#Like I still have been drawing a lot but like I am incapable of taking good photos without shadows so I am just :(

[this-is-a-url]

Currently cursing out every ao3 hs author ever because now my eyeliner is messed up

[evaskjew]

I'm trying something for fandom artists/writers

Well, as I don't have anyone to tag (I'm really the least sociable person in the world and I'm too scared to talk to people in the fandom 😂), it's up to those who see this post to participate or not (if it turns out that it's not going to take at all, but never mind!)

Well, as my thing is drawing, I'll go with that (but you can adapt it to writing for those who write, or anything else for that matter!)

Last drawing:

Favourite drawing:

Well, I'm cheating, I'm putting two in because I can't choose 😖 On the one hand it's my best pastel drawing (to say it's also my second realistic portrait in colour) and on the other the painting I did with my grandmother and it's also the first time I've done anything other than a portrait in realistic drawing with a background and so on.

Hated drawing:

Right, then. Here again it's hard to put just one. I'm VERY hard on myself and I hate almost all my drawings 🥲 But really, if I have to choose, there are three that I really can't see any more because I find them so horrible.

Future project(s):

Following the poll, I'm going to start working on a new portrait of Garreth.

Next up, why not draw Ominis again (I've taken several in-game screenshots of him that I'd like to do to work on the backgrounds) and I'd also like to draw characters I haven't drawn yet, like Natsai or Amit.

And maybe one day, when I'm bored because I can't find any more images to use as models, I might draw some MCs from in-game screenshots.

And apart from drawing, I'd like to finish writing my OS by the end of the year 😂

Favourite artist:

There are far too many talented people in fandom ❤️

But without hesitation I'd say @tamayula-hl! Long before I dared to post my drawings online, I admired her work so much and even today I jump on every notification as soon as she posts! I know I'll never reach her level but her work is a source of inspiration and motivation (even more so now that I've switched to watercolour and I'm still trying to figure out how to work with colours, the way she works with colour is so incredible 🥰)

And I can't thank her enough for her post showing all the possible angles for Ominis' and Sebastian's hairs, it was so helpful 🙏🏻

And I admire @choccy-milky too! These are the two fandom artists I've been following since I started on Tumblr a little over a year ago 😄

One or few points on which I would like to improve:

First of all, I've managed to stop transferring the outlines of my drawings. Yes, it's a bit cheating to transfer, I know. But if I don't do it, the proportions are going to be catastrophic and that's going to piss me off (long live my perfectionism) and I'm going to stop and stubborn as I am coupled with my lack of self-confidence, I'm never going to want to draw again. So for the time being, we're going to keep tracing 😅 We'll see what happens in time.

But most of all, I'd like to stop depending on images I find on Pinterest or Tumblr and just reproduce them as drawings. I'm incapable of doing anything other than faithfully reproducing an image 😢 It annoys me, because I'd also like to post lots of drawings of my MC Evangeline interacting with other characters 😞 And the worst thing is the difference in my drawing level when I do something that doesn't depend on a reference image! (the proof: my drawings of Evangeline and this drawing of Ominis)

I took it upon myself while writing this post and forced myself to do a drawing of Evangeline in 20 minutes without a model (I just traced a neutral pose from a drawing dummy to have my base and improvised from my watercolour of Evangeline for her outfit).

You be the judge:

The end of her leg and her shoe is a disaster 😭

Well, that's that. I don't know how it's going to turn out and whether any artists/writers are going to take part, but it was a fun post to make!

[quillthrillswriting]

now that ao3 is back up, boy oh boy do i have a fic rec for you!!!!

i get that the comics are meant to fill that gap between atla and lok, but i feel like we've always been missing that moment where katara and aang actually formally confess their feelings and talk about everything they had been through. with how mature both of them are, it feels somewhat... unrealistic to me that we're never shown that moment where they talk it all out, after three (3!!!) whole seasons of buildup >:(

this fic was inspired by me wanting to show the moment when aang and katara are finally free from the responsibilities placed on them by the war!!!<3

OR: Aang wakes up the morning after him and his friends saved the entire world, and the first (and only) thing he can think about is Katara. When they get a chance to talk, the two take a walk down memory lane.

---

“Is it ok if I ask you something? While we’re on the topic of… us kissing?” Aang asked, hesitantly. 

Katara nodded. She had a feeling that she knew where this was going. “Ember Island?”

“Yeah.” He breathed. “We never got to… talk about that. After we kissed at the invasion, there was never a moment alone, and I do recognize now that Ember Island wasn’t the right time to bring it up, and I shouldn’t have sprung all of that on you. It wasn’t fair for me to ask you to make such a big statement. It wasn’t right for me to be so demanding. I felt ridiculously jealous over the implication that you were interested in Zuko, and I… well, I reacted poorly. I really am sorry for that.”

“I appreciate you saying that.”

He continued. “But, if you don’t mind me asking… what did you mean when you said you felt confused?”

Katara sighed, drawing water from the lake and tossing it between her hands idly. “I still don’t quite get it, even now. I think the best way to describe it was that I was in fight or flight, locked into survival mode. I did have feelings for you, and I knew that, but I just couldn’t let myself be vulnerable like that at a time like that. I guess that I was worried that if we started something, it’d be a weakness for the both of us. It felt too selfish to distract ourselves from the greater mission at hand when the world was at stake.”

“Ah.” Aang said, thinking it over as the pieces began to click together. “That… that makes a lot of sense.”

Katara continued. “If we’re both being honest, you do have a history of… avoidance, Aang. Giving into my feelings for you felt like it would mean enabling that bad habit of yours, and it seemed like the world needed you more than I did.”

---

Katara fought the blush spreading rapidly across her cheeks as the two leaned closer together. “Do you remember making that necklace for me out of fishing twine? So I could have a placeholder while Zuko had my mother’s necklace?”

He only nodded in response, her proximity rendering him entirely incapable of producing coherent speech. “I still have it. I don’t think you realize how much that meant to me.” She laughed, lost in memory for a second. “The way you looked at me when I put it on… and Sokka said you were acting like you were in love, and I… called you a good friend?”

“Mhm?” Aang asked, about as close to her as he could be without her lips on his. “What… what about it?”

"I don't want us to just be... good friends, not anymore." She took a deep breath, her voice wavering with nerves.

I think we were meant to be more than that." Katara breathed.

---

♥ the rest of the (completed) fic can be found here!! ->

[heyidkyay]

I guess I’ll take this pain, instead of your name |

Part Seventeen

A/n: IT'S BEEN A WHILE! Hi, I'm very sorry for the wait! But even so, I hope this next part will have been worth it, there's a lot going on here and it jumps around a bit but it is longer! Enjoy? x

Summary: In life, things changed. The boys you'd once grown up with were men now, and famous ones at that. The type that toured the world and had millions of adoring fans.

The five of you shared a shit ton of history. But you also shared a lot of mixed emotions for one of them in particular, a certain drummer.

Warnings: Lots happening!! Mentions of food, body issues, bouts of sadness and struggles with both physical and mental health (dw, there's still a healthy amount of fluff, im not that evil)

Masterlist

--

“Excited, darling?”

Matty’s enlivened voice startled me from the messy thoughts which swarmed my mind, I glanced up and out of my daze to find him walking over. I hummed back in soft confusion.

“I mean, you’re finally getting out of this shit-hole and your face only continues to look like that of a slapped arse,” Matty snorted as he dropped down onto the bed beside me, though he did nudge my shoulder to soften the blow. 

Still, my eyes narrowed as I wrinkled my nose up at him in retort.

“This do you any better?” I goaded, getting into his space.

I watched his mouth pull up into a lopsided grin, it stayed there even as he rolled his eyes at me and proceeded to shove my face away from his.

“Tons." Matty blew out, "But come on, darling, what’s been going on, eh? Figured you’d be bouncing off the walls by now, been planning an escape ever since you first opened your eyes.”

I quirked a brow at him. “Erm I’d quite like to remind you, Healy, that I am currently incapable of bouncing from foot to foot at this very moment in time, let alone any walls. Also, I’m pretty sure that Dr Mann would rescind my release papers if I even made an attempt.”

With a shrug, I shot him a braggart smile. 

“Yeah, alright Einstein.” Matty drawled with another roll of his eyes. “That still doesn’t answer my question though, does it?” 

His gaze drifted downwards then to where I held my phone tightly in my good hand. Its shattered screen tended to draw the eye- but I figured I’d get it fixed soon enough, when I had a bit of money to spare instead of taking up the guys’ offer of just getting me a new one altogether. They were utter idiots if they thought for one second that I’d ever agree to an offer like that. Though, it had been rather sweet.

But in truth, I only had my phone on me because I’d been waiting on a text. Or a call. Or any sort of notification that would let me know that George hadn’t just gone and disappeared off of the face of the Earth- again. 

Though it seemed to be an ongoing thing with him, something of a hobby now that I’d actually thought about it...

See, after the events that had transpired during his last visit, it was safe to say that I hadn’t heard from him again since he’d left. Which, in itself, had been quite the dramatic exit.

What with Hann having gone off at him whilst the rest of us had been too fucking shell-shocked to try and sort things out between ourselves. George had taken his opportunity and ran with it, darted the second fate had given him the chance. Which had actually been in the arrival of the day-nurse with my breakfast, who’d been awfully surprised by the audience of people, as well as the very tense atmosphere we’d created. 

The lads, well mainly just Ross, had reassured me a few times since then that they’d let George know about my discharge from the hospital, but there hadn’t been any sort of response from him. Not anything of worth at least, unless you considered him blocking me on every social media platform.

Yeah, that’d hurt.

“Love.” Matty called out again with a huffed laugh, gently knocking me sideways.

I blinked out of my stupor and over towards him, “Sorry, what?”

With an exaggerated groan, Matty rolled his eyes at me and fell back onto the bed in a strop. “You know… when they listed off what the fuck was wrong with you, I don’t remember them ever bringing up amnesia.”

“Oh, piss off.” I scowled and tried to swat at him, but I couldn’t hide my slight smile, especially when I carefully lowered myself down to join him, the two of us just sprawled there, sidewards on the sheets. I kicked at his ankle childishly and his legs locked around mine in retaliation. 

“Almost wish I’d been given amnesia if it meant I’d be free of you.” I mumbled, hoping he’d take the bait. 

And he did. Matty gasped brightly and I could only laugh at the indignant expression that overwhelmed his face.

“You prick, take that back!” He practically shouted, slapping the back of his hand against my hip.

“Sorry, no can do, Healy. Lying’s a sin and all that gobshite.”

I received a derisive snort in return but when I glanced over at him, Matty was wearing a fond sort of grin. “Our little atheist, glad to have you back.”

I shook my head in mock exasperation, fighting off a wider smile, and then proceeded to shove at him when he tried to rope me into an awkward sort of hug due to our position. “Oh sod off, would you!”

“Nah, at least not until you say you love me!” He quipped back, burying his chin in my hair. 

“Matty!” I groaned, but ultimately resigned myself to the fact we’d probably be stuck here a while. “You’re actually such a stubborn prat.”

My head reeled back as best as it could into the mattress when Matty’s face suddenly popped into view above me. “Pot, meet kettle.”

Helplessly, I groaned again.

“Knob.”

—

Knock. Knock. 

I looked up from where I’d lazily been packing at the soft sound and smiled when I saw Lee stood in the doorway waiting for me. “Hey.” I greeted him with a soft grin and he returned the sentiment just as easily.

“You got everything?” Lee asked me whilst he made his way over, eyeing what little items remained on the bed. 

“This is the last of it.” I told him, tucking away a folded t-shirt. “Why, you gonna miss me or something?” I questioned with a sly smile, feeling very smug when he laughed and gave me a feeble nod.

“‘Course I will. Besides, you know you’re my favourite patient, what am I going to do without you and all your chaotic fuss?” He quipped and I had to chuckle, feigning a halfhearted glare even as I pointed towards him.

“You say that now, but you’ll be glad for the peace.”

Lee shook his head, wearing a smile that was only ever made for sorrowful goodbyes, and I had to tut at him before I started getting all misty eyed too. I stepped forwards and threw my one good arm round his neck to tug him in.  

“���M gonna miss you.” I mumbled into his shoulder, silently cursing the tears that had started to prickle behind my eyes. He only hugged me tighter at the admission before we finally parted ways, and I watched as he tried to brave a real smile for me.

“I’m gonna miss you, too. Reckon everyone here will,” Lee sniffed, “You and your boys have made this ward into a VIP lounge of sorts.”

We both snorted at that, knowing it to be all too true. Everyone had been aiming to get a bed in our unit, what with the band coming and going, Matty and all his theatrics. Just thinking about it, it was a massive surprise to suddenly realise that there had been a real lack of paps.

Or maybe, I’d just been shielded from it… I made a mental note to ask one of the lads later on.

“I’ll come visit.” I assured Lee before my face fell into an anxious sort of frown, thinking it over. “Wait, that’s alright, ain’t it? Me stopping by?”

With a simple mirth filled laugh, Lee pulled me into another long hug, “I’m counting on it.”

I hid my smile in the collar of his scrubs.

—

“Oi.” Ross said to me, nudging my knee with his free hand from where he sat in the driver’s seat, it broke me from where I’d previously been watching the world outside pass by. “Was talkin’ to you.” He added.

My brows lifted and I blinked as I turned away from the window. 

“Sorry, just strange being outside again. Feels weird.” I told him honestly, fingers tapping away on the door handle. 

The giant snorted in turn and moved to shift gears. “Like when you get back off holiday weird? Or you’ve been frozen and just woken up, sort of weird?”

“Second. Futurama type shit.” I nodded decisively, eyes skittering over everything we drove by so that I could take it all in. The gossamer sky and its many clouds. The dozens of contradicting faces. Those with their frowns and them with their laughter. Even the postbox got its fair share of gawking. But then I had to shake my head and peer back over at him, “What were you saying anyway? Before.”

Ross blew a soft exhale out of his nose and I watched one side of his mouth quirk upwards slightly. “I asked if you were gonna be alright, camping out at Matty’s place and whatnot. Figured you might’ve finally had enough of the daft idiot.”

I laughed softly and shook my head at him in turn. “Nah, we’ll be alright. Besides, Doctor's said I needed to have someone close by whilst I’m still recovering, didn’t they? And Matty, he offered.” I shrugged, playing with a loose thread on my jeans. “Well, I say offered, he just sort of decided- but I was just grateful for it all the same. I mean, who else would’ve put me up for so long? Not like I could just head on up to my mum’s if I wanted, or have my boyfriend wait on me hand and foot.”

I snorted at the very thought, but it died the second I saw the hardened eyes Ross wore- even with them casted out towards the road. I knuckled his shoulder in hopes to ease his sudden solemn mood.

“Awh, what’s wrong, MacDonald? Sad you didn't get the chance to house me for a couple weeks, ey?”

Ross cracked a smile at that just as the car made a right, he glanced over at me. “Yeah actually. Could’ve had a right laugh me and you together. Plus, nursing you back to health would’ve given me the chance to get out of a couple of these upcoming meetings we’ve got going on.”

My mouth dropped open at the revelation and I flicked his upper arm in retaliation. “Oi, I’m not some helpless pawn you can use!”

With an amused roll of his eyes, Ross flashed me a toothy grin. “I know that- still, would’ve been a win, win though.”

I simply shook my head at his wind up attempt and left the topic to rest.

Trying not to move too much in my seat, despite my discomfort, I let my head loll back against the headrest. “What time did Matty say he’d be back anyway?”

Said prat had gone and dipped out of the ward a little over an hour before I’d been set for release, claiming he had ‘shit to sort out’.

Ross had originally offered to bum us both a lift but in the end Matty had decided on getting himself an Uber after having given the bassist strict instructions on where to collect the rest of my medication and how to get me home. ‘Safe and sound?’ Ross had assumed, but no. Matty had given him quite the detailed description- having already accounted for the journey and its flow of traffic when we'd first received the news- but he’d also had another rant prepared for what would occur if those points were not met.

It’d been a laugh. For me, at least. Ross not so much.

“Uh,” I watched as Ross’s eyes flickered to the dashboard of his swanky motor before he answered me, “Probably be back about the time we are, could already be there.”

His phone dinged then and we both shared a look when a couple more rapidly followed. 

“Guess you’re a psychic, MacDonald.” I told him, then chuckled to myself when Ross winced and moved to turn the radio up, mainly in hopes to drown out the many messages from Matty on his pinging phone.

By the time we pulled up to Matty’s, both Ross and I were rather thankful for the fact that the frontman had seemingly made it back before us, seeing as he’d gone and left the front gate wide open so that the car could graze up the driveway.

I peered as best as I could through the windscreen at the house as I unclipped my seatbelt and Ross turned off the engine. It looked far too still, which always through me off whenever I came over, but even more so than usual. The hospital had been severely overcrowded though, and so it was incredibly bizarre to be welcomed by something so polar-opposite.

“You good?”

Absentmindedly, I nodded at Ross's question and the man took it for what it was, hopping out so that he could grab my things for me. The car was eerily quiet for a brief moment before the boot opened and the sound of rustling and the birds that had nested in the nearby oak tree flooded in. I tried not to focus too hard on the faint buzz that’d started up, deafening my left ear, and instead moved to follow.

“He reckons he left the front door unlocked for us, so just head on in, yeah? I’ll grab this lot.” Ross told me, catching my attention once I’d finally managed to slam the car door shut behind me.

“You sure?” I questioned him, eyes squinted as they got used to the full force of the sun. Even with its sly chill this time of year, London always came with a harsh glare.

“‘Course, go on. I’ll just be a sec.”

I nodded to myself and paced the rest of the way up to the stoop. Luckily, Ross’d been right and the handle gave way with just a gentle push, allowing me to step inside.

“Matty?” I called out, peering my head around the hallway’s first corner to see if he was in the living-room or kitchen. “Matt?” I said again, this time a little louder.

“Yeah! 'M up here!” I heard him shout back, voice muffled and a way away. I frowned but found myself already making a beeline for the stairs.

“What the fuck are you even doing up there?” I asked out loud as I slowly edged my way to the top. “You better not be on the shitter, Matthew! I’ve been there, done that, and would very much not like to relive it.”

I grimaced at the vivid reminder my mind then gifted me. It was safe to say that it hadn’t been the most gracious of days for either one of us. 

See, the tour bus flu was indeed very much real and also a huge fucking menace. Six hours stuck in a moving metal bin fitted with one singular toilet in a bathroom no bigger than a coffin was actual hell when you were yoshing and another person had the shits.

Matty and I hadn’t been able to look one another in the eye for a good while after that. Only forgetting about it when Hann had gone and gotten himself shitfaced after a show and nearly sliced himself in half climbing up the bus’s steps. It had taken us a bit to finally find the humour in it though, still it was not something I’d like to experience again.

“Oh, shove off, you’re dying to catch another glimpse of this arse!” Matty replied and I had to roll my eyes whilst I took a second to catch my breath on the landing. Though it wasn’t too long before I was wandering down towards where I’d heard him shout.

“If I wanted so see something flat and pasty then I’d-”

The words I’d been about to speak were ripped from my lips the second I bypassed one of the many doors Matty’s house had to offer, completely taken aback.

I could hardly blink, let alone fathom it, as I tried to take the entire room in whilst Matty jumped up from where he’d been putting something together down on the floor so that he could flaunt his way over to me.

“Like it?” He questioned me with a sly grin, but I couldn’t find the right response to give him, especially with my jaw hanging by my feet.

It was an absolute contrast to everything the room usually offered. Gone were the beige covered concrete walls that decorated the rest of the house, replaced by a calming white that had been paired with a beautifully muted sage feature wall. The bedsheets had been revived by a lovely floral pattern but softened by a plethora of blankets and pretty pillows.

The expected wooden dresser and side tables had also disappeared and in their place now stood antiques coloured the same as the green wall, with brass handles and etchings. Then by the window there was a large collage of pictures, practically an album plastered there in a spiral which stretched from the window to the far corner. I couldn’t quite get myself to move towards it because I'd been stunned to actual tears.

When I finally looked back to Matty, he wore an anxious sort of smile, one of which was almost a smirk but tinged with a little insecurity.

“Matty, I-” I blew out a breath and glanced around again. “You did this? All this?”

He scratched the back of his neck, gaze skitting about the room with mine. “Yes, no? Dunno, not sure if those tears are a good sign or not, so if they’re bad, it was all Ross, yeah?”

With a soft snort, I gifted him a far too fond smile. “First of all, I’m not crying. And second, why would any of this upset me?”

“Oh yeah, ‘course, how stupid of me. Too cool to show emotion us, eh?” Matty feigned as he dipped his head a couple times and pursed his lips, playing along. “You actually like it then? ‘Cause I sort of came up with it on the spot the other day- picked it all out myself as well. Had Ross and Hann put the dresser and shit together though, then paid some guy to paint for me, 'cause fuck that.”

He shrugged it all off, acting as though the gesture was nothing. But I could tell he was proud, that of his work or my reaction I didn’t know, but it was probably both though knowing him. I had to grin. 

“Thank you.” I whispered with conviction before finally enveloping him in an overdue hug.

“Ah, take it you liked the surprise then?” I heard Ross say as he waltzed in behind us, dropping my stuff just outside the door.

I pulled away from Matty to watch him walk further inside.

“Even set up the steps! Knew you could do it, mate.” He continued, clapping his curly haired mate on the shoulder as he gestured over towards the right side of the bed.

My forehead pinched as I rounded the two to get a better look at what he meant. “What steps?”

Matty was back to looking a little sheepish again and he trailed on over to where a small set of wooden steps resided. He toed at the structure lightly, “Figured you still had a hard time with he hospital beds and this one, well it’s a lot higher. Reckon these will make it a lot easier, innit?”

Wow.

I couldn’t even get past my fish-mouthing before Ross was intervening again. “Go on then, have you tested them out yet?”

Matty’s eyes widened slightly before he laughed and shook his head. “No, man. Finished just up as she walked in.”

So that’s what he’d been doing.

“Well then, best make sure they’re stable enough for her majesty.” Ross cajoled, wearing the slightest hint of a smirk whilst he prodded at Matty’s shoulder. “Can’t be having any more injuries, can we?”

I rolled my eyes, but not even Ross being his usual twattish self could dim my mood.

Matty’s wary gaze darted over to me and I had to hold back a laugh, “Come on, do as the man says.”

I was met with a petulant scowl before Matty finally relented and shimmied his way over towards the steps in a huff. “Why am I always the one getting fucked?” He mumbled under his breath and I had to hide my smile in the cuff of Ross’s shirt when he moved to throw an arm over my shoulders.

“Ah, come on, Healy. Be a good sport, won't you.”

“Yeah, I mean I’d do it but imagine what Dr Mann would say if I’m already in A&E before the days out?”

Matty glared at the pair of us but didn’t comment, instead he put a courageous but cautious foot on the first step. Ross and I stood there with baited breath, waiting in anticipation whilst Matty drew in a shaky lungful of air before finally allowing the step to take the brunt of his weight.

His eyes had been glued shut but when nothing happened he slowly pried one open, the other soon followed when a prideful grin threatened to overwhelm his face. Ross and I cheered loudly in congratulations (and sheer shock), before Matty, in turn, did a silly little bow for us shortly followed by an odd dance.

“Alright, Louie Spence. Calm down before you really do hurt yourself.” I chuckled and took his outstretched hand in mine when he motioned for a bit of help back down.

“And you said I’d fuck it all up.” Matty beamed like the cat who got the cream back at Ross. “Pay up, dickhead.”

I glanced between the pair in rising amusement and observed the way Ross scoffed before he ultimately dug his hand into his back pocket.

“How much did you bet?” I couldn’t help but ask them.

“50 quid said I’d get the ump and give up. 100 if I paid someone else to do it for me. 200 if it broke.” Matty relayed, happily counting the extra notes he’d been handed. 

I laughed at Ross’s prominent scowl before the giant tackled his bandmate onto my freshly made bed.

“No, not the clean sheets!" I gasped, shooing the two. "Get your dirty shoes off my pillows, MacDonald! Oh for fucks sake.”

I should’ve known better than to try and stop them, because even with a broken body they still somehow managed to rope me into their antics.

“Guys!!”

—

Recovery felt much different outside of the ward I'd decided.

There was no proper routine here at Matty’s. And although I was forever grateful to him, for everything he’d done in the build up to my release and for letting me shack up with him for a few weeks, it was also very hard.

I was still in pain. More so, sometimes. There was no Lee here to rely on, and I couldn’t find it in me to burden Matty any further than I already had. Everything felt like a task to me. From sitting up to showering. Or even going to the loo and drinking a glass of water.

I mean don’t get me wrong, the first couple days had been heaven sent. The peace and the quiet. But then the peace had quickly grown tense and the quiet too loud. And I was left stuck here in my own head for hours at a time.

Being out of hospital meant life getting back to normal. It meant days passing without much fuss, friends stopping in but never for too long, meetings and calls and messages- all of which only ever concerned Matty, seeing as Delia had threatened to sack me if I even thought about doing any work whilst I was supposed to be resting. Which meant no emails, or designing.

But the band meetings Ross had previously mentioned a couple days prior appeared to drag on for hours, and Matty would be holed up in his office or the studio for most of the day. Not that I had much room to complain, he had a lively hood and actual shit to do. I couldn't keep interfering with that.

It was just hard. Hard being alone. Hard feeling so isolated. 

Hann was busy with Carly and work, and when he had the time to spare it was mostly spent with us just talking about the new album or how I’d been getting on. Which was nice enough, but I hated lying to him, to everyone really. 

Ross had been back and forth, he’d annoy me for a couple hours whilst Matty was busy and then he’d disappear for a couple days and I’d hear nothing. Maybe a vague text here or a tag on Twitter there, but that was it. 

And me, I was slowly abandoning what little sense of reality I still held onto. 

Things with George hadn’t gotten any easier.

In fact, I started to ignore everything and anything to do with him.

The guys they never mentioned him, not even in passing. But I knew when he’d been around. I could always tell. Ross wouldn’t look me in the eye. Matty told too many jokes. And Hann would give me this pitying expression that made me want to hit him.

I avoided all mentions of him and the band on social media as best I could and had started listening to podcasts through headphones whenever Matty’s music echoed through the house.

It was difficult. Everything felt difficult at the moment. Life did.

And so, almost subconsciously, I’d taken to hiding myself away for longer periods of time. The room Matty had made for me was a safe haven, it made me feel more at home than I would’ve in my own bed. But it was also isolating, being at Matty’s cut me off from the outside world. He had no real neighbours, no local parks or trails to wander, and the only scheduled visitor he had was the cleaner who came in every Wednesday.

My body and I were also on the outs. A little like George and I, I supposed.

It was an evident struggle having to relearn parts of myself. To acknowledge these new scars I had and the thing that came with them. It was still a shock to me each morning to wake up and be reminded of the damage to my ear. To my head. The throbbing migraines that followed, as well as the ringing and the utter silence too.

Most days, I just wanted to scream. Others I wanted to disappear altogether.

—

“Looks to be healing rather nicely. Though I’d be a bit wary about the wound on the back of your head, it seems to be taking a little longer than the rest.” The doctor told me and I simply nodded in return, wanting this whole charade to be over and actively avoiding the tiny mirror adhered to the wall opposite from where I was sat on the bed.

It was just another checkup, I told myself in hopes to calm the nerves. I’d had two in the time I’d been out, and this was just the third.

“What- it isn’t infected is it?”

That was Matty, he’d joined me as per usual.

In my peripheral, I saw the doctor shake her head in response to his question. “No, but I would suggest keeping an eye out for any abnormalities that might arise. Oozing liquids, light throbbing, heat and what not.”

Matty hummed and then proceeded to ask another rapid fire of questions whilst I just stood up and dipped back behind the curtain to change out of the gown they’d given me.

“How long until the cast can come off?” I overheard him say.

“Three weeks, hopefully. Though we’d probably recommend a splint after that. At least until she’s in physio.”

I kept on breathing. In and out. Out then in. Ignoring the muted whispers that followed.

I tugged on the large hoodie Ross had leant me, one that actually covered my cast, then stepped back out. “Are we all done?” I questioned and the woman turned to me with a polite smile, clipboard in hand.

“All good to go. Your prescription should be ready at the front desk, you only need to head to the pharmacy.”

I nodded and quietly thanked her, slipping out of the office and then the unit altogether as quick as my feet would let me. Unaware of the troubled gaze which followed behind me.

—ROSS’S POV—

With a quiet huff and a flick of his wrist, Ross waved off George’s silent question as he tried to pay attention to what Matty had been saying on the other side of the phone. 

The two of them had been holed up in the studio since the early hours of the morning- mostly because he’d been shafted with ‘G Duty’ (a glorified name for babysitting the walking self-destruct button they all called a mate basically)- because the knob hadn’t been sleeping as of late and so he'd decided to come in and work through some things. Not that it’d helped much. They'd gotten fuck all done.

“Say that again, mate. Didn’t quiet catch it.” He murmured into the phone, listening intently even whilst George decided to take a seat near him instead of heading back behind the deck.

“Just- I don’t know what to do, man! She’s been- I don’t know! It’s like she’s turned into a zombie or summat! Lifeless. Dead, almost.” Matty hissed through the speaker, and Ross could practically visualise his turmoil, the way he’d be scrubbing at his face or anxiously tapping his foot.

He sighed heavily to himself. It seemed they’d known one another for far too long.

“She won’t eat, and if she does then it’s only ever in her room. She comes down in the middle of the night and I hear her puttering about down here, she’ll make a tea or something then she’s gone before I can even see her, and I won’t hear a peep til the next evening- that's if I’m lucky.” Matty went on to say, describing to him what the last week or so had been like for the pair of them.

“I’ve tried everything, mate. She doesn’t want to come on a walk, or go to the shops. Even step into the garden, for fucks sake!” He was whispering harshly now and Ross could easily pick up on the stress which lined his tone. “Gimme a sec.” Matty told him after a tense pause had passed and so Ross listened to him faintly pad about his house before a door soon opened.

“You alright?” Ross asked him with a furrowed brow, only glancing up when George shifted slightly beside him. He ignored it for the time being.

“Yeah, yeah.” Matty assured him, albeit a little breathlessly. “Just had to step outside for a fag. Didn’t want her to hear me either.”

“She there?”

Ross could almost hear him shake his head. George shifted again too and so he shot him a dark look in hopes he'd fuck off.

“Nah, in her room." Matty replied, "But I don’t know. Rather not chance it, you know?”

Ross hummed in reply, then inhaled slowly. “How did the check up go yesterday?”

“Fine, I ‘spose. Doctor said her cast could come off soon, so that was a plus. But they're still a little iffy about everything else though, her ear especially…”

“Still can’t hear a thing?” Ross asked, picking at a long thread in the studio’s sofa.

“Nope. Ringing sometimes, she's said. But otherwise nothing. Sometimes I’ll be talking to her about random shit and I’ll see her turn her whole body just so her good ear’s facing me. I dunno if she even notices it.”

“I know, I’ve seen it too.” Ross mentioned gruffly, his chest growing uncomfortable at the thought of it. At the thought of having to see her go through even more heartache. “Did she say anything?”

“Barely spoke a word to me on the way home, mate. Picked up her favourite too.”

“Five Guys.” They both said simultaneously, and Ross’s mouth quirked upwards when he heard Matty’s airy chuckle titter out.

“Yeah, got her usual. But she mentioned having a shower when we first got in and so I left it for her to heat up and went to sort out some crap, but I came down later it was still on the side. And that was hours after we’d got back, man.”

Ross chewed on a loose thumbnail, lost in his own head.

“I just, I don’t know, what if she’s like depressed or something? I mean, I get it. More than fucking most. But her? Seeing her like that... Ross man, it’s killing me.”

“I know, mate. I know. You just gotta hold out, yeah? She’ll bounce back. She always does.” He attempted to reassure, but he was fucking fretting over it all too. How much could a single person suffer through before they just caved in?

“Ross.” Matty paused after he'd said it though and so Ross waited. He listened to his mate work through his tangent of worries, heard his shaky breaths, and just waited.

“What if she doesn’t?” And the tone Matty used was one he’d only ever heard once before, the morning that he’d decided he needed to get clean. 

Ross hadn’t even realised that his jaw was wrenched shut by the grit of his teeth before he went to reply. “Then we be there for her. Like she was for us. Like she’s always been.”

“Right.”

Ross didn’t say anything for a long while and it almost sounded as though the line had gone dead before a loud trembling exhale ripped him from the tension.

“Look, mate. I’ll head on over tonight, alright? Surprise her.” He decided, “Bring dinner or dessert. Fucking whatever. You can go out for a bit. Clear your head. I’ll try and see if I can get her to talk.”

Whilst he listened to Matty ramble away in return, asking if it was a good idea, if he was sure, Ross caught George’s eye from across the sofa before the drummer quickly startled away. Ross watched him closely after that, but still found himself mulling things over. Wondering how he could possibly fix this apocalyptic mess that'd been created. If anyone even could.

But then he decided in that next moment, he at least had to try. 

If not for his own sanity, then for her's.

Part eighteen>

[sol-arise0]

I WILL WRITE TO ALL CUSTOMERS MYSELF WITHIN A WEEK.

(With a detailed text of what happened to me and what we will do next...)

Thank you in advance, if you can read this to the end, there will be a lot of letters about my feelings that I have always held back. But I no longer have the strength to remain silent.

Now there will be a long post about why for more than a year I behaved badly on social networks, practically not posting art. Some of my subscribers have probably seen posts that I had to have two operations (one was on my stomach in 2022, the second on my eye in 2023, and unfortunately both times fell in February, on the eve of my birthday) Now, looking at the past, I understand that this there were the clearest hints that I was mentally ill back then. Because the doctors in both cases said that the reason could be stress, which caused an exacerbation. But it just so happens that I live in a family where we BASICALLY DON'T TALK ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS, essentially downplaying that, wow, it turns out it can be bad mentally, not just physically?

In addition, I am the daughter of my father, whom my whole family sincerely despises for leaving my mother with debts so HUGE that she has been paying them off for 20+ years. I think you understand why my mother feels negative emotions towards me, putting pressure on me, trying to change me. Unfortunately, I now realize that she didn't do any better. For this reason, in the late spring of 2023, I moved into my sister's apartment, during her absence, to keep an eye on it. And feeling that no one is pushing you, how you talk, walk, sleep, eat, that you don't have a boyfriend, you look terrible and other things - it was easier for me. So it turned out that when my sister returned from vacation, I asked her to stay for another while. And well, in short, it was both a good and a terrible time.

In a nutshell, I was working through my problems, and the second dragged myself to the bottom. Of course, because I expected🥹👍 that I would take up painting seriously, working for money🤌, no one would touch me, (I was always a "housewife" in the family house, because we could not hire special people, so to help my mother, I did all the work around the house, garden, and even I helped with the documentation, although I am very inattentive.)

Living with my sister, I realized that all my expectations would crack against mine... Apathy? I don't know what to call this period, but I was just basically a vegetable. I didn't want anything. I got into debt because of this, I couldn't get a job, and drawing made my hands tremble because I had commission that I couldn't finish. And so it turned out to be an endless circle of lack of money and despair - I couldn't finish art cmm, so I couldn't take new ones out of shame, I couldn't get a job, because I didn't even have the strength to go out for a walk. So it turned out that every day I ate kefir with a little bread, because I saved my expenses up to 2.5-3 dollars a day.

Seriously, if my sister hadn't fed me from time to time, I would have gone back AGAIN to the hospital. I understood that everything was going wrong, that it was abnormal, why it turned out that I was so weak, incapable, and more.

And so, we come to the end of the story. I returned to my parents' house because we had earthquakes from winter to mid-spring, and living on the 12th floor you only think about a quick death.:"") I'm going through this mini home hell again, because it's even more fun! My stepfather and mother converted to Islam. Completely. And you probably know that painting, music, open clothes and other things are considered forbidden/sin there. Well, if I used to be neutral about religion, now I'm really AFRAID of it. That one day I will still get caught on gayshit, which drawings I am working on, and I will be beaten like poor girls in Islamic countries. What adds a spark to the situation is that they know what I'm roughly called on social networks (also my older sister, with whom I have smtm conflicts, again fuckin religion!!, SHE IS SUBSCRIBED TO MY INSTA, AND I CAN'T DELETE HER BECAUSE SHE'S A FOOL HAS SEVERAL ACCOUNTS THAT I DON'T KNOW ABOUT) so I think in the near future either to move accounts (insta).

In short, I'm just tired of hating everything and everyone, crying and getting angry, constantly holding back emotions so as not to conflict with my family. Because I know what the hell we've all been through together, that's why I've put up with everything before. And it did me harm, because my creative nature is ready to die from my fears, pain, mood swings and constant pressure. Against this background, I asked a friend to give me a discount so that I could make an appointment with a psychologist at least once (I'm still terribly ashamed, but I hope in the future I'll pay for everything) And she was told that there is a damn suspicion of ADHD!!!! But to prove it, i need to go to a therapist, and this is tantamount to being branded crazy... after all, there are no mental problems unless you have schizophrenia.👍

That's why I'm writing this post. I am sad that I wake up every day thinking that it would be nice to die, and other apathetic thoughts. Now I have to decide to close it all. All debts to customers, all debts to myself, because I know that I am an unloved daughter who knows how to love everyone except herself. Because now, I know that damn it, yes I, yes I'm not talented like my siblings and peers, but I'm good in my own way. It's a shame that it took me more than 10 years of my life and a year of starvation and despair as an insolvent person to understand that I need to mentally support myself, and not shoot myself in the foot with all these nagging and discontent.

That's why I share my plan with the world, because I know that I need support, help, and that it's not a shame to talk about myself and my problems.

- First, i will close my $2,000 debt.

- The second is to set aside at least $1,000 for a deposit for future housing.

- The third and most important thing is to release a project called "ResinRays". This is a large-scale world that was born a long time ago, but was resurrected thanks to a friend who supported me.

Overall, thanks to all my friends, if they didn't tolerate my tantrums, then maybe... I wouldn't write this now. That's why I love them!! 🥹🙏����💖💖💖

If you have read up to this point, then thank you very much for that!!! It's damn important for me to know that there are those who are willing to at least support me like that! I will be glad to establish contacts and draw again, because let the AI assholes go who think they will kill the creative potential of artists!

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

for, ahem, no particular reason, i decided to catch up on brilliant minds today instead of watching… other things. so! have a random assortment of brilliant minds thoughts:

the “outed by my phone’s text-to-speech feature while driving a failing patient to the bronx for treatment while my also gay colleague stabs the patient in the eye with a needle i keep in my car” scene in ep 3 was… a lot. medical drama nonsense, yes, but also a lot of fun for me personally.

(i do think this means the show is setting nichols up as a potential romance for wolf, though i don’t have a good sense for whether they’re going to acknowledge that potential in the text soon vs take the slow burn/will they won’t they path. given oliver sacks’ real life ‘shyness’ i think i’d prefer the slow burn, but i’m up for either option.)*

i need me a gif of that classic zq eyebrow reaction, captioned with “🏳️‍🌈?”

*coming back to this comment after episode 6 and feeling vindicated. i love how self-aware wolf is. saying “i’m not available” and meaning he’s emotionally not in a place to date? not for a lack of interest in this “objectively good-looking guy,” but because he doesn’t want to put a near-stranger through his intimacy issues for a chance at physical intimacy. slow burn, slow burn, slow burn…!

had not noticed the “glory to god” line (in the pilot, when wolf accepts an intern’s offer of half a clonazepam) until i went gifset hunting, and i am a bit :/ about it. are we really taking a real life jewish man and fictionalizing him as christian? like, sure, you’ve also changed the man’s birth year and nation of origin, but those changes were for storytelling convenience. it’s not like zachary quinto is incapable of playing jewish characters.

and the recent flashback with his dad, off his meds, rambling about going out in the woods to protect wolf-the-messiah… yeah, i don’t know about this one, gang.

the flashbacks felt like they were being told out of chronological order the first few episodes, so the more recent ones being a very straightforward linear progression kinda bummed me out… it felt like much blunter storytelling. they also felt increasingly less related to the medical mystery of the week—which, aren’t they supposed to be flashbacks wolf is having during the episode? there should be a connection between the events and the memories—especially in the latest episode, but i acknowledge that a group pregnancy delusion was going to be hard to tie to a single man.

i like the interns quite a bit! the only one i’m still a little uncertain about is jacob (ex-jock); while i think they’re being intentional about him withholding his personal stuff, i still want to learn that personal stuff!! does he really think being a college football player with a death sentence would’ve been a better life than a long-lived doctor? what’s his context that could make that true??

dana (anxious tumblrina) is probably my favorite intern? she’s fun, she’s Very Online, what’s not to like? her panic attack in episode 6 was very well done—this show does a great job of filming to show the subjective perspective in such moments, and her response to the panic attack was even better. felt very real.

i want ericka (‘i’m the real quarterback’) to have more going on than the “i worked so hard for this/never got to have fun” thing. i’m hoping she’s just a private person, and that something more meaty will come up about her eventually.

van (anxious empath) is fine, but i would like for him to stop drawing focus. he’s the only white intern, giving him the potentially big “another neurologist with a neurological condition for wolf to bond with/care for” storyline makes me concerned for this show’s ability to center its characters of color.

also… i do not want intern love triangle. i am worried that either the writing team is trying to build one, or two different writers favor different intern romances and aren’t talking to each other before setting them up with emotional moments. :/ i’m just not into either option. the way both relationships have been written so far feels very much about the guys’ emotions towards ericka, and nothing from ericka herself.

(granted, we haven’t gotten much emotion from ericka in general, see my above comment about her, but even so… this is not a compelling way to introduce a romance. convince me that there is a mutual interest!)

in the “house md but kinder and more diverse” metaphor, carol’s somehow both the wilson “best friend in a different specialty” analog and the cuddy “antagonistic administrator” analog—though she shares the latter role with wolf’s mom. it’s interesting! i don’t know how successfully the show is handling that balance, it’s a bit of a wait-and-see thing right now.

(actually, wait, i may have overlooked this in the pilot: does this fictional hospital have a combined neuro & psych department? is carol wolf’s boss? i guess that would make more sense than a one-man neuro department—and the two specialties do share a medical board in the us…)

i want more of the wolf-carol friendship! i think the weight of their history is well written, their dialogue isn’t written in that clunky “spelling things out for the viewer” way that states things that are obvious to the characters but that are news to the viewers. it’s refreshing. i worry about the “spying for mom” thing, i don’t have a good sense for how seriously the show’s taking it or how much of a betrayal wolf will find it.

[vitamango]

Oh! Hello there! Here's something different! A rare text post! I realize I interact very rarely here (and tbh interact very rarely on social media at all, in recent years) but I'm trying to figure out a nicer balance than just dead radio silence.

I guess, hi hello. I'm King -- I'm a nonbinary artist. I draw. I love video games and cute things. And I am trying to beat my anxiety over using social media back with a stick. I dunno how many of my followers are still active here, but regardless of whether you have found me recently or stuck with me for years, you guys really mean a lot to me. It's a really quiet little corner of the internet, but it's mine, and I find comfort in knowing that there's someone out there who was kind enough to take a moment out of their life to see my work.

I want to challenge myself to start posting a little more so I'm slowly posting some of my old art backlog, but maybe also just chattering mindlessly and finding comfort in blogging again.

Man, it's really been a while since I last posted a text post, huh. To be honest, somewhere in the last 2-5 years, I've developed some kind of crippling fear of being perceived and just kind of drop my art on social media like a cat dropping a dead mouse on someone's pillow for praise and just disappear back into the ether. I miss it, though! I miss interaction even if I'm not a particularly chatty person in blog form but, hell, it's a blog and it's silly to be worried about blogging... on a blog.

So here I am. I think part of the anxiety has stemmed from trying to slowly make the switch to twitter and there being so many unspoken rules of engagement on twitter that at some point it all just got all twisted up into a big ball of "well idk how to interact so I guess I won't!" and somehow that just kind of extended to pretty much every social media thing I have. It's kind of wild how hostile social media feels nowadays -- is it just me? I know I have a lot of anxiety but I hope someone out there relates!

Tumblr is a strange blogging platform, isn't it? It makes interacting with people kind of hoop-jumpy and difficult, and yet it still feels a lot more approachable than something like twitter in my opinion (my beloathed).

I've been considering making the jump to Cara seeing so many other artists do the same (and I have made an account), but to be honest, the idea of maintaining yet another social media account fills me with so much bone-deep exhaustion.

I've been really struggling with artblock recently and finding it difficult to find enjoyment in the hobby that I loved so much and has been so formative to me. It feels strangely alienating finding myself incapable of producing artwork the way I used to, but it's been a slow work in progress. Reviving my social media accounts is a step in some direction, honestly! Or at least, I'm hoping it will be.

Tangentially related, I don't draw a lot of fanart -- not because I'm not a fan of things but more because if I spend the energy on drawing, I often want to spend it on original creations (as the #1 and singular fan in that fandom LOL), but I always feel like I should do it more often -- mostly because it's such a delight to see other fans trickle in out of the woodwork. I think this every time in the rare occasions I do post fanwork, haha!

Anyways, I'm not actually expecting anyone to read this but if you did, hello! I hope you, specifically, (yes, you!!!) have the bestest of days! ;)

469th post on this blog, too. Nice.

[swampgallows]

.

ive been getting job leads from the dept of rehab and i just feel completely inadequate and incapable of doing any of them. there was a library assistant one that sounded really nice but it would require me to drive through the mountains on mulholland and i just feel like... i don't know man im just not cut out for existence. i hate that driving is such a barrier for me and at the same time i resent doing it at all. i feel like i can't contribute anything to society beyond being a whore or otherwise treated like a slave. im having a lot of experiences lately that i feel like i can't talk to anyone about but i know they're putting me down a terrible path again. i can feel myself about to get hurt and don't care enough to stand up to myself and stop it and get out. im content being miserable even though i know it's killing me because it feels more painful to try to escape or to even dream in general. im tuned out of my own life because i know how miserable i am and i feel powerless to change it. there are so many factors that make the possibility of change hostile to me. i can barely take care of myself most days and my parents still hold these delusional obsolete expectations over me like that im gonna go work at disney or something. they don't even know that i don't draw anymore, and that i actively hate doing it. i just hate the world as it is right now and what it's doing to the people i care about and i can't get my shit together at all and be a functional person let alone an adult

[rarepairnation]

6, 13 and 21 <3

hiiii coming to you from my lunch break <3 thank u for sending!!

6. which ship fans are the most annoying

man i actually don’t think i have an answer for this one. love is love. but fr i think most everyone ive encountered is really just here to have a good time a lot of times i get annoyed when people are like. talking shit or defending their fave at the cost of other characters (i typed defending their fave and was like Hold On Mx Hypocrite but actually no comment. ❤️) and maybe i just follow the right ppl but i find i haven’t experienced that really in my memory

13. worst blorbofication

got this one a couple times so im saving the obvious answer for later but. OH. I KNOW. PIPPIN. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS WHAT GANDALF MEANS WHEN HE CALLS SOMEONE A FOOL. if you were essentially 16 when you went on a homoerotic voyage to the most dangerous place on earth wouldn’t you also do a bunch of stupid shit on the way. that doesn’t make YOU stupid! pippin is incredibly shrewd and empathetic and sometimes he is PLAYING the idiot and sometimes he IS young and impulsive and lets his first thought run his mouth and goddamn, man, haven’t we all been there? i mean there is no way him and merry escaped the uruk-hai if merry was doing all the work. he offers his service to denethor in payment of a debt that he very very much understands it is impulsive but it is born of loving boromir and seeing the same loss that he feels himself in his father. and yet he is smart enough and also not simply blindly following orders to say the quiet thing out loud at the end. my lord has gone insane. i am mourning as we speak but i won’t let him take his son with him when he goes. like jesus that is. the breadth of his emotional capacity is kind of crazy actually. and um Well. at the end he does understand poor denethor a little better. which 95% of the real adults on this damn website do not. soooooooo what does that say about him huh? (look you tell me to be bitchy and i WILL)

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

this is more of a past opinion that has evolved more into “jesus i WISH i knew what was going on in there because im sure it would eat my brain but i find myself genuinely incapable of understanding” but the feanorian hype was sooo incomprehensible to me when i was younger. 15 year old me: well i can’t fucking tell any of them apart. CANT care about that. i feel like i get it now simply through extended osmotic exposure. in the way that one might get an eldritch horror but still. actually the one thing i do think is absolutely crazy is the way that silm enjoyers will just draw. Anything. and understand which feanorian is being portrayed with idk the power of sorcery or something. Hello? ok maedhros fingon feanor i get. yeah i could also pick them out of a crowd. but the rest? girl. i respect it so much but how are you doing that

[14muffinz]

Rottmnt au where the turtles meet Casey as tots right before she begins her foot training and april ends up (somehow) being the foot recruit instead

Casey ends up taking an interest in the boys' training and loves joining in on lessons, even when its just imitating the movies. She's over competitive and this just results in leo and her trying to one-up each other which makes them both slightly more competent ninjas for it

April, on the other hand, is learning to be a foot ninja, while not telling her mom that she's learning to be a foot ninja.

Basically April's known as this troubled, hyper-violent kid, and this drives everyone, even the weird kid Dale, away, leaving her isolated from everyone but her family and the Foot, and of course she isn't telling her mom that her 'taekwando' classes she's been taking for years were actually ninjitsu for a ninja organisation, so this leads to her getting a little obsessed with climbing the ranks of the foot.

I think the main point where this would diverge would be insane in the mama train.

Casey would be more eager to be involved in their ninjitsu training, given she'd been considering it anyways around the time she met the turtles, and since she's been immitating movements from the movies just like them since she was around 8, she knows almost as much as they do. So she joins that fight, flashing around a naginata that she is highly uncomfortable while using, but they were doing it as formal ninja now and that didn't exactly include hockey sticks, to her knowledge, ninjas were very confusing.

Foot!April (Riri, as I like to call her) doesn't want to fight Casey. At all. Not that she doesn't think Casey is incapable or anything, but she's not under direct orders to attack Casey and... she doesn't want to.

Also before we continue, Casey does get a mystic hockey stick in Donnie vs. Witch town, simular to canon!April's bat.

-- Cutting it here because this is getting lengthy --

The Brownie Episode.

In the Brownie Episode, yes I am referring to it in capital letters, because this is where the au can go in two directions.

Riri has her morally correct mom. She was taken into training almost at random at the age of 8, and never looked back, but now she's starting to meet the turtles and their human companion more and more and... she wants a clan like that.

Her first idea, randomly enough, is to start a new clan, with girls who just have a bit of a harsher side, like her.

And then she accidentally ends up in a pastry war with Casey.

She doesn't want to do it, not really, but the part of her that will always follow the Foot's rules demands that the two 'humans' be captured at once, so that she can interrogate them.

Long story short, she lets them go with their money.

Around the time of the finale, Riri is trying to find any way out of the clan, but she's suddenly one of the last remaining, and thus one of the highest ranking, members and that comes with a lot of pressure and more importantly, a lot of time around the people in charge.

She still asks, though. Riri asks time and time again to leave the clan, and every time she is turned down.

This comes to a head in finale part one, in which she looses all hope in the clan when she sees the demon she once idolised being used as a slave by her sensei's.

Riri steals the ring and declares, while in control of the Shredder, that she is leaving the clan, and because Brute and Lieutenant don't deserve to be in charge, she attempts to free the Shredder.

For the sake of the au, this happens at the same moment Karai is freed, instead of a few hours before.

When the Shredder is unleashed for real, Riri doesn't know what to do, because everything she'd been told about him was wrong.

So she goes along with it, hides during the fight at the Hamato 'base,' and ends up being appointed general by the Shredder.

Riri mumbles a quiet "I'm sorry," to her Sensei's before she goes to draw the thingy from the final part of the finale.

It's not much of a hard choice for Riri to pull out a baseball bat and whack the shredder. not really.

"You dare defy me, General?" "I ain't your general, or anyone else's! I am April O'neilllll!" Riri calls out her name as she pitches the rock up in the air and whacks it as if she's playing tennis with the wrong stick.

And Riri grins as she joins in on this fight. She's not taking orders, she's going with the flow, yelling out her name and quips and battle cries and anything and everything that comes to her mind, and it feels good. Just... right, somehow.

The Hamato Clan. A clan that thrives on letting each member explore themselves, to the point their spirits all have different auras and hues.

And it's right where she fits in.

[kinghijinx22]

The Owl House Watching and Dreaming review/analysis part 2

Part 2 The Collector's Origins, Amity and Raine breaking free

While I'm still don't really like the Collector a lot as a character and I think that a lot of people are way too forgiving of them considering how much damaged he caused, I do think the way this episode handles the obvious direction they were taking their character to be really well executed. They work well as the chaotic but ultimately forgivable antagonist compared to Belos's calculated pure evil and I think they play a good role in this episode. Him being a younger god like being who is incapable of understanding death and the harm that they cause on other's is really interesting and plays into a major plot point later on in a powerful way.

I think now is a good moment to mention that I really appreciate how this episode really focuses on the other biggest emotional core of this series which is the adopted Owl family. The found family dynamic between the human Luz, Eda and King has always been really strong and is where the everything started. Three outcasts who didn't fit in because of their differences were able to come together and not fit in together, becoming a found family and showing that the people that matter most are those who love and accept you for who you are. And I love that after they break free from their nightmares and surviving the Collector's games, the Owl family and especially Luz are able to use their immense empathy to relate their own experiences to the Collector's experiences. It's here that we get a proper explanation of the Collector's origins of originally being from a family of Collectors, and that their older siblings are known as the Archivists. According to the Collector, the Archivists had sent them down to the Boiling Isles to get him out of their business and while they were actually able to make friends with the baby Titans, the Archivists were not happy after discovering the Titans themselves and the fact that their powers can cancel out their own. Because they saw the Titans as a threat, they wiped them out but not before King's dad had hid King away and sealed away the Collector, believing them to be the main threat. The whole thing was clearly very messy with some misunderstandings, but what we learn for certain is that the Archivists are the true villains of this situation.

Raine playing a big role in this finale was pretty cool. They've been such a great character throughout the series and are some of best nonbinary representation in any story with how well they've been written. They finally get to start breaking free from Belos's control while Belos was on his way to the Titan's heart and while it was always obvious, it was pretty cool to see even Belos recognising their strength. They tried their hardest, even making one last desperate attempt by banging the violin on ground but was just unlucky and Belos was able to slip through a small hole in the magic barrier.

Speaking of strong witches, Amity being strong enough to regain her autonomy enough to draw the light glyph while she was a puppet was an awesome moment and what makes this moment even more special is that I think this is the first time she has drawn a glyph successfully. And just like it was Luz's love for Amity that allowed her to break free from her nightmare, I like to think that it was Amity's love for Luz that gave her the strength to draw the glyph. She uses what her girlfriend had taught her to help her break herself and her friends free from being Collector puppets. Amity, Willow, Gus and Hunter end up having to save everybody who was turned into puppets and being kept in the archives. I suppose it's now that I'll mention Hunter because I won't otherwise because I still really don't care about him and I never will but I am so happy that they kept him out of the big final battle. As perfect as most of this show is and with how important it has been for it's representation, my one problem is the fact that they decided to introduce this generic cishet white edgeboy and suddenly started pushing him as one of the most important characters to the detriment of the much more interesting queer and poc main characters and sometimes even Luz, the character who is supposed to be the main character. I'm just so relieved that they knew to stop pushing Hunter so hard as a white saviour and to actually let their queer afro Latina protagonist get to be the hero in the end.

So the Owl family is able to relate to the Collector, but to really connect with him Luz decided to take them the places where she was able to connect with other people while sharing her stories. The first place being the Owl House itself, or "the bird house" as the Collector calls it. It's where she properly got to know her now found family of Eda the Witch, King the Titan, Owlbert the Palisman and Hooty the Door. The weirdos that came together and accepted each other when they needed it, just like they were doing with the Collector. The next place they go is the Grudby court which also feels like it could be a stand in for Hexside in general because it represents Luz finding her friends and the love of her life. Where she met other outcasts Willow and Gus and they became close friends, and also where she met and was able to break down the rough exterior of former bully but now loving girlfriend Amity Blight.

The final place they go to is the Knee, the Titan's knee where Eda had taught Luz how to connect with the Boiling Isles or rather the Titan itself, where she was able to learn the Ice glyph with the help of the Titan is great foreshadowing for when we get to meet the Titan in person. The Collector themself even mentions in this moment that he's jealous that the Titan had showed Luz the glyphs and not them. Even though you could have made the assumption, this is our confirmation that the Titan really has been helping Luz to find the glyphs this whole time. The way this comes up, and the way this episode is able to brilliantly wrap up all these mysteries and plot points was very satisfying. This show has always been great at bringing back small plot details and paying them off in a big way. After hearing about all of Luz's adventures and about all the family and friends she's made along the way, the Collector makes the assumption that she must have somehow forced people like her own girlfriend Amity and her cool aunt Lilith who had started off as adversaries into liking her. But as is explained by Luz, people are complicated and sometimes they just need some kindness and forgiveness. There is more to people then what we see on the surface, and sometimes if you are able to see past someone's hard exterior you can reach the kind person on the inside and maybe even bring them to the surface. Throughout the series Luz with her kindness and sincerity has been able to do this for a lot of people, and now she's showing this kindness and sincerity to the Collector.

[watchingblsnowandforever]

Hello.

Listen, I'm still not over ep 11 yet. AND THEN THEY GIVE ME THIS I- *muffled screaming*

Anyways, welcome to my crack posts. =D

Warning: long post 😊😅 (I somehow took even more screenshots than last time 😭)

I knew something like this would happen hehe

Also-

Don't lie, Peem, he'd already won your heart the moment he said "Na, krab" with those puppy eyes

I love how despite thinking they're enemies up till this point, Tan immediately jumps on the ship the moment he learns it exists.

Fang: cute. <3

Q: cutee. <33

Shy babygirl Peem has my whole heart 🥺🫶🏼

Yeah? Anyone specific you want to draw a portrait of, Peem? Someone from Engineering, maybe? Someone who confessed to you in front of all your combined friends just last night? No? 👀

This smile. This goddamn smile. I get you, Peem, I totally get you.

Q peeking in small into the bag is so accurate 😭

As I'd said in my previous post: "Right in front of my salad?!" and "Something very LGBT just happened to me o.o"

NOSE BOOP

I love nose boops hehe

[Phum: I have to go to class.]

You actually go to class?! *pikachu meme face*

Q's face perfectly expresses my feeling, and I'm definitely saving these as meme pics

Peem's plan to be hit on backfired so fast so hard 😭

Poor boy went into shock 😭

Peem is never hearing the end of this from Q. Never.

I love their friendship though. Besties forever. <3

Toey looks so excited here 😭🫶🏼

He's definitely over the moon that his two beloved hias finally realized they like each other (and of course he manifested this wdyem)

Throwing stones from inside a glass house, huh Q?

You're just as bad as, if not worse than Peem.

*shaking my head fondly* these boys are so whipped for their baes

This ep gave me a lot of meme pic ehehe

Why so surprised, Peem? You were the one telling Phum to flirt on you, why so shy now huh?

Oh, Aunt Pui knows. She's just trying to help her nephew get a nice boyfriend hehe

Also- learning the family business early on? Nice move, Phum.

I'm pretty sure Aunt Pui will accept Phum as family the very instant they start dating.

Actually- she probably already has.

What will you be tying next? The knot?? (I am so so happy I can make that joke and actually mean it now.)

Oh, and I love love love their dynamics. I'm always looking for verse because I don't like active power dynamics, but this show really delivered on it. There's always a push and pull, but throughout, they're equals. Yes, even through that slave era (remember how exactly Peem came to be his slave?). It did start off with a slight imbalance, but it evened out pretty fast (because Phum is incapable of not being the cutest clingy little puppy for more than ten minutes and Peem is weak for it).

PhumPeem/PeemPhum is giving me so much that I'd thought I'd almost never get from BLs (there are a few other examples, I think, but this is probably my topmost).

I don't know if y'all have noticed, but Phum is deliberately soft and is often using polite pronouns for the last two episodes.

It's just... they're so pretty 😭

This scene is just >>>

He-

HE LEARNED LATTE ART JUST TO USE THIS LINE WITH PEEM I'M DYING OH GODS

Phum is 200% committed. Other upcoming BL romantic interests, please take notes.

Jokes aside, what started out as a potential red flag (even two years ago, this relationship would have been very very different) turned into the greenest flag (with a side of childhood trauma).

Did he just-

He almost confessed!!! So close!!

Also- please give me them as boyfriends already, I'm on my hands and knees. But can you imagine what they'll be like when they actually start dating...?

...

I CAN'T WAIT. GIMME NOW. *grabby hands*

This scene made me speechless. Ep 12 was full of beautiful, absolutely stunning scenes, but this was what took my breath - his cute smile that lights up his whole face, his "Pai, krab" and the sheer relief when Peem asks him if he wants to go.

For a moment there, he thought Peem would leave, just like all the people in his life. He knows it wouldn't be permanent, but it's hard to get rid of such an old, deep-rooted fear.

But Peem, unknowingly, immediately waves it away by asking him if he wanted to come with. The only thing is... I don't think it was that unknowing.

I'll end part 1 on this note. Part 2 will be posted soon!

If you've reached this far, thank you so much for reading! 😊

Here, have a doughnut 🍩

And here are my previous We Are posts.

[thegreenmeridian]

How have you been navigating being jewish with everything that's been going on? Fortunately where I live antisemitism isn't prevalent and as far as I know no one has been attacked, but I'm still scared idek why

It'd be so much easier to discuss what both Israel and Palestine (or rather Hamas) did and are doing wrong, than to just demonise jews and hurt palestinians as well in the process. It baffles me how much misinformation is being shared without any sources, who do they think this is helping?

Well most days I’m waking up an hour early and midway through an argument with someone from a stress dream so… not hugely coping, I guess. But I’m trying to find joy in Jewishness. And there is joy in it, cobbled together from YouTube and My Jewish Learning as my practice may be so far. Having a Shabbat dinner by myself, putting the effort in to cook and stumbling through the exact same words ancestors of mine would have been saying with much more confidence… it’s healing. I’ve said this a lot about becoming more observant, more actively Jewish, but it really is like coming home.

And yeah, the constant misinformation isn’t helping anyone. It puts Jewish people on the defensive because we’ve got a few thousand years of people taking lies about us to murderous extremes. It props up a terrorist group who’ve been stealing from and torturing their ‘own’ people for decades. It results in the ‘activist’ leaders of the protests blocking actual Palestinians who are anything less than fawningly grateful.

But tbh I think the majority of people are just sort of… fundamentally incapable of *not* lying and buying into bullshit when it comes to the Jews. It’s so baked into Western and Christian society, and frankly Islamic society as well, that a decent chunk of the people who want to evict (at best) all the Jews from Israel but couldn’t give two hoots about Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh or the Uiyghurs or anyone else simply do not realise that they’re antisemites. Let alone that immediately believing Israel is populated entirely by bloodthirsty child-murdering organ thieves is antisemitic.

I am pretty fucking jaded about it tbh. I remember friends of mine truly believing that Jeremy Corbin et al. sharing drawings of hook nosed men with forelocks hunched over piles of gold wasn’t remotely antisemitic, and also truly believing that there was a Zionist conspiracy against him. These were people who were otherwise very left wing, very intersectional, very anti racist. Very much believing themselves to be, and otherwise generally actually being, the good guys.

And like most Jews I’ve also had a lifetime of people’s 2nd or 3rd sentence to me after finding out I’m Jewish being something about Israel, usually ‘how come you can’t criticise Israel without being antisemitic’. Like I said. It’s so deeply ingrained in our culture that this is only gonna get worse.

Most people I know wholeheartedly buy the genocide line and I essentially have to choose to talk to people who believe that or talk to no one at all.

[lindsayrps]

the saltwater room

it’s a slow, meandering walk back to elliot’s hotel, least of all because nell is having second thoughts about it and more because she’s tired as all hell and desperately wanting to take off her shoes but they make it there eventually. he’s gentlemanly enough to not say anything as her hand slips into the crook of his elbow, fingers pressing soft dents into the fabric of his jacket nor when they step into the elevator, her cheek resting against his shoulder as he instructs the operator on which floor to go to. she still isn’t totally sure how she feels about this from a fraternization standpoint, she certainly wouldn’t want to be the reason that elliot got in trouble, but if he’s right (and, thus far, she has no reason to doubt him) and it’s nowhere near six in the morning when she can go back to her own hotel then it’s better to crash and sleep in actual bed instead of on a bench in a park somewhere in london.

she straightens up as the elevator lurches to a stop and the operator pulls the door open for them. nell manages to make the trip from the elevator to his room without yawning but elliot draws a key from his pocket and nell drops her hand from his arm and it just happens.

"you must be really tired," he states, matter-of-factly with something akin to a soft, quiet laugh that makes her stomach do a kind of flip. it’s been doing that a lot, lately, when it comes to elliot. "no late nights for you?"

"not even when mary wants to spend most of the night gossiping about all of the attention she’s been getting on her latest adventures." nell replies, stepping into his hotel room when he gestures for her to do so before flicking on the lamp near the bed. helen kept them in line, in so much as was possible, chidingly reminding them that they had things to attend to on the clubmobile early in the mornings which meant that their nights usually ended well before everyone else decided to do the same. a weekend break from base and their duties there was not enough time to change habits like that, no matter how much of the day mary had kept them on their feet, bouncing from one place to the next well past curfew.

if anything, perhaps that made her more tired.

"mary’s the adaptable one, she can handle it. me?" nell shrugs out of her coat, not in the least surprised that he’s helping her out of and finding a temporary place for it and his, as well. "creature of habit, i guess." not that that was it, necessarily, either but it was as close as possible, she figured."are you sure about sleepingo n the floor?"

"sure am," elliot nods.

"that doesn’t seem very comfortable."

"then I’ll sleep in the bath tub." he smiles, then, and she can see if even in the low, warm light emanating from the lamp.

"that’s not much better," nell frowns. she uses his arm for balance and reaches down with her free hand to pull her heels off, exhaling a sigh of relief when her feet are finally flat on the floor. "at least let me give you the blanket and a pillow if you’re going to insist."

she doesn’t wait fo him to say that he would manage without, dropping her hand from his arm, again, and pulling one of the pillows off the bed and handing it to him as she skirts around the end of the bed to yank the blanket off as well, bundling it up into her arms before handing it off to him. maybe he knows better than to fight her on it, she thinks. juts like he could insist he was fine with sleeping on the floor so, too, could she insist that he get a blanket that isn’t threadbare and incapable of keeping anyone warm or comfortable and a pillow that isn’t lumpy and hard in places.

once he gets set up on the floor, just beside the bed, nell climbs underneath the sheet that’s still there, lying on her side so she can peer over the side of the bed at elliot. the set up feels a little too familiar, like many of the sleepovers she’d had as a teenager with her friends, spending hours of the night gossiping and talking about the boys at school that they had a crush on. she doesn’t think that’s on the table for the night—he’s not one of her friends from childhood and, more importantly, he is the boy she has a crush on.

she wonders, to herself, if he knows.

(she already knew what would say about him had any of those childhood friends asked. he was kind and funny but not in a crude way like some of the other airmen she’d known. he had bright eyes and beautiful curls and she’d most likely silently swooned over him whenever she’d thought about him or seen him at the club. she’d convinced herself that she didn’t worry about him when he was on missions any more than she’d worried about anyone else but that was also, likely, a bold faced lie and she wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to keep all of this to herself.)

"comfortable?" she asks, using her hand to prop up her head as she looks down at him. he’s got his eyes closed already and there’s a part of her that wants to ask if he’s just like every other pilot who can fall asleep wherever and whenever with little trouble but knows that that might open a can of worms she’s not ready for just yet. regardless, she knows he’s listening because the corners of his mouth quirk slightly at her question.

"not in the slightest." his head tilts from side to side, slowly.

"we can always switch?" she offers.

he laughs, soft enough that if she hadn’t been where she was, she might’ve missed it. "not a chance."

[ronjona]

A new low

at the beginning of this year, it seemed like everything started to make sense bit by bit.... decisions were made passively by the mid of this year I also had seemed to regain my spirituality more than usual.

But if I am being entirely honest....for most part of it, i have not been able to suppress the pain I have in my heart. Somedays I was able to distract myself from all of it by keeping myself too busy.

Or maybe I was better.

I don't know what it is about me.....that is trying to destroy this. That is trying to run away from my 'supposed' happy ending. Previously I had also tried to find this reasons...and then I was incredibly miserable for far too long and now I am here again.

Even in my attempt of botching I have indulged in something that is sufficient enough to break a marriage. And it still didn't.

Can you imagine the magnitude of love that can allow that? How much loving and supportive one can be to allow that. I am loved and supported by this person, that I know for a fact will be let down by me. By my deteriorating health, by my inability to reproduce....by my incapability to let myself be happy.

'You only accept the love you think you deserve'

I don't think I deserve showmic

I don't think I deserve happiness

I have chosen not to focus on the things I have...like the love of my partner, the love of my father, the love of my friends. I have chosen to dwell on my rejections and abandonment issues.

I have chosen to dwell in the misery of a person who has chosen to distance me right after a moment...even right during a moment.

And the whole time I had spent ruminating over the personal offence I took in it.

It was personal.

'It's not you, it's me'--- this sentence has been said to me before.

and this is the most personally offensive thing one can say. It clearly means one denying/refusing to give an explanation....one taking away the liability of their actions; one just not acknowledging your pain.

One rejecting you essentially

One thinking they don't deserve your love

Whether they are too good for it or bad

One rejecting you

Why am I complicating things more during a time which is already too difficult?

My sister is not well....today 23rd Oct marks the day. The day I know, I no longer can help her.

This helplessness, was the one thing I was constantly running away from.

Z is right in a sense to not be with me. We are too broken to be with each other....we won't be able to help each other. I won't be able to help him; he won't be able to help me. We are perpetually miserable. And for him, the attraction has died since it has been semi-utilized.

For me, maybe not so much...maybe that's why I am hurting. For a very superficial aspect. Cos I had accepted it long before that nothing can ever happen.

I am hurting for a very superficial reason.

I have created a seemingly stupid misery in the sea of misery I am at right now.

Show said this one thing...

we think that with time we become this version of ourself that we think is less. So we love less, we become half of the person we used to be

but show said, it's not like that, We consist of infinite pieces....and we have inifinite pool of love to give. It's just that our sense of self depends so greatly on others validation and love that with time and more people the only thing that lessens is our opinion of self; but not our capability to love.

We can love, like we used to...or maybe even more. We learn to love a lot more self-lessly.

I am very tired. I don't know what to do. I don't know what will make me happy at this point of life. I kept on chasing pavements...i feel like I still doing that. Me calling Z few mins ago in an attempt to vent and draw attention is also a moo point. I don't know why i did that. Why i do that. In the last 3yrs...I have chased pavements for him; knowing everything. I forgot about him and then got reminded again.

I really want to do everything in my power to now feel this sucky. Maybe I have been abadoned for good this time with him. Maybe that will be a blessing in disguise. No matter how much it hurts.

Right now, this point....right this point in my life

I don't even want to say I want to die. I fear for my father

I don't know what to do honestly.

I prayed to Allah to simplify my problems and give me a solution.

And next day my sister is like this.

I am terrified of asking anything in prayers now.

How terrifying it is

I am scared to pray

[silenthillmutual]

Chestnut: 1-3 Frost: 12-14 Karol: 21 19 17

[imagining these three sharing a computer to answer questions is SO fun. baby in charge.]

Chestnut -

1. How would you best describe yourself?

happy! i am very happy and things do not make me sad a lot. when something scary happens i say no thank you and i walk away. i go and i look at a bug and i am happy because bugs are just little friends you can stick in your pocket and take everywhere! i am also short but one day i will not be as short. and then i can catch bugs when they are flying :]

2. What's your profession, and how skilled do you think you are at it?

right now i am a bug catcher but very soon aba says i will start school with ms. ravel and then i will be a student. sometimes aba says that i am a good bug catcher but not a good bug releaser because i try to keep as many bugs as i can. when i am old like aba and papa i want to study bugs and also maybe draw them. i think i would be very good at this because i am not scared of them. and then people can look at my pictures and they will know bugs are not scary!

3. Where do you live, and what is life like for you there?

i live in a house with my sister and my sister and my brother and my papa and my aba and our bull! except the bull does not live in the house because he would not fit. but he lives outside and we feed him apples and sometimes we all go to shekhen with him and see our family! it is nice to go there and see everyone and learn things from taya. we live in the town on gorkhon which is a river i am not allowed to go to because papa and aba get very scared. but aside from that i get to play with my siblings wherever and catch and keep bugs that papa helps me to care for and aba is teaching me about herbs! :]

Frost -

12. What was your childhood like?

My childhood was... very lonely. Not many people where I was raised. Especially after - they came. I suppose at one point in time I had a family. More than my mother.

Well. I suppose I would have been more than they could handle, anyway. It's rude to speak ill of the dead, but I tend to be too much for most people. They can only deal with my moods so long. So I left. And I'm still looking for something to fix me.

13. Is blood thicker than water, or would you rather wash yourself clean of it so-to-speak?

I could wash myself clean of it. It would be - so easy. What do I even know of my family? But that would only be a verbal renouncement. I can't un-become what I am. Whatever my allegiance, I am bound to my family by my blood. By our blood.

14. What’s your favorite animal?

I am fond of the pine martin.

Karol -

17. Are you more diurnal or nocturnal?

I would love to be a nocturnal creature. There's so much more work that can be done in the night, especially in palliative research. Unfortunately, I am cursed to be diurnal. I have attempted to change my sleeping habits in the past and found myself irritable. I suppose if it's for my damn mood, I can suffer through mornings.

19. What was your biggest mistake?

Moving to the city feels like a mistake sometimes. I could be doing something more useful with my life. I don't regret my decision to work for Thanatica. I believe we are doing important work. But who is taking care of my family while I'm gone? It's not as though we earn much in the way of money.

21. Does it feel like time and fate have always been against you?

What would Dankovsky say to this... I don't believe in anthropomorphising a concept such as time. It is a construct. We created it, and we can best it. And fate? Fate is a lazy man's excuse for failure. If I find myself incapable of meeting my goals, it is my own fault.