he knew, then why wasn’t he blackmailing her? Was the blackmail for later, once he got her alone? This was probably a power play, getting her off balance by insinuating that he knows but not being explicit about it. He’d probably pull out the blackmail, ‘I’ll ruin your reputation you slut etc’, once they actually got there. Not that he could - Annabelle had contingency plans - but she would have to be careful to actually record him propositioning her anyway. Worst case scenario they had a MAD situation, best case she could squeeze him. Probably not for very much money, since grad students were poor as dirt, and she didn’t exactly need him to boost her grades...get him to slip her the test key and sell the test key? That could work. She could probably get him to strategically cut grades, which was a service that Annabelle could probably sell to students with a grudge…

But then Mr. Sims smiled at her, as if he knew what she was thinking, and Annabelle realized that she had been silent too long. She wanted to come off as panicked, maybe desperate, definitely flattered. 

“Sure!” Annabelle said, barely having to feign the anxious creak in her voice. “What time? I have night classes, so…”

“Next Friday at six,” Mr. Sims said instantly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too.” Annabelle affected Smile #35 - shy virgin. Mr. Sims’ grin widened. Annabelle silently put aside the ‘Catholic schoolgirl’ outfit for Friday. “See you then!”

She turned around, gave him a shy smile, and bounced off. She had just opened the heavy door out of the room when she heard him speak again, freezing her in her tracks. 

“Oh, Annabelle - how is the study with Dr. Bates going?”

And his question panicked her so much, made her heart change rhythm and made her skin itch as if something was straining to come out of it, made her eyes itch and crawl and burst, that every calculated move went out the window. She didn’t answer his question, didn’t even give an excuse - she just ran out the door, bright purple vintage boots thumping against the linoleum, breath catching in a chest where she was no longer sure she even had ribs. 

Most of her was already calculating. She was already two months into uni, she had to start establishing her power base. The minute her sorority accepted her she’d have greater access to money, popularity, and influence, but she needed reach with the administration too.  Mr. Sims was her in. This was a good thing. 

But part of her was disappointed, because she had liked him, and she felt a little used. Feelings of disgust, as strong and vivid as in her nightmares, rose in her chest. She squished far down in her chest, familiar with the feeling and effortlessly repressing it.  

Annabelle was good with disgusting things. 

She had another session with the Arachnophobia study on Monday. Which went fine. It was fine! She didn’t wake up that morning so sick with nerves that she almost threw up. She didn’t stare at her email inbox for thirty minutes, begging herself to cancel and drop out of the study. Nope. 

She distracted herself by befriending all of her roommate’s friends and dropping faux-concerned gossip about how cranky and anxious Irene’s been lately, have you noticed she’s been blaming me for how badly she’s sleeping? It was really super sad, frowny face, how do you think I can help, frowny face frowny face frowny face? 

So Annabelle went to the Arachnophobia study (it was fine), had increasingly realistic and vivid nightmares about her chest caving in and a nest of spiders crawling out of her chest and eating her eyes, and slept through class. It was all fine. 

She should have gone to Oxford. It still made her a little bitter. She had been smart enough to get in, but she hadn’t been smart enough to get the full scholarship. She couldn’t afford it, so instead she was stuck in University of Surrey, where dreams went to die. Future politicians should go to Oxford. Yeah, Surrey had some peers and Parliament members, whatever. She needed better, Oxford and awards and money. From there, from some swotty school or another, it was easy street. Annabelle deserved easy street, and she deserved Oxford, and it just wasn’t fair -

After another three am nightmare, Annabelle blearily scrolled through her sibling groupchat. Barney was doing great in med school. Tricia had posted her maternity photos. Wow, look at that, Robin had gotten a commendation at his law firm. Whatever. 

No hope of distinguishing herself in the world. No hope of distinguishing herself in her stupid family. She was smarter than any of her siblings, brighter and better than those doctors and lawyers and accountants, but nobody cared. Mum and Dad were living their retirement in comfort and cooing over their grandchildren, finally rewarded in old age for all their hard work. 

If Annabelle dropped off the face of the earth, nobody would even notice. 

It should have been a depressing thought. The idea that nobody cared about her, not really, that nobody knew the real her. But somehow it just made her heart beat faster in excitement. 

The idea of disappearing from all of this, of cutting herself free from a thousand threads that brought her plummeting down to earth...in the cold hours of that dark morning, to an eighteen year old terrified and alone in uni, it was a siren song. 

It was a siren song that sounded, oddly, like the chittering and scuttling of a thousand tiny bodies, but Annabelle was learning to look beyond that. 

By the time next Friday rolled around, Annabelle was considering breaking her self-imposed rule against drugs and popping a Xanax. But that wouldn’t help her exhaustion, the persistent bone-deep frazzled sensation of going a week on almost no sleep whatsoever, so she settled for an espresso as she wriggled herself into a tight, slinky plaid dress paired with a puffy olive green windbreaker. She wasn’t sure if she owned any clothing that was made after 1990 - a habit born from a childhood of shopping from thirst stores, and continued voluntarily into high school when she started making her own money online fleecing suckers. It was her, so much as anything was. 

“Hot date?” Irene asked, bending over her Physics textbook without looking up. She glanced at her vibrating phone, scowling. Poor baby - her friends were staging an intervention. “New guy or old guy?”

“New guy,” Annabelle said vaguely, carefully picking out a bold red lipstick - or did that seem too forward? Should she go for a natural look? “If I’m not back by midnight call the police. I’ll text you a picture of his car.”

“Roger.” Irene flipped a page of her textbook, oblivious to the fact that she was one of the few people Annabelle genuinely liked. Not enough not to screw with her, but she liked her. “He’s not good enough for you, something something.”

“Darling,” Annabelle said, winking into the mirror, “nobody is.”

She hoped Irene believed it. She didn’t. 

It wasn’t a frequent occurrence that Annabelle wished she was stupid, but today she wished she was stupid enough to take a power nap during her ten minute Uber ride. Her mind felt frazzled and frayed, as if it had been taken out of her scalp and spread out with a rolling pin onto a floured countertop. She felt as if she was melting, her vision spiralling into fractals or blurring out. She wanted to sleep. God, she’d do anything for some sleep -

So she blared Bad Romance in her frayed earbuds instead, clutching her iPod Touch tightly, pulling herself together. Gaga, give her strength. 

By the time that she tipped her driver, effortlessly found Mr. Sims’ car in the parking lot of Bombay Bicycle Club and texted Irene the license plate (Volkswagen, obviously), she had dragged herself into focus. She stapled on her confident posture and walk - no, we’re going with ingenue today, make it shy and hesitant - and slipped inside the restaurant, making a show of holding her clutch tight to her chest and looking around with big eyes. 

She saw him instantly. He was sitting in a corner booth, head down and texting on his phone with a half-smile. The corner booth was poorly lit, light dampened by the wood panelling and soft leather seats, and half of his face was draped in shadow. 

Great. She had even arrived ten minutes early just so she could pick a brightly lit, intimate little table in the center of the room. This guy - he was almost like her. He was almost like her, but he was better. 

Annabelle fought the urge to grind her teeth. She smiled instead, waving cheerfully until he raised his head. He smiled back at her, wriggling his fingers, and Annabelle wove around the tables until she could slide into the seat across from him. 

“This is cozy!” She said brightly. “Thank you so much for inviting me out, Mr. Sims. It’s been ages since I got away from my books -”

“Oh, cut that shit out,” Mr. Sims said, bored. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Annabelle’s mind shut down. Error 404, blue screen of death. 

“I’m sorry,” she said pleasantly, smile frozen on her face. “What?”

But Mr. Sims just shrugged listlessly, slumping against the cushioned wall. His expression was no longer fond, indulgent, haughty. He just looked bored now, as if he was too tired and underpaid to deal with eighteen year olds. “I don’t want to sit through this entire dinner fending off flirting. We have actual business to talk about, and I am uninterested in beating around the bush when there’s no point. You aren’t even subtle.”

“Excuse me -” Annabelle started, enraged, but Mr. Sims put up a hand and cut her off. 

The change was instant. On a dime, Mr. Sims straightened his posture, swept a finger through his hair to transform it from slicked back professor type to windswept, adopted a friendly and casual expression, and leaned in as if he was happy and excited to be sitting with Annabelle. In a moment he dropped ten years. Barely a second after his transformation the waiter approached them, holding a notepad, and Annabelle realized with a start that he had noticed the waiter coming before she did. 

“How are you two doing tonight?” the waiter asked politely, smiling at the both of them in a rote routine that Annabelle remembered from her own days waitressing. 

“Doing great!” Mr. Sims said, and even his accent was different, closely matching her own. He glanced back at Annabelle, nothing but open and friendly. “Mum says get whatever you want, dork. It’s on her bill, so let’s run her out of house and home.”

Instinctually, Annabelle shot back, “Aren’t you old enough to take me out to eat with your own money, loser?”

“Not with your stomach!” Mr. Sims laughed, and the waiter chuckled along too. Mr. Sims effortlessly rapped out an order for the waiter, before Annabelle even got a chance to look at the menu, and when she floundered Mr. Sims just rolled his eyes and ordered for her too. It was, somehow, her favorite food. 

He waited for the waiter to move onto the next table, eyeing him carefully, before he let the persona drop. Mr. Sims sagged again, dropping the friendly act, sizing her up from half-lidded eyes. 

“How did he even believe that,” Annabelle said flatly. “We don’t look anything alike.”

“White people will believe anything,” Mr. Sims said, rolling his eyes. “I have the Belgian government convinced I’m an Iraqi scientist and most high profile Australian celebrities think I’m Egyptian royalty.”

“...does Egypt have -”

“Nope.”

Annabelle was beginning to feel a little like the star actress in the school play who got upstaged in every way by the villain’s performance. Nobody did what she did. Nobody did what she did, but better. 

“Don’t feel insecure,” Mr. Sims said, as if he could read her mind. “I’m a good actor, and I’m excellent at reading people. But I can’t plan or plot like you do. I’m shit at thinking three steps ahead, much less thirty. You can keep plots and schemes going for years - decades, even, if I were to guess. I’m not sure how someone as competent as you can have self-esteem issues.”

Annabelle bristled. “You try having nobody care about you for - how do you even know that shit about me?” Something terrible occurred to her. “Are you some kind of stalker, Mr. Sims?”

Mr. Sims shuddered in real disgust. “It’s Jon. And no, of course not. You just aren’t as subtle as you think you are.”

Yes, she was. She was subtle to everyone on the planet - everyone save, maybe, Jon. Annabelle narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Jon said immediately. 

“Liar. Everybody wants something.”

“I’m here altruistically,” Jon said, the perfect picture of innocence. “Really. I’m here to help you, Annabelle.”

“You are stalking me.” Annabelle leaned forward, but Sims didn’t move. “Are you even a real graduate student?”

“Absolutely not. I’m twenty three, I got my Psych degree last year and I’ve been bouncing odd jobs since.” Jon shrugged, as Annabelle felt silently vindicated. Nothing about this man acted like a twenty three year old - she remembered her siblings at twenty-three, there was nothing adult about them - but it was probably just another persona. She wondered how far she’d have to scratch to get to the real Jon Sims. 

“So you were just at Surrey to spy on me,” Annabelle said slowly. “I don’t know what country you’re from, but in England that’s definitely stalking.”

“I’d call it scouting,” Jon said. The waiter dropped by to place their drinks on the table - Jon had gotten a mule for himself, and he had ordered water for Annabelle in a move uncharacteristic for a sketchy guy. He waited until the waiter left to continue. “Call me a recruiter.”

“For who? What kind of job recruiter teaches a class for two months just to get to me?”

“How’s your study with Dr. Blake going, Annabelle?” Jon said, almost randomly, and Annabelle shut up. He must have seen something in her eyes, because a sharp little grin stretched in the corner of his narrow and sharp face. “Thought so. What do you dream of, Annabelle? In the cold corners of night, what fears come to life in the dark recesses of your mind?”

Maybe, Annabelle thought inanely, this was a dream too. Just an extended nightmare, one she hadn’t woken up from. It felt like that: distant and strange, hyper-real and unreal. This strange man sitting in front of her, who swapped faces so easily even Annabelle couldn’t keep up, was far too out of place to truly exist. 

Or maybe he was the first real person she had met in a very long time. 

Jon continued talking, as if she had responded. Maybe she had. “I am not a hero in this story. If I was, I would have come earlier. I would have deleted your name from the pool of subjects, and I would have made it so that you never got that call.” Jon looked away from her for the first time, letting a little sadness show on his face. “I couldn’t. No - no, I could have, I simply chose not to. You’re important, Annabelle. And I didn’t want to rob you of something that you may grow to treasure. I’m afraid that the choice you make now may not be much of a choice at all - but, perhaps, there is still a chance. At the very least, I would like to make this transition a little easier for you. It is a terrible thing, to have to do it alone.”

That…

“That was so vague it was completely meaningless.”

Jon barked a laugh, strangely delighted. “It’s not fair to speak in circles to somebody who’s gone a week without sleep!”

“But you’re doing it on purpose,” Annabelle said, too dead inside to feel mad.

“Oh, absolutely. I am not taking the risk of taking you on at full power.” Jon smiled at her, as if they were friends sharing a joke. “I saw what you did to that Walker boy in secondary.”

Despite herself, Annabelle smiled. “Hear he gets out on parole in five.” Something else occurred to her, a bit belatedly. “You are stalking me!”

“Does a spider stalk the fly that strikes a string on its web?” Jon asked cheerfully. “Or is it simply investigating an encroachment into its territory?”

“Does that mean that you’re going to eat me?” Annabelle said archly. “Thought you said you didn’t want to fuck me. Rude, by the way.”

Almost hilariously, Jon wrinkled his nose. “Sex is a waste of time, resources, and my attention. Can’t imagine why people are so obsessed.”

“I know, right!” Annabelle burst out, before she could help herself. “Do you have any idea how much money I get a month from guys just to talk to me? It’s like they’re aliens! Why do people fuck or date if it’s not to manipulate someone?”

“Right! It’s ridiculous.”

It was the first time anybody had ever agreed with her on that. It was the first time she had even told anybody she felt that way. For a brief second, Annabelle felt connected to Jon. It was the first time that happened in...a very long time. 

Jon was the first person Annabelle had ever met who was like her. Everybody in Annabelle’s life had always been either useful or useless. Jon seemed above that, somehow. To be beyond utility, to exist on your own power...what did that look like? To be the powerful, instead of the powerless?

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many puppet strings Annabelle tied around her fingers, she was never powerful. Not really. She was eighteen, from a nothing family, and no matter how many molehills she made herself queen of she would never rule the mountain. She couldn’t get as far as she wanted with what she had. The only reason she had even volunteered for the stupid Arachnophobia experiment was because she needed to crush out weakness in herself, erase the hidden flaws in her mind.

But Jon said her flaws were strengths. What made her weak could be turned into power. 

Annabelle needed more, more, more. She needed everything, if she was to have anything. She needed what Jon had. 

Everything Annabelle said had a purpose. Every word she used was chosen carefully, every little gesture or body language was calculated. She said nothing without thinking, and she could do it so quickly nobody even noticed. Jon would notice, a con man as perfect as she was.

Let him. Give her two straight days to sleep, and they’d have a real battle of wits. In the meantime, she just had to pick her questions strategically.

“What am I turning into?” Annabelle asked, after a half-second of rapid thought. “Who are you? And what do spiders have to do with any of this?”

Jon smiled again broadly, grey eyes dancing with a barely hidden delight. “You’re fully aware that these are all the same question.”

“Then answer them. You said you’re here to help me. Then help me.” Annabelle narrowed her eyes. “We’ll negotiate a price later.”

“This one is a freebie,” Jon said. He leaned back, face fading into the shadow of the dim yellow light of the hanging light. “You’re turning into something much akin to myself.”

In the darkness, Annabelle saw Jon open his eyes. And his eyes. And his eyes…

All eight of Jon’s glittering black eyes shone in the darkness, straining her own and making her head thump. It was wrong, outside of humanity or reality, and it felt as if the very sight was straining the fabric of her delicately maintained life so tight it would tear. It felt as if it was tearing her, right in two, ruining her forever. Her eyes felt like they were going to burst out of her head. 

She didn’t want to know what would replace them. But she had the feeling that she already did. 

“Then what,” Annabelle gritted out, “are you?”

“I am the eldest and most treasured Son of the Mother of Spiders,” Jon said. He smiled at her, just a little, almost apologetic. “Sorry about that. I know you’ve always wanted to be an only child.”

Ah. Duh. Obviously. She should have known.

“...do I want to know who the Mother of Spiders is?”

“Your mother, should you choose to accept her,” Jon said cheerfully, leaning back into the light, and his face was normal again. Human as ever. Strange and foreign as ever - possibly everything, possibly nothing. “I know you aren’t strictly in the market for adoption, but you may not have much of a choice. You’ve felt her scratching beneath her skin. She’s going to tear out of you, and soon. Did you know some species of wasp lay their eggs in the body of spiders to provide food for the grubs?”

“During the next experiment,” Annabelle said dully, already filtering out Jon’s useless tidbits of information. That was a guy who spoke for the sake of hearing himself talk. “That’s when it’s happening. When I’ll...change.”

“Yes. It’s a painful process,” Jon said, and it was almost apologetic. “My own happened when I was fifteen - quite young, all things considered. I still remember the sound of my bones snapping as -”

“Don’t.”

“Of course! Anyway, I thought I’d make sure you had...to use the psych term, informed consent, before you entered the crucible. Our - my, sorry - Mother often foregoes true consent in our operations. The beauty of nature!” Jon laughed, as Annabelle felt sick. “Agnes wanted to put together a pamphlet, but then we let Gerry go wild on the clipart and...well, it’s better if I just explain. I can’t give you the full story now, but I’ll tell you as much as your mind can comprehend.”

Annabelle wasn’t sure she could even comprehend this. It was so much, and she was so tired. She had just heard that her body was going to rupture like a cocoon and give birth to a giant spider that may or may not also be her, and all she could think about was the fact that she wanted to go back to bed. Somehow, all she could ask was -

“Why?” She asked, so stupid and pointless, as if she was stupid, as if she wasn’t her at all. “Why are you doing this?”

“It’s like I said.” In the dim yellow lighting, Jon’s eyes glittered pure black, and in that brief and stupid second Annabelle felt as if they were the same in that way. “Nobody should have to go through this alone and ignorant.” Then the moment was over, and his eyes were a human grey again, just left of normal. “Besides. Siblings stick together, right?”

“I hardly need more siblings,” Annabelle snapped. 

“You’re about to lose seven of them real soon,” Jon promised, extremely worryingly, “so I’d take what you can get right now, Annabelle.”

“Are you going to kill -”

“Unfortunately, you may have to fake your own death!”

Then their food came, and Annabelle received her first lesson in the class of hard knocks. 

They talked for hours. It took hours, to even just get a picture of the story. Jon was patient, answering every question, and Annabelle strained so hard trying to fight through her exhaustion, trying to understand the answer, Jon’s motivation in answering it or what he could be leaving out, that by the end of it she felt as if she had run a marathon. She had never felt so tired in her life, in the most dangerous situation in her life, with the most dangerous person she had ever met. 

By the end of it, Irene was texting her to ask if she was dead, and Annabelle was falling asleep at her chair. Jon cut an end to their conversation when he slid out his wallet, covered the bill with a black Amex card, and slid a business card against the table. Annabelle squinted down at it. 

The text in the center just said [FREELANCERS]. That was it. She stared at it.

Underneath the vague word, she saw a phone number [555-555] and an email [email@organization.gov]. Annabelle looked up to stare at Jon. “Are you for real?”

“Almost never,” Jon said cheerfully, “but the card will make sense when it needs to. Let me take you back to your dorm, alright? You can get some sleep in the car.”

If he was a creep, she was dead anyway. Annabelle didn’t bother arguing. She grabbed her jacket and got in the passenger seat of his car, and true to his word Annabelle drifted asleep almost immediately. She even felt as if the ride took longer than ten minutes, as if he drove in circles just waiting for her.

For the first time in a week, Annabelle slept uninterrupted, and had no dreams.

Annabelle wanted what Jon had. 

And a week later, she took it. 

Shivering in an alley, clothing ripped to shreds, her own skin hanging off her triple jointed limbs, she dug out a creased and torn business card. She had been worrying at it intensely over the weekend, staring and it and clenching it tightly as if it was her only lifeline. It was, of course. But Jon had known that.

The card looked different now. The text now looked handwritten, but with a beautiful and old-timey slanted handwriting. It now just read: 

‘To Annabelle, with love. From your new friends Gerry, Jon, and Agnes’. There was a number underneath, and Annabelle frantically dug in her tattered leather jacket pocket to draw out her cracked phone. 

Annabelle hated taking favors from people. Everything she had, she had fought for herself. She would scrape, borrow, beg, and steal whatever she had to. But, when it came to siblings...maybe, then, it was okay.

Dizzily, as Annabelle let the phone ring, she thought: this is my supervillain origin story. 

The thought sent a slow smile crawling across her inhuman and warped face. 

Sounds like fun. 

[abbinurmel]

You know something, part of my brain really wants to scream and cry whenever I see one of these guys. And that unfortunate "kill it with fire!" reflex, is idiotic, because most such creatures can't possibly hurt you, they're good for the world ecosystems and either way one should not indiscriminately wanna kill ANY sentient thing, bla bla bla, the whole usual drill.....:

- and y'know something?? I can have both these views in equal amount, and be GLAD of them co-existing in me, because, irrational to the developed modern world a phobia it may be, I DO believe these phobias on some primal level exist for a reason... or at least a reason that over generations of evolution is now rendered entirely obsolete. I DO believe we knew once that creatures of this nature, if not specifically this species, something buggy and leggy LIKE this vinegaroon aesthetically, COULD hurt us in the wild, like a scorpion's stinger or a tarantula bite or a wasp nest getting stepped on. Nature's not supposed to be comfortable and cute and convenient for anybody!- it's SUPPOSED to make us react with adrenaline and wariness, it just is doing what it needs to survive, and that makes it both beautiful and dangerous. Our collective stupid monkey brains just apply now that once ancient only somewhat needed fear, over EVERY scenario touching nature, and the unfamiliar alienating prejudice only increases the more detached from the environment we are.

What I am TRYING in a nutshell to say is, DO NOT KILL IT with fire!!! Even though it's correct that some part of you does! Bugs are frightening and they are supposed to be, and it is cool they even exist, and it is COOL THAT YOU FEEL ANY FEAR at anything this small and preciously fragile AT ALL....these things are exotic Kaiju nightmare gods to their prey, and to us we should treat them like the godlike tiny hideous dangerous beauties they are, while using that fear to appreciate, not denunciate, like in an eldritch or fey sorta way...it is a miracle that you are surrounded by the diverse natural chaos of Life!.....We as humans NEED mystery and things out there that are super gross and bizarre and ugly and can kill us,! We NEED things like that, to inspire us, to motivate us to be safe, and keep distance from nature so we DO NOT HARM it by coming into contact with it. We are supposed to wanna leave Nature alone because we are truly the most dangerous!

While I know I will probably never grow into a person who wants to end up with a vinegaroon crawling one night in their bed, I CAN be GRATEFUL I get to live in a world where such an event is even A POSSIBILITY I GET TO HAVE. IT IS COOL that I get to be surrounded by thousands of unique and often unsettling unpredictable and mostly innocent creatures, only a very very few could actually harm me, and I appreciate whatever God or mysterious forces of Destiny that arranged for me to get the privilege to co-exist among them all/be able to live in a time where I can be allowed to have and savor these fears, I am not delusional, but I am also going to be someone who has the gift to SAFELY LEARN ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE WHOLE NATURAL WORLD, ANY TIME I WANT!

Like do you guys understand how special this is for us???

Centuries ago if you had a fear of something, some weird new dangerous animal shows up and it makes trouble, or it just LOOKS dangerous and scary, what can you really do about it outside either 'fuck around and find out' or 'shun it in terrified superstition, just to play it safe on the off chance its nasty?' You didn't get often libraries, or tomes with really truly well sourced info, you could never have photo proof or video documented footage or wikis with updates with each new discovery. Not even the concept of a SCIENTIST, or a basic unbiased nature researcher in of itself was really a true thing for eons until human civilization started getting truly handle on its own thing. Shamans and foragers you can argue may have been the earliest examples of such, but you still at end of the day would only be able to rely on HEARSAY of your local tribe leaders, and not every tribe elder had his or her information straight or every iota of experience one can glean from the wild. You only had whatever limited window of knowledge your forefathers chose to pass to you, and whatever subjective personal bias or unique experiences you savored each trek you randomly took thru the woods.

I think it's fabulous I can live in a world where I can (hopefully) never have to physically come up in person with a vinegaroon or something BUT I somehow unpredictably *COULD*, like a faery or a bump in with a tiny goblin or a witch. Will they be a kind-hearted and misunderstood sorta witch, or the type who wanna eat you? Who knows! That's what makes it interesting! And best of all I SAFELY AM STILL ALLOWED TO SEE AND DISCOVER THEM AT A DISTANCE!❤️❤️❤️

AND I AM SOOOO APPRECIATIVE we are growing into a world that loves and understands them and other 'ugly' underappreciated critters like these better. It is so lame having these phobias as an excuse to just ignorant blind yourself to kindness or knowledge, when instead, that phobia is supposed to be A DNA ENGRAVED BADGE OF *RESPECT* PASSED DOWN FROM YOUR ANCESTORS.

Tremble and respect yon leggy twitchy assholes.

Stella really is one of the most perfect Creatures ever I think. few can Creature as well as she

[magnus-gimmicks]

TW: Bugs

Confession time: I have an irrational fear of bugs (flies in particular) crawling into my nose or ears and laying eggs in my brain.

This fear of mine is so severe that I can't sleep without earbuds or earplugs in. I've managed to somehow convince myself that if I am listening to music at high enough volume, bugs won't want to crawl in my ears because of the vibrations from the music.

What definitely does not help this fear of mine is that all of last night, a fly kept flying up my nose and I had to blow it out. Currently I am in bed preparing to sleep as it is night now, and a fly keeps getting really close to my face and it is not making me feel safe. I feel the opposite of safe.

Tried to Google of this was a real phobia or not but all Google did was give me links to articles about real instances where bugs had lay eggs in someone's ears or nose so I will likely not be sleeping tonight.

Take care, and if you have a fear of bugs but read this anyways then don't say I didn't warn you because I tried but I am currently shaking with fear right now (literally shaking, this was so hard to type and the fly is still in my face, send help)

[ashyblondwaves]

1 through 16, please :)

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most? For this one, I pulled my top tracks of all time on Spotify and here's what we've got:

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? My grandpa's parents (my great grandparents on my mom's side then). I have so much I'd like to ask them about our Italian ancestry etc but I never got the chance to meet them since they passed before I was born.

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. "For the moment at least, I was free." The Pit and the Pendulum in a Horror Short Stories collection I've been reading.

4: What do you think about most? Probably my mom and her health needs.

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say? "hello!! so my parents said they will pick up Emma tomorrow around 10:00. I already told her too." From my cousin. My God Daughter is staying for the weekend and we were ironing out details on getting her home.

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on? With clothes. I have an irrational fear that a bug is gonna crawl up my butt.

7: What’s your strangest talent? Uhh.. I can bend my ring finger on the left hand to look like the number 7.

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence): I have no Earthly idea lmao.

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you? My husband wrote a song about me when we were still dating, but I can't remember how it goes anymore :(

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar? Hmm.. I can't remember. It's been awhile though.

11: Do you have any strange phobias? Yeah, the bug crawling up my butt things LOL.

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? When I was a kid I stuck a piece of felt from a Christmas stocking up my nose and it got stuck. Thankfully the force of my crying made it come back out.

13: What’s your religion? Atheist

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Gardening

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind, for sure.

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? Blink-182 for the fact that I've got 2 tattoos for them and endless great memories.

[mchug]

I have an insect phobia and I’ve been working *so* hard to get better at it because I truly do love nature and animals! And I’ve always found bugs fascinating and cool parts of nature! It’s just that my irrational anxiety brain goes haywire when it sees certain insects.

But I’ve followed the process that the above posters have described and it’s *working* and it makes me so happy! I’ve been watching lots of videos from True Facts and Deep Look on YouTube which shows the fascinating and beautiful side of a lot of bugs. It’s very good exposure therapy. I’m lucky that I already got to the point where I recognized my fear of bugs as an irrational phobia and not a proper way to interact with the world so that I can take the steps to help myself overcome it.

I found a dead cicada perfectly intact and I was able to pick it up and take it home with me to make art with it and honestly that’s a *huge* improvement considering how bad my phobia used to be. Today I was able to get a spider out of my car by having it crawl on my credit card. (Although weirdly I’ve never been as afraid of spiders as I am of certain insects)

It’s not perfect. I will still scream when a large cricket jumps at my face because it decided to sneak into my apartment and chill on my desk. I still make my spouse kill roaches when I find them in the house. Bugs over a certain size will probably always make me uncomfortable. My worst nightmares still always involve bugs in some way.

But it’s a lot better! You can get better! You can learn how to coexist with these creatures that make up a huge portion of life on our planet. Nature is wonderful and beautiful and bugs are a part of that.

Been working in pest control for 3 months now and i can confidently say that nobody on earth seems to understand that sometimes You Will See A Bugs and that's Normal if you live literally anywhere with oxygen

[pumpkin-toast]

It’s Ramager dream time again! This one’s a little foggy but I remember the basic details.

So I was driving across the country with my dad, grandma, and someone else who I can’t remember. My dad lives a six hour drive away from my town irl, and in my dream, we were on the way to his place.

Another important thing to mention is that I have a severe phobia of insects. Insectophoboa I’m fine if they’re just hanging out, like whatever, but if they’re in close proximity to me or touching me I’m gonna freak. I’ve run screaming from bugs before, and no one around me really seems to comprehend my phobia (even if it IS a bit irrational, I’ll admit).

Anyway, all shapes and sizes, I hate those little things. So I get to the car, open the door, and am greeted by ants. Ants on the seats, ants on the walls, ants on the goddamn ceiling. The car was BLACK from how many there were. We get into the car, with me protesting, and start the drive. And throughout the drive there’s these other bugs, like crazed deformed scorpions and beetles that get up and crawl into the front seat. I think eventually I did get out of the car, it was horrible.

[abominationimperatrix]

I don’t know how helpful this will be, as it’s just my experience in the matter, but I used to have a fairly severe phobia of certain types of insect larvae, and I can try to explain how it worked.  It was not at all consistent.

Now, just in order to clarify, I love bugs.  And I loved bugs just as much as a kid, when it was at its most severe.  In fact, the phobia was most inconvenient for that reason, as it made it much harder to research them to nearly the degree that I wanted to back then.  The phobia didn’t develop until I was probably about six years old, and actually started as the result of a nightmare I had.  Before that dream, I had no issue with worms, maggots, or any animal at all really, but within the dream, where I encountered several colossal, but non-hostile, earthworms, I felt a disgust towards the creatures which I’d never felt before and continued to feel afterwards in the real world.  Really, the dream should have been quite pleasant, as I would have thought interacting with giant bugs of any sort would be pretty cool, but I guess not.

The phobia initially consisted of earthworms, maggots, grubs, and mealworms, though I got over the earthworms myself early on, and it became strictly larva focused pretty quickly.  The thing about the mealworms is pretty unusual though.  It started when a classroom I was in after school (not my teacher’s, my mom worked there) happened to have a small terrarium full of the little guys, who were just crawling around in the sawdust, and chewing on pieces of fruit.  I was unfamiliar with mealworms (darkling beetle larvae, if anyone who’s reading this is unfamiliar with them) and I was initially quite fascinated.  Like I said, I love bugs.  However, before I found out what they were, it occurred to me that they might be maggots, and I freaked out.  It was the label of “maggot” that caused me to become phobic of them.  If I’d been told before seeing them that they were beetle larvae and not fly larvae, it probably would not have been an issue.  Even after I found out what they really were, the phobia persisted though.  I suspect this is also when beetle grubs in general were added to the phobia list.

The phobia was, in general, texture-based.  I particularly did not like (and am still pretty grossed out by) large writhing swarms of lengthy segmented bugs.  I was also freaked out by individual larvae, though it was inconsistent which kinds.  Caterpillars were a-okay, even species that looked fairly similar to mealworms or grubs, which is weird.  It was probably at least partially due to a combination of colors and textures, with white or yellow-ish segmented larvae being the most unpleasant, but it’s not like there aren’t caterpillars with those colors, and some dipteran and coleopteran larvae, like those of mosquitoes and tiger beetles, were notably immune.  I suspect in the latter case it might have been because I’d already seen and been fascinated by tiger beetle larvae specifically before the phobia developed.  So it was a weird mix of label and physical texture, ultimately.

I did manage to mostly get over the phobia in high school though, though as noted I can still be a bit queasy around large congregations, though even that’s not as bad as it once was.  Shoutout to my mom for actually acquiring a can of live mealworms from the pet store and making me keep them for a couple of weeks as a form of exposure therapy.  That was a really cool thing she did, and while she probably did it just because she thought having an irrational phobia like that was unhealthy, which it was, it also helped open up an area of interest (entomology) that had been closed off as a result of it, and would further help me get into a lot of monster-related stuff, including Mortasheen.  So it ended well, I suppose.  If most animal phobias work in a similar way to how mine did (which they might not), then there's probably as much of an element of labeling as they are purely based on visual stimuli.  The way a pale segmented body was okay on a moth larva but not a beetle one.  It was the fact that they were “grubs” and not “caterpillars” that would push them into the phobia zone.

One thing I wonder with people who can't look at certain animals though is like.... How's a black beetle so different from seeing a black boot or a black car? How's an insect's legs that different from seeing plant branches? There aren't really any particular shapes or textures all that unique to certain creatures, how can the same person be affected differently by a photo of a worm, eel, snake, noodle or tree root?