#IF JUST LOSING WEIGHT WAS THE PROBLEM DONT YOU THINK I WOULD HAVE SOLVED IT ALREADY??

[thatuselesshuman]

Me when someone says some dumb shit about my medical issues

[featherymainffins]

It's also a problem that's deeply embarrassing for me because I feel like it puts a lot of pressure on other people because the only methods I've found to somewhat work were basically just asking someone if I was allowed to eat or repeatedly asking if they found me disgusting.

And that's like fucked up to need from someone. It was tolerated by my family presumably because I am their child and for some reason they didn't find any part of that weird or concerning. But it's not something other people would be willing to do for me I'm pretty sure.

*Trigger warning for eating disorder talk*

I hate how whenever I eat anything my brain is like "You should kill yourself. Now." Like what's your fucking problem

[wannaholdhandswithfictionalmen]

Can I send a request for a fic with venti and a gender neutral mc? It's not really meant to be romantic or anything along those lines. I've just been constantly thinking about how the mc was stripped of everything, including their wings when they lost their fight against the unknown god, and how the gliders might have brought them a bit of comfort when trying to get accustomed to Mondstadt.

Something more heartfelt, maybe the mc just talking to venti after a late night out, or just waking up in the middle of the night to take a stroll in peace away from paimon, amber and the rest of the Chaotic knights of favonious.

This is more of a prompt if anything- I dont usually send requests so I dont know how to format them- sorry about that :'0

A/n: first time writing Venti. Oof. Hopes it's alright and anon I hope this is close to what you wanted.

Genre: Angst. Some fluff. (The power of friendship.)

Warning: It gets a bit angsty before it get softer.

Summary: The reality of your circumstances of the trapped traveler get you and Venti offers you some advice and comfort as your friend.

Word count: 1,420

In The Days To Come (How Much Will I Miss You?);

It was a series of perfect events, little coincidences, Paimon got distracted a while back by the smell of food, fluttering off with 'Delicious. Tasty food! Paimon will be back' before vanishing from your side. The knight of Favonius had no urgent problems to ask for your aid with now that the Dvalin has been saved and Mondstadt and its people can rest easy. You finally had time to yourself, time to feel and think of your new reality. 

It was the gentlest tug, pull of melancholy it crept up slowly, slowly, slowly all day nipping at your heels until you felt it from your toes to your head. Numbness, so empty at first then came sadness buried deep, ignored for days for the sake of saving others, making sure others were happy, living in their home, with their family-- while you were still missing yours. It felt unfair. Resentment and anger reared their ugly heads, howling like starving, ravenous beats. 

What an overwhelming torrent of emotion, waves after wave, lapping at your chin, your mouth, your nose. Sinking. Sinking. Sinking. No. Drowning. 

Until there was nothing but a muffled, muted haze of the world around you. 

If you nodded and 'hm', 'yes', 'sure', 'okay' your way through passing conversations no one noticed. Oh, how kind, brave and stoic the traveler was! Our hero! Maybe you didn't want to be a hero. You just wanted your sibling back. 

Gliding from the highest building in Mondstadt in the dead of night, you could close your eyes, imagine it, see it, your wings, the wind through your hair, the laughter of your best friend, your constant companion, your sibling-- 'I am absolutely certain, I can beat you!', 'Ha! How hilarious. You just try to keep up!' 

Then your feet hit the cobblestone of Mondstadt, your eyes snap open and that dream, that wish, all of it shatters into the most fragile fragments, fading away, slipping out of your mind, no matter how hard you try to grasp onto it, hold it close. Gone. 

You just want to cry. 

Figures it would be Venti who just so happens to find you. In the late hours of the night, every minute passes towards that too late but also too early threshold of time. 

He is whistling, then humming a gentle, soft song. Lyrics and melody unknown to you, deft, nimble fingers strum quiet, easy notes from his lyre. 

Quiet footsteps approaching your seating form, nearly hunched over a ledge outlooking most of Mondstadt from this peak near the cathedral and the statue of your friend, it was still a little odd to think of Venti, the whimsical, chaotic bard as a god but easier to wrap your mind around given the fact you had traveled to many different realms and worlds in the past. 

"How lucky I am to find a lone traveler, perhaps I could provide you with some company?" Venti interrupts his little performance to sit down beside you, cradling his lyre in his hands, you don't really have the energy to even answer or protest his presence even if you wanted. 

"Did you catch a bit of my new tune? I must work on something that will blow away even Master Diluc! Perhaps enough for a night of free drinks in the tavern in exchange for the request of my music!" Venti exclaims rather determinedly as always, especially when it came to getting the best wine possible, for free as well. The lengths he'd be willing to go is almost admirable in a way. 

Your answering silence, no laugh, huff or even a scoff at his expense nor a head shake, roll eyes. Nothing. 

"Ah poor traveler, your gloom could bring down even the brightest flowers bloom, what has doubled your trouble?" Even his joking yet sincere rhyming can't bring much of a reaction to your face and that eats away at Venti. Never one to want his friends to suffer, not if he is there to help in whatever way he can. 

Venti loses his playful, mischievous nature for the moment in favor of being serious. It's then he is more Anemo Archon then Venti the bard. 

"What is wrong, friend?" 

One tear is followed by many others, everything rushes to the surface, you shake, tremble, break under the weight of your own sorrow. Sobbing out to the blinking stars far, far away. 

"What if my sibling is gone forever? What if I never find any clues, signs? What if I spend the rest of my life trapped here, searching and searching?" You sound half hysterical with grief and worry, rambling out every doubt, insecurity you have kept so tightly hidden away. Because everyone else had their own problems and all the problems they wanted you to solve. 

"Years side by side, through every trouble, every battle, every adventure, journey, they were always with me. Now? I am alone. My power, my wings, my sibling taken from me." You sniff and cough, squeezing your eyes shut as the world around your blurs and become a mess of colors. 

"I am tired. I am scared. Why do I always have to be brave? Strong? My whole life has been turned upside down and I have barely had time to adjust! To take all of this in, it feels like every person I meet needs my help for something unrelated to finding my only family!" You can't help the way your words turn exhausted and bitter. 

Venti waits and listens to your venting without interruption. It's only once he is sure you have let it all out that he speaks. 

"There is no shame in your sorrow, your pain. You have been thrown into a situation unfamiliar and unless anything you have experienced before and you are being forced to endure this without your closest friend, your sibling." Venti's tone is slow, decisive as if he is giving every single word meticulous thought. 

"You are incorrect to assume that means you are alone. You have new friends here, people who care about you, your journey and your goal. Paimon, Me, Jean, Lisa, Diluc, Kaeya, Amber, we all care for you. And you will have our support whenever you need it. Without question." The finality and firmness of his statement leaves no room for argument. 

You realize and recognize the truth in his words and Venti stays by your side, in the quiet night as you cry and cry, relieving the tangled knot of everything you had let grow, fester and linger for so long, even before you found Paimon. 

Venti plays a soothing harmony, a mellow, delicate dance of the strings of his lyre and his soft voice, singing; something just for you, for the moment of trust and sharing between two friends. It is a lovely, comforting song as your tears begin to dry and the burden on you is lessened for now. 

It's easy to smile and hum along with Venti as if you've heard this a dozen times.

You have no idea what is awaiting you on the journey, what struggles you will face, what obstacles and hardships that will cause you to stumble and fall but you do have friends who will be there to pick you back up again and again.

"Paimon just enjoyed a juicy, sweet, savory meal! (Name) you should have join- wait a minute!" Paimon takes one look at you and her cheeks puff out in anger, it's too cute to be truly scary but the glares she shoots at Venti is fiercely defensive. 

"What did you do tone-deaf bard?!" 

You laugh, reaching out to take hold of Paimon, you hug her gentle. Paimon squeaks out in surprise but you feel her tiny arms gently squeeze your neck. 

"I have done nothing wrong, this time." Venti had paused his private little song, ensuring it was something meant to be shared between you two just like this night would be a shared memory to look back on. 

Paimon wiggles away from you, floating before you, you watch her stick her tongue out at Venti, blowing and making a hilarious show of her disbelief. "Paimon doesn't believe you! Apologize to them now!" 

In the ensuing 'fight' between Venti and Paimon, you watch Venti reach forward and pinch her cheek and the small girl lunged at him in a failed attempt to choke him, you are sure, Venti holds her back with a hand over her face. 

You laugh. 

Yeah, you had friends and you weren't alone. 

[zontiky]

okay so i tried to save this ask as a draft and it got deleted because tumblr is just such a functional website like that <3 but the prompt was “the hargreeves as ghosts in the apocalypse with five” or something like that i’m going to scream

this is SUPER long so i’m putting it under the cut hfkjsd

pre-five: the hargreeves siblings are dead. wait i feel a drabble coming on ooh

The Hargreeves siblings are dead.

Ben isn’t very aware of this at first. He’s been dead since 2006 -- he’s quite used to it, by now. What he is aware of, first, is light. Blinding white light. And Vanya, in the middle of it. He doesn’t close his eyes because he can’t feel pain, but if he could he thinks she would have made him blind. There’s light, and heat, and power, and then he closes his eyes anyway because the ceiling is collapsing around him and it’s instinctual.

When he opens them again he sees ash. Ash -- and Klaus.

He’s gotten used to Klaus, too. Klaus has a memorable sort of face; even if he didn’t, Ben has seen it every single day for almost twenty years. He doesn’t know if it’s actually been twenty years, for him. He doesn’t know how time moves for ghosts. Klaus has assured him it moves the same as it does for the living. Ben isn’t sure Klaus, stoned out of his mind, bleeding sluggishly from his arm, knew what he was talking about.

Anyway.

Klaus.

He’s wearing the coat he’s been flaunting around for the past week. His shirt is see-through, with little stars on it, like a pale imitation of the sky. Ben remembers his pants had laces on them, he’s sure they did not a minute ago, before the brightness that threatened to wipe out his very soul -- his soul is all he has left, really. His gaze drifts down anyway, to check.

Yes. Klaus’ pants have laces up the sides.

“No,” Ben says. Klaus is laying in a heap on the ground, his fingers curled like his tendons have been cut.

His lips feel numb because they always feel numb. Because Ben can’t feel at all. He takes a step. “No,” he says again, louder, surer. “No!”

Klaus looks up at him. His makeup is smudged, like it tends to be. His lips are bitten raw, like they tend to be. His hair is a mess, like it tends to be, and like it will be, always, because Klaus isn’t breathing.

Klaus is lying in a heap on the ground. Klaus is standing above his own body. Klaus is reaching for Ben like he’s hoping to touch him for the first time in years. Just when Klaus’ cold, dead, fingers brush his face, a voice from behind says, so quietly, dripping with disbelief: “Ben?”

Ben shuts his eyes and wishes desperately he could cry.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, for the first time in so, so long, but he also doesn’t feel it at all. He feels-but-doesn’t-feel someone turn him around, until they are saying, “Ben? Ben!” and he has no choice but to open his eyes and face the music.

Diego is gripping his shoulders like he is a dying man and Ben is the answer. Behind him, Luther and Allison watch them, stunned silent. Allison’s hands are pressed to her mouth. She looks like she wants to cry. 

And Vanya. Little Vanya, painted white. Her head is hung as her shoulders shake with the weight of the destruction she has so inevitably caused. (Ben would say he always knew she was destined for great things -- but he can’t, because he didn’t.) (Nobody ever said great things had to be good.)

The Hargreeves siblings are dead. Their bodies are strewn across what is left of their childhood home, smouldering and burning, and Ben is very aware of that fact.

righto anyway. so they have an emotional reunion but its also kind of bitter? id have to actually write this for it to make sense so lets skip it for now lol

five shows up

he cannot see them obviously bc theyre all ghosts

god if i did write this it would be such a monster of a fic and would take me like 2 years to finish i already know fhkjdsk

somehow ?? they manage to influence the world around them maybe? idk maybe now that klaus is dead hes sober

or maybe hes high for all eternity?

for the purposes of this au lets say he died sober or in the late stages of withdrawal, and bc ghosts cant feel pain in action hes sober

so EVENTUALLY they figure out how to corporealize bc klaus is like blam wham ghost powers

asdlfk that sounds so stupid im sorry

he would say that tho imho,,, it sounds like something hed say,,,

if i DID write this it would be alternating povs also,,,

ok so out of all of them klaus and ben have the most experience homeless

and while being stuck in an apocalypse is not at all the same thing as being homeless it does help to have some knowledge

five doesnt eat the twinkie!! good for him

dammit okay. theres 2 options we can take here. in the comics five couldnt get back bc he fucked up his math and spent 15 years doing the wrong thing, but if u apply that here, with 6 other ppl checking his work this could be avoided and they end up skipping the whole assassin shtick and just hopping straight back to 2019, ready to prevent the apocalypse

OR five still gets hired for the commission but the sibs are tagging along

i think bc five isnt completely alone in this au unfortunately dolores doesnt exist :((

for each other the 2 paths tho theres also options?? bc they (ghosts) can go back in time and inhabit their past selves bodies? OR they could just,,, cease to exist

IM JUST NOW REALIZING HOW MANY PATHS THIS COULD TAKE,, AAH FUCK

okay gonna split this into parts. this is gonna be so long brace yourselves.

1) they go back in time because math checking and the ghosts swap out for their past selves

after multiple years of being stuck in an apocalypse together i think they would learn to get along with each other. like at least a little bit

which would make it easier for them to prevent the apocalypse

bc theyd:

trust each other more

already know abt the apocalypse and not have to wait for five to grace them all with his knowledge

are working as a team from the very beginning

have open lines of communication

yeah uh. so there

vanya is also already aware of her powers so the whole harold goading her into turning against her family and snapping to wipe out all life on earth thing? yeah that doesnt happen

oh and harold wouldn’t know how to do that in the first place because klaus wouldn’t throw out reggie’s journal! this solves so many problems wtf

there’s still commission issues bc they (and by they i mean five) are on the commission’s radar

so there’s still dope fight scenes sdlkfd pinky promise

okay idk. they stop the apocalypse and everything is okay the end hfkjd

2) they fix the math but only five can go back and the ghosts cease to exist

this is just sad! it would be sad okay! im sad! lets move on

subset of the past one: ben CAN go back with five because he was already dead and time travel affects them differently or something idk

aaaaaa

five & ben dynamic duo would be dope as shit BUT five would not be able to see him... so they use klaus as a middleman fjsdsfd

is there 2 bens? is one ben deleted in favor of the time-traveling ben? i dont know! i dont know my brain is melting

either way shit is happening yall!! obviously klaus is clued in, directly or indirectly it doesnt matter but he is on board the ‘don’t let the entire world end in flames’ train

3) they join the commission and then when five goes back in time they all go back

this is fun because now five is a highly trained assassin who is also lowkey a complete marshmallow for his siblings and once again TEAMWORK WOO

basically the first path but now five has a gun fhsdjk

4) they join the commission but five has to leave them behind and they cease to exist

five with a gun but hes sad now

i didnt go into how much losing his siblings would suck in the prev path but like. it would suck so much. he’s already lost them once if you think about it when he time traveled the first time and yeah he found the adult ghost versions but,, its different

and now suddenly hes stuck with these strange adult versions of the people he knows and he KNOWS them but also he doesnt? at all? they dont have all the years of shared experiences together? and theyre all grown up from the first ‘set’ of siblings he had which for five was like 40+ years ago??

SCREAMS

i have losing my mind disease (self-diagnosed)

subset: five has to leave them behind but they still exist because the commission is out-of-time kind of? idk but they’re still floating around somewhere and come back to impact the plot later or something

yeah idk. literally just wrote them down bc i didnt want them to die^2 hfkjwehd

subset: they still exist but instead of being just Somewhere they’re specifically at the assassination of JFK onwards because thats where five left them and they either go on ghosting and make an appearance in s2 OR they cease because them-wise they havent died yet but that doesnt make sense because ghosts can time travel so nevermind

i dont have the brain energy left to explore this one aaaa

okay jesus christ i think that’s all

I DON’T KNOW. i don’t know. i might write some more of this because honestly it is a very fine flavor of angst + hurt/comfort <3

[stemmmm]

its interesting that the servants are fully aware of the looping situation. adds even more weight to beatrice helping them in the last round. well... shannon, kanon, and probably genji at least. so the three people who absolutely undoubtedly believe in beato. its nice because shannon and kanon are the two looping characters aside from maria that have had a sort of ongoing character development and it means that all that doesn't get erased! i respect! i think it would be very unhelpful for them to be crying over their life situations the same way over and over.

good lord just tell me what ange was hallucinating about at the boat captain's place. cut out that irritating vague destiny shit

oh god damn it the rabbit girls ARE the porcelain rabbits maria had. i'd been waiting for a 4th to show up this whole time but they just reminded me the 4th got smashed into a fucking wall

battler and kyrie calling each other mother and son for the first time 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

the fucking succession test is "fuck, marry, kill" im gonna lose it. in my mind i'd narrowed it down to either solve the epitaph(lame), some kind of written response essay you'd get at the end of a bad multiple choice test, or a math problem and i was trying to think of what would be the funniest but this blows it out of the water

well i see why only jessica and george are being tested first because battler and maria don't have a s/o like they do

george if you were and woman and gay this speech about killing everyone else for the sake of being with shannon would speak so much more to me. like life is strange. unfortunately i don't like you. respect tho, fuck your family they do suck

honestly? lame as fuck george didn't march off to legit kill every one of his family members. loser. weak. kill 'em.

oohhhh shit ough fuck hes fighting The Spot

this extremely long fight scene for me is just "magic isnt real" *skips dialogue skips dialogue skips--

beatrice turns to battler after showing him all this bullshit like "hey isn't this so cool dont you love it? isnt it awesome" and battler just looks at her and says

"anime sucks"

the ploy this whole time was to show magic as openly and clearly as possible to make it undeniable. dont fall for it battlerrrrrrrrrr this is like. so easy. you can make so many logical leaps i prommy.

episode 4 post, starting with my current theory

ep1 ep2 ep3

lambda so kindly revealed to us and reminded beato that she gave beato her power, beato is not a real witch. interesting, given that beato claims to be a thousand years old but we'll ignore that for now. lambda insists that beato has to keep battler in this game for as long as possible or else, because she wants to keep bern trapped for as long as possible, so we've got a new goal post popping in yet again. beato not only wants to defeat battler and make him admit she's a witch, but now she has to wear him down more slowly too and there's even more pressure on the fact that he must not ever win.

this is further complicated by ange coming in with the intent to solve the case and save the family on rokkenjima as fast as possible and not fuck around. its funny timing considering the last game was the first one where battler was actually playing in a way where he could bring himself to blame family members and therefore... actually get somewhere with it. feels a little mean to him to come around the instant he's got his shit together and be like "you suck at this. move out of the way" but he took it well and honestly, he's not in any rush like she is

because in conflict with all of this is the fact that beato and battler are absolutely both losing the plot. they've both become way more invested in the other person's emotions and wellbeing in a very visible way. battler came to her rescue despite being mad at her and beato cheerfully burst into the room to try and lift the mood when she was lied to that battler was in a bad way. (chefs kiss to that btw)

so this is all the observation, what's the theory? there is a chance that... since beato is still pushing hard for battler to affirm she's a witch, that doing that may somehow give her real power. at this point I'm pretty squarely on the magic is real side, bern and lambda are pretty firmly and obviously real witches with actual power. bern declaring ange a witch (especially after ange apparently trained herself as one) and bringing her over has all but completely confirmed that for me. however, the argument that we've been having isn't really "is magic real"... it's "is beatrice a witch", and given that her powers apparently aren't her own, it seems that she's actually not. the ritual exists as a way to give beato real powers... potentially. this may not even be true, but she does get stronger each time it's successful so there could be something to that.

my additional source for this theory is the red truth that we couldn't hear used against evatrice. perhaps she wasn't saying that witches and magic weren't real for any reason, but that evatrice's powers weren't real or her own. "you couldn't do any of that magic stuff because you don't actually have powers, I did all of that" or something. after all, in the end of their fight before battler showed up, the servants were all saying that beato was the true golden witch in a pretty confusing matter. the only thing that makes it hard for me to believe beato was so deep into it that every single thing was an act is the fact that we've been shown very clearly that she can't lie well. even if she didn't say so herself (which she has), the magnificent facial expression swapping she does makes it particularly blatant. that makes it hard to say exactly how much of the last arc was trickery vs how much she was genuinely struggling. my view of it is that she did in fact hand over her borrowed powers, not expecting it to break quite so bad, and when she got through to the end on pure dumb luck, she flipped the script to make it look like she didn't just barely scrape through.

in short... this is lambda's game. we're just playing it

now for my next question: does virgilia actually exist or what

[a-lonely-tatertot]

Finding Home

A/N: HIIIIIII IM BACK BOIS! Anyways this is a shorter chapter I didn’t wanna mess with outline so you get tiny chapter. sooo woot woot for like barely 2k words? But like the doc im writing this on is at like 19k and 29 pages i am in shock. trying to get back a consistent updating with this so uh yeah dont keep your hopes up tho- working on ch. 7 rn hope you enjoy! As always betaed by the glorious @bookwyrminspiration

words: 2208

tw: none

wattpad ao3

Chapter 6: These Secrets Stain Us Red

They had gotten off the bus at the last stop before Kull, stepping out into the cold air. Sophie glanced at the trees in the distance turning orange and yellow. Distantly, she remembered when she was younger this was her favorite season, how the leaves would fall and crunch at her feet, and how it was actually somewhat bearable to be outside. She smiled at the memory as she held Linh’s hand, walking quickly to the gas station, her stomach already grumbling.

“Linh?” a voice called from behind them as they stood in line. Linh swung around, trying to find the source of who called her, nearly startling Sophie into almost dropping her water. The mystery person stepped out from behind a small cluster of people with an overly energetic wave. “Linh! It is you!” he called.

Sophie watched as Linh’s eyes landed on the man and her whole expression shifted. As opposed to the man’s own happiness, Linh seemed to put a wall between her real emotions and the rest of the world, her face betraying nothing. “Hey, Sameul!” Linh said in pretend excitement; Sophie knew that her words carried an undertone of malice.

This Sameul was not the man Sophie had seen in the memories, but from Linh’s reaction, he seemed to probably be involved in whatever Linh was in.

“That’s me,” Sameul responded, clearly not getting Linh’s annoyance like Sophie was. “Geez, it’s been what, how many months since I last saw you?”

“Yeah it’s been a while,” Linh said, her shoulders rigid and her jaw set. Who the heck is this guy? she thought. Their name was called and Sameul followed them to go pick up their food. Sophie tried not to feel trapped with the way Linh’s eyes darted.

Sameul smiled ruefully, “Last time I saw you you had a little backpack and were running out the door in the middle of the night.” Linh took in a sharp breath and stuttering to a halt, her tray of food almost dropping. Sophie raised her eyebrows, more confused than ever. There was a beat then a sharp ring interrupted the weighted silence and Linh’s eyes widened with relief.

“Oh Sam, I’m sorry, that’s her sister calling. She’s really gotta take that. Why don’t you come with me?” Linh asked, more of a command than a suggestion. Reluctantly, Sophie pressed accept on her phone, ready to unleash the crazy whirlwind of shit that she had found out on one completely unprepared Amy. “What up checking in blame Tina she was worried,” Amy said, boredom concealing her concern.

“Uhuh sure Tina was worried,” Sophie chuckled. “Anyways, Linh is being super suspicious.”

Amy made a startled noise, “O-okay then so not well.” 

Sophie nodded even though Amy couldn’t see her, “Yup, also uh side note, totally did not watch another one of her memories.” “Sophie! It’s like you’re trying to do it on purpose!”

“It was an accident I swear!”

“Mhm, yeah, definitely.”

Sophie grumbled, “Oh screw off. Anyway, I was in this bathroom and her knuckles were all bloody like she had punched something. And then this guy came in and said that she wasn’t allowed to be reckless anymore, but from what I saw it was like she was living with some other runaway people I guess?”

Amy was silent for a moment. “Well damn.”

“Yeah,” Sophie agreed. “You shoulda seen her when this guy recognized her while we were getting food; she got like scary tense and for a moment I thought she was gonna water power him.” “Water power him? Really? That’s what you’re calling it?” Amy said. Sophie could practically hear her raising her eyebrow. “At that point just call it water bending.”

“I refuse to call it that.”

“How dare you; you’ve disrespected our childhood.” Sophie laughed. “But seriously,” Amy continued, and she knew she wasn’t going to like what she was going to say next, “Soph, what happened to telling her about the memories? Instead, you just spied more.” “She’s the one with the sketchy past!”

“That you don’t have any right to!”

“She’s been weird and I need to figure out why. Once I do I’ll tell her everything.”

“No, you don’t need to figure it out yourself! You need to talk to her and she will tell you if she’s ready to.” “Don’t tell me what to do Amy. She lied to me. The first night we were together we talked about how we got here and she lied to me like it never happened.”

“This isn’t war Sophie. Just because you’re scared, just because she lied doesn’t mean you get to invade her privacy. She’s not the enemy Sophie, she’s your girlfriend.”

Sophie hung up and her phone buzzed twice more while she watched Linh walk back over to her. This wasn’t Amy’s problem, this wasn’t Amy’s life, so screw her for trying to tell her what to do. She had the abilities and she was sure as hell going to use them. “Sam left,” Linh said with a clearly fake smile. “Said he should probably get back on the bus and didn’t want to intrude.”

At that Sophie raised an eyebrow, she didn’t need to use her telepathy to know it was a lie.

Stepping on the bus felt like placing the weight of the world on her shoulders. She knew that man was something to Linh, or Linh was something to him; maybe he was what Linh was running from. She didn’t have regrets when she reached carefully out to Sameul’s mind and glanced at what he said to Linh. Maybe she should’ve regretted it, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She needed to know, when she had left the Lost Cities it was her way of saying “I will not be lied to even if it seems better that way”. So much had been kept from her and here she was, getting things from the source instead of waiting for someone to tell her.

The words, “You haven’t changed Linh,” rang in her ears as she pulled back, not letting any emotions show on her face as Linh followed behind her. Linh didn’t say anything so Sophie didn’t say anything and they settled into a tense silence as the bus around them buzzed with noise. Sophie tried to think of something to say as the words played on repeat in her head but Linh beat her to it.

“You never told me much about Mari, about what she means to you,” Linh said. Each word seemed rehearsed as if she had said it in her head a thousand times before speaking the words into existence. “I didn’t know you cared,” Sophie responded quickly before she could think it through.

“Tell me about Mari?” Linh asked softly.

Despite what Sophie was hiding from Linh and what Linh was hiding from her, she couldn’t stop herself from talking. The words may have meant nothing as she rambled on about her life there, only meant to be a distraction, but she let them spill from her lips without hesitation. She talked of Tommy, Angie, and Mari, of her weekly game nights, of the regulars at the diner. The people she had come to love yet when the time came she didn’t hesitate to leave ‘cause she was scared. Scared of the permanence of it, scared she’d lose herself in the dream of it. And how when she burned those bridges all she felt was a gaping hole in herself. As she talked she thought of the people she had left in the Lost Cities; how she burned it all like she had when she was young and reckless and angry burning her mark, the moonlark, into the ground desperate to prove something, desperate to mean something. But now she was afraid of that, tearing everything to shreds, burning it to ashes because she didn’t know how to mean something to someone. She thought of what Amy had said and briefly wondered if she would ever be able to just talk about something instead of treating everything as a mystery she was destined to solve. Eventually, her words lulled Linh to sleep and she let out a soft sigh of contentment as she laid her head on Sophie’s shoulder. Sophie glanced at Linh, only allowing herself a quick look at her girlfriend’s soft and relaxed face before staring out the window watching the gravel pass, not allowing herself time for her guilt and sadness to rise. She wasn’t allowed those feelings. With every fiber of herself Sophie dreaded and couldn’t wait for the moment they stepped off of the bus into Kull, the town with as weird of a name as people.

An hour later, as the sun started to fall behind the trees and the sky began to turn dark, that moment came and Sophie found her entire body filled with anxiety. They made their way to the front, Sophie in front of Linh, her hand stretched behind her holding Linh’s hand like a lifeline.

They were the only ones getting off and within seconds they were left standing on the dirt road, the bus was long gone. The air was cold, and the wind blew lightly, tossing around Sophie’s ponytail. Neither spoke to the other, standing in silence, staring at the buildings in front of them. It felt like they’d break a spell if they moved, if they talked, so Sophie didn’t. But Linh did (a spell didn’t need to last an eternity in her mind, just for the moment that it was intended for). Linh squeezed Sophie’s hand three times, dragging her out of her haze to stare at Linh confused.

“It’s a human thing,” Linh said sheepishly. Distantly Sophie remembered Amy teaching her, three squeezes, “I love you”. Four squeezes back and Sophie had said, “I love you too.” She didn’t have time to think if it was a lie because with that she started walking, entirely on autopilot, the familiar route to Mari’s house ingrained in her mind. It was after hours, so there’d be no point going to the diner. So she dragged Linh down main street, taking a left about halfway down, and then it was another block til she found herself outside the door on the white porch of the bright mobile home with her whole body buzzing. It was almost too much to be there; staring at it again it was like nothing had changed. But something had, because she didn’t have a key, and so she knocked with all of the impulsive courage she had left.

Three rapid knocks.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five seconds.

The door opened with a creak.

It wasn’t Mari.

There was a man, about her height, hair pulled in a bun and silver bangs over glasses. He was familiar, why was he familiar? Linh drew in a harsh breath of air and squeezed Sophie’s hand as tight as she could. That was when the puzzle pieces fell into place. That’s when it all made sense. The man standing in front of her was someone she hadn’t seen in two years other than in the memories she had unrightfully stolen from him. The man standing in front of her, still with his signature silver, was Tam Song.

Amy’s phone buzzed next to her, pulling her away from rereading her homework question for the eight time. Ever since Sophie’s call and her following silence Amy couldn’t focus; she tried to distract herself, and pulled herself away from texting Linh and telling her everything Sophie had told her. It’s not my place, she would think. It’s not part of the plan. Her phone unlocked and she slowly processed the photo and message. It was a picture of Sophie leaning her back against the gas station with her hand holding her phone to her ear. It was just like her co-conspirators to be that dramatic they had to send a photo too.

-Operation Collect the Dumbasses-

Braincell Holder: You know we heard that call. Pure of Heart Dumb of Ass: I thought we said that I would start this conversation? No Thoughts Head Empty: Yeah well you took too long. Braincell Holder: Not the Point. The Mental Stability: And the Point? This felt too pointed, Amy thought. Way too pointed and directed at her. Her phone buzzed again. Braincell Holder: Having second thoughts? Only slightly, Amy thought, but no no this needed to happen. The Mental Stability: No Pure of Heart Dumb of Ass: Thank the fucking ancients we can move on No Thoughts Head Empty: We’ve got a Phase 3 to begin

Phase 3, which they already had planned, would be the hardest to set up. Everything had to be just the right timing and just the right place.

Incoming call from Braincell Holder

Amy smiled as she accepted the call and long red hair popped into the frame. “Where is she?” Amy asked.

The redhead grinned, “She’ll be here in a minute, you know how Mrs. Sparkly Justice is; she’s got meetings but she said she’s got a friend who wants to help.”

Amy smiled, their little band of conspirators and their plan was working better than she could’ve imagined.

“So,” Amy said, “Where do we start?”

[arthurflecksgirl]

Nothing but clowns /Arthurs POV

My version of the scene when Arthur watches the news on tv

Making food for mum is always a bit complicated. Much to think of, because there are always two questions: Should I put some sleeping pills in her oath meal or not? And if yes how many? I check and notice that I am running out of meds. Shit.

The plan for today is:

Visiting Dr Kane, going to the pharmacy afterwards and then go to Pogos.

Today`s not a usual visit at the comedy club. Today will be my day! I will tell my own jokes up on stage. I`m no longer the lonely man sitting alone on his table with a glass of water in the middle of the room. I will be the star up there and people will have a good laugh. Even Sophie. And I just know she will be there to see me. I hope she will get my humor- I`m sure she does because she was digging it in the elevator- and maybe she`ll like me even more afterwards. I would love to leave Pogos together, take her out on a date, have a coffee or something. Talking about how I write my jokes and what inspires me to write them. How it feels like when funny thoughts cross my mind and how much of it is hard work and how much just comes to me. Maybe she`ll be interested in that after watching my performance. Interested in me. I`ve heard that humor is important in a relationship and that woman prefer men with a good sense of humor. So maybe I will have a chance after all.

I dont hesitate to take the last two sleeping pills and crash them to mix it in my mother`s bowl. No way I would give her the chance to ruin my afternoon. Everything is planned out and I know she would freak or do something unexpected as soon as she watches me leaving the house all dressed up. She would make a big scene as soon as I`m coming home after a long night out. And I just don`t have the nerves to deal with her shit. Besides that, it`s not good for her health to get all excited or angry about something. So a little sleep will help us both.She`ll be all save and sleepy when I come home, not a worry on her mind about where her son might have been.

"Happy look, Thomas Wayn`s on TV" My mothers voice echoes through the living room. her voice always feels like an echo to me. Because its always the same words filling the room, over and over again. Crashing against the heavy walls  without a sound but her thin voice .

"Happy Happy Happy. Thomas Wayne. " Two words that make my ears bleed in one sentence. How does she do that? It`s getting worse. Her voice just makes me feel bad sometimes. I really do care about mum a lot but some days I feel triggered by her talking and I don`t know why. Its like she says something and I immediately feel like I should eighter crawl under a blanked and hide or punsh a fucking wall.

"Yes mother!" I try not to sound annyoed. Not that she would ever notice if I was. Or hurt. She never does. Mum would have made a common therapist. Just sitting there, repeating the same three sentences for years while looking right through you.

Mum as a therapist would be like:

"Thomas Wayne will be major soon. How does that make you feel? Thomas Wayne does have some enemies lately. Does that change your own opinion on him? Did you noticed how skinny you are? Thomas Wayne gained some weight instead of losing it . How do you feel about that?  Are you sad today, Happy? "

And of course all my answers would also echo through the room. Unheard and without making a sound while crashing through the windows. Breaking glass. And I would cut myself on that glass. Over and over again. And Penny would call the doctors,telling them I tried to hurt myself again. Not realizing that she was the one hurting me.

My answer to her questions would be "Happy was always sad. Every minute of his life. How does that make you feel?"

I get the bowl and crush the rest of the pills. My wet hair is sticking to my neck. I`m freezing a little bit while wearing my PJ  pants only . It`s always cold in here. This apartment represents peoples hearts.

"They`re asking him about those horrible subway murders" she says.

What? Oh my god. This caughts my attention. Now I notice that I wasnt paying attention to the news for the whole time. Somehow it didnt cross my mind that there will be something about me on the news anytime soon. I was wrong!

They thank Wayne for being here, in these difficult times. Difficult for who? For him?  As if he would care about what happened or about anyone who isn`t like him. As if some dead guys on the subway would effect him personally. Does he know what it means to have a difficult life at all? I`m aware of the fact that money doesnt solve all problems. I dont even think about money. I think about so many other things Thomas does have and he is nothing but an arrogant prick about, Looking down on others.

I leave the kitchen and make my way to the couch "Why him?" I ask, placing her bowl of food on the table.

Why is Thomas the one talking about the three dead guys anyway?

"Look like he gained weight" .

I knew she would ignore my question and care about his looks instead. Seriously, sometimes I get the feeling like she has a crush on him or something. There must be a reason for her fixation on this man.

"Yes all three worked for Wayne investments. Good, decent, educated."

So thats why he is talking about them.  All about the money, Wayne huh? I run my fingers through my hair, getting nervous.

"Although I didnt know any of them personally, like all Wayne employees, past and present. They`re family."

There he said it. He didnt even knew them. He`s just using them to make it seem like he cares.

The tv screen shows three photos. Each one of them a face of the subway guys. It feels strange to see them now after I killed them. My memory of their faces slightly differ but I remember what they did and how it felt.  My mind is racing, all over the place. Memories of their evil laughter. Flashbacks of the pain they caused me. Physically and emotionally. Their photos might look innocent but I know what kinda guys they were. I experienced and wittnessed it. But what does Wayne know? Or the tv guy? Nothing. No one was watching them while they almost kicked me to death. I was alone. I`m always alone.

"Did you hear that I told you we`re family" my mum says.

"Shhhh shhh shhh!" I want her to shut up. I just cant stand her voice right now. Especially not now. She really does think Thomas thinks of us as family because she worked for him decades ago. I can`t listen to this. Its getting all too much. The only voice I have to listen to right now is the guy on tv. I take a deep drag of my cigarette. It feels like breathing is getting harder. Something is going on. Not just inside of me but in this city. In the world. And it started with me. Am I the center of something? The beginning or the end? Am I everything at once? Does someone notice its me?

"There now seems to b a groundsweel of ani rich sentiment of the city. Its almost as if the less fortunate resitends are talking the side of the killer".

Thomas talks about how much of a shame this is and that this is one of the reasons why he is running for major. Gotham lost its way.

Oh you notice now? Where have you been all these years?

Its hard. So hard to watch peoples ignorance and how they use things to make themself stand in a better light. A light of lies.

They now ask him whats up with the eye wittness report of the suspect being a man in a clown mask.

Now the walls are closing in on me. I`m terrified but at the same time I am not. Unsure of how I feel I smoke my cig, not being able to blink while starring at the tv screen. This moment feels so much more like a daydream than so many dreams did. Is this truly happening? Are they really taling about a murder a did on the news? Is this my first time ever being on tv? Well, I gotta be honest here I always thought my first time on tv would be a lot different. But here I am.

So seems like there was someone wittnessing it. I should be worried now. I should freak and I know that. But what is bugging me much more is the fact that Thomas Wayne says "It makes total sense to me, because what kind of coward would do something that cold blooded? Someone who hides behind a mask. Someone who is envious of tose more fortunate than themselves. That the`re too scared to show they`re own face."

Thats it. Thats when I lose it. I`m trying not to let it show because of mum sitting in the same room with me but it`s hard. I`m good at hiding my feelings in front of her or in front of anyone in general but this is too much. The news are making a total different  story out of this, As if I was hiding behind a mask to go out an kill people. It was self defense for gods sake. I was wearing that damn clown make up because I was on my way home from work. Some shitty bullies started to attack a man in a clwon costume and now they are making him the bad guy? This is sick.

I never cared about money. I just wanted to have enough to take care of mum and be able to pay rent. Even my dreams about being famous were never about being rich. It was about being seen and loved.  But what do they know?

I thought I was living an illusion but they are living their very own illusions.

I feel my body tensing up. Every muscle. Every inch. My skin is getting tight. I lean back on the couch. I dont know what to do. I wanna get out of myself. Being me is getting unbearable again.

Another time being missunderstood.

They dont even know it was me and they still don`t get it right,

"And until those kind of people change for the better,those of us who made something of our lifes, will always look at those who havent as nothing but clowns". Wayne adds.

My legs start trembling. There is no way to hold them still. Bad sign. Very bad sign. I laugh to myself as I stare at the ceiling. What a joke. Great punshline with the clowns. I bet you are proud of yourself, Wayne. I bet you are. Always glad to be able to help to tell a joke.

They thank him once again while my mum tells me that this isnt funny.

I wanna say something but I better don`t. It`s not a good idea to ruin someone else`s punchline.

I`m going to explode, explode, explode.

Until I feel nothing.

I inhale the smoke, the only thing that proofs that I am still breathing.

Because I cant feel it. The only thing I feel is rage and my left hand grabbing my right wrist.

And this god damn candle that looks like a ginger cat staring at me.

@impulsiveclown @will-you-be-there @jokerownsmysoul @missjoker96 @arthurskitten @lynnesm @nonnymousse @gwynplaine89 @ajokeformur-ray@damnrightobsessedwithim @sgtsavoytruffle  @duhliriouss  @flowerglitterwoman @thirstforfleck @spookyhome @iartsometimes  @you-cant-cry-in-here @bustafatclownnut @jokerismyhubbie  @check-out-this-joker @darknessisafriend  @arthurhappyclown    @neon-umbrella-for-stella   @call-me-harley-quinn  @arthurjokersgirl  @raven-romanoff @ajokeformur-ray​ @ivedescoveredheathsjoker​

@aarthurfleckk @mylovelycrazyworld @clownalog @ajokerfangirl  @the-one-who-is-chaos @sabrinaeileensnape

[sergle]

hey sara, if you dont wanna answer this its fine, but im gonna ask anyway, im almost 20, supposedly the height of my youth or whatever and... im the fattest ive ever been, i know that weight =/= worth, but im having a Very Hard Time coping with it, how can i help myself through that?

i don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to be upset first of all- a lot of people think that being Body Posi means never ever having negative thoughts about yourself, but we can’t all be confident all the time, so don’t Feel Bad For Feeling Bad Sometimes.also worth mentioning: 19/20 is NOT the height of your youth, most folks’ lives don’t start falling into place until their 30s/40s!!!!!!! nobody expects you to have your identity/confidence/life figured out when you turn 20.I think trying to feel good about yourself is a personal thing and it’s going to be diff for you than it was for me. So these are things that I’ve done, and things that I try to think.- making self portraits helped me during a period of weight gain, to see my body for exactly how it looks. taking reference photos of myself and drawing them as accurately as i could so that if i LIKED the way the portrait looked, i couldn’t say “but that’s not what I actually look like, though”- as someone with on-and-off eating disorders for many years, being persistent about reminding myself that Everyone Has To Eat To Live. that Not Eating has only, and would only, make my life worse.- working my hardest to place myself around depictions of fat people. that means following artists who ARE fat/plus sized, seeing their art every day. this is especially important if you are a member of a friend group where everyone is thinner than you. the art helps.- exercising for any other reason than to lose weight. a lot of fat people have a complicated relationship with workouts. tunnel vision can happen and you can over-exercise bc you want so badly to become thin, or become more muscular, and exercise turns into a lens for self harm. i have experience in this.exercise for a sense of routine (on tuesdays and fridays we go to the gym, on wednesdays we wear pink), taking outdoor walks so that you can Look At Nature, doing yoga for a little flexibility and to center yourself. any reason works.- i despised the way my body looked 3 years ago, even though old pictures of me look great to me now. 5 years ago, i despised the way my body looked, even though 3 years later i would wish i still looked like that. and so on, and so forth. sometimes i think about how, if i’d just enjoy what i look like WHILE I LOOK LIKE IT, that’d solve some problems. maybe in 3 years i’ll see pictures of myself in 2020 and say Damn, That Bitch Hot. - this is the hardest one. if you have friends (skinny or not!) who talk about weight and your body in a way that makes you feel shitty, or shit talk OTHER fat people and pretend like you’re not included in that group, put them on blast. just dump them if you have to. this constant, slow-burn negativity does nightmarish things to your self esteem. this includes thinner people who say “i’m so fat, i’m so fat, look at my tummy that’s 10 times smaller than yours”. it’s garbage.if you have family who make you feel bad about yourself, that might not be something you can control. but you CAN control who you’re friends with.and finally: if you’re plus sized, a positivity message of “i’m fat and i’m SEXY” isn’t going to cut it. it’s GOOD to feel sexy, but here’s a small reminder for all of us: you don’t have to be sexy. it isn’t the price you pay to have permission to be fat. you can just exist.

[houseki-no-suffering]

honestly in pad's perspective, them being in a coma didnt make rutile happy and them being healthy still didnt make rutile happy so it's like fuck you. try fixing me then, here's a piece of something that fixed me, see if you can replicate it if youre so stubborn about it. meanwhile, im gonna pay back the gem that actually helped me by giving myself to them cause you clearly only care about being able to fix me and not my recovering itself

after trying to answer this concisely, I found out that i had a lot of thoughts.

So have a meta about Padparadscha’s wish for death, Rutile’s insecurities and why Padpa came back to Rutile.

to latch onto your ask, the only time padpa speaks about making rutile happy is when we first see them. 

they just woke up from a centuries long sleep and rather than spend time with rutile, they go for a walk with phos, the ‘youngest little squirt’ who always tagged along sensei. the little jewel Padpa probably didnt have that close a relationship with, compared to other gems they have known for a longer time.

during this conversation, we quickly realize how similar these two characters are. Both of them need constant replacements: phos breaks all the time and the seventh treasure theory pushes them (unbeknownst to them) to lose and acquire new parts of their body. This is similar to padpa’s condition, with the difference that padpa’s has a much harder time accepting new pieces.

it’s ironic. phos could live the same life padpa does if their body wasnt so accepting of replacements (and we get a glimpse of it when they acquire lapis’ head and during the 220 years time skip). Padpa could live the same life as phos as well if their body wasnt as picky. Add pain, loss, the weight of a meaningless but timeless existence, of war, of crushing self-hate and helplessness. 

You can see that padpa and phos are aware of the similarities they share. So padpa moves it one step forward.

Padparadscha says they want rutile to give up on assembling them because they dont want to be a burden. For this we can assume two things:

1) like most of the old gems (and some of the young ones too), padpa has lost any interest in living. 

they arent alive for their own sake or because there is something they want to do or prove or see. Even after they go to the moon, they say they will sacrifice their whole being in seeing that phos’ mission is successful. They want to help phos and maybe they have new faith in change thanks to phos’ revolution but, ultimately, they still end up sacrificing themselves. 

Padpa never stopped considering their life like a chip they could bargain, they never stopped thinking about death.

2) Padpa doesn’t hate Rutile and they are living for Rutile’s sake out of kindness and resignation. perfectly aware of Rutile’s obsession with fixing them. 

To be “discreet and composed” is possibly the most recurring advice in HnK: be prudent, think before you act, have patience, wait, consider everyone else’s feelings, dont rush. Ultimately, this is just a cute wrapping for what these pieces of advice really mean: let it all go. 

Padpa let it go when they decided not to confront Rutile and they always stayed true to their resolution. They’re fond of Phos and fascinated by Phos’ ability not to let go, the one that made them an outcast, but even while helping them Padpa is still nonchalantly  putting their life on the line.

Padpa let it go. They dont speak with Rutile during the night raid. they dont think that communication will solve their problems. And the same is happening now.

Padpa’s face when they salute Rutile and give them a piece of their gem is like that of a mother who sees their lost child. If the child just doesnt understand, what good is to speak about things? 

They’re resigned, there’s tenderness in padpa’s eyes. It’s like they’re telling Rutile: “here, i’m back, sorry for the trouble. i did the thing i was meant to do. I’ll give you this piece so you can say you fixed me, like back then. It will be like old days: I’ll live for your sake again.”

This is directly connected to Yellow’s line in chapter 70, the one that sums up Rutile and Padpa’s relationship perfectly: “Padparadscha woke up! Isn’t that what you wanted?”

It isn’t. 

What Rutile wanted was to have absolute authority over their craft. If anyone can fix padpa, what’s Rutile’s skills good for? If they are disposable in a society where your worth and your value depend on how essential you are for the survival of the species, what good is Rutile?

It is ironic and profoundly sad and it shows you just how messed up the lustrous society is. 

I can think of few gems who are as un-disposable as Rutile. Euclase maybe, because they have a good grasp of the defects of their society and made themselves irreplaceable, Sensei, Bort… But Rutile is the only doctor, an excellent doctor. They truly are useful and their craft is praised and acknowledged as indispensable. And yet they too are disposable, because anyone can do their job if they train hard enough. Sensei can do their job better than Rutile.

So Rutile decided to embark on an impossible mission. They would fix Padpa. If they could succeed where everyone else had failed, where sensei had failed, they would be irreplaceable. They would be unique, needed, useful, worthy. 

Rutile is the umpteenth victim of the system. 

They didn’t tie their destiny and their self worth to a lost cause because they’re a psychopath. They’re just profoundly insecure, because insecurity is the only ground upon which a society and a community that refuses to mature emotionally and that teaches apathy can be built. 

This is not to say that Rutile doesnt care at all about Padpa. Rutile is probably unaware of the true meaning of their actions, but if you read between the lines you get a glimpse of the truth. For Rutile, it didnt really count whether Padparadscha woke up or not, what counted was that no one else but Rutile had a chance to wake them up. As long as the gems agreed that Rutile was the most suited for this task and could progress further than anyone else could, it was enough.  

This is where Phos was wrong. Taking padparadscha away didnt make things easier for Rutile, it took away from them their very mission, their self-worth, their guarantee that they were important and needed and worthy of existing in the lustrous society. 

This is why Rutile isnt devastated when Padpa falls unconscious after talking with Phos. This is why rutile tries to take Padpa’s replacements away during the night raid, this is why the say that they want to make Padpa worth something again “by my own hand” in chapter 62. 

This is why Padpa comes back to Rutile.

The problem is not whether Padpa can make Rutile happy or whether Padpa wants to upset Rutile and show them that Phos is the one that helped them in the end. Because yeah, Phos did, but Padpa wasnt looking for help. This is the umpteenth problem Phos couldnt fix: Padpa had let go.

Padparadscha is a keen observer. They are smart. They have been living for Rutile’s sake for hundreds of years, perfectly aware that they were not a person but a project, a puzzle that cannot be solved. By fixing padparadscha, Phos and the moon people have thrown away Rutile’s reason d’etre, they have stepped on their self-worth and destroyed their sense of security and confidence in their skills. They have taken away Rutile’s place in the world. Rutile cannot forgive them.  

Padpa knows, and that’s why, I believe, they never stopped thinking that they had to come back to Rutile. They have let it all go, with cold, simple rationality. They did what they could to help Phos, now they come back home. It doesnt matter if Rutile will decide to cure Padparadscha or not now, what counts is that, with that piece in their hands, Padpa has given back to Rutile power of life and death over them, purpose, meaning.

“Here,” they tell a mad Rutile, tossing their heart into the air for them to catch, “I’m yours to fix as you please.”

[sapphicautistic]

dont rb but idk why u would

My sisters' situations are so fucked you guys.  Sister R is living in a van belonging to her abuser, except last night she spent $110ish from her donation post to get two nights at a cheap hotel because sleeping in a van with a cat and your sister in midwinter northern Michigan is too much sometimes.

And I hate that I wish she hadn't done that, because she still needs to raise over $1000 to get the camper that is the only plan she thinks is workable, and I don't think the donation posts I'm making are going to get much more traction. 

She's actively being stalked by two different abusers and fighting to get full custody of her 4yo from one of them. She's not gonna get it, but she refuses to try to get an apartment in michigan (we can't find one anyway tho) because she believes she will and she'll be able to take that camper to where our other sister lives. 

But at least she has a gfm going and she might be able to get her shit solved.

My current project is figuring out how to save my sister M who is homeless too and in desperate need of surgery, part of her small intestine is dead and she has endo which is making tissue grow between her organs and is adhering her ureter to her spine. She's in constant agony especially when moving and/or not lying down. She's lost at least half her body weight because she can't keep food down and she's nauseated constantly. 

She quit her job in the fall because she just literally couldn't do it anymore and she asked me for help today with her unemployment appeal and I had to break the news to her that in south dakota, you can't get medical unemployment without a doctor signing off FIRST. She kind of quit in a panic over her pain and didn't really plan well. So no money can come from there.  

Anyway her fucking surgeon from her last surgery told us immediately after the surgery that she wasn't able to remove the tissue between M's spine and ureter because she's not a urologist - BUT SHE FUCKING LEFT THAT OUT OF THE NOTES, presumably to look good, and only mentioned in the notes for the followup visit that "M says she was told there was still tissue connected to her ureter" and I'm like Bitch!!! you told her!!! I was there!!! 

So her disability appeal is going to be hard to pull together because the doctors she's been seeing including her gp do not say much of anything in their notes, her GP fucking says "she can work with flexible time off for endo flares" which is insane, she literally cries getting into the car because the pain is so horrific, a "flare" can only be solved with SURGERY which is turning out to be a bitch to get - she gave up on the good kind & has been trying for a year to get just the basic ablation and kept being put off bc covid.

Mayo clinic is supposed to call on Tuesday and tell her if they'll take her, but there are lots of problems including - M is on Michigan medicaid (which they do take) because she was homeless in michigan for the last couple months BUT if she stays in sd where she currently is she'll lose her Mich medicaid. And she can't get on SD medicaid because she has no income or children. AND she can't stay where she is anyway because she has a trauma history with the person she's staying with and she’s literally actively being retraumatised. 

She can't get back to Michigan though because the car ride from Mich to SD nearly killed her and she has to return her car anyway because she can't make payments on it. 

Meanwhile I'm in California and have a one bedroom apartment with someone very allergic to the cat M has had for her entire life (he's a v old cat) and M probably couldn't do that long plane trip anyway even if we had $ for it which we don't. 

I really wish our mother were still alive, I just have no idea what to do. M is unlikely to get on disability because her doctors fucking suck. She has no income - and no insurance unless she goes back to Mich.

Mayo clinic better fucking take her because it's been so long since her last surgery that the next one will be extremely complex and I don't trust anyone else to do it - plus they do excision which slows regrowth better than ablation. 

But yeah I have no idea what to fucking do. I almost want her to come here and leave her cat with a sister, but she's literally suicidal and losing her one constant source of comfort might actually kill her. Not to mention the logistical problems.

I keep thinking about how literally all of this would be solvable if even one of us were middle class. Or if this country had just basic functional medical care. Jesus fucking Christ I hate capitalism.

[whoknowsbud]

Speeddemon storyline

Again, not much was actually written... the format of this one reads way more like a discussion at times, because that was how a lot of this was developed and... I don’t really wanna fix any more of this stuff.

Again, DO NOT TAG AS GIO/MIS!!

Pompeii:

Giorno snatches the keys right out of Fugo’s hand and jumps in the driver seat, "hurry up get in let’s go!!" So Fugo & Abbacchio are like 'ok... at least he treats things with urgency'

The trip is horrific, and Giorno almost drives right through the park. The 「MITM」 fight happens as it did in canon, with maybe a little dry heaving stumbling around from Fugo & Abbacchio.

Abbacchio realizes he can’t drive on the way back, he’s lost too much blood and a whole hand, And Fugo...

Fugo tries, he really does. He tries so hard to get Giorno to let him drive. But... well. He’s scary. He’s a literal demon in the car.

Abbacchio: "HE ALMOST KILLED US!"

Bruno: “Giorno? That's ridiculous.”

Fugo’s almost crying because he never thought he could meet a more dangerous driver than him, and that was terrifying, but he doesn’t say anything because he’s still shaking from everything that happened in... 2 hours?

They almost crashed into a few cars on the way, almost drove right into the ruins, Giorno infected himself on purpose, he almost crashed into a few more cars on the way back, etc.

To Florence (the train):

Van scene? They all get thrown onto each other like sardines.

BIG TIME THERES NOT EVEN A SECOND TO REALIZE IF SOMEONES TOUCHING TRISH, EVERYONES ON THE GROUND IN SECONDS

ABBACCHIOS SCREAMING BECAUSE GODAMNIT HIS HAND

BRUNO HAS BIG CONCERNS BECAUSE WHERE THE HELL WAS THIS SIDE OF THE BOY!?

Narancia’s probably having fun

GIORNO ACTUALLY PASSES WHERE THEY HAD TO GO AND NOBODY REALIZES IT FOR LIKE A WHOLE 3 MILES, BUT SUDDENLY THE VAN WHIPS THE FUCK AROUND AND ALMOST TIPS OVER, ALMOST CRASHING INTO SEVERAL OTHER CARS AND ZOOMS BACK

AND THERES NO SUCH THING AS SLOWING DOWN TO GIORNO, THOSE WORDS DONT EXIST

HE ONLY EVER SLAMS ON THE BRAKES

Bruno believes Fugo and Abbacchio now.

After Florence:

"Do you feel that, Coco Jumbo," Giorno laughs. He's speaking to the turtle, seemingly forgotten that everyone's inside, "this speed, the rush! Nothing can catch you! Nobody can reach me!" And that’s... odd. That’s not the kind of thing they’d expect to hear.

Not from him; someone who didn’t seem to care who was in his way, (probably) willing to run over anyone.

And when someone (let’s say Mista) gets out of the turtle to say something, Giorno panics. He’s freaking out, because nobody was supposed to be able to catch up, he was safe as long as he was moving, moving, moving, moving, but someone was here somebody caught up and-

"Dude, hey, hey, relax! I was just going to say, we should stop for some food! There's no enemy here!"

And he realizes he summoned [Gold Experience], and its strength was crushing the wheel in his hands, and the gas pedal creaked dangerously under his heel from the pressure he was putting on it. He loosens his grip and lifts his foot, breaths heavy with the echoes of his fear, "r-right, its... safe..."

And Mista’s staring, he knows that’s not right. But Giorno wasn’t ready, clearly - and Mista didn’t want to lose an arm because he pried too soon. But he didn't forget it, and found himself watching Giorno a lot more. Watching for signs of whatever the hell set him off, trying to see if there was something they could do. This was the new guy, the youngest of them as well as probably the strongest & most confident, but he seemed like he was almost in worse shape than they were when they joined

Giorno doesn’t notice, but the others do. It’s in the way Mista sits in the passenger seat with almost no hesitation, and how he stares so closely at Giorno when he’s driving. Well, they don’t really notice that, but Mista brings it up.

"Do you notice that Giorno looks... free?" Nobody knows what the hell that’s supposed to mean, except Bruno, who agrees but doesn’t expand on it.

"Do you think Giorno...," he starts at some other time, but stops himself.

Abbacchio fills in, "is a lunatic? Yes."

"No - I mean, he’s a little crazy, but I mean- do you think he-," Mista hesitates, and finishes quietly, "he’s running from something?"

That strikes a nerve.

Because they’ve all been running from something. The past, the future, themselves, or others – they’ve all been running.

Venezia:

Thanks to Ghiaccio and that chase on Liberty Bridge, Mista figures out exactly what made Giorno panic so badly

Whereas Mista just startled him before in that truck, Giorno knew there was nobody around on that bridge.

When Ghiaccio shows up, Giorno knows it’s because he caught up

He was only caught when he stopped before, he was always safe when he moved. For the first time in his life, someone caught up when he was running;

Because he’s not fast enough, and if one person can catch up then there are hundreds of others, and he can never be safe again.

Mista figures this out because Giorno’s saying it out loud; "I’m not fast enough", "they’ll catch me", etc.

And he realizes Giorno is running from everything.

He was probably even trying to run from them, emotionally.

Now I’m not sure what kind of speech Mista could/would give, but I imagine there’d be something there about... Not how running away doesn’t solve anything, that’s not what he needs. Something like...

"It’s easier to run away when the thing chasing you can only walk."

Or of course, "if you get rid of what’s chasing you, you don’t need to run."

So Giorno realizes there’s one thing he’s always done when he’s running that he hasn’t done now

Stop.

So he slams on the brake and summons [Gold Experience] to stop the car from up front. Ghiaccio was not prepared for this, and he slams right into the car, skidding across the icy top and sliding ahead on the bridge, probably for a good mile.

And now it’s time to run again.

[Gold Experience] hits the car from behind to get it moving while Giorno hits the gas, and Ghiaccio is definitely hit.

Mista’s stomach is in absolute knots, he feels it in his throat, but he cheers anyways because hell yea, and that light of freedom is back and Giorno’s laughing, when seconds ago he was approaching a near total breakdown

Of course Ghiaccio’s not done, but they bought time, time to get ahead and thaw the car, time to get several miles closer to the goal and a plan

Which is when Giorno drives the car into the canal.

(Not before making a pigeon and sending it ahead to steal the disc, as well as just filling the car with leafy plants)

So they kind of just... huddle down and wait. No way Ghiaccio would see the bubbles & ripples and think it wasn’t them, and Giorno was sure he’d freeze the water to be sure they’d drown. With the plants they’d have oxygen for a few hours, and the pigeon (having been made from one of Trish's hairpins, stolen of course) would return to the turtle with the disk in no time (he hoped), so they just had to wait.

Of course, this wouldn’t be Golden Wind if something didn’t go wrong. So there’s a splinter in the glass the two are worried about, and they watch with growing fear as it steadily stretches across the windshield, water streaming in, until the break is too big for the glass to stand.

This is where they don’t have time to think of alternatives, and they have to swim out asap. There’s no telling where Ghiaccio’s waiting, or really where they even are, so they just have to hope for the best and get to the surface

And the surface is, of course, frozen over. So they have to estimate where they are by light - or rather, by shadows, because their best chance of going unseen is to break out under the bridge.

Which... Ghiaccio’s smart, he’s figured that out too. But he doesn’t know their stands, so he’s waiting right above, waiting to hear the telltale smash.

But they don’t actually break through; it’d take too much energy, be too loud, and the rest of the ice would be too unstable. Giorno, Mista, and [Gold Experience] are just kind of... pushing against it

Eventually it starts splintering and cracks open, and they can get their heads out at least to breathe - at the same time Ghiaccio’s starting to rant about secrets, or girls, or... something, they aren’t really paying attention

They’re both getting ridiculously numb, but the ice seems like it won’t hold their weight, so they can’t get out of the water too quickly - they actually have to push their way through, cringing and holding their breath at every sound.

Giorno sees the pigeon on the rather distant statue and knows the disc must be inside - disappointed that it isn’t handled, but glad the pigeon blended in well enough that the statue was never investigated. But the trash was, it seemed, and whatever image Mista thought of made him grin.

It was enough of a distraction from the cold that they were able to drag themselves onto the bank, but the next problem was an even bigger obstacle. How could they get to Ghiaccio and take him out, or get to the disc and grab it, before being seen...?

Giorno considers the ice itself. He couldn’t make anything that'd actually help in this cold - the water they’d just escaped was already freezing over - but a distraction... And nothing was better to get an enemy's attention than to make them think they were making a break for it.

So Giorno makes 2 winter bass - big enough to make a lot of noise, but not so big that they’d be immediately caught - and drops them in the most fragile area of reforming ice, sending them on their way. Their backs bump the solid ice a few times as they go around, and Ghiaccio makes a noise like a squawk and jumps up, following what he believes are the two targets

They both get up. Giorno signals for Mista to stay down, but Mista grabs his arm, "hey, relax a little, let me. I need a success somewhere; you're hogging all the glory." He smiled, to show he’s kidding but intends to do this, and though he doesn’t get it, Giorno smiles back slightly.

Mista’s weird boots don’t have the slight heels Giorno's shoes do, so it really was for the best as he trudges his way to the statue. After a second, he grabs his gun and starts trying to chip the stone away, grabbing the pieces as they fall, and watching where Ghiaccio ran off.

Eventually, when he sees the corner of the case, he fumbles, nearly cursing aloud when the pieces of stone hit the ground with echoing clacks

He ends up panicking, yanking the disk out, and scrambled back to the bridge

And then they both realize they have no idea what to do next

Giorno gives the disk to Trish's hairclip pigeon and sends it off, but they still have a big threat to handle. Neither of them can tell how much of their shaking is from the cold, and how much is the anxiety

Giorno ends up grabbing Mista’s hand, hoping it would ground him, and Mista realizes just how scared Giorno actually is. How scared he probably always is, when they're not moving at insane speeds.

And he can't let that fear be any more justified.

"We'll get out of this," he whispers, "we'll get this guy, get back to our friends, and we'll be moving again, little buddy."

[scripttorture]

Sleep Deprivation

It’s really past time we talked about sleep deprivation. It’s a mainstay of modern torture and it’s been used for hundreds of years.

It’s also one of the clean (non-scarring) tortures that’s most regularly dismissed. The damage it causes is downplayed. And we often don’t even recognise it when it’s shown in fiction.

Sleep is a physiological need, like eating, drinking and breathing. Deprived of it we start to become ill and eventually die.

I’m breaking this down into sections, we’ll start with ‘normal’ sleep, talk about what sleep deprivation does to physical and mental health and then talk about how torturers deprive victims of sleep.

I’ll finish up by talking about how the long term symptoms of torture can impact sleep.

How much sleep is enough and what is normal sleep?

There is some variation in sleep patterns between individuals but if you let someone sleep for as long as they like most people sleep for around 7-9 hours a night. When we’re ill we tend to sleep more.

If you plot life expectancy against average hours of sleep a night you get a sort of U shaped graph. People who routinely sleep less then 7-9 hours a night have shorter lives and so do people who sleep more.

But there’s no evidence that sleeping too much actually causes poor health. People who sleep more on average may have underlying health conditions that shorten their lives.

And we have a lot of evidence that sleeping less causes poor health.

Sleep is divided into two types, REM and NREM sleep. That stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep and Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep. Most people know REM sleep as dreaming sleep. Both are essential for human health.

All animals that have been tested sleep but only birds and mammals have been shown to dream. There’s also considerable variation in how long different species need to sleep for, most animals seem to need more than humans.

We sleep in cycles, chunks of time roughly an hour and a half long when we go through different stages of sleep. The initial cycles focus heavily on NREM sleep and as the night goes on we have more REM sleep, but every cycle contains a little of both.

The time of day we’re most likely to naturally fall asleep and naturally wake up varies with age in a non-linear fashion. Young children wake up early and tire early. Teenagers famously stay up late and sleep in late. The elderly wake up incredibly early and sleep incredibly early. This variation, along with individual variation, is thought to serve a protective function: humans are pack animals and varied sleep patterns within a group ensure that someone is awake most of the time in case of emergency.

It’s perfectly healthy for the time we want to go to sleep to vary, but the amount we need to sleep is more or less consistent after infancy.

Drugs, including caffeine, may effect our ability to fall asleep or our perception of how sleepy we are but they do not fulfil our need for sleep.

Keep in mind that even a character who is voluntarily depriving themselves of sleep will feel the effects. Repeated experiments have shown that we can be consciously aware we’re sleep deprived and aware of the effects of sleep deprivation but can not compensate for them.

Your character can’t get around the effects of sleep deprivation by willpower any more then a drunk can get around the effects of alcohol. Stimulants might keep them awake and raise their reaction time but they don’t effect other symptoms and may make some symptoms worse.

We need sleep after roughly sixteen hours of being awake. After that point our ability to function well starts to drop.

Effects of sleep deprivation

We’re still in the process of pinning down all the effects of sleep deprivation. Some of these effects are things we know happen but we don’t know why.

The more sleep deprived a character is the more symptoms they’d have, both physical and mental. Some of these symptoms are apparent after just one night of poor sleep (for the purposes of this post five hours sleep the previous night). I’m going to mark these early symptoms with an asterix (*) so you can easily recognise them.

Keep in mind that these effects are cumulative.

A character who gets into a pattern of not sleeping enough will get worse rather then staying at a steady level. The longer the character isn’t sleeping the more symptoms they should develop.

Physical symptoms

Shakes

Headaches*

Muscular pain

Increased blood pressure*

Reduced alertness*

Lower immune response leading to:

Increased infections

Longer recovery times

Longer reaction times*

Worse reflexes*

Lower natural testosterone levels and lower sperm counts

Abnormal menstrual cycles and lower fertility levels

Hunger*

Poor coordination*

Increased chance of accidents*

Subtle changes to physical appearance that cause a character to appear unhealthy*

Microsleeps (short periods of unconsciousness)

Psychological symptoms

Agitation

Reduced ability to interpret other people’s emotions*

Increased feelings of distrust towards other people*

Paranoia

Hallucinations

Increased chance of substance abuse

Confusion*

Memory loss*

Impaired ability to learn*

Increased risk of developing false memories

Suicidal thoughts and urges

Delirium

Markedly reduced concentration*

Consistently underestimating their level of impairment*

Impaired ability to think logically*

Increase in depressive and anxious symptoms, possibly inducing depression and anxiety

Reduced creativity*

Reduced problem solving ability*

Reduced ability to plan*

Increased risk of violent behaviour

Symptoms similar to psychosis in the long term

Long term effects

These aren’t symptoms exactly, these are a list of conditions people who are chronically sleep deprived are more likely to get. They develop several years later, usually in the 40-50s at the earliest.

Any amount of sleep deprivation is thought to increase the chances of these conditions but the longer and more consistently a character is sleep deprived the more likely they are.

Diabetes

Cancer (various kinds)

Heart failure (and coronary heart disease)

Strokes

Dementia, especially Alzheimer’s

Higher miscarriage rates

Vaccines may be less effective if the person was sleep deprived before the vaccine was administered because the immune response is suppressed. Research on this isn’t quite as thorough yet and it isn’t clear if the smaller immune response actually equates to less immunity against the real disease.

Sleep deprivation is also thought to increase weight gain. It makes people feel hungrier and crave unhealthy foods. While not nearly as serious as the other effects here it is a noted long term effect and as such I felt it needed to be included. Especially since there is a correlation between higher weight and sleep disorders.

How torturers deprive people of sleep.

Sleep deprivation is sometimes portrayed as a ‘modern’ innovation. This is untrue. Scottish witch trials used it heavily in attempts to force confessions and the Spanish Inquisition explicitly forbid its use (they thought the delirium and hallucinations would prevent victims from truly confessing and repenting their sins).

Not all of these methods would result in total sleep deprivation (ie absolutely no sleep in 24 hours). Some of them would lead to less sleep, poor sleep or disrupted sleep. This is still profoundly harmful.

Some of these methods could fit easily with a historical setting. Some wouldn’t. Some would work better in a pseudo-interrogation or forced confession scenario. If you’re planning on using sleep deprivation in your story pick a method that you feel fits your plot and setting best.

And if you’re not planning on using sleep deprivation but you see something you have used on this list take a moment to think about what you might be implying.  

Poor cell conditions including:

-Constant light

-Constant noise

-Insufficient room to sleep

-Wet cells

-Extreme temperatures in cells

-Lack of beds and bedding

Stress positions such as forced standing. These are generally used for between 24-48 hours continuously meaning they’re automatically combined with sleep deprivation.

Constant use of restraints, especially if the restraints stop the character from fully extending their limbs or fully lowering their limbs.

Forced exercise such as forced walking (this was used in Scottish witch trials).

Forced labour for prolonged periods.

Guards disturbing the sleep of prisoners. For example shaking people awake every few minutes.

Prolonged interrogation without rest such as relay interrogation. Relay interrogation involves switching interrogators regularly so that prisoners can be kept in interrogation for over 24 hours at a time.

Starvation, hunger reduces our ability to sleep well and get as much sleep as we need. When combined with poor cell conditions poor sleep becomes inevitable.

Denying medical treatment to injured characters.

Poor sleep in survivors

Most of the long term symptoms of torture have the potential to disrupt sleep.

Depression, anxiety, hypervigilance and suicidal thoughts can all prevent survivors getting to sleep and disrupt sleep.

PTSD often involves intense nightmares which can both disturb sleep and make a survivor dread falling asleep. The majority of PTSD sufferers have difficulty sleeping.

Chronic pain can prevent sleep and many of the drugs commonly used to treat it can also lead to disturbed sleep. Like commonly abused addictive drugs pain medication can lead to poor quality sleep.

This doesn’t necessarily mean every survivor will have trouble sleep or be sleep deprived. While a lot of people with mental health problems have poorer sleep not everyone does. Medication for depression and anxiety can sometimes help people sleep and this in turn can reduce the intensity of symptoms.

Think about the combination of symptoms you’ve chosen for your character and consider whether they could lead to long term sleep loss.

Our need for sleep isn’t something we can debate, bribe or drug away. It’s a fundamental part of our biology.

Losing sleep is serious, being actively deprived of it is abusive. Be aware of what your story is doing and be prepared to show the consequences.

Sources

Why Torture doesn’t work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation by S O’Mara, Harvard University Press, 2015

Why We Sleep by M Walker, Penguin, 2017 - This book contains references to a lot of sleep research papers and is a very good introduction to the subject. Walker and Jagust conducted research together on the link between lack of sleep and Alzheimer’s. He also recommends D Dinges’ (University of Pennsylvania) body of work on sleep and concentration, response time and car accidents.

The Mystery of Sleep by M Kryger, Yale University Press, 2017

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[juupajaa]

1This is gonna be super long and I'm sorry but I gotta get this off my chest somehow and I would like your input. Also major trigger warnings!! I did a bad thing?? I know I shouldn't have but it's already been done. For context, my friend lives in a different state but we live close to state lines so we meet up pretty much every other weekend. She lives by herself because her parents kicked her out (they're homophobic) but my family loves her so she spends holidays with us.

2I've been in recovery for about 11 months now and she's been my rock the whole time. She stayed with me on the phone for hours when I was real bad, and she gave me plenty of space too. I don't really like it when people baby me, it makes me feel like a burden. When I told her about my ed she stayed the same she always had been so it was a relief to be around her. My family voiced their concerns and talked about recovery so much I felt cornered a lot and needed a break from it.

3She didn't treat me with kiddie gloves like others did and helped me by keeping things normal, and supporting me more quietly and I think that's something super helpful that people don't talk about much. I know it's important to talk to someone and actively pursue recovery but I really needed that sense of normalcy too.

4She spent another weekend here, but when she had a bath her phone rang and I searched her bag for it in case it was her work. The call ended before I got to it but checked the notifications anyway so I could tell her who called. That's all good, but I noticed a tumblr notification and checked it without thinking. My friend has an ed blog??? I was shocked but put it away so I wouldn't be caught snooping, that wasn't even my intention.

5When she left I just spent hours scrolling through her blog. I know I shouldn't have but the curiousity got the best of me. I wanted to know if she had posted about me at all, which she hadn't. I feel so bad for never thinking something was wrong. Her weight has yoyo'd the whole time we've known each other, but she's been normal weight for as long as I remember.

What fucked me up is that her blog is much older than my eating disorder, and I just had really disordered thoughts. I thought wow I'm a fraud, she's been in this for years, maybe I'm just pretending?? But then it got nasty. My mind went to things like, all this time and she's not even skinny yet? At least I became underweight and it didn't take long. She eats so much she can't have an ed. I thought about how she looks too but she's normal weight, her body is perfectly fine! but ed logic right?

I'm so conflicted. I can't even begin to imagine how she must have felt all that time supporting me? All the stupid disordered shit I said, and still do sometimes.God I'm recounting times I complained about calories even when she had just eaten. I must have made her body image worse too because I would criticize even healthy bodies when she was right there. I know my disorder is to blame but I feel horrible. A lot of those I would trash were smaller than her and I didn't even think twice.

I've obsessively tried piecing things together. A couple of years ago we walked downtown and she commented it smelled like sophomore year, vomit. The whole time I was in recovery she ate normally. It was easier for me to start eating again because others did, especially her because she never nagged about it like my family did. Does she prefer visiting because it's easier to pretend away from home??

When I stay over she doesn't really have food at her place?? Could be coincidence but we go grocery shopping whenever I visit. Maybe Fridays are just her grocery day. I never thought about it but now I'm worried. Does she not eat when she's alone? From her blog I know she restricts a lot, but when she's with me she eats normally. When I was at my worst I found satisfaction in it and compared our intake.I don't think she purges when she's here and that could explain why she's not losing weight.

(Last one) Please help me, I don't know what to do. I'm worried but I don't want to lose her. I know I betrayed her trust and all but I can't pretend like I don't know and let her suffer. And she's a sweet girl, and I feel like shit now. She never even talks about her family situation so I doubt she'd tell me about her ed, especially since I'm in recovery. When her family kicked her out she seemed so calm, but that shit hurts?? It breaks my heart, even more now knowing about her ed too.

🌻

Yeah there's a lot of complicated stuff here but I feel like the first thing I should say is that you're beating yourself up for something that isn't your fault. I don't see you having done anything terrible here🤔

You weren't snooping, it's a very different thing to actively go look up other people's phones than to accidentally see something you didn't mean to see. And as for looking up her blog, if it's a public blog, you could have found it even without knowing it was hers. That's just something that we all need to realize when we make blogs and such. Even if your blog feels like a private thing, it really isn't if you put it online wide open.

And all that nasty disordered behaviour you did in her presence? You were sick and didn't know better. I know it's hard to separate these two sometimes, I struggle with it a lot too, but trust me, you're not a bad person for things you have done by accident or out of ignorance. And all the nasty thoughts you had about her are very normal ed thoughts. They feel awful and they're so intrusive and nasty, but they spring from your ed and not from your heart. You clearly love your friend a lot and want all the best for her, and your ed is just trying to hurt you through her when it spams those thoughts into your head.

And as for your friend, she's no doubt feeling horrible as well. I bet she must have felt like a fraud herself, watching you go to recovery while no one even notices that she's sick too. And as you said, she's been sick a long time and "still not losing weight", I wouldn't be surprised if she has been beating herself up for that as well. I feel like she's probably waiting for someone to notice her too.

To be honest, it sounds to me like you two need to have a talk. A really long and open talk that involves you both probably crying and hopefully hugging at the end. These talks are not fun to have but they clear these things up like nothing else. If you don't know how to set up such a talk, I recommend you open it with a text message and make some opening statements like "I really wanna talk about this thing but I dont know how to bring it up so here's a text. I know you're not doing so well and I want to support you like you've supported me. Can we meet up at some point and talk about this and this and this?"

I've had a few of these talks and every time I've had them, I've felt like I'm about to throw up, I'm sweating, I'm about to cry, but it is so worth it to go through with it bc it can solve such a huge amount of the problems that are festering. And after it's over, the relationship is so much stronger and both parties have an easier time to breathe.

If you have a hard time knowing what to say to her, just think about what you would want to hear in her situation. What you would have wanted to hear and what would have helped you feel better? You two share the experience and you both know exactly what words and gestures hurt you, and you also know what heals, what feels nice and what is needed.

Whatever you decide to do, I'm sure your friend would rather keep you and be happy and honest with you, rather than to let your friendship be rotten away by secrets and shame and guilt. Talking things through is hard but so are most things that will help you. Medicine usually tastes gross but it will help.

Good luck with it, I'm sure you can figure this out, just be honest with yourself and what you want to do and be so so so brave Remember to also take care of yourself and that you're still healing yourself ❤❤❤

[pennyfynotes]

8.2.18 // 4:30pm // school subjects and AP exams oh my

so i recently (ok not so recently i’m sorry super busy rn) got an ask from an anon about subject specific tips and ap exams. this is the masterpost i told you to look out for ;). there are no ap exams in college, but some of the stuff is still applicable. i did my best to be as comprehensive as possible and dump everything in one place. hope this is helpful! xoxo, m ps. guess where the actual tips are?    if you said “under the cut” then you’re right bc i’m predicable af

tips by subject:

languages (i took spanish): 1. flashcards are your friend. i don’t care if they’re digital (would recommend quizlet or studyblue) or paper, but they help immensely with either vocab or things like remembering literature.

2. charts are also your friend. conjugations giving you a hard time? write out a chart of the different tenses and the conjugations for each subject. put down some of the irregulars too.

3. acronyms/pnemonics are also also your friend. a lot of these already exist, you just have to go find them. i’m pretty sure i still remember what “wedding” stands for for the spanish subjunctive.

4. it’s ok to start over. it’s easy to start a sentence based on what you’d say in english. you’re doing fine until *bam* you hit that word/phrase you really need but you have no clue how to say it. whether it’s an oral or written exam, take a few seconds to think about it and, if you can’t figure it out, just back track. restart the sentence and rework it. better to do that than to lose all your time thinking of one word you may or may not know.

5. skirt around things. if you can’t remember how to say fridge but you really need to say it for something, just say “machine that keeps food cold” or something. it might sound silly,  but it gets the point across and removes the road block.

6. make a list. no, not a to do list. if there’s phrases you find yourself reaching for all the time, but you can never remember, make a list of them and their translations. it might be because its a phrase/part of a sentence structure you use a lot in your native language or whatever. make that list and drill just those few phrases into your head. it’s helpful

english/language arts: 1. proofread. i guarantee you’ll find a mistake, a sentence that makes no sense, or one that just sounds cringy. thank me later.

2. have a damn thesis. its ok if you just need to write and spit words/ideas out for a while to figure it out. but figure it out.

3. conclusion ~= introduction. for those of you who didn’t get the tilde, it means not. yes, they both tie your points to your thesis but they are not to same. do not just reword the same information in the conclusion. push your ideas just a little further. i usually like the push them a little bit outside the realm of what i talked about in my paper. for example, if i focused on the first 5 chapters of the book in the rest of my paper, i’ll expand the ideas to the rest of the book. or if i’m talking about female characters and focus on just one or two, i’ll use the conclusion to potentially connect it to another.

4. have favorites. pick a few fav transitions, sentence structures, and fancy vocab words. basically build a toolbox. this way you won’t have to think as hard when you want to “spice up” your work.

5. summaries only go so far. once you get to higher level english classes, there will be a lot of analysis of specific imagery, or wording, or dialogue. reading cliff notes is only going to give you the plot and none of this. if you don’t have time to read and you’ve been assigned a pretty standard english novel/play/whatever, take the time to look up some famous quotes or symbols. they’ll probably come up in discussion and this will help you look less unprepared.

6. have on question/comment ready. if your teacher/prof is into discussions and grades on participation, it’s handy to write down one (or a few) things. it’s easy to forget what you were going to say while you follow the discussion and it sucks to get docked points for not saying anything. even if it’s just a thoughtful question, jot it down.

history: 1. lol prob my weakest subject, just go see the apush (ap us history) section bc i don’t have much more for you than that.

science: 1. back to basics. i say it all the time, i’ll say it again. really understand basic concepts. they will come back. i’m serious.

2. pattern recognition. science problems are often times about recognizing patterns. once you identify the type of problem it is, even if you’ve never seen the exact one/something similar before, solving it becomes way easier.

3. make a recipe book. tied to the last one, but once you recognize a type of problem, you need steps to solve it. go through any practice problems you’re given to determine all the “types” of problems. once you’ve categorized them, make yourself a step-by-step guide on how to solve.

4. flashcards. you’ll have to know polyatomic ions or random biology facts. see languages tip #1 for more.

5. note your errors in lab. if you do something wrong, don’t just try to brush it under the table and forget about it. not that it’s a big deal, because its not, so don’t freak out. they’re just great opportunities to note sources of error. i mean obviously dont write in your lab report that you weren’t paying attention and mixed the wrong chemicals, but something like “we may not have waited sufficient time for the product to dry” can explain why you got 800% yield.

6. have a toolkit. kinda like a recipe book, but just a collection of straight facts that come up often. knowing common molecular weights and chemical properties (is ammonia acidic or basic?) will make things go faster. like i said earlier, polyatomic ions are also great.

7. brush up on some simple arithmetic. similar to the tool kit, this will just make things go faster. being able to quickly add things and calculate easy percentages (ex: 30%) will make things like hw and exams go faster. i’m of the opinion it’s always good to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide w/o a calculator (on paper, not all in your head)

bonus: math #5 and #7

math: 1. see science #1

2. see science #2

3. see science #3

4. see science #4. see a pattern here? you might wonder why you need to flashcard math, but it’s good for learning equations or the names of certain techniques. if the prof asks you to solve something using X technique and you don’t know what that is, that’s gonna pose a problem. also good for the unit circle (don’t get me started)

5. figure out your speed. this is applicable to most everything, but i find it most relevant for math. is it better for you to speed through the whole exam and then do it all again/check it over 2x? or for you to take it slow so you know you got everything right the first time? personally i use the first approach, but i’m a fast taker and prefer to have time to process between repeating problems instead of staring at it forever once and never looking again.

6. science #7. a lot of teachers will expect you to be able to do this.

7. go over the material a couple times. also applicable to everything. i find it’s easier to remember things when i know that concepts are connected. you might have learned X 3 weeks before Y, but if you go back over, you might realize they’re closely related. this will help you if you’re not sure on a test because you can reason through things using the connections you’ve drawn

tips by ap course (obv look at the subject above bc i will be giving *really specific stuff* here that i’ve gathered from experience. they’re also ordered by when i took them, sorry it’s not super logical but i didn’t want to forget one)

general ap course/exam tips: 1. practice exams. you need to be familiar with what will/will not show up. you don’t always need to simulate and real testing situation, but i’d recommend doing at least 1-2 that way. also *know how many questions they’re are you so can pace yourself!!!!*

2. college board is pretty good about giving topic breakdowns. use those. go through and figure out what topics you’re solid on and which need more work. the above tip is to help decipher what the topics actually mean bc it can be confusing.

3. give the free response a quick flip through. do the ones you’re confident on first.

4. make sure you know the policies/what you can bring. don’t want to forget something. also once our test administrator tried to stop us 10 minutes early, but we were on top of our shit and all gave her a death glare bc we knew when we were supposed to finish.

ap chemistry: 1. polyatomic ions and molecular weights. know them

2. chapter/section reviews (in addition to class notes) and how-to guides. my teacher made us make them and let’s just say your girl did *really* well (and i’m damn proud of that one)

3. do a quick skim of the free response. applicable to most exams but, the year i took it, they’d just remade and re-curved the exam and put *way* too many free response. like no one finished them. if that’s still the case, make sure you do the one’s you’re confident on. also, i did not get to like 3 questions and still got a 5. they may have fixed this idk. (sorry this is redundant but i wanted to give this ap chem exam specific info)

ap environmental science: 1. there is a lot of damn information here. i would use chapter outlines and pick out key terms, policies, and events etc. treat this like a history class.

2. for the exam, use common sense. most of the time, the most environmentally friendly answer is the right one. if you just have a general gist of the course and its topics, but don’t know a lot of details, go with your intuition and you should be fine. i didn’t have a lot of time to study for this one and this method worked for me.

ap calc bc: 1. memorize standard derivatives. power rule, sin and cos, chain rule. that’s important.

2. similarly, memorize standard integrals.

3. don’t forget +c for indefinite integrals. just don’t.

4. similarly, if it’s definite, don’t forget to evaluate at the end! super easy thing to do, but also super easy way to lose points if you forget.

5. if the integral looks complicated, that probably means there’s a “trick” involved. u substitution, integration by parts, trig substitution. something like that.

6. memorize some standard series’, operations, and types (arithmetic, geometric etc)

7. if you’re looking at a word problem, understand what is dependent on your variable and what isn’t (in other words, what’s a constant). for example, if it says the water flows into the barrel at 50 mL/s and flows out at 1/5 times the volume, that translate to F = 50 - (1/5)V. don’t make things more complicated by trying to write everything in terms of V (in this example). also, your equation might just be a constant term or just a variable term doesn’t have to be both.

8. know what your derivative is with respect to/what it really means. aka if your problem is talking about flow and volume, how are they related to each other? flow is the change in volume *with respect to time*. so if i differentiate volume with respect to time, i get flow. if i integrate flow with respect to time, i get volume. this also helps you make sense of word problems.

*disclaimer*: it is been 5 years since i took this class and i have taken quite a few math classes after. i apologize if i introduce anything that is a little irrelevant.

ap spanish language: 1. flashcard. like seriously. there’s gonna be vocab involved.

2. understand what’s asked. for the persuasive email. *be persuasive*

3. toolkit. i mentioned this before but this was probably the most useful for this class. our teacher gave us a bunch of fancier words to use instead of causar (to cause) because that was a word we’d need a lot. the one that still sticks with me 4 years later is fomentar. have a few alternatives for these kinds of super common words, a good greeting and closing for your email, and a set of good transitions. *make sure you know how to use them properly*

4. write stuff down during listening. you can either answer questions during the first listen, then take notes the second to catch stuff you missed or vice versa.

5. it’s ok to backtrack in the speaking. don’t let yourself get stuck and just not say anything. it’ll freak you out for the rest of the exam and will rob you from showing off what you know. also take notes of things you want to mention based off cultural knowledge of the situation related to the dialogue.

6. don’t zone out. with everything going on and all the stress, it’s easy to zone out (esp during the conversation). don’t do it or you’ll have a hard time responding and freak yourself out (again)

7. don’t lose your place in the convo! they give you a sheet that shows you how many times the other “person” will talk. i lost track and said goodbye one segment early. it was bad ok. all these conversation tips are from personal experience.

ap statistics: 1. know the different kinds of tests inside and out. know the differences and the conditions. if you’ve got that, you’re like 75% the way there.

2. be familiar with sample vs population. it’s a bit confusing, but take the time to understand.

3. ok sorry i really don’t remember anything else. this exam really isn’t that difficult (in my opinion), you’ll be ok.

ap physics c: 1. free body diagrams. understand how to draw them *and draw them*. they will carry you through mechanics. draw gravitational force, normal if there’s a surface, and then any other given forces.

2. basic equations. you get an equation sheet, but knowing the equations means you know the concepts and the relations between them. big ones are f=ma and the equations relating position (x), velocity (v), and acceleration (a). also friction f=uN.

3. *normal isn’t always the opposite direction of gravity!!!!* gravity is straight down. normal is perpendicular to the surface.

4. vector components. please don’t just add vectors. break them down into components and then add or you are so fucked.

5. get familiar with triangles. this will help with the whole component thing.

6. kirchoffs rules are so helpful. know them.

7. understand the relations between voltage/potential and current in terms of the properties of circuit elements. that means the equations for resistors, capacitors, and inductors.

8. know how to add in parallel and series. it’s important. also! if the circuit is drawn “weird” a good way to know series vs parallel is that parallel elements share two nodes and that series circuits only share 1.

9. sorry i kinda blocked out E+M bc i didn’t know what i was doing (or so i thought). i still got a 4 tho so that curve is generous.

ap us history: 1. chapter outlines. pretty self explanatory.

2. make a timeline. put important events, sentiments, policies, and presidents. if you can associate these things together into time periods it will be easier. most of the time, any one question (esp long response or whatever they’re called) will only focus on 1 time period.

3. sentiments are important. if you know nothing else, know these bc they will help guide you through questions by reasoning even if you know nothing else.

4. gilder lehrman (or similar us history summaries). these are tailor specifically to apush bc they are organized by period (i think that’s what they were called?). i actually fell asleep listening to these bc i didn’t have time to study. they were mildly helpful, but every little bit helps right?

ap psychology: 1. chapter outlines/flashcards. this course is based heavily on key terms and less so on larger concepts.

2. ok sorry i took this online i remember literally nothing except how annoying my teacher was and that the exam was easy. if you know terminology i think you should do fine.

ap biology: 1. there is a lot. go through all the topics and make sure you’re solid. start with the big picture, then think about narrowing down.

2. know how charts work. things like pedigrees, punnet squares, and evolution trees (that’s def not the right term). some of the exam will just be interpretation of this.

3. i am so sorry i remember nothing else.

ap spanish literature: 1. flashcards. title, author, time period, short summary, key elements (a line, character, symbol). this is *so helpful*

2. think about the works in relation to each other. you might be asked to compare them. even if they ask you to compare something on the reading list with something new, you’ll be familiar with the points you might talk about.

3. know the lit terms. more flashcards. associate them with a particular work if you can/need to.

4. don’t freak on the listening. a lot of the recordings are old and shitty quality. take a deep breath and try your best. know that the rest of the test takers (excepting maybe natives) are experiencing the same thing.

5. use that tool box. see general spanish and ap spanish lang.

this is so freaking long and i think the moral of the story is that i blocked out my senior year ap exams. i hope this was helpful and, if you have more questions, or want more stuff like this, let me know!

[caps-clever-girl]

thoughts on endgame.

fair warning, i am not going to be kind. i enjoyed watching this movie, for the most part. it was funny; it had many good jokes and good, pure and well done interactions between multiple characters. but i didnt like it, and here are the reasons why.

unfortunately, this isnt a ‘nitpicky’ post. my main problems are with a lot of the bigger points points of the film, and had quite a few. this is a LONG post.

• “marvels first gay character!!!!!!!!!!!!” shut up. you joined the ‘fad’ late for brownie points and it was a cameo character who got about 3 lines. there are plenty of canon queer and gay characters who could have been introduced, either as cameos or in earlier films. dont even get me started on the fact that tony has more canon bi material than most others and marvel could have taken the time or even the slightest bit of effort to make this. while i enjoyed the jokes about steve being Incredibly Hot and his ass being Gods Gift To America (which honestly??? correct!) that could have been expanded on. several characters made comments about how nice steve’s ass is, and could have been used as actual material for a queer character, instead of sticking a random chharacter in there. i get the whole ‘gay people could be anyone! its normal!’ thing by giving the ‘role’ to a regular person, but you would also prove that by making any one of your 30+ main cast actually queer instead of making gay jokes and hints that could be retconned and explained away by humour.

• slapping someone out of a panic attack, and treating the panic attack like a joke. yeah, i get it, they didnt have a lot of time. still, come on. did iron man 3 teach you nothing? apparently not since tonys ptsd was pretty much never brought up again.

• speaking of thor. now, i am not an expert, but when a person gains weight, they do not keep their abs. certainly not after five entire years - not even asgardians. i also found it odd that thor became the way he did. i understand gaining weight and comfort eating after all the trauma thor went through losing his home and brother and people, i really do, but 1.) do it properly, at least, and 2.) thor is the leader of his people. does he want the task? not particularly. he hasnt wanted to be king since the first thor movie, but hes been forced into the role. even depressed i dont think thor would shy away from it, not completely. hes always wanted to do right by his people and i think that hed stuck to it, especially after The Snap backing him into a corner, if that makes sense. to clarify, i dont have a problem with chubby/fat thor. (IF done right instead of with weird, shitty cgi, that is.) i have a problem with the fact that thor, even though he doesnt want to be king, would abandon the last remanents displaced people to build a new home all on their own and become a hermit gamer boy. ESPECIALLY with valkyrie around. she’s been through a derpressive, alcohol fuelled time in her life and thor pulled her out of it. (mostly anyway, asgardians are party animals and im p sure she still gets trolleyed on the reg) i have bo doubt that after years of wallowing she would do her damned best to try and kick his ass out of it, even if it were just because his people need a leader, instead of letting him drop everything on her and just let him stew while new asgard gets on with it. i also didnt like the fact that all of thors emotional moments were treated as jokes and made to be funny when hes genuinely Fucked Up about eveything thats happening and made his image into a whiny crybaby.

• professor hulk. more of a personal one, this, simply because i just didnt like it. fair enough if y’all disagree on this one, im not going to fight it. i just never saw him wanting to combine himself with the hulk. ever. when he apleared on the screen i was completely blindsided, and his explanation, and the way he interacted with the kids????? i just want to know where all of this confidence suddenly came from. i use the term ‘suddenly’ loosely, since its been five years, but bruce has never been the guy to care about strength or looks or fame. hes always been shy and nerdy. not afraid to stand his ground or make his opinion known. hes bot a catchphrase, posing and flexing ‘hell yeah lets take a selfie’ guy. i get that thats maybe the result of the hulk and bruces combined personality but it just felt WEIRD to me, like, there wasnt a time in the film where i felt comfortable with the character. this was the final avengers film, with all of the original six avengers in it. but it didnt feel like that, it didnt feel like bruce or the hulk was in the film, even though there was a lot of funny and good moments with orofessor hulk, it felt like a stranger with some familiar characteristics. it ruined any feelings of nostalgia for me. i like bruce, and i like the hulk. i like the way their differences add to the story and the way they interact with eachother, and the slow change in their relationship. sorry if its petty but i prefer them seperate, theres just so much more to them for me.

• clint and natasha’s journey for the soul stone. both times, in infinity war and endgame, a male character and a female character went to get the soul stone. both times the male came back and the female died, and we lost possibly two most developed and main-line female characters in the entire mcu. now i understand the reasoning for both, and out of the characters that went there, i agree with the choice. thanos and gamora; it was thanos who was aware of the sacrifice and who chose to make it. gamora didnt get a choice and was unaware until it was too late. thanos was never going to die there. he knew there would be a sacrifice and chose to take gamora, because she would be the most likely sacrifice to actualky sucsesfully yield the soul stone because she was the most loved by him. i get it, but we lost gamora and i dont like it. clint and natasha; looking at it completely objectively, clint has a family, a wife and three children, that he wants to get back. natasha does not have any children, nor any (blood) family. if i had to choose, based on facts like that, id choose her too. but i still hate it, because there goes the only female member of the avengers. also, nebula (and i think maybe rocket?) KNEW that a sacrifice would be made and either accidentaly or deliverately left out the terms of aquiring the soul stone. it would have been easy to tell, if not easy to solve. but nothinb was said, and two best friends had to make a fucking awful and horrible choice when they might not have had to.

• on the ‘feminism’ tangent; the random congragation of women in the end scene??????? i dont????? okay so i am marking myself as a hypocrite here because i did love this scene!!! it made my lil gay heart go boom to see so many good and strong women all in one place - ESPECIALLY rescue - and it also made me realise how many women there actually are across the mcu??? which was really nice?? but it just felt... so forced? the way they ALL suddenly apleared and stood together even though they were all mixed in around the battlefield. it was a wonderful thought and i did enjoy it, but it seemed too Off and Odd to seem as much more than a bid for Feminism Brownie Points.

• captain marvel. i dont know about you, but i was actually looking forward to her being in the film. for a character so hyped to be the saviour of the avengers and the end of thanos, she was barely in the film. ‘i have other planets to save, the earth isnt the only one affected by thanos’ yeah but earth is the only plannet actively attacked by him. its where the people who are rallying to fight him and reverse what he did are. dont you want to stick around and help them? surely it would be a hell of a lot easier with your help, and faster too. yes, she blasted theough the ship at the end, but she did fuck all to help defeat thanos himself, and the help she did give with the ship came at the end. i genuinely think they kept her out of the movie because she was too powerful, and would have made fighting thanos etc too easy to get all the suffering and noble sacrifices in. if she had been a side character i dont think id be as mad, but she got a whole MOVIE in which she is clearly the start of the entire avengers initiative; she is their HISTORY!!!! she is so powerful!!!! and yet she has 5 mins of screen time!! it pisses me off that she was So Strongly implied to be the character the avengers NEEDED, the one that without whom it would be IMPOSSIBLE to defeat thanos; the woman that really tipped the scales in there favour, and yet she did fuck all. (and lets not even get started on the carol/rhodey and carol+tony bromance we COMPLETELY missed out on.)

• (speaking of bonding what the fuck happened to tony and nebula????? after they were rescued it was like they never met)

• the whole entire concept of time what the fuck!!! ‘dont change anything’ okay well for the most part you did okay, and the PLAN and CONCEPT was actually really easy to grasp, at least to me, which is hard when working with paradoxes and wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey stuff. but that went out the water when past!thanos and his army were brought into the future and disintergrated. does this mean they’re dead in the past - since they would have just. Left and not come back and therefore ceased to exist from that point???? or did tonys Snap simply send them back to their point in time, with no memory of what had occured? idk because it aint explained.

• speaking of; loki. again - his past changed; he managed to escape, with the tessarect. this is not explained nor expanded upon. assuming the events of thor 2 came about - which were impossible if he escaped - then his timeline would carry on as normal, and would PERHAPS explain the tessarects wacky timeline. (i dont know for certain, because i cant work it out anyway). but loki disspearing means he wouldnt have gone to trial on asgard, nor would he wouldnt have been in thor 2 - also by extention meaning that frigga is still alive. technically if he went back to get odin off the throne anyway, everything else after thor 2 involving loki/asgard would still come to pass. either way, we dont know. it was a nice way for endgame to give fans what we wanted; the posibility of loki coming back. but it doesnt make a lick of sense, and we have no idea if hes still alive/escaped or not, and why. personally i have no fucking idea and im pretty sure it was a cop out so they could give us what we wanted. which brings to my other point:

• giving the audience what we wanted. we got loki interaction. we got loki ‘escaping’ and ‘surviving’ (????) we FINALLY got rescue, who many fans have been asking for since i think iron man 2, and even more so since The Badass That Was Pepper Potts in im3. we got morgan stark and tony and pepper married, we got jokes about steves ass, and more jokes about male characters admiring how hot other male characters are. and, most importantly, we got tony having the nice relaxing life he wanted out in his cabin in the woods with his wife and kids (even if it was a horrific way of getting there). i dont quite know how to explain it, but to me it seemed like they were shoving as many ‘fan-requests’ into the film as possible - so that when they killed off 2 of the original 6, and removed another by ageing him out of use, they could lessen the backlash and justify the changes by going ‘but you got so mych that you wanted beforehand!!’. a tactic they drenhed us with because one of those 2 was a fan favourite that people were BEGGING not to be killed off because they felt that he hadnt recieved anywhere near the peace or happiness he deserved so far - and now never will. which brings me to:

• tony’s death.

there are two parts to this.

one, i was incredibly pissed off because strange’s Big Plan, the ONLY reason he saved tony in infinity war, was so tony could use the gauntlet and kill himself anyway later. anyone in that film could have used that gauntlet - and many wouldnt have suffered fatal injuries; captain marvel, steve, t’challa, peter quill to name a few possibilities - basically, anyone who is in anyway enhanced would have had a better chance of surviving and would have therefore been the better choice; aka, half the mcu. i think it was a proximity thing; tony was closest. he had the oppertunity and the others didnt. but tony didnt know about the option of using it until strange looked at him and gave him ‘the signal.’ the signal to sacrifice himself. and of course, this is tony stark. when is he ever going to refuse that.

but reason two, and this is the one that stings the most; tony started the mcu.

in my opinion, he is the character who has put the most in during the whole ten years. he, of ALL the characters, deserves his happy ending of marrying the love of his life and having a kid, without constantly fearing that hes foing to have them ripped away from him, that hes going to have to fight to the death to keep them safe.

one of my friends, when i complained about tony dying, said; “it was his time. plus, he had a legacy! with pepper and morgan, and the iron man name. how can you be upset?”

i can be upset because tony got the happiness he wanted after losing exactly 50% of what he held dearest. i can be upset because hawkeye got his family back, but tony only got five years with his wife and less with his kid, instead of getting the oppertunity to grow old with his wife and watch his kid go to collage like clint will. i can be upset because the character that has gone through the most trauma, both physically and mentally, who spent the last ten years trying to better the world and everything in it and protect it, who got the most shit for every decision he made and who ended EVERY SINGLE FILM with a broken limb or his face littered with bruises and cuts while every other film centric character ended the film usually scrape free, didnt get his happy fucking ending. sure, he has a legacy. but i dont give a shit, because that legacy - of iron man, of morgan and pepper and stark industries - would have been there whether tony was alive to see it flourish or not. but he wont be.

this goes beyond being a ‘tony stan’ or tony being my favourite character. out of every single character, from start to finish, anthony edward stark fucking deserved a happy ending and by god he deserved it the most. i will argue that until my end of days.

i watched tony stark on screen for ten years, and i watched him get progressively more scarred and fucked up. his parents. the ten rings. losing yinsen. obie. vanko and hammer. the palladium poisoning. new york; the nuke and the wormhole. the ptsd, the panic attacks. the iron legion and retirement attempt. killian and extremis and the end of that returement attempt. wanda’s vision. jarvis being destroyed. the accords and subsequent civil war. finding out about the winter soldier and his hand in his parents death. finding out that steve knew. siberia. struggling to balence iron man and the accords. losing peter. being stranded on titan, in space for weeks.

tony in that wheelchair, shaking and rail thin and unable to stand for more than a few moments will haunt me forever.

i watched him suffer for ten years - longer, even, in-universe - clawing for his quiet, happy ending while fighting for the happy ending he thought the rest of the world deserved, and instead of getting rewarded he just got beaten down and beaten down. after ten fucking hears of watching the backbone of the entire franchise get nothing but shit piled on him until he struggled to breathe for it, excuse me for thinking he woukd finally get the chance to crawl out from under it and be happy. no strungs attatched, no awful, sacrificial price to be payed, just for a man who had given so. fucking. much. to finally get something for once, and be allowed to keep it.

well i was wrong. and i feel so incredibly fucking stupid for even hoping otherwise.

and thats what i didnt like about avengers endgame.

[fal-carrington]

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Pairing: Victoria x Mc

Gender: Slightly Angst/heartbreaking filled with romance

A/N: Hi everybody, today I was inspired and I decided to write this. The idea popped into my mind as I was replaying the last chapter of RCD's book 2 when Victoria admits being in love with MC, and MC alternately rejects her, so Victoria says "Don’t say anything else please. If you get there... Amazing. If you don’t... I still think having you in my life has been for the best”

Prompt: Falling in love with your best friend and seeing her date someone else can be painful, especially when you do not admit your feelings to her for fear of losing her and being rejected. That was what Victoria thought, but that was before her agent called with an unexpected offer. When Victoria and Kat have to act as lovers in Thomas Hunt's new series, things can turn out to be disastrous, would Victoria finally admit the truth when she's about to kiss her best friend for the first time on a TV show? Somebody is going to get out of this with a broken heart?

"So what do you think Victoria? I mean, it's a great opportunity and you were saying a few years ago that you wanted to reinvent yourself. That may be the perfect moment." Rachel, her agent was looking at her waiting for a response from the diva. Victoria stared at the script with no expression on her face. She knew perfectly well that this was a great opportunity, many famous names in Hollywood would be in that show, Hunt was the director, that had everything to succeed and be a glorious, but what she did not expect was who would be her co-star. Kat.

"You know very well that I don’t do TV shows, Rachel." Victoria left the script on the coffee table, turning her eyes to her garden, feeling the cool wind hit her face. Her agent took a sip of coffee with an expression Victoria knew well. She would not take an no so easily.

"That role is perfect for you and you know it. I honestly do not know what the problem is in accepting." Rachel groaned again, waiting for a true answer from the diva. "Is this because of Katherine?" Rachel narrowed her eyes. Victoria sighed.

"She is my best friend. She has nothing to do with my refusal,” Victoria lied, swallowing dry, distractedly stirring her croissant on her plate.

"You're a great actress, but I know you're lying." Rachel pointed. "Are you still having that unprofessional tension on the set? I thought that had been solved in Tender Nothings."

"And it was! We get along really well, I love being around her, we talk about everything, we spend most of our time together. She's a good friend,” Victoria said feeling the words run down her throat like acid. Referring to the person she was in love with as a friend was perhaps as bad as being rejected by her.

Rachel stared at her for a few moments before taking her coffee.

"So it happened, huh? I was wondering how long it would take to happen," Rachel said casually.

"What are you talking about?"

"You and her. You fell in love with her. Who would say, honestly I'm not surprised at all. I do not know how the media has not yet realized this tension between you two"

"Oh, please." Victoria rolled her eyes.

"It's true, huh? Tell me how long you've noticed” Rachel leaned back in Victoria's summer chair and looked at her with a triumphant smile.

Victoria sighed. She knew she would not escape that conversation even if she tried. The best thing would be to open the game for her agent and stop denying it at once.

"Since she visited me in New York. Before the recordings of The Last Duchess begin,” She admitted. “... And she show up at The Godmother premiere.”

"And you never opened the game for her? Has nothing ever happened between you both?”

"No, never. And besides, she's dating Matt.” She sighed heavily, feeling the weight of those words. "Why would I say anything? I do not want to ruin our friendship. She clearly doesn’t feel the same and I dont even know if she’s into girls.”

“You never asked?”

“No!”

"So you're afraid of rejection."

"Oh, for god's sake. Enough talking about Katherine.” She rolled her eyes. But deep down inside, she knew that Rachel was right and with that came the memory of last night in her mind.

Victoria was coming down through her Pictagram feed, smiling gratefully at the thousands of likes that popped up in her newest photo. She liked a photo that Teja had excitedly posted from her new chair of director of the film she was directing, Victoria's eyes went down to the end of the screen immediately to the unexpected photo posted a few seconds ago. It had been posted 10 seconds and there were already a thousand likes.

"Night out with bae! Love you.”

Her eyes lingered on the photo for a few moments. Until her fingers went automatically and without her permission to give like in the photo.

It was a picture of Kat with Matt. Both were hugging and smiling, sitting in a booth couch at Vertigo's. Kat was as beautiful as ever, the flash had made a beautiful contrast in her blue eyes. Victoria swallowed hard looking at the photo of the new Hollywood couple. It had been a huge bang when they both took over the relationship, gave in all the magazines and newspapers. Both were in innumerable interviews and the cover of the magazines, she lost her account of the photoshoots they did together. Leland and Candy always demanded new interviews to see them again, just as the paparazzi pursued them in the streets. She wanted to hate Matt.

She wanted to hate him with all her strength, but she could not. Matt was a good person and a good boy, and he was certainly making Kat happy. He probably was a good boyfriend too, he was going in all the fashion shows that Kat participated as a model, she knew perfectly well that he was going, because she also went in all. He had been with her on all her travels, and had been with her almost all her tours, since she had decided to invest in the music career dropping her first album, making a huge success.

He was with the person she wanted to be, the person she had fallen in love with. Her girl, her best friend. But she understood or she tried at least, Matt was young. Both were, and it was undeniable that both could not take their eyes off each other during the entire Tender Nothings recording, Victoria would like to say that she was surprised when Kat came to tell her the news, but she was not.

"I'm not going to lie, it fucking hurts," Victoria murmured softly to herself. She had never told Kat what she felt, but what was the point of doing this? She would only be rejected. She remembered perfectly the tough beginning of their friendship, how she had been rude and cruel to Kat, until she truly knew the girl and realized she was a good person. End up liking her without even realizing what was happening, what was a rivalry became a friendship... And the friendship became love. She never expected to fall in love with her best friend. She'd known Kat for four years, and she had not expected to be so attached to her. She needed her and couldn’t imagine her life without her best friend. Maybe the universe has a sick sense of humor after all.

"... And It's kind of hard to put aside when we're going to have to play as lovers on this show!" Victoria said, running her hand through her blond hair in frustration.

"I know this complicates things."

"Just to say the least." She sighed.

"You have much to consider. Think about it and try to put this question about Katherine aside. I know you two are best friends, you're in love with her, but you're a complete professional actress. Certainly, I know you can leave your personal problems aside on the set.” Before she could said something else, her cell phone vibrated. "Oh, it's Pippa Majors, I have to pick it up. Think about what I told you and then call me, okay? " She stood up leaving a confused Victoria behind.

21h30pm

Victoria paced back and forth in her bedroom, with Rachel's words in her mind. She knew that accepting the role was a difficult choice, but it was probably the right thing to do.

California's hot air entered the room of the actress porch, causing the curtains to sway. She was too busy in her thoughts to realize that her cell phone was vibrating a few seconds ago.

"Oh, fuck," she said to herself and took him in her hands. She bit her own lips, cursing herself when she saw the name and the picture on the screen.

Kat. She watched for mere seconds to Kat’s dork photo and she answered.

"Katherine, what can I do for you?"

"Hey, you." Kat laughed on the other end of the line. "You're not busy right now, right? You can talk?"

"Sure. What's it?"

"So I was talking to Chazz this morning and Hunt came up with this incredible new series offering he's producing, so he mentioned that he offered it to you as well. So of course I got the script, and I was wondering if you already accepted it.”

 "Well, I'm still thinking about. I'm not much of a type making series."

"Oh, come on Vic. It'll be great, you'll love it! "

"I'm not so sure about that."

"What's the problem?"

"Nothing. It's just... It's not my style."

"It's never too late to change." Victoria sighed impatiently.

"I'm thinking about it, okay? I know this is a great opportunity, but I still do not know."

"I'll be there. Let's act together like we did in the past. Tender Nothing’s was great and you know it."

"Yeah... I'm aware of that."

"... And we can see each other everyday. It's been a long time since we've been out, I've been busy and so have you. I have not known what it's like to see you for months. This project will be great for us "

"I'm sure Matt fills my seat." Kat laughed.

"You are my best friend. Do not get me wrong, I love Matt, but he's not you." A smile grew on Victoria's lips at those words.

"Grow up, Kat." Victoria rolled her eyes.

"Oh, come on, do not be mean."

"Yeah. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's good."

"Look, you're already agreeing."

"You're so biased." Victoria laughed and sighed. "Okay fine. I'll talk to my agent."

"Finally! Thank you, Vic."

"Do not thank me, I'll get paid for it." Kat laughed in response. "So ... Uh. Do you have plans for tomorrow? I'm free, and if you want to have coffee or something..." Victoria bit her lip anxiously.

"Sure thing. We can catch up. I have plenty things to tell you."

"Alright. See you tomorrow."

"See ya." She hung up and swallowed dry looking of her cell phone. Until her fingers automatically went up to her agent's name in her agenda and soon the phone was already dialing.

"Victoria?"

"Hey, Rach. I was thinking about the paper... And I decided to accept it."

"That’s great. What made you change your mind?"

"Kat did."

Saint Monica, Malibu 15h30pm 

Victoria was staring at her coffee in her hands, watching people passing by, people looking over her shoulder and taking pictures of her with flash and the paparazzi doing a terrible job of hiding themselves at the tables. She rolled her eyes. As the cafeteria door opened and Kat emerged, a smile lit up her face involuntarily. She looked gorgeous in that white summer dress, her honey-colored hair loose and her blue eyes vibrant. She smiled back when she saw Victoria, walking to her table.

"Hey, Vic." She hugged her.

"Hey Kat," Victoria sighed, patting her back slightly.

"I feel like I have not seen you for decades! You've been so busy lately.” Kat laughed as she sat beside Victoria.

"Oh, shut up. It's you who's been traveling all the time,” Victoria said and Kat chuckled.

"I know, things are going crazy these days. But I'm so happy to see my best friend again." Kat touched Victoria's hand on the table, taking one look from Victoria to the pair of hands together. "I missed you."

"Yeah... Me too. So ... How's it going with Matt?" Victoria scratched her throat trying to distract herself from the scene.

“Like always. He's recording his new movie in London and I'm getting new work in mind now."

"Hunt's new series," Victoria concluded.

"I'm so excited about this. It will be wonderful, all the scenery that goes, the forbidden romance ... All the crime and the action scenes. And of course, I'm excited to see the guys, Chris, Holly, and I was told Pippa's going to be in the movie. Are you excited to see her?’” Kat took a sip of her coffee.

"Who?" Victoria frowned.

"Pippa." Kat shrugged.

"Why would I be?" Victoria looked at her blankly.

"I remembered the chemistry between the two of you that day at the party at her house. You seemed very interested."

"That was... Nothing." Victoria dismissed it with one hand.

"Oh... okay. Well, anyway, The fact that we're going to star together as lovers is awesome. I’m so excited, I mean, you're a great mentor and my best friend, I feel like we're going to do a great job."

"Oh, yeah." Victoria chose the words carefully. Watching the big dimpled smile on Kat's face. "Well, what can I say... Two hot women as a couple on a tv series? This series is already ours.”

“That’s the spirit!” Kat grinned.

“What can get wrong?" Victoria muttered to herself.