#This is Not a good holiday for people with anxiety (me)
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prolifeproliberty · 2 days ago
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10 months on the Carnivore Diet - my results
I know back in January I mentioned in a couple of posts that I was trying out the Carnivore Diet. Back then it was still new, and I was doing a bunch of research. Now I’ve been fully on it for 10 months, and it’s been amazing.
What I’m eating:
Meat (mostly beef and pork/bacon), eggs, butter, some cheese (mostly used as a garnish on eggs). I aim for a fat to protein ratio of between 75/25 and 80/20.
Typical breakfast: bacon and scrambled eggs cooked in bacon fat
Typical lunch: Chomp beef sticks or more recently these Greenridge Farm beef snack sticks from Costco that have really clean ingredients. I’ve also done leftovers and breakfast casseroles.
Typical dinner: Beef burger patties with scrambled eggs
What I’m drinking:
Water with electrolytes, Coffee with heavy cream, occasional low-carb alcohol (red wine, whisky, low or no carb drinks like vodka soda)
Supplements:
Bacopa monnieri (500mg capsule, 1/day) for my ADHD, Codeage beef organ supplement (1 capsule per day) as a multivitamin.
Exercise:
Basically none, outside of some walking and some minor weight lifting (biceps, triceps, squats) - nothing strenuous or consistent. I am working now on getting my walking and weightlifting more consistent, along with incorporating some abdominal exercises.
My results:
Weight lost: 50 lbs
Cycle regularity restored
Significantly lighter menstrual cramps
More energy, less anxiety/depression
Better immune system (still get sick occasionally, but much less frequently)
Biggest victory: my cravings for sugar and carbs went away pretty much entirely after about 2 weeks. I now have no desire to go back to the way I used to eat, making this the first diet I’ve ever tried that I‘ve been able to stick with for more than a few weeks, and certainly the first one I think I could stay on indefinitely.
What made this work for me:
The high fat content of my diet is very satiating, which makes it much easier to say no to carbs/sugary snacks. Also, artificial sweeteners actually make you crave sugar, so I cut those as well when I started the diet in January. I think that made a huge difference.
For context, I had NO ability to moderate carbs and sugar before this diet. I had a huge problem with binge eating sugar, especially if there was “free food” (a party, donuts in the staff lounge, etc). On previous diets, I could always come up with an excuse to eat sugar. Somebody’s birthday, I had a long day, it’s just this once and then I’ll be good, etc.
Now it’s not even a temptation.
How I learned about the diet and did my research:
I started with YouTube videos from people like Steak and Butter Gal. She does a lot of videos with recipes and tips for staying consistent, and she also does a lot of collaborations and interviews with doctors who recommend the diet, such as Dr. Elizabeth Bright. I went into researching the diet more for my hormonal health than for weight loss, and Dr. Bright is the expert on hormonal health (especially for women) and thyroid health.
This lead to more videos from different doctors and reading studies (including studies on the “link” between eating red meat and problems like heart disease and cancer, which were poorly done and don’t show what they claim to show).
How I handle social gatherings and holidays:
Everyone who knows me irl knows about my diet by now, either because they noticed my weight loss or because they’ve seen me eat! This means friends and family who are hosting will often ask me if I can eat certain things they’re planning to serve and will try to accommodate me.
It’s not too tough though because most social gatherings with food include some kind of meat, and it’s often “buffet style” so I can skip things I can’t eat. I generally try to avoid processed foods unless I can check the ingredients and make sure they’re free of preservatives, dextrose, sugar, etc, but one of my “cheats” is eating the meats and cheeses from charcuterie boards at parties.
If I suspect I won’t be able to eat much or I’m just not sure, I’ll often eat before I go so I’m not sitting there hungry. Then as long as there’s something I can eat, I can still participate in the social aspect of eating with friends and family.
Why I don’t eat fruits/vegetables:
I will occasionally have small amounts of vegetables, usually as a garnish (like I do with cheese). I also use medicinal herbs in the form of tinctures, capsules, or teas - though I need them much less often now! However, avoiding vegetables for the most part simplifies the diet, reduces my inflammation, and means I don’t have to count carbs like I would on keto.
The foods I eat all have zero or virtually zero carbs, and I know they won’t mess with my digestion or make me feel bad. It’s simple, it’s easy to follow, and I don’t have any real need or craving for the veggies. Occasionally I’ll have a couple pickle slices with my burger patties at a restaurant or some avocado with my bacon and eggs, but that’s about it. Basically, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Please feel free to ask questions and check out the channels and videos I linked above to learn more!
Starting a new diet is obviously tricky this time of year, but January 1st will be here before you know it. If you’re looking to make a change, maybe this could be the thing that works for you like it did for me!
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tropes-and-tales · 23 hours ago
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Once Bitten, Twice Shy
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(Richard Muñoz x F!Reader)
CW:  Light angst (talk of anxiety disorders, therapy, and medication); bad first dates; two shy dummies who are destined for each other. Fluffy goodness, as one would expect with Richard.
Word Count:  3951
AN:  This was requested a long time ago by @frasmotic - sorry it took a lifetime to write this!
AN2: Usual caveat - not edited in any way whatsoever.
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Richard only agrees to the blind date because he’s had absolutely no luck in finding dates on his own.  When he sits and tries to calculate the last time he went out with a woman, his mind boggles at the years—not months—that have passed since then.
When he tries to calculate the last time he had a bona fide girlfriend, he despairs and gives up before he comes up with the exact amount of time that has passed.
Anyway, he doesn’t require precise numbers.  He knows how he feels:  lonely.  He has his dog but no one else.  He lives alone, spends his evenings and weekends alone.  Spends his holidays alone.  His sole interaction with humans is from his coworkers and whatever paltry connections he can build with customer service employees.
It’s a fellow guard, Mike, at the prison who sets up the blind date.  Mike’s sister-in-law is similarly shy, the same sort of introvert as Richard.
“A real nice gal, Rich,” Mike explains over lunch.  “Smart, has a good job.  Owns her own house.  She just has trouble meeting a nice guy.  Everyone on the apps are either creeps or assholes who ghost her.”
Richard would never agree to it, but then Mike slides his phone across the table to him.  He’s pulled up your profile on social media, and Richard studies your picture.
“She’s pretty,” Richard admits.  He feels a fluttery swooping in his gut at the thought of taking you out, but Mike is something of a bull in a china shop, and before Richard can even stop it, his fellow guard is setting up a double date for him and his wife, and you and Richard.
“Safety in numbers,” Mike says, and it seems that Richard has little to do other than show up and be himself.  As if it’s that easy.
“Dios,” he mutters after his lunch break ends.  Already he’s flushing at the thought, his palms slick with sweat.
-----
The date is supposed to be low stakes:  dinner at Mike’s house.  There are no public spaces to navigate, no random people to throw Richard off what little game he has.  He turns up at Mike’s house ten minutes early with a bottle of wine that he spent far too much time agonizing over at the store.  In his other hand he clutches a mixed bouquet, and that took too much time to choose too.
The zenith of the date is here, on Mike’s front porch, the few moments before he knocks.
It goes downhill from there.
*****
Your sister married an idiot, but Mike has his sweet moments.  For example, this date he set up.  To hear your sister tell it, it was mostly Mike’s idea. 
“He worries about you,” she told you weeks ago.
You snort and shake your head, secretly pleased that your brother-in-law is so, well, brotherly to you. 
“He’s only worried you’ll get stuck with me when I’m old and infirm,” you replied.
“Not true.  Besides, he said this guy, Richard?  Said he’s nice.  Shy, like you.  He thinks you’ll hit it off.”
You can’t quite buy into Mike’s optimism.  Because the guy, this Richard, barely looks at you, and he says even less.
Mike introduces you with an expectant smile.  Richard is cute, you decide, edging against handsome.  You offer him a smile, tell him you’re happy to meet him.  In reply, you get the limpest handshake in the history of mankind, and then Richard winces, swipes his hand against his pants. 
Mike frowns slightly but rebounds.  He claps Richard on his back and tells you about how your date works in the letter room of the prison.
“Tell her about it,” Mike prods gently.
“It’s not that interesting,” Richard mumbles.
Which is about all he says to you all evening.
Bless your sister and brother-in-law, though.  They try to help Richard along.  They do all they can to open up lines of conversation, to sing your praises to him, to sing his praises to you.  They uncork a second bottle of wine.  They put on some low music to fill in the awkward gaps of silence. 
During the start of dinner, you are merely perplexed.  Are you hideous to him?  Do you smell abhorrent?  He’s not even being polite, and as the evening drags on, your confusion cedes to a low-simmering anger—which makes your own shyness fade.
“More broccoli?” you ask him, and you move to hand him the dish.  The motion makes Richard flinch way too hard, and his hand catches the edge of his wine glass.  The deep red merlot splashes on your dress, and you slide back from the table, then stand.  Richard doesn’t turn to look at you; he only stares at the widening stain on the tablecloth, and he hisses out a low, tortured fuck.
Your sister stands too, and she gives a polite ‘excuse us, gentlemen,’ then ushers you to the powder room where the two of you daub at the splash of wine.
“This is not going well,” she finally murmurs to you.
“You think?”  It comes out sarcastic, and you wince when you catch her reflection in the mirror.  She looks apologetic.
“Mike said he was awkward…”  She tries to explain the rude behavior away but then trails off, goes silent.
You sigh.  You tilt your head towards the ceiling and shut your eyes for a beat.  Another awful date, and this one had been served to you on a silver platter. 
“It’s not Mike’s fault,” you finally concede.  “And anyway, it’s almost over.”
-----
When the two of you return to the dining room, it turns out the date is already over.  Mike sits alone, picks at the food on his plate, and he looks at you gloomily as he announces that Richard left.
“I’m sorry,” he says.  “I have no idea what his fucking problem was.”
You return to your seat and try to school the tears that prickle behind your eyelids.  Are you that terrible a prospect?  You know you aren’t some great beauty, but you have a lot going for you—
“I’m sorry,” Mike repeats, quieter, and you glance over to see him shaking his head. 
“It’s okay,” you reply, even though it isn’t.  This hurts, and it draws cracks in your foundation.  You know there will be fallout to your confidence in the days and weeks that follow.
You don’t have the heart to stay much longer, and your sister walks out with you as you climb into your car.  You wave at her and drive off, and you are a block away when your sister turns to go back into the house.  Something bright catches the corner of her eye, and she looks down at the ornamental shrubs that stand beside the porch.  Tangled in the low branches is a bouquet of flowers, tossed aside.  She bends down and scoops them up, notices that they look pretty fresh.  She takes them inside.
“What you got there?” Mike asks when she joins him in the kitchen.  He’s scraping off plates and loading the dishwasher, and he watches as she snags a vase from the cabinet under the sink.
“Flowers.  They were thrown in the shrubs by the porch.”
“Huh.”  Mike looks at them, then pulls together a theory.  “You think Richard brought them?”
“And threw them away before he even came in?”  She shakes her head.  “Why?”
*****
If Richard had enough money, he’d quit his job and move to the other side of the country.  Hell, he’d move to the other side of the globe if he could pull it off.
He’s never been so ashamed.  So embarrassed.  Mortified.  There’s no adjective that can capture the depth of shame he feels at how he acted on his date.
He can’t even really explain it—though he tries, of course, when Mike angrily corners him in the breakroom the following Monday.  Richard tries to explain how out-of-body he felt, how the moment he knocked on Mike’s door and heard footfalls making their way to let him in, he panicked.  He tossed the flowers away, suddenly terrified that the cheerful blooms looked cheap in their cellophane wrapping. 
And it only got worse from there.
He broke out in a sweat immediately.  He felt it trickling down his temples, had to daub it away with his shirt sleeve on the sly.  He felt his armpits growing damp, felt flushed and sickly, feverish.  The air in the room was too warm and too heavy, like breathing through soup, and the shallow breaths he took only made the panic grow.
Then you entered the room and for heaven’s sake:  you were pretty in the pictures Mike showed him, but you looked downright angelic in person.  Dress lightly skimming your curves, gentle smile on your face as you looked at him expectantly.  When you stepped closer to introduce yourself, Richard caught the scent of you—faintly sweet, a warm smell.
How could he feel anything but shame to shake your hand with his own sweaty palm?  You were perfect, and he felt unwieldy, monstrous beside you.
And you had tried to be kind anyway.  Tried to converse with him, asked him questions about his life that he only grunted at.  He asked you no questions in return, and when you tried to pass him some food, he ended up staining your beautiful dress with the wine he brought.
Of course he fled.  Of course he spent the drive home cursing himself, cursing his stupid brain that was always so eager to flood itself with stress hormones the minute a situation got uncomfortable.
“I’m so sorry,” he tells Mike in the breakroom of the prison.  He tries to explain it, assumes he fails like he does everything else.  “Please…tell her it wasn’t her fault at all.”
“Of course it wasn’t her fault!”
Richard flinches at the anger in Mike’s voice, but then he hangs his head.  He lets the fresh wave of misery course through him.  “She was too good for me anyway.”  It comes out a low mumble, but Mike must catch it anyway.  The other man sighs after a long beat, then lays a heavy hand on Richard’s shoulder.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown you into the lion’s den like that,” he concedes.  “But for fuck’s sake, man.  You made her feel terrible.”
“I know.  I mean, I guessed as much.”
“So it wasn’t a love match.”  Mike drops his hand and sighs again.  “But it would help a lot to apologize to her.  She’s beating herself up pretty bad.”
Richard looks up, surprised.  “She’d be willing to see me again?”
“Doubtful,” Mike replies with a shake of his head.
“Then how—”
“Fuck, man.  You work in the fucking letter room, right?  So write her a letter.  I’ll get it to her.”
*****
You’re not overtly depressed over it.
You’re also not okay about it.
It doesn’t help that the days are getting shorter.  It gets dark early, so it’s easy to justify the hermit-nature you’re embracing.  You come home from work, you walk your dog, and then you spend long hours in your pajamas watching trashy reality TV shows before you go to bed.
You sleep a lot.  It helps with the little pit of despair your failed blind date opened up in you.  It shook your confidence harder than you would have thought.  You’re generally pretty sturdy in your sense of self, but each year that passes without any success with the men erodes it more than you care to admit.
You spend the week after the failed date wallowing.  No sense in white-knuckling through it.  You feel bad for yourself, you go a bit maudlin, and you start to climb your way out…
Then your sister stops by for a visit, and when she goes to leave, she hesitates, then reaches into her purse.
“This is for you,” she says, but she holds it for a long moment before she hands it to you.  It’s a white envelope, and it bears your name across the face in unfamiliar handwriting.
She takes in your puzzled expression and clarifies.  “It’s from Richard.”
“Ah.”
“He felt terrible, sweetie.”
“That makes two of us, then.”
She studies you for a beat.  “You know, he brought you flowers, but something made him panic, I think.  I found them tossed behind a shrub after you left.”
You furrow your brows in confusion.  “Kinda weird.”
“Kinda.  But not serial killer weird, at least.”
You smile.  “True enough.”  You hold up the envelope.  “At least he didn’t ghost me.”
-----
You’d like to say that you have a certain measure of patience, but the moment your front door clicks behind your sister, you tear that envelope open like a wild animal.  Your curiosity allows nothing else.
It’s a single page, but Richard’s printing is small and tight.  You have to hold the paper closer to the light to read it.
It’s an apology, of course.  A genuine one that goes a long way at softening your heart to the man who had been so impolite at your date.  Because he tries to offer an explanation too—the utter panic he felt, the crippling anxiety—and that softens you too.
You know about that sort of panic, that sort of anxiety.  It used to cripple you too until intense therapy and the right combination of meds helped you tame it.  Still, you can feel it claw at your chest sometimes, so your anger at Richard is replaced by understanding.
Also, he drops this line in the middle of his letter, and when has a man ever said (or written) something so guilelessly sweet?
I think you might not realize how beautiful you are, Richard wrote in his cramped, neat printing.  I was already struggling to breathe from the panic, but the moment I saw you, I couldn’t breathe at all.
“Richard, you surprising son of a bitch,” you whisper aloud in your kitchen, and you reach for your phone to text your sister.
*****
It’s grace that Richard doesn’t feel he deserves, yet Mike offers it:  a second chance.
“It’s a big holiday party,” Mike explains when he hands Richard the invitation.  “My wife fucking loves all that Martha Stewart, Bing Crosby, chestnuts on an open fire bullshit.  There will be a lot of people there, so...”
He trails off, but Richard catches his meaning.  A lot of people will serve as cover for Richard.  He’ll be able to melt into the crowd, peel off into another room if his anxiety threatens to choke him.
He’s not so sure it will, though.  In the month and a half since that terrible first impression, and since he found out his apology letter was well-received, Richard has taken control of it.  For the first time in his life, he got angry—angry enough to make an appointment to see his doctor.  Angry enough for a referral for a therapist.  Angry enough to try out a low dose of anti-anxiety medication.
There was no shame in it, he had decided.  If a person had high blood pressure, didn’t they get medicine for it?  Richard had grown up in a home that stigmatized feelings in general, and he had always taken the ‘ignore-it-and-it’ll-go-away’ approach to his own mental health. 
But when Mike had told him—secondhand, through his wife—how well you had responded to Richard’s letter, he felt that flush of anger.  At himself, partially, but also at the family legacy of suffering in silence.  Why had he suffered so long with no relief?  Why did you offer him more kindness than he had ever offered himself?
Hence the meds.  Hence the forty-five minutes every week where he awkwardly stammered through his overanxious thoughts, his family history, his own history.
And it seems to be working.  The medication seems to drop a thin veil between him and his own head.  It gives him the barest bit of a barrier, just enough protection from himself.  The therapy gives him the tools to understand why he reacts the way he does.  Richard comes to understand that it’s his low self-esteem that drives much of his social panic, and his therapist prescribes him a list of mantras he is to repeat to himself in the mirror each morning and night.
It embarrasses him at first.  His reflection flushes in the mirror as he says nice things to himself…but damned if it doesn’t seem to work.
-----
Who can say why it goes better the second time around?  Maybe it’s the meds or the therapy, or maybe it’s the barest bit of understand Richard has achieved through his letter to you.  Maybe it a combination of all three things.  Richard doesn’t linger over the why because the what is so much more gratifying.
What is it?  It’s…so much better.  Richard arrives at the perfect time—not too early, not too late.  He walks through the front door, and he doesn’t toss aside the bouquet of flowers this time.  His heart hammers in his chest, but he remembers to breathe, remembers to smile.  He repeats his mantras in his head as he makes his way through the growing throng to find you.
I am worthy of happiness.  I am worthy of love.  I am open to new possibilities.
He finds you alone in the kitchen, half-bent in front of the oven and peering at whatever cooks inside it.  You’re just as beautiful as he remembered.  His pulse picks up, rapid, but he swallows.  Takes a breath.
I am worthy of happiness.  I am worthy of love.
“Hello,” he says.
You stand up and turn; at the sight of him, you smile.  At the sight of the flowers in his hand—a wintry mix of white roses and sprigs of cut pine—your smile grows wider.
“Those would look better in a vase than tossed in the azalea out front,” you tease, but you say it gently with that smile on your face, and Richard shakes his head ruefully.
“I thought I might wait at least a few hours before I throw wine on you, too,” he jokes back.  The joke lands because you laugh—a merry sound that makes him chuckle.
You reply that you specifically wore black in case he turned up, and he chuckles at that too, but then he turns serious.  He apologized by letter, but he knows he has to say it to your face as well.
“I am sorry about that evening,” he says now.  “I’m m-mortified…”  He trails off when he stammers, and he feels his face flush hotly.  Dammit, he thinks, but then he realizes what he’s doing—he’s falling back into the deep rut of old behavior, so he thinks an abbreviated mantra over and over to steer himself away from the cliff’s edge where he stands.  I’m worthy, I’m worthy, I’m worthy—
His thoughts are interrupted by your soft hand, tentative, on his arm.  Just for a second you touch him.  Just enough to reassure him, because he looks into your eyes and sees only understanding. 
“You don’t have to apologize again.  It’s in the past.”
“I just—”
You shake your head, cut him off with a smile.  “I have an entire lifetime of awkward social moments.  I get it.  Really.”
What else can he do but gaze back at you, to return your smile with his own?  To finally nod his head, to consider himself forgiven?
“Good!”  You break away with a little clap of your hands.  “Now let’s get a vase for those flowers, and then you can help me with the mini quiches my sister has baking.  I forgive you, but your penance is being a fellow cater-waiter for the evening, okay?”
What else can he do but laugh at that, then give you a little salute?  How can he resist your charm as the two of you take orders from your sister, the hostess?  The two of you spend most of the party in the kitchen together, running the dishwasher, drying glasses, uncorking bottles of wine, refilling trays of food.  You take turns rejoining the party proper, but when you regroup in the kitchen after each excursion, you share little jokes about the other guests, observations and gentle teasing, and Richard realizes late that the entire evening passes and he hasn’t broken out in a cold sweat once.
He realizes that he hasn’t overthought anything either.  Hasn’t ruminated over his words.  He’s at ease, and he’s enjoying himself.
-----
Which means that the night ends far too early. 
His role in the kitchen gives him a bit of a reprieve:  when the other guests leave, Richard stays behind and helps clean up.  Not that you or your sister asked—he volunteers to stay, and he misses the bemused look that passes from your sister to Mike.  You miss the look too.
You and Richard tidy up as best you can.  The bulk of the cleanup will be in the morning, but you put away the leftovers, you set the dishwasher for one last load, and you sweep away the crumbs. 
The cleanup ends far too early too.
You get his coat for him from the guest bedroom, and then you walk him to the door.  Mike had said you were shy too, but Richard has never seen it—until now.  At parting, you turn shy.  You don’t quite meet his eye, and you stammer out how you had fun, as you thank him for his help.
It’s funny how much your sudden shyness endears you more to Richard.  He recognizes the emotion in you, and it makes the kinship between you feel stronger.  You understand him and he understands you, and when was the last time he felt that sort of connection?
That must be what gives him the mad bit of courage as he stands at the threshold.  You remain indoors, he stands just on the other side of the doorway, and he feels a surge of bravery that makes him lean forward, quick, and brush the gentlest of kisses across your warm cheek. 
“Oh!” you say, startled, and Richard suddenly thinks he’s overplayed his hand.  He feels his own flush creep up from the collar of his coat.
“Sorry, I—”  He starts to say.
“No.  No!  You’re fine!  You’re—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You just surprised me.”
“Oh.”
You smile, your eyes finding his.  “A nice surprise.”
-----
The entire drive home, Richard can’t stop grinning.  He smiles so much—and has smiled so much throughout the evening—that his cheeks hurt, the muscles so unused to so much effort.  It’s only once he’s inside his own home that he kicks himself; he didn’t get your number or give you his, so there’s no way—
“Just ask Mike for it, dummy,” he mutters to himself, but then he recognizes the negative talk, so he amends it.  “I can just ask Mike for it.  No worries.  Of course I didn’t think of it in the moment.  I was enjoying myself so much.”
But maybe he wasn’t the only one with the mad bit of courage in the end.  When he goes to shed his coat and hang it up in the hallway closet, he checks his pockets for his wallet…and finds a small scrap of paper, folded into fourths.  It’s like a passed-note in school, though no one ever passed him a note during his school years.
It’s from you, of course.  Your elegant cursive with your name and your number, and below that, an invitation to call you sometime so the two of you can get to know each other better.
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shima-draws · 1 year ago
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Fuck 4th of July all my homies hate 4th of July
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sherlock-is-ace · 28 days ago
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#ive been stressing all day about a purchase i'm not even making lol#i have mental problems sjfmsjg#no but for real i was reviewing the tablet i had decided on to buy in the distant future#and found out it's actually not very good for drawing which is the sole reason i want to get a tablet#and i got physical symptoms of anxiety and dread as if i had wasted money#on a thing I DIDN'T BUY#but then i found another tablet which is good for drawing and it's a bit more expensive#and once again i got the anxiety levels of someone being hunted for sport#for another product I DIDN'T BUY#but it's just this horrible timing thing that's making me anxious#because it's a lot of money that i have to spend on this#and I don't have a regular income#and my country's economy is hell to the point that by tomorrow the price could double without warning#and there's also there's some sales coming so maybe i should wait til then#but then also i have to catch the sale and the product i want#and also the holidays are coming so the price might spike up#and i never know when the correct time to buy anything is!!#and this folks is why I don't gamble lol#no but for real... i have been panicking all day and I don't even have a proper reason#i could also live without the tablet very well so it feels like a waste of money in general#so...#i have issues with spending money...#especially because I don't know when it's gonna be the next time i get work#could be next week... could be in six months... could be never again...#if i just could get hired for a proper project woth a decent pay...#ahhh the dream :')#ok i'm gonna go to bed now (if my stupid ear '''''infection'''''' lets me...)#life is hell but at least i got to boop people today <3#angel talks#personal
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discoreptile · 4 months ago
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Beasties of Greenhollow soundtrack! Some tracks on this are from older projects like elphame but all of them have been reworked in some way. Most of them are entirely new. Enjoy!
#soundtrack#music#indiegamedev#Youtube#beasties of greenhollow#indiegame#chiptune#elphame#hey again gang. Another scream into the void#Things have been getting more interesting tbh#I'm starting therapy again. I have learned from this that my anxiety is in the very very high end.#And I guess the only thing that surprises me about that is that it's an abnormally high amount vs the average.#I've had more intrusive thoughts this week than in a long time. (I almost said ever but that was 2021 where they woke me up...)#It's mostly about my mistakes and ppl I've scared out of being in my life because of the actions based on my anxieties.#Like “if i could go back in time I could fix it”... girl you'd be going back in time like 100 times. At that point it's not fair lmao#I think I shouldn't talk about who I'm dating here anymore. Friends told me to stop seeing so many new people and I took that advice.#I'm exercising incredibly frequently; obsessively so. It really doesn't change much in my anxiety. I walk for like 3 hours a day.#My friend group is... difficult. One of us had a falling out with another and the dynamic is just so awkward for me now.#it just seems like everyone else has moved past it though but I still miss him. I don't think this can be reversed#we used to talk on my stream and play digimon cards n jackbox and d&d... But now they're only interested in d&d which I don't love#For god's sake I've published a game and moved to a nice new place. why aren't I happy hahahaha#work is no longer enjoyable since BoG was publised. our new project is in an iffy category but it's not my place to argue#I want to write music and animate but I have to do my hours for this new project before I can do anything like that...#I ended up siding with my current boss in that ethical dilemma I posted about and rn idk if that was the right decision.#Okay what can i talk about that's good? We moved to a nice place. I'm celebrating BoG's release with family tomorrow.#Graeme's playing Iconoclasts- one of my favourite games! He's also returning to work soon so it'll be less awkward to have a lady over#Thinking about good stuff going on just draws the mind to holidays I've had before. I treasure my memories!#Okay so I've complained for a long long time bc life doesn't feel great rn. But rest assured I already know this is 90% my fault hahaha#Oh another good thing that happened!!! My elestrals card was printed and ppl are really happy with it. I have a card in a real card game!!!#don't tell anyone but there's another one on the way. Anyway that will do for now. I'm sorry about my... self.
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makedamnsvre · 4 months ago
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recently ive been getting really sick of my neighbors i wish that i had a bunch of money so that i could buy up their houses and only let people i live live near me
#neighbors 1 used to be friends but theyre trumpies and also neglect and borderline abuse their dog#i like river hes not a bad dog but hes not trained well and is a very large and powerful dog and really really wants to kill my cats#and they just let him loose wander in the road wander into other peoples yards and hes trapped me and my mom outside because#he tries to force his way into our house if we try to go back inside of our house and i kinda dont want my cats guts splattered everywhere#neighbors 2 have a fenced in yard with a lab and a husky that they leave outside all of the time in their yard#as far as i know they dont have a dog house or even food and water out there and absolutely no toys and the dogs bark constntly#probably because theyre so bored outside in the hot weather usually without shade and no entertainment they bark at each other#or anyone in the yards of the neighboring houses or they bark at the door begging to be let back inside or bark at the windows#and theyre patriots too they got one of those huge skeletons last halloween and theyve kept it up ever since changing out the spotlight#for holidays which initially i really liked i thought it was funny but then for memorialday/july 4th they dressed in patriotically#and i hate america so . i hate them and how they neglect their dogs#neighbors 3 they are related to the one good neighbor BUT. theyre married (?) and they scream at each other arguing all of the time and#because of the geography of where we live it echos right to our house very loudly and it gives me anxiety and they have a kid or kids#who sometimes cry loudly because they scream yell at each other loudly i kinda hope they (not the kids) go to hell#neighbors 4 i . im not sure if theyre newer here but they also have dogs but so far theyve kept them on leashes i think?#except for that one time where their dog just. walked up to me. idk if they let the dog loose on purpose or if it was accidental#but recently me and my mom were outside messing with the garden and They are also a couple and were screaming at each other#also ! i love straight people 😍 please breakup or get a divorce or move away or go to hell youre fucking crazy people go to therapy#and then theres the people on super loud motorcycles or in super loud cars and then theres the other neighbors with the isra hell flag#and the other neighbors that i SUPER SUPER SUPER HATE and have hated for YEARS ecause i went to school with one and hes#racist as fuck i hope he dies or something. and because of them we dont even go down the road that way#they have free roaming animals that would go into the road and they run some ? atv repair or something out of their house and sometimes#completely occupy the whole road loading shit or something. like if you want stereotypical redneck assholes its them#and i hate all of these people so much. mutuals you should live here instead of them. its the blue ridge mountains its higher altitude#its pretty but sometimes it rains and causes something of a 'creek' to flow but were on a mountain so it flows down and away#and well sometimes the sewer smells really bad for some reason idk but like . its fine dont worry about it#and bears might drag your trashcans up the mountain but just dont leave food outside and they wont do that#we have a . shockingly beautiful ?? dumpster on the road too so its okay 👍#dear lird i just scrolled up and thats a lot of words . o well
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sandwrrm · 1 year ago
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ahhhhh okay i've drafted my "lol sorry but i can't work the rest of my notice bc being in there makes me want to die" email.... now I just need to send it.... i know it's what i have to do, i know i literally cannot work one more shift w/o losing my mind, but i haaaaate confrontation and making people dislike me 🫠🫠🫠🫠
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kiwidotcom · 1 year ago
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went to deposit a cheque into my account to discover i have $30 until my next pay cheque 😩
and of course the app isnt letting me deposit this cheque. because why bother having an app if its functional. a banking app that works ????! wild
#getting paid on thursday aka my birthday#but my rent is going up just for september so i really dont have any money oh my god#this birthday just keeps getting better and better#also this pay cheque will be smaller anyway because last monday was a holiday and i dont get holiday pay#the guy ive been seeing has been insisting on paying for things and holy fucking god thank god i didnt insist too hard#imagine i insisted on paying for $100 dinner and then got declined#our next date is going to be me making dinner at my hosue which was already the plan but yea thank fuck it is lol#i have cash to buy alcohol but i was originally going to get a decent bottle of wine#not anymore i suppose lol#fuck me man#i work so much how am i so broke#im not having a good morning#and ngl ive been taking too much xanax recently because my anxiety has been awful and the temptation right now is so strong#but i cant i cant i cant i cant#just gotta suffer instead#omg tho#i mentioned . to my date. that my doctor wont prescribe me anti-anxiety meds because of my 'problems' with addiction.#the addiction being that alcohol i drink to deal with my anxiety#to be clear#and he (my date) said he could help me with that because he knows people ahahaha#i said nooooo its fine ahaha but yea it did make me like him . just the fact that he wants to try and help#but its fiiiiineeeee#i need to find another doctor#uhg i want to see my therapist#its been 6 weeks but yea#$30 in my account so fucking fat chance thats going to happen any time soon#also i think i need to stop taking my meds#i spend $20 a day just to feel normal#i cant afford this#sure not being on my meds makes me suicidal but hey
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regallibellbright · 2 years ago
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God, I hope I manage to get people reading this fic even a HUNDREDTH as invested in this character and the family I completely invented out of whole cloth for him who have been living rent-free in my head for like two years now and steadfastly refused to make a story work until now, because I needed to get a good bit out of my head before I went to sleep, made myself cry because I cry ABSURDLY easily, and now it’s like four hours later and I need to actually get to FUCKING BED ALREADY but words keep coming, my fic is too sad, and I use a CPAP that already finds my face shape tricky and don’t want to combine that with my messy crying.
I’m just saying, it’s not fair I inflict this on myself while WRITING it. Rereading it later, sure, I’m fine with that, but writing it? What am I doing, using these characters as an outlet for emotional catharsis? Gross. Inefficient. I can’t keep writing when I need to routinely stop and wipe my eyes.
#writing with regalli#wips#I haven’t even gotten to the part that’s making me sad just to think about#no but seriously this is an actual problem for me that has happened more than once#if it works even a fraction as much as I’m hoping it will it’ll be SO GOOD and I will be SO PROUD OF THIS#but see I’m already invested and other people are not because you know. OCs.#I am deeply and profoundly attached to these OCs who have literally no implication in canon#seriously even the canon character in question is just a step or two removed from blank slate#and by this point I could write an entire fucking NOVEL in which there are maybe a couple hints of a second canon character offecreen#and then it ends with him meeting a third.#if someone talks shit about AUs not potentially engaging with the themes of the source material I fucking might.#like a really good AU that tries is DEEPLY concerned with where characters change and where they stay the same when this changes#and this particular threat of spite would be very much invested in the setting and deal with themes#but while looking at a spot that’s particularly thin in a movie that is admittedly more Vibes than plot and going ‘It’s free real estate’.#I can’t do AUs like that I struggle with differentiating character voice enough. but you know what I can do?#THIS BULLSHIT. and I am genuinely proud I can.#but it does bring a lot of anxiety when the emotional core is around characters who /I/ care deeply about#but who no one else has ever heard of because they are mine#god though THIS is the first idea I wanted to do this holiday prompt challenge for and it is WORKING for me.#the others have been aggressively Not at times and another one will be the full climax but this one actually fully fits the prompt#without the association that already existed in MY mind but which I will have to sell to not feel totally shoehorned for readers#which is admittedly a big ask under the circumstances#because the association would not be obvious if you DIDN’T know I had in fact had this idea for ages#and why would you? I have not brought it up before
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featherymainffins · 8 months ago
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Binge-reading Dungeon Meshi because it's the only thing standing between me and suicide ngl.
#it at least gave me the single molecule of mental energy required to force myself to eat at least one slice of bread#because it's like the physical energy is there sure but mentally I'm like 'noooooo I don't want to eat anything i hate food#all food tastes bad and i hate life and i want to eat nothing at all and furthermore i need to lose weight so i should starve myself'#I'm thinking that it might actually make me last until I either convince the crisis center that I'm for fucking real for real#or until my appointment with the school counselor. which idk when would be because i was supposed to go on the#2nd of April but i guess there might be holidays because he called me when i was atva lecture but i couldn't take it#because i had a lecture and he hasn't called since but I'm assuming#that hell call again and that he wants to let me know that the date is impossible#but I want to like wait and see what he says. and if he goes like 'oh actually im on a long vacay now goodbye forever'#or whatever I'll just go '...slay' and ride my ass to the hospital tomorrow.#show up at the crisis centre looking exactly like the patients with chronic pain who report pain 7 while looking unphased#like 'hello i am an active danger to myself I can't get out of bed most days; i need 16 hours of sleep to function for 4 hours#my meds have stopped working I haven't eaten anything but exactly 2 pancakes and a slice of bread in the past 4 days#and i exhibit a strong refusal to change this marked by thoughts present in people affected by eating disorders. no activity#feels fun anymore and they were marked by a strong sense of anxiety a few days ago but now i just feel nothing at all.#at this point I'm not even refusing to do any of my hobbies because im increasingly afraid of failure and its#consequences while being hunted for sport by anxiety from the opposite end telling me that i need to finish 50 masterpieces#immediately or nobody will ever like me again and they'll all see me for the talentless fraud i am. at this point i just don't care.#i don't do anything because i feel sluggish and my body is heavy and I'm so so tired and I'm tired of being awake and I can't think straight#also i think i might be going into a psychotic episode again.'#they're gonna tell me to get the fuck out of their faces anyway but it's worth a try.#like idk i feel like they might kinda listen because yesterday I guess they wouldn't have but today i have stopped caring about cars#and looking both ways. which is like. not a good sign probably. also yesterday i was still somewhat able to talk to people#even though i was in a very irritated and drained out state but today I'm feeling like if anyone even fucking attempts to talk to me#or if i hear any loud fucking sound at all I'm just gonna punch myself in the head until the pain drowns out all the sound
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gracieheartspedro · 2 months ago
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Dagger In The Heart
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pairing: ellie williams x afab! reader
post about palestine - please be aware and know who your content comes from. this post informs you about the tlou writers and creators, as well as how to help the Palestinian people.
word count: 6.1k words
warnings: MINORS DNI!!! 18+ ty!!! abusive relationship mentioned, reader's bf is a cheating asshole, calls her names, makes comments about weight, talks of cheating, some lowkey cheating from reader, sharing clothes with ellie, ellie is 18+ but her age not specified, talks of hardly eating food at dinner, reader is a bit confused with her sexuality and wants to explore (which is fine!!! and normal!!!), wlw relations, pussy eating, fingering, tribbing, tattoos? lots of tattoos, dirty talk, reader being a bit desperate, getting caught (but not really), mentions of a strap, men being drunk and stupid. that's it. I think.
description: when you get the chance to meet your asshole boyfriend’s family, you take a liking to his sister, ellie. when a conversation about her tattoos turns into talks of what you’re really into, you can’t help but want to explore it more.
author’s note: hi girls, gays, and theys! I am so happy to be bringing this request to you. it was an anon request from july and I just suck at getting my life together to actually write. but here we are. FYI, I don't condone this behavior or cheating. anyway I hope you enjoy. I will also be putting this on my ao3 soon, so if you see it there, don't worry, it's just me (;
“You gotta chill, babe. Your anxiety is giving me anxiety.”
He was never very good with comforting you, so you bite back your snappy comment and just fake a smile.  
You had been dating your boyfriend Matt for almost a year. You two met in your college biology class and really bonded over your love for folk music and Greek food. He had kind eyes, mousy brown hair and the brightest smile you had ever seen. 
At first, you thought this was the best relationship you ever could ask for, but Matt grew distant after four months together. You didn’t know why, but his temper had shown itself one too many times. He fought with you constantly. He was quite jealous. You could never be seen with another boy without accusations of cheating. But every time you two argued, he always came back with an apology and a bouquet of flowers. You could not help but believe you could fix him. 
It had been 10 months, you had to brave meeting his family. Unlike you, his family lived two towns over and he visited them quite often. He was close to his younger brother and mom, so he made a point to see them as much as he could. 
He brought up the idea of meeting them back around the holidays, but you were planning to board a flight and visit your family across the country. He understood but was pretty disappointed you could not try his mom’s infamous pumpkin pie.
You had no excuse when summer came. So here you are, standing with him at his childhood home’s front door as he scrambled to find his keys. 
You were sporting something more dressed up than your normal. Matt loved this one black dress on you, so you decided to wear that with some cute flats. You were sorely regretting the shoe decision, the pointed-toed shoes squeezed your big toe and the arch was not high enough to be comfortable. 
He unlocks the deadbolt and the red door jolts open. You are instantly met with the scent of BBQ and cornbread. His childhood is cozy and lived in. The entrance is lined with shoes, everything from high heels to sneakers that have run through countless puddles. It was a sigh of relief, they were a no-shoes in the house family. You kick off your uncomfortable shoes, holding on to Matt’s shoulder for balance. 
His mom is the first one to enter the hallway to meet you two at the door. She is quite beautiful, her hair darker than Matt’s. She was shorter, wearing a nice blouse and jeans. She welcomes you both with a bear hug and cheers of excitement. When she pulls you out of the embrace, she gets a better look at you. 
“You are more beautiful in person, pictures do not do your gorgeous smile justice,” She remarks, squeezing your hands. 
You shake your head, trying your best not to let out that you are beyond nervous about this entire encounter. “You are too kind, thank you so much for hosting us.”
“Come meet the crew!”
Matt eyes meet yours, noticing how tense you are. You had hoped for him to hold your hand and guide you through this experience, but instead he just nudges you with his shoulder. He brushes by, heading after his mom. 
The hallway opens into a kitchen and living room, which is littered with random strangers who, in some way, resemble your boyfriend. 
His brother, Collin, stands up first from the barstools, racing over to your boyfriend to dap him up. When he glances your way, you just smile and introduce yourself. He extends his hand to shake yours, which you gladly accept. 
His dad is next to stand up from a recliner in the living room. He makes your acquaintance quickly, telling you he’s so glad to finally meet you after months of hearing all about you. 
When he moves away from in front of you, she comes into focus. You had not even noticed her sitting on the couch across the room. 
She’s slender, her dark locks framing her chiseled jawline. She looks like Matt, but more like a person who belongs in a Renaissance painting. Her eyes are a more dimensional brown. She has freckles scattered around her pale complexion, which only added her beauty. 
You do not realize you are gawking until Matt nudges you. “This is my sister, Ellie.”
You blink again, bringing your focus back to the situation. She extends her hand, and that’s when you take notice to her tattoo-filled arms. Her tank top raises a bit and you catch a glance of her midriff, exposing more tattoos littering her abdomen. 
“Nice to meet ya. Heard plenty about you.”
You swallow, taking her hand and shaking it. “I hope good things.”
“No, I only tell her the worst things about you.”
Everyone giggles except you and Ellie. Luckily it is filling the room with enough noise to drown out your thoughts about your boyfriend’s beautiful sister. 
Ellie rolls her eyes before whispering, “Don’t worry, it’s only ever good things, sweet cheeks.”
-
Matt’s dad loves to talk and you can tell it annoys Ellie. You were seated outside on their patio set, drinking some homemade lemonade Matt’s mom was adamant you had. He was helping her with all the sides that were still yet to be made, so you took up Ellie’s offer to check out the backyard space. You did not expect Matt’s dad to come with you two and tell you all about the flower beds he curated. 
But you listened, smiling and nodding while sipping on your tart drink. 
He got occupied with grilling, so you and Ellie were left on the couch near a very used and abused firepit. 
You wait for her to say something. She was truly making you nervous, her eyes trailing you every so often. 
“So, you and Matt met in science class?”
You finally look back at her wandering eyes, “Yeah, he was my biology partner.”
“Gotcha,” She leans forward, putting her elbows on her knees. You do not know what comes over you, but you cannot physically pull your eyes away from her arms as they flex. “You good?”
“I like your tattoos,” You barely manage to say, “They are… hot.”
You want to jump into the unlit firepit for that one. 
No other adjective came to your horny mind? Really?
She giggles, enjoying watching you practically squirm under her gaze. “Thanks, dude. My ex girlfriend was a tattoo artist so I let her practice on me.”
You remember a moment about 5 months ago when Matt mentioned his sister being gay, but for some reason, you finally connect that duh it’s Ellie, you fucking idiot. 
You also remember some choice words he had about her. You remember cringing when he called her a slur and said she could not keep a girl to save her life. You held your tongue and refused to reply.
“That’s awesome,” You scoot closer to her, bridging more of the gap between you two on the couch, “Which one is your favorite?”
She smiles at your intrusion into her space and questions. You realize you two are almost sizing each other up, right in front of her family, your boyfriend’s family. They could easily peek outside of the kitchen windows and see you two eye fucking each other. She leans back, her eyes tracing all the tattoos on her arms. 
Then she laughs. A deep guttural laugh. 
“What?”
“Nothing,” She brings her front teeth down on her bottom lip before speaking up again, “It’s a tattoo I can’t show you.”
“Why not?”
She looks towards the window, checking on her brother and mom. Her expression changes when she turns back to you. 
“Because I’m not pulling my tits out in front of my family.”
Your pussy practically pulses when you hear her say it. What is wrong with you? You are dating her brother. What is wrong with you?!
“Your… boobs are tattooed?”
She nods slowly, bringing her one hand up to your bare exposed thigh, “Bet that shakes a sweet one like you to your core.”
The comment insinuates that you are an innocent little girl who knows nothing about the world. And sure Matt is your first real boyfriend. Sure he was the first person ever to eat you out because your high school crushes did not even know that was a thing. Sure you never have been sexually promiscuous. Sure you thought you were straight. 
Sure.
But something inside you was crawling its way out. This small interaction with your asshole boyfriend’s sister was enough to send you into a spiral. You never gave a girl a chance so how were you supposed to know you did not like it?
“What if your family wasn’t around?”
Ellie is gobsmacked by your comment, her jaw practically hitting the floor. You can tell she realized she was flying too close to the sun. She pulls her hand away from your leg. 
“You are my brother’s girlfriend. I am not going to be the one to corrupt you,” She states, scooting over a bit away from you. Your cheeks get flushed, instantly feeling embarrassed for asking such a question. But the more you sat in silence, the more you realized that you really did not care. The feelings Ellie made you feel within the last 10 minutes were more exciting than any feeling Matt had given you in 10 months. 
You clear your throat, “Luckily for you, Ellie, you would not be the one to corrupt me. That has already been done.”
She looks at you quizzically, “Is that so?”
“Yeah, I may look sweet and innocent,” You creep in close to her, “But I am really a freak.”
Now you are just lying. 
Before she can utter a word, Matt’s brother comes out to let you two know dinner was done. You hope and pray he didn’t take notice to how close you two were. Or how Ellie stared at your ass as you walked away. 
-
You sit between Matt and Ellie at the table. 
Every so often during the meal, you would place your hand on Matt’s leg. He would push you away, rolling his eyes when you glared at him. When the conversation came around to him, he would find a way to demean you and then continue blabbing about school or his internship. 
You answered questions from his mom and dad, but you were sorely uninterested in them. But then the conversation comes around as to whether you two would be staying the night tonight. At this point, Matt had already had four beers, and you knew he probably would not want you driving his new Mustang. 
“You can take Matt’s bed and he can sleep on the couch,” His mom suggests, indicating that you two would not be sleeping together. You understood that they were a bit more traditional, but you were not expecting to sleep in your boyfriend's childhood bed without him. 
“That’s a great idea, Ma. We can stay, right?”
You look at the plate of practically untouched food in front of you. You just nod, finally saying, “As long as you give me some comfy sweatpants to wear.”
“Mine are all back at my apartment, but I’m sure Ellie has something you could borrow. Plus, you probably wouldn’t fit my sweatpants.”
Matt constantly made comments about your figure and how he could not share clothes with you. He refused to share his clothes with you, stating that you would not be able to squeeze into them and you also “left your scent on everything”. 
God, he made you feel terrible about yourself. 
Butterflies erupt in your stomach when you think about wearing Ellie’s clothes, though, and you completely drown out the separate conversation happening around the table. You feel a hand creep up your thigh, but it's not coming from the side you expect.
Her hand is so soft and delicate as it creeps up your leg. You cannot help but glance at her direction, catching her smiling over at you. 
“Don’t worry, I got something you can wear.”
-
Dinner finishes up and Matt expresses that he wants to go for a round of drinks with his high school friends and brother at the local tavern down the street. He never asks if you want to go, telling you “It would just be high school friends that you don’t know, anyway.”
He tells you that his Mom and Ellie would get you all set up. He gives you a pat on the back, and heads to the door, right behind his brother. You watch him leave and almost breathe a sigh of relief. 
When you turn back, you see his Mom already going upstairs. 
“I’m gonna get your bed all set up and then I’m probably going to retire to my bed, too.” She states, slowly making her way up the wooden staircase. 
You wanted to scream because this only meant one thing. You were alone with Ellie. 
You follow her up the stairs and look around the hallway. She heads to the right and begins pointing at the only room with the light on. You didn’t even know that Ellie was upstairs.
“Have Ellie get you something to wear, I’ll make up your bed!”
The door swings open and Ellie stands there, having changed into her own bedtime clothes. And for fucks sake, she’s not making this easy for you. 
She is sporting a tight white tank, no bra, and shorts that ride up to the very tops of her thighs. Her legs are tattooed as well, but not as much as her arms. There isn’t a touch of her freckled skin that isn’t marked with art. You can almost see through her shirt, making your mouth go dry. 
“Let’s see what you fit into!”
She lets you into her space. Her room is decorated with posters of space and heavy metal bands. From the looks of one corner of her room, she’s an artist. She has different art styles, anywhere from charcoal to watercolors, littering a desk and her walls. It’s messy, but it’s not dirty. It smells like incense and clean laundry. 
She walks over to her dresser, opens up the top drawer. Everything is neatly folded, which kind of surprises you. 
“I have some sweatpants, shorts, boxers-“
“Sweatpants are fine,” You retort, not wanting her to list off anything else, “Do you have any t-shirts I could wear?”
“Well of course I do, sweet cheeks. What do you want, loose or tight?”
You stare at her dumbfounded. You know what she’s doing. And you hate yourself for liking it so much. 
She pulls out a pair of navy blue sweatpants, still waiting for your reply. 
“Loose.”
She starts to dig through another drawer when Matt’s mom pops her head in. 
“It’s all set up for you, sweetheart. If you need anything, you let one of us know. I’m going to downstairs if you need me.”
You smile, thankfully. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Williams.”
“If she needs anything, I’m sure I could help her find her way,” Ellie says, absentmindedly. She pulls out a white t-shirt from her drawer and tosses it at you. 
“Goodnight, girls!”
And then you two are alone. Ellie slowly saunters to her door and shuts it. 
“You can get dressed here. Just make sure what I gave you fits.”
You silently turned your back to her, tossing your hair over your shoulder. “Can you unzip me?”
You are not even thinking straight. You are so caught up with being alone with the girl you have had weird sexual tension with. She walks over to you confidently, before grabbing the top of your black dress, which lands right at the middle of your back. She pulls down the zipper, ensuring it reaches the very end of its track. 
The hairs on your back stand up in her wake. You breathe deeply, before shimmying the dress off your shoulders. You were wearing a bra, so you were just going to keep it on. You step out of the dress, leaving you in just underwear and the push-up bra Matt gifted you not too long ago. 
You don’t turn to her, but she just comes around to your front, nonchalantly. 
“Jesus Christ,” Ellie stammers, before plopping on her bed. You shakingly step into the sweatpants she gifted you to wear, unsure how to respond. You rack your brain trying to gain the confidence you had before dinner, but your mouth is dry and your brain is dazed from seeing Ellie in her pajamas. 
You finally manage to glance up at her hungry eyes, smiling softly. 
“I never knew I would be jealous of my brother.”
You swallow, “Jealous?”
“Yeah, he gets to have someone like you every night and I can’t even find someone worth hanging out with around here. Never thought a nerd like him would win over a woman like you.”
You are standing in the sweatpants and your bra, not able to digest her words completely. A woman like you?
“Your brother is sweet. And we don’t have sex every night.”
“Just sweet?” She steps a bit closer to you, “And I said nothing about sex, darling, I said he gets to have you.”
She is looking at you like you are her prey. You almost fell to your knees and begged her to put you out of your misery, but you resisted. Instead, she just stands up, trying to catch your nervous glances. 
“H-he, uh, does what he can, when we d-do, yanno.”
Her fingers trace up your arm, her eyes trailing as she does it. You bite the inside of your cheek, waiting for her response. She clicks her tongue a couple of times, shaking her head. 
“I am sure he tries,” She sputters, standing back from you, “Do you even really like him?”
You furrow your eyebrows, suddenly snapping out of the situation you are currently in. You reflect for a moment.
Matt was an asshole but you sometimes enjoyed his company. He made you laugh on occasion. But deep down, you knew that he wasn’t made for you. He lacked emotional intelligence and made sure to put you down any chance he got. You had inklings he was talking to other girls and his friends were probably the most intolerable people on your college campus. And then there was that one time when the inklings were just. 
The realization that you maybe didn’t like him made you sick. You wasted so much time and now you have met his family.
“When he’s not mean to me. When he isn’t cheating on me.” You admit quietly, almost too humiliated to say it. 
She crooks her neck, “He cheated on you?”
You hate talking about it, it made you feel as though you were never good enough. He made it out that it was your fault because you would not have sex with him when you had the flu. “It was just some hand stuff, baby,” he said to you. 
“Just once. I forgave him because he told me he loved me.”
“People who love you don’t hurt you like that,” Ellie says without a beat. 
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Is he mean to you all the time?”
You think back to the last nice thing he said to you. Your ass looks fat in that dress. And even that could be seen as a bad thing. You shake your head, trying to find a good way to paint her brother. From the looks of it, she doesn’t really like him all that much anyway. 
“Most of the time.”
“So, what I’m hearing is my brother is an asshole that doesn’t know how to treat a woman both in life and in the bedroom. Is that what you’re saying?”
You stand there pondering her question, coming up with nothing. She was right, but were you ready to admit that?
So you shrug.
Ellie stands with her arms crossed now, chewing on the inside of her lip. She’s contemplating something, her eyes falling to the floor for a moment. 
“Listen, I am not just saying this because it has taken everything in my power to resist sinking my teeth into you,” The first half of the sentence put your heart in your throat. Nonetheless, she carries on, “But I have an inkling that you don’t like my brother at all. I think you like girls and you’ve never had the chance to explore that. You want to say you are a freak, but you really don’t know what that even means.”
“Ellie, I d-”
“You need to break up with my brother,” She states plainly, “And then, after all is said and done, I can show what it looks like to be taken care of.”
You agree, sadly. You do need to break up with Matt. And on the basis that you believe that he’s probably at the bar hanging out with old friends, probably with other girls, probably flirting with those other girls. You decide you are not going to wait anymore. He cheated on you once, what’s stopping him now? Ellie was right about everything, and while that revelation changes your entire perspective on life, you settle on jumping head first. 
“Show me now.”
You watch all the blood drain from her face. She fumbles with her inked hands, waiting for you to say you didn’t mean it. That moment never comes. 
“Are you sure about that?”
Swallowing hard, you just nod. You do not even realize what you are getting yourself into, but the undeniable chemistry cannot be ignored anymore. You don’t even want to waste another thought on Matt. You know if you think too hard about it, you’ll talk yourself back into staying with him.
Ellie’s face gets closer to yours and your lips connect seamlessly. She wastes no time, bringing her hands down to your waist to pull you in. You wrap your arms around her neck while fireworks erupt in your chest.
Her lips taste like mint and a dab pen your college roommate made you hit a couple of months ago. She was borderline intoxicating. 
She backs you up towards her bed, letting your knees hit the edge of the mattress. You plop down, disconnecting from her lips. 
Through hooded lids, she asks you, “Do you want to see my favorite tattoo, then?”
Your breathing hitches as she does not even wait for a response, she just pulls her tank top over her head.
Each piece is connected somehow. Her stomach piece is what appeared to be a dragon flying up towards her under-boob area. It was extremely detailed and took up a large half of her upper stomach. Around her collarbones were very intricate lines that almost rain over her body like veins. They spread down her chest onto her boobs, where around her nipples were two matching daggers appearing to go through her areola. 
You smirk at the idea that these are her favorite tattoos. The cheeky ones around her tits.
“Holy shit, Ellie.”
You reach out and touch her tits, ever so delicately. You use your finger to outline the daggers, smiling to yourself. 
Being this close sends a pulsating feeling down to your pussy. You have never felt a lightning strike quite like it before. 
She’s letting you feel her up, but when you change your tune and start pinching at her nipples, she throws her head back with a groan.
“Hmm, you should try putting one in your mouth,” She remarks, hoping to God you would be eager enough to do so. She was very in tune with you because you leaned forward taking her right nipple into your mouth. She’s guiding you around every turn, whispering how good you are doing already. 
You release her with a pop and sit back. You reach around to release your own, but she stops you. 
“Lemme do it,” She says mounting your lap. You place your hand on her hips while she runs her fingertips across your back. She unhooks your black bra, letting your tits spill out. 
You feel the tops of your hands stand up as soon as her hands begin to knead your tits. You glance down at her movements, watching your sensitive nipples perk up due to the attention she’s giving them. 
“Mmm, you like that, sweetness?”
You just groan, your lips needing to do more than just talk. You pull Ellie’s ajar mouth down to yours, diving your tongue between her teeth. You never had such a hunger for anyone else. No guy ever made you feel this way. 
She nudges your shoulders, having you fall onto your back. Her lips move away from yours and start to trail down your neck and chest. When her wet mouth touches your tits, you cannot control the sounds that leave your throat. She bites down on your supple skin, which makes you groan more. 
“You gotta quiet down a bit. Don’t need anyone hearing us.”
You try to manage your noises, but as soon as she starts to kiss down to the hem of the sweatpants she loaned you, you know you’ll never be quiet like she needs you to be. She tugs at the waistband, taking your underwear with it. 
You are now butt naked on her bed. And god, the air is hitting the wetness between your legs is titillating. 
“Listen, sweets,” She whispers, palming your thighs with her tattooed hands, “I’m going to make you cum on my tongue first. Then I am going to fuck this pussy so good, you won’t know any other cock but the fake one in my side table. You hear me?”
Your stomach is in knots, but you know that this is what you really want. “Okay, Ellie. Please do whatever you think I will like.”
“You’re gonna like it all, baby girl. And if it gets a bit dodgy, you just let me know and we can stop.”
You shake your head positively as she smiles between your legs. She starts by kissing up your thighs, keeping you completely in a trance. When her mouth finds your slit, she licks a long stripe. She takes her time, working her tongue in between your pussy lips. The wet sound that happens when she shakes her head is pornographic. When she finds your clit, she encases it and starts to suck lightly. You scream out in pleasure, never feeling this sensitive before. It usually took a whole lot of Matt lazily fingering you and fucking you to illicit such a response. Ellie is building up an orgasm within you in record time. 
She uses her fingers to open up your pussy a little bit more. You instinctively want to close your legs, but her left arm has your legs locked on her bed. Her middle and index fingers curl inside you with every motion forward. 
Her eyes are closed and you are laser-focused on her expressions. She’s putting her all into making you feel good and it’s relieving to watch someone put so much care into it. 
You notice the small little freckles that scatter across her nose get lighter as they reach her cheekbones. She’s so fucking pretty. 
“Jesus, you’re doin’ so good sweetheart. You feel so good.”
“Oh my god, Ellie, please don’t stop,” Your voice is strained, begging her to continue fucking you. She chuckles and begins to pick up speed. Your mind is cluttered, unsure how you can feel this good. 
When the peripherals of your vision begin to get white, you know it’s over. She latches her lips back onto your clit, humming to drag the orgasm out of you. When it happens, your deep guttural moans get muffled by her palm.
You think your heart is going to stop beating. 
Once you begin to feel your muscles relax, Ellie is crawling on top of you, hovering over your chest, her lips kissing your collarbones.
“You did such a great job, baby girl,” She dotes, her short hair falling across her forehead, “You’re so fuckin’ sexy.”
Your heart swells up a thousand sizes. You never got called that before, let alone felt sexy. But Ellie had this aura to her. She made you feel sexy, desirable, wanted. 
Your hand reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, “Please show me more.”
She nods, before she leans back on her knees. She balances on one leg before shoving her pajama shorts down. The ink travels to every part of her body and you wonder if the ones around her hips hurt. The snakes that travel up her thighs, have their heads resting right on her hip bones. 
You sit up and observe her movements, she’s fumbling with something in her drawer. She seemingly cannot find what she’s looking for and slams it shut. 
“How about this,” She says with a huff, “I want you to see what it feels like to grind that pretty little pussy on mine anyway. The strap will have to wait.”
You feel the blood drain from your face, “The strap?”
She giggles at your not-so-faux innocence. “We will try that next time.”
You aren’t ready for her to grab onto your legs and move you like a rag doll around her bed. She rests her body horizontally from yours, her lower half lining up with yours. You were not sure how this worked, but you had heard of scissoring before. The technicality was lost on you. 
You sit up waiting for instruction, but Ellie is so hypnotized by your wet slit, she doesn’t even look at you. You watch her reach out and touch your dripping center and it sends an electric shock down your limbs. You throw your head back, hissing at the action. 
“God, that cunt is so pretty.”
You finally look back at her, wanting nothing more but to fuck her like she fucked you. So in return for her toying with you, you hastily reach out and touch her pussy. You are confused by what to do, but by her reaction, you know you did something right. 
“Tell me what we are doing,” You beg, closing your legs in closer to hers. She nods, watching your fingers pull apart her pussy lips. 
“Pull your cunt against mine and ride me like you’d ride Matt’s dick.”
You halt your movements, “Ride him?”
“You’ve never ridden him before?”
Your response was your silence. You had never explored much with him, simply because he was quick to get his nut before traversing to other territories. 
She helps you sit up, hover your cunt over hers. You can not lie, the sight of her sticky wet pussy was hot. She guides you down so your mound is on hers. She bites her lip as you practically drool watching your purely untouched body against her painted figure. 
“Now move your hips back,” Her hands are gripping onto your hips, showing you the way, “And forth.”
The friction is immediately overstimulating, but it feels like an itch you’ve never scratched. So fucking delicious. 
“Shit…” You groan at the response your body is giving you.
“Practice makes perfect, baby. Keep moving those hips.” 
You have never been on top, but it’s almost freeing to be in control of the movements. You weren’t sure what you should grip onto as you rubbed your pussy against hers, so you grip onto your own shoulders. Your hips gyrate, the slickness between your legs starts trailing down to Ellie’s navy blue sheets. 
“God, this pussy is so fucking perfect,” Ellie says through gritted teeth. She holds down your hips, somehow trying to get you closer to her.
“It’s yours.” You whine, letting the lust take over your speech. You had no clue what that meant for this situation, you just knew that Ellie knew how to fuck you and it was bliss. Your hands leave your shoulders and eventually find Ellie’s tits.
“This pussy is mine? The first cunt you fuck is the cunt you fuck forever?”
You want to laugh, but the bubble in your stomach is about to burst already with how fucked out of your mind you are. “If the cunt is yours, then yes. I want this forever.”
Ellie sucks on her two fingers before she reaches down, finding the very top of your cunt, and begins to press down on that sensitive little bud. The saliva only mixes with the messiness of your liquids. You squeeze her nipples in response. 
“Never going back to my stupid fuckin’ brother, hm? This pussy belongs to me.”
“Yes, Ellie, fuck!” 
She smiles at your quickening pace. She knows you’re reaching your breaking point, and she knows that she’s close herself. 
“Come for me, baby. Come all over my fuckin’ cunt.”
You jolt forward, your hips stilling over hers. You don’t know if you’ve felt a sensation quite like it. You had tears pricking the corners of your eyes as your body felt like a volcano erupting. The curses leaving Ellie’s lips as she came from your orgasm only added to the high you felt. You knew words were leaving your mouth, but they were just jumbled together strings of sentences. 
“Jesus Christ…”
“It feels so good…”
“I want this pussy forever…”
You fall over next to Ellie, your legs still intertwined with hers. She was trying to catch her breath, her body still jittery from her high. 
“That was per-”
“Babe!!”
Your stomach drops to your ass when you hear Matt’s voice.
You jump up from Ellie’s bed, finding the closest clothes you can grab at. Ellie does the same, but takes her time throwing a tank top over her bed head. His footsteps are practically running up the steps. 
You are still wobbly on your legs, practically falling over trying to put on the pants she loaned you. You just keep saying “fuck” over and over again, knowing that you two will probably be caught. You just finished putting on a shirt when he barges into the room. 
He’s drunk. 
“What are you still doing in here?” He asks you in an accusatory slurred voice. Collin is close behind him, trying to shush him.
“Chill, dude. I was just showin’ her some of my art.” Ellie defends, plopping down on her bed. She’s trying to mask the fact that her bed is wet with your cum. 
While he blabs about how Ellie sucks at art, which he is very wrong about, you notice a red blotch on his shirt collar. You zero in on it because you fucking knew. 
“Matt, what’s on your neck?” You interrupt.
He stops his rant to look down at you. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s so gone that his mind can’t make up an excuse. 
“It’s from Sophie,” He blurts out, his lips getting ahead of his brain. Ellie pauses and the entire room goes dead silent. You had no idea what to say back to that. You had no clue who Sophie was. You honestly did not care, your relationship was already done in your head. You were just kind of shell-shocked that it happened exactly how your mind doctored it.  
You glance over at Ellie who is already looking at you. Collin clears his throat. 
“I think this a conversation for the morning,” Collin says, grabbing Matt’s arm to tug him out of the room. 
You nod, “Yeah, Collin, great idea. Why don’t you take Matt to bed? Tuck him in and give him a sweet kiss like Sophie did.”
Matt’s face turns bright red, the same thing it always did when he got mad at you. Before he could lash out at you, Collin drags him out of the room and into the hall. Before shutting the door behind him, he says, “I’m sorry.”
You furrow your eyebrows, “It’s fine. It’s not the first time. But it will be the last.”
When the door clicks shut, you hear Matt whisper yelling at Collin about how big of a bitch you are. How you didn’t deserve him. Yadda-yadda-yadda. 
Ellie just gawks at you. The tone of the room changed so drastically so quickly that you felt almost disconnected from reality. 
“You okay?” She asks innocently, her hand holding onto your shoulder. 
Your legs are still weak. “Yeah, I think I’ll need more practice though.”
She is confused, you can tell by the look on her face. “Huh?”
“I’ll need more practice riding you. And, hey, you didn’t get to use that fake dick on me, remember?”
-
taglist (for those who said they wanted this haha)
@cavillscurls @satellitespinner @mourningdovee @hockeyhughes @stonerzdaze420692 @00ops1e @sunflowerwinds @holilogram @whoucallingalesbian @aurelialuna
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povlnfour · 1 year ago
Text
ੈ✩‧₊˚ CONTENT CREATION (CL16)
pairing: charles leclerc x f!reader
summary: when ferrari hire a new content creator to help their social media presence, fans start noticing a certain friendship developing between her and their star driver.
*face claim: dina denoire (but please imagine her as you see fit)
scuderiaferrari just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by 209,885 people
scuderiaferrari we’re all smiling and relaxing on media days📸
view all comments
user who is taking such good photos when did ferrari care about their social media
user okay loving all this content we are getting lately but what changed admin
user charles wearing white jeans gives me anxiety
user ferrari cooking something
ferrari just posted a reel ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by 451,209 people
scuderiaferrari charles’ comments after the race have left us craving something 🍕
view all comments
user SO THAT WAS A GIRL’S VOICE RIGHT.
user IS THE NEW HIRE A GIRL
user so you DID hire a new media person… i knew all this content was too good to be true
ferrari just posted a tiktok ੈ✩‧₊˚
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84k likes, 1.2k comments, 1k shares
video captions:
[carlos: is my person attractive?
charles *laughing*
carlos: that tells me everything!
charles: yes she is!
carlos: is it y/n then?
charles: i’m saying nothing]
ferrari charles and carlos play who am i featuring the members of our ferrari team!👀
top comments
user CHARLES WHAT DO U MEAN UR SAYING NOTHING.
user WHO IS Y/N AND WHY DOES SHE HAVE CHARLES LAUGHING LIKE THAT
user okay but carlos knowing he was immediately y/n from the way charles blushed👀 what does he know that we don’t she must be hot
user admin give us a y/n reveal💳💳💳
ferrari just posted a tiktok ੈ✩‧₊˚
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39.8k likes, 415 comments, 890 saves
ferrari what time do our team arrive for our meeting?
top comments
user THIS IS THE FAMOUS Y/N???? SUDDENLY I UNDERSTAND CHARLES
user UMMM WHO IS THE GIRL
user double checking their team on the website it would appear she’s the content creator👀
user the one charles keeps mentioning???
user wait what time did the meeting start😭
yourusername 5… some of us were late
user IS THIS HER ACCOUNT BC IF SO…???? IM PANICKING SHES SO HOT
yourusername hi😭😭 yes this is me!!!
user oh my god she’s so hot
yourusername just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by charles_leclerc and 56,408 others
yourusername first few months of many travelling the world have been a dream. grazi ferrari❤️
view all comments
user FINALLY FOUND UR ACCOUNT IVE BEEN WANTING TO SCREAM ABOUT HOW HOT YOU ARE FOR AGES
user was so focused on you i didn’t even notice the photo of charles
charles_leclerc no photo credits?
yourusername WAH WAH WAH
user how does it feel to liVE MY DREAM
yourusername pretty incredible tbh
ferrari just posted a video ੈ✩‧₊˚
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[video captions:
CARLOS: who is most likely to be late because they overslept?
CHARLES: *laughing* probably y/n. she’s always late. i don’t think i’ve seen her be on time to a single meeting yet. she’s also notoriously hard to wake up and sleeps through her alarms and being shaken!
CARLOS: *teasing* you speak from experience, no?
CHARLES: *laughing* i’ve definitely struggled to wake her up a few times!]
twitter reacts ੈ✩‧₊˚
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charles_leclerc just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by landonorris, carlossainz55 and 561,356 others
charles_leclerc enjoying the summer break
view all comments
user IS THAT Y/N?
user so ferraris content creator gets to see charles shirtless ? where do i apply
yourusername nO pHoTo CrEdItS?!😤😤😤
user GET HIM
user not to be that person but if they went on holiday together that means they probably shared a hotel room right…
user oh they’re totally doing it
user can’t blame her at all i would too
yourusername just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by charles_leclerc and 98,406 others
yourusername some well deserved time off🫶
view all comments
user UMMM THE SECOND PHOTO??? ITS GIVING BOYFRIEND
user BESTIE WE ALL KNOW UR TOGETHER JUST MAKE IT OFFICIAL‼️
user this is confirmation in my head
formula1 just posted a video ੈ✩‧₊˚
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[video captions:
CHARLES: y/n how do i look?
Y/N: you look alright.
CHARLES: just alright? oh my god my heart is broken.]
top comments
user WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR HEART IS BROKEN CHARLES WHY IS HER OPINION SO IMPORTANT TO YOU👀
user oh so they spend the whole summer break together and now they’re in love????
user charles and y/n just announce you’re dating already i beg
user a whole formula 1 video and the first thing charles thinks of is to ask for y/n’s opinion… yeah we’ve lost him guys
user fr and i can’t even blame him have you SEEN her
yourusername just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by charles_leclerc and 98,406 others
yourusername thanks idiot for mentioning my name constantly on the internet. glad to know i’m always on your mind (you’re on mine too)
view all comments
user OH MY GOD I KNEW IT
user TEARS THEYRE SO CUTE
user not ferrari playing matchmaker😭
charles_leclerc i love you. sorry i had to scream about it, glad i can do it double time now
charles_leclerc just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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liked by landonorris, carlossainz55 and 561,356 others
charles_leclerc shout out to ferrari for introducing me to the girl of my dreams and only being minorly annoyed when i decided to make her mine
view all comments
user SO REALLLL
user MOTHER AND FATHER!!! ITS OFFICIAL
user when will I have my fanfic worthy love story
carlossainz55 i can’t wait to third wheel for the rest of our career together
yourusername you love us really
carlossainz55 i do. i really do
—————
taglist (found here): @sunflower-golden-vol6 @six-call @skatingiswalkingincursive @peqch-pie @m0cha-bunny @ironmaiden1313 @champagnelovers101 @alessioayla @hobiismyhopeu @mingkyungseokie @woozarts @he6rtshaker @iluvvmeeee @goldenalbon @lucyysthings
as always, comments, likes, reblogs asks etc etc etc always greatly appreciated🫶 had a lot of fun w this one hehe
- giselle xx
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dat-lil-shark · 6 months ago
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So I just watched Inside Out 2 AND GOSH MY DAMN ANXIETY IS WAAAY TOO CUTE FOR ME AAAAAH!!!
And good news! It's summer holiday now! Meaning i will be able to answer more asks, draw more, and draw in better quality!
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Shes just a pathetic little frog!
I love her so goddamn much!
I wanna keep her as a pet!
SPOILER ALERT:
I love the way the movie treat her as a someone who was also suffering from anxiety and was spreading it to Riley, thinking this would help, instead of an evil monster that just want to possess Riley which many people portray anxiety and negative self talk to be.
And I also love how, at the end of the movie, no other character blamed her or hold a grudge. And some, like joy, even helped to take care of her and taught her self care skill.
OH and don't get me STARTED on how Pixar designed her to have a traditionally male carton look, but gave her she/her pronouns for the most part. Which, as a gender fluid myself, makes me want to kiss pixar in the face!
Its just so wholesome on so many levels!
2K notes · View notes
ms-demeanor · 10 months ago
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Can you offer any advice for avoiding hoarding when part of the problem is that trying to deal with the clutter and garbage and dirt causes paralyzing anxiety? I want my house to be clean and cluttered because it's stuff I like, but instead it's full of trash and stuff that had a place but doesn't seem to fit back in it after being used.
I can absolutely offer advice about that.
Short TL;DR:
Select the room you want to clean and make a map of it.
Divide the room into small segments like "top of desk" or "cabinet under sink" or even "half of junk drawer." SMALL segments.
Designate bags "trash," "donate," and "consider later."
Schedule a time to work on cleaning each segment, don't just assume "i'll do it next week." Write down an assigned day for each area.
Go into your target area and sort things into those bags.
Optionally, create a bag for memento items to put into a specific memento box/book.
Take bags out of the space when they are full to make more room to work and to see progress.
Do the section for the day and stop. Don't get overwhelmed by a ton of stuff, stop when you've done what you planned for the day (unless you've got good momentum built up and continuing will energize you.)
Long TL;DR:
Go someplace where you are not looking at the mess. You want to draw a map of the room, but you do not want to be in the room. Work one room at a time.
Divide the area you want to clean into very small spaces. You aren't cleaning an entire desk, you are cleaning one drawer of a desk.
Take three containers with you for each section: one trash bag, one donation bag, and one bag of stuff to consider later.
Plan out time to work on the space. Don't say "I'll do the whole thing this weekend" or "I'll get to it after the holidays," sit down and write out a schedule. There's a version of this called 40 bags in 40 days that people do for lent (that was the version of this i first found and followed the first time i did it), but you could do it in ten days, or a hundred, just try to stick to working on each segment on the day it's scheduled.
In each space, keep the stuff that's obviously meant to go there in that space, so if you're cleaning a desk drawer and it has a stapler in it, the stapler can stay there but if the staples and paper clips and rubber bands are a mess put that stuff into the "consider later" bin. Same thing with papers; if you've got a bunch of papers and you may need to keep some and may need to trash some, put them in the "consider later"
THERE IS AN OPTIONAL BIN FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO HANG ON TO A MILLION MEMENTOS AND CONCERT TICKETS AND SUCH. I make them by getting gallon freezer bags and filling them up with business cards and concert programs and scraps of wrapping paper and birthday cards. This isn't quite "consider later" because it's probably stuff you know you want to keep, this is "I don't have a home for this thing right now but it's not trash" so this is a temporary home for that category.
Remove stuff from the space as you work. As you fill up a bag of trash or consider later or donate, take it out of the space so you aren't looking at it and you can see the progress you're making on the space.
Do each section as you come to it on your schedule and then call it quits. If you cleaned out the counter next to the sink and that was your area for the day, you don't have to worry about the area under the sink unless you have the energy and enthusiasm for it.
Philosophical musing about why this works
The reason this kind of plan works (for me) is by pre-managing several things. You know you're working with a limited area, you know what you're going to do with the stuff you find in that area (put it in one of your bags or leave it where it is if it belongs in that area), you're working on a limited time so this can't stretch out forever it's just a little chunk, you're thinking about the space as you build your plan so you're visualizing the anxiety inducing thing outside of the space that actually gives you the anxiety which hopefully allows you to detach slightly from the anxiety, and you're getting your steps lined up ahead of time so there's no muddle of "what do i do now, how do I get started" - you get started by grabbing your bags and you go to that day's scheduled section.
The whole thing is constructed to prevent you from getting overwhelmed.
I used to try to clean my room as a kid and I would find something that needed to get put away but I didn't know where it went so I'd spend a bunch of time trying to make a space for it and I'd end up getting lost in the weeds of imagining how I'd use the item and if the new place for it was accessible, and oh look at the items that I found in this other place where I was going to put this item and this method cuts off all of that. Where I am putting the item is in the bag, where it is going is the "consider later" pile and when I've cleared out most of the space I can consider where things go when I've gathered all the uncertain things into one place instead of continually unearthing them and disrupting the process of going through stuff.
What it means to Consider Later
The reason you're working room by room is because you should be isolating the consider later pile by room. If you're cleaning out the bedroom you may end up with stuff that belongs in the kitchen or the office, but you'll end up with a lot of stuff that belongs in the bedroom. When you've worked through all your segments, you can sort the consider later pile and now that you have all the objects together, you can consider whether some of them belong together in a space in the room.
For instance, when I first did this there were a lot of books that needed to go on bookshelves, but my bookshelves weren't accessible in the early parts of the process. So books from the floor and the bed and the nightstand went into the consider later pile and after the whole floor was clear and there was no trash on my desk and all the books I was donating had been pulled from my bookshelves, I was able to organize all of my books at once instead of stumbling across a book every four minutes and trying to shelve it.
That's what spawned the memento bags for me; there was a ton of stuff in my consider later bags that didn't precisely have a place but weren't trash and needed a place made for them. If I'd struggled to find where each item went as I cleaned it would have completely stalled me out.
I kept finding yarn as I went but I didn't have a dedicated yarn spot, so I just put yarn in the consider later pile and at the end I found a basket for it and put it on a shelf in the closet that had been cleared out when I'd donated old clothes. If I had tried to find a spot for the yarn before donating the clothes, I would have had to move it once the better spot opened up, so saving all the consider later stuff for later saved me from having to move stuff several times.
If you're in a small space or if you're living with people and you can't make a pile of stuff in another room for two weeks, at the very least remove the trash and donation bags as you go and designate an area for your consider later pile; maybe a laundry basket or something similar so that you can keep it mobile as you clean.
It's kind of like moving in to a new space. When you move in to an empty room, you have all your stuff in boxes and you need to figure out where it goes and that can take a while, but it's sometimes easier to find a place to put things in a new environment than it is to put things back "where they belong" because maybe you've added a dozen skeins to your collection and they don't belong in the little yarn bag anymore.
What to trash, what to donate, and what to consider later
Trash should be immediately obvious as trash. Anything that is trash goes in the trash bag right away.
If you find yourself thinking "but I might use this plastic fork that came with my value meal," or "this receipt may be important," put it in the consider later pile and don't think about it right now.
The donate bag should be for stuff that will still be useful for someone, but won't be useful for you. Clothes that you don't like, books you hated and won't re-read, toys you don't want to keep, all of that goes in the donate pile. If you think you might want to keep a piece of clothing but you want to make sure it doesn't fit, don't stop to try it on now just put it in the consider later pile and you can sort it into the donate bag later.
"Consider later" is for anything that requires more than thirty seconds of thought or effort to handle. If you're looking at your desk and you've got a keyboard for your computer on your desk that keyboard is staying there and doesn't need to be considered. If there's an empty takeout cup on your desk, that cup is going in the trash and doesn't need to be considered. If there's a receipt for your computer sitting on your desk, you may want to save that for record-keeping purposes but may not have a place to put it, so that is what you consider later.
Some guidelines on what is or is not trash
You might look at a sturdy plastic cup from a gas station and say "that isn't trash, I could use that, that's still good" but unless you have a specific purpose in mind for it right now, that is trash. If you wouldn't put it in a donation box to be used for some ambiguous future purpose, you don't need to keep it.
If you have a specific purpose in mind, like using an old milk jug to make a watering pitcher for your plants, it may not be trash. But only ONE is not trash; more than that is trash.
If you wouldn't need to have a hard copy of a paper and you have an electronic copy, it is trash. This means receipts for most everyday purchases like groceries and fast food. Don't keep receipts for items past their return period, don't keep receipts for items that you have a digital copy of unless that item cost over $1000.
Nice cardboard boxes (or good glass jars, or sturdy plastic takeout boxes, or cleaned food containers) that you don't have a use for are trash (or recycling, depending on where you live, but still in the trash category).
If you know someone who is specifically looking for an item (like maybe the neighbor kids are asking for cardboard tubes for a science project, or you work with a meal delivery group that could use extra packets of takeout utensils, or you have a friend who is into canning and has asked for jars, or if you make your own soup stock and need containers to put it in, or if you have a friend who is moving and needs lots of good cardboard boxes) then these items don't *have* to be trash but if you are just keeping them in your space and not giving them to people who want them or putting them to use yourself, they are just trash in your space and you should throw them away.
Memory Books/Memento Bags
I make memory books out of the little items i collect into one gallon storage bags. They allow me to hang onto the stuff that I want to keep because it brings me good memories without having a pile of random junk and sometimes without having to keep the item, or having to keep the whole item.
If the thing I want to keep because it brings me good memories is bulky, perhaps I can take a put a picture of that item to put in the book. If it is a worn out shirt, perhaps I can cut a patch off the shirt to put it in the book. If it is a card, perhaps I can cut out just the front of the card, or I can almost certainly just throw away the envelope and put the card in the book.
If you have things that do *not* fit into the memory book, like costume jewelry or rocks or a weird toy you got out of a coin machine on a really fun family vacation, you can also make a memory box; I have some of these and they've got a bunch of truly random crap in them, but I *like* having the nametag from the four hours that I worked at Denny's, or the keychain from when my mom took me to the morgue training class. It's fine to like these things, and to keep many of them, but you want to keep them someplace that they won't stress you out; that might be a display case for nice things, but it also might be a pretty velvet bag that you periodically pull out of a drawer and sort through like a magpie, or a wooden box that you painted.
You can also be selective about this stuff. You don't need every piece of costume jewelry your grandmother owned; keep the pieces you really like or the ones you have strong memories of or the ones that are very nice or the ones that are in good shape. But look, my mom was a teacher and she had a wide variety of goofy holiday jewelry that she wore in the classroom and I don't need to hang onto that. I don't need the big plastic ghost earrings that won't fit in my plugs, but I'll hang onto the spider brooch. She collected cheap watches - I don't need all of her four dollar watches, I can keep the nice ones, or the one that she got for ten years at her job. Do the same thing with stuffed animals and baby clothes and magazines and children's books. You don't need to keep all of it, and keeping all of it isn't going to help you remember that time more, or remember that person better.
Do you really want to keep it or do you feel obligated?
Youtuber Caroline Winkler (who has some great videos about home organization that I like a lot, in particular "this is why your home is a mess" - with the caveat that she likes closed storage and my ADHD ass loves open storage) has a really great tip on getting rid of stuff that works a LOT better for me than the Marie Kondo "Does this spark joy?" question and it's the Red Wine Test. Instead of asking if an item sparks joy, you ask yourself "If a bottle of red wine spilled on this (or if it was in some other way damaged) how hard would I try to fix it?" If you wouldn't try very hard, or if you would be *relieved* then you can get rid of that item. If one of the Venom mugs I have on the shelf fell down and broke, I wouldn't try hard to fix it. If my cat stuffed animal from when I was a kid tore open, I would immediately be looking for my sewing kit.
.... I should recycle those cheap teal glasses, actually.
Some general tips that may help to get you started that work for me and my ADHD and may work for you and your anxiety:
Start a timer for a short time. You don't have to clean your whole house, you are just going to pick up for five minutes. Then you can stop, and you only have to face a *little* bit of the anxiety.
5-4-3-2-1-go. Don't overthink it, count down quickly and then get up and do something. Keep going in as long a spurt as you can manage without getting too upset, but cutting down on the time for pre-game fretting might help with the anxiety.
Do the smallest amount possible. You don't have to clean this room, you just have to take one dish to the sink. You don't have to do all the dishes, you can just unload part of the top tray of the dishwasher.
Some general tips on trying to keep a space clean:
First, encouragement: It is a lot easier to maintain a clean space than it is to create one.
If you're thinking that something needs to be done and it can take you under five minutes to do it and it's right in front of you, do it. I do this with my dishwasher. It turns out unloading the dishwasher is the main thing that stalls me on dishes and keeps my sink full, so now when I'm waiting for the kettle or letting my tea steep, I unload whatever I can get done in that time. If I have the vacuum out and I did my living room but the hall and the bedroom could use a quick pass too, I vacuum them while I've got the machine in my hand.
Set success traps. Success traps are things that let you fall into succeeding by front-loading the effort (or executive function) of cleaning with planning. Trash collects in your living space? Put a bunch of little trash cans everywhere. Cleaning your bathroom takes extra time because you have to go get glass cleaner and paper towels from another room? Keep a bottle of glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels under the sink. You never sweep because it is a pain in the ass to get the broom out of the broom closet? Hang the broom from a mount in the kitchen. It takes too long to clean the counter because you have to pick up a bunch of makeup brushes and bottles and soap? Put that shit on a tray and now you only have to move one thing to clean the counter.
And for your specific question, with "things never seem to quite fit back where they came from" sounds like you're playing storage tetris, which is when things have a place and it is a *very specific and exact* place that doesn't have a lot of room around it. You may need to think about downsizing for your space, or, more likely, think about more efficient storage. That Caroline Winkler video I linked has some tips on this ("don't store things in a way that will make you angry like putting your common use objects on an out of reach shelf or you'll never put things back because it's hard to put them back" and "maximize your weirdo spaces" speak to your situation, i think) that I've put into use, particularly in my kitchen. It was hard to keep the counter clear because it was hard to put my stand mixer away because the rack for the stand mixer had a wok and a bunch of cast iron pans and a panini press and a chafing dish on it; I put the panini press and the least-used cast iron and the chafing dish and the wok in a more out-of-the way cabinet (because i basically never use them but they're very useful when I need them) and now that shelf has a little grill, my more commonly used cast iron, and my stand mixer so putting away the stand mixer is a lot less effort so my counter stays clear. I wasn't using the top shelf of my dish cabinet for dishes because it's too high up for daily use, but it's perfect for the rice cooker, waffle maker, and food processor that I use less than my dishes but more than my george forman grill.
And anyway, the TL;DR for all of that:
Work a little bit at a time, be nice to yourself, don't keep things that aren't worth keeping, and configure your storage in a way that works for you (by keeping your lifestyle, the way you use things, and how easy it is to put away into account before deciding that's where something lives).
Good luck!
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katiascraft · 25 days ago
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"If nothing else gets you through. Then darling, i'll cry with you" | LN4
parings: Lando Norris x reader.
Summary: after the chaotic Brazilian GP, you know Lando is verygood at lying that he is alright and nothing can move him. But with you he can't pretend.
Now playing: "Cry with you" by Jeremy Zucker.
Word count: +1,2k.
Warnings: I think none. A few cursed words I guess and mentions of anxiety. Not a native English speaker so there could be (so many) errors. Not proofread.
Author's note: so today was the shittiest day at the office y’all! I still feel like shit but I needed to write something about this. Why is Lando so hated??? You need to check yourselves!! Don’t forget to like or reblog! And follow me so we can be friends :3 (and drink mate together!)
MASTERLIST
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The Brazil GP it’s been the toughest so far. The Championship of drivers was also kind of defined. Of course Max was gonna win. He wasn't a three time world champion by luck. He is really one of the best drivers this sport has ever seen in history along with Senna, Prost, Lewis and Schumacher. But all of that indicated that your boyfriend was not gonna win the championship this year and that shuttered your heart.
You knew how hard Lando worked on that. All of the media attacked him. Social media twisting his words in a really cruel way. It was all too much noise and you perfectly knew how hard it was for him. How much anxiety he was handling and all of the pressure he was putting on himself. The pressure and illusion of the team to be back at the top after so many years decided it was gonna be Lando the one who did that. And that was a correct choice, lando was more than capable of winning the championship. But at some point it all happened so fast the pressure was descomunal.
You knew your boyfriend. You know how hard he’s worked all year. How much this all meant to him. You didn’t have holidays this year because he really wanted to fight. Train. And attack. Or at least that’s what he wanted to do.
You knew he was really good at pretending and playing it cool so people won’t ever know how much hurt his carrying. He could play the super hero indestructible for all the camaras. You won’t see him shattered right then and there. But you knew him too damn well to know he was broken. He hoped to be the winner. He dreamed about it his whole life. And this magical year was finally the one who gave him the chance to almost be it. This race was the hardest. It was luck and skills to the limit. A lot of crashes. The rain was irritating at one point. You almost didn't want to keep watching. When Lando got off track and went down to P6, you knew. He didn’t reply to any message through the radio. You cried, of course you did. You were on this as much as he was in it. You cried out of frustration. This year was a rollercoaster for you. You also dreamed of the day Lando won. You wanted that to happen even more than he wanted to. He deserved it. For how hard he works. How hard he is on himself when something out of his hands happens. Or when he made a mistake. How hard was all of that on his mental health. How obsessed he could get. And how that could send him into a spiral. You knew this was the best year at the same time it was the worst one.
When you watched him walk into the garage where you were. Your heart broke. Not because he was angry or even sad. He was playing it cool like it was not a big deal at all. So you knew how much pain he was handling.
Your eyes met after he talked to his engineers and mechanics. You were so sad this weekend. So good yet forgettable.
“Hey” he said walking to you and you just couldn’t help but dropped a few tears hugging him so tightly. You were squeezing him at some point. He let you do it. And rested his head on your neck. He fought the tears in his eyes so hard in that moment.
“I’m so proud of you. You are so strong Lando. So talented” you said now looking at him trying to repair something with your thoughts on him but knowing it won’t change anything. But you just wanted him to know he was all of that and the greatest person alive you knew. He kissed you gently.
“I love you y/n. Thank you for always supporting me” he said and gave you a kiss on the cheek giving you another hug. You didn’t say anything but hugged him tightly. After a few seconds another person joined and by the giggles he left out, you both knew it was Oscar. You two giggled a little. It was a family hug.
After that intimate little moment, the media had to be done so you had to say goodbye for a while.
(…)
After dinner with the papaya family you decided it was night in. Lando showered again because he said he had a headache. You haven’t talked about how he feels yet. You didn’t want to be invasive and more because this was a very sensitive topic to discuss. You knew he would eventually crack and talk to you. Like he always did.
You put on your pajamas and waited for him by just looking out the window at the city of São Paulo. After a few minutes la do was out. You turned to look at him. He was by his luggage wearing only a towel looking for a boxer and T-shirt. You could see his whole back. He took off the towel and put the clothes on. You looked to the bed and climbed in it waiting for him. You analyzed him one more time while he got cozy on the bed with you.
“Stop looking at me like that. I’m okay babe” he said, like reading your mind. You gave him a half smile.
“You sure? We can talk about it baby” you said softly and got closer to him so you could stroke his hair sweetly. He looked at you and nodded. But then his eyes were full of tears so he denied. Your heart sinks. “Come here my love” you said, bringing me to your chest and hugging him in a way for him to find comfort somehow. He hugged you and hid his face in your neck so you couldn’t see him. “It’s okay baby. I know it was q fucking shitty day at the office. I know how much you wanted it. And you deserve it still, baby. But life is sometimes a bitch you know? I mean the alpines got the podium” you said trying to make him feel better. He was still crying and all you could read was he tigherter his grip. “Sometimes life is a bitch to the people that don't deserve it. Amazing people who are good and so no harm but somehow get the harder life mode now and then. This makes you stronger, Lando. I know next years gonna be. You will do it. Because you can and because you want to. And that more than enough because talent you already have babe” he moved a little under your hug. You heard him giggle a little. That makes you smile a little too.
You stoked his curls gently and kissed his forehead.
“I love you and admire you so fucking much. You deserve the world and I know you will eventually get it” you told him now looking into his eyes holding his face between your hands. His face was wet and his eyes teary. Seeing him like this broke your heart in so Many pieces. But you knew he was gonna be okay. He was gonna be world champion one day.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you. I love you” he said with a shaky voice and you gave him a little kiss.
“You just did you landinho” you said sweetly making him smile and you gave him another million kisses.
——————————————————————————————-
Hope you liked it 💌 if you have any ideas my inbox is open so send your requests!
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ckret2 · 2 months ago
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What's your stance on Ford as a person? Honestly, I believe that for thr majority of canon he is a bad person. But I believe he grew. Still not great though XD
(Love him anyways obvs)
I disagree entirely! I think he's equally as good a person as any of the other main cast.*
*Except Mabel, who, as we all know, is always right about everything.**
(**This is a lighthearted joke. For the love of god, I don't want Mabel discourse in my inbox.)
His biggest sins in the show:
After telling his brother that he was thinking about changing their shared life plans, and then discovering that his brother had gone to the high school that night for no good reason and gone to the science fair for no good reason and messed around near Ford's science project for no good reason and broke it and didn't tell Ford about it... Ford believed Stan did it intentionally and held a grudge for it. You know what, it WOULD be pretty damn hard to believe it was an accident.
Hilariously ill-equipped to cope with Fiddleford's mental health. A guy who responds to "I have anxiety" with "have you tried yoga, it helps me" isn't a bad person, he's clueless. "Character cheerfully enacts a bad idea while a loved one in the background goes NO PLEASE DON'T DO THAT" describes half the episodes of Gravity Falls.
Was successfully manipulated by a professional manipulator into believing his best friend wished him ill. Man, what a terrible person Ford is for being manipulated by a manipulator and saying cruel things to somebody he'd been genuinely convinced was trying to harm him.
??? Didn't say thanks to a guy he was still mad at after the guy fixed a problem he himself had caused. This is a solitary example of stubborn bad etiquette, jesus christ. There's half a dozen different reasons why it makes perfect sense Ford wasn't in the right mindset to feel grateful, this is not something worth indicting his entire character over.
He had high ambitions, which everyone seems to lambast him for, but high ambitions that wouldn't have required doing anybody harm! (Until the professional manipulator started manipulating him into harming the people around him, but we are going to demonstrate some reading comprehension and not blame Ford's underlying morality as a person for things he never would've done if not for Bill's bullying, con artistry, and outright lies.) Like, what is it that he wanted to do with his life? Use his talents to get rich and famous? Shit, that's exactly what Stan wanted to do with his life. It's what Dipper fantasizes about doing with his life. Even Mabel, who thinks about her long-term future the least, dreams big with her art & performances and is already making big money off cheap-ass commissions. What terrible people they all are, for—let me check my notes here—uhhh... unrealistically fantasizing about achieving success in life by doing the things they're good at.
When their dad accuses Stan of lying as a child, Ford puts his entire summer on the line to defend Stan even though he knows Stan is a habitual liar and has no reason to believe Stan is telling the truth this time.
When his new college roommate he barely even knows gets laughed at for proposing an outlandish scientific theory, his first emotion is outrage at this injustice and he drops everything to convince his already-despondent roommate that he was right and help him prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
When he moves to a new town, he tries again and again to befriend his new neighbors, and fails not because he's rude or a jerk, but because he's awkward as hell, tells terrible jokes, and sucks at identifying phoenixes.
When Fiddleford gets hurt around him, he cares about it, feels guilty about putting him in that position, doesn't want it to happen again, and tries his best to help even though he's bad at helping.
When he gets kidnapped by a weird holiday folklore creature, he concludes without even thinking about it that he's now in charge of protecting and rescuing the kidnapped kids. Yeah, then he immediately starts hollering at the folklore creature for trying to impose his religious beliefs on Ford and the kids—but like, Ford was right tho, he just had bad timing.
When he discovers that the Northwest family committed atrocities against their poorer neighbors a century ago, his first instinct is to march up to their house, find the first Northwest he can locate, and give them a piece of his mind for it. Like, this won't even FIX anything. He's just THAT OUTRAGED over the injustice.
When he sees what he thinks is a fortune telling fraud conning the people, he attempts to debunk her because he's mad to see someone cheating other people with lies—and when he can't debunk her, he just leaves her alone rather than harass her about it. Typically, if assholes think somebody's doing something wrong but don't have any proof of it and fail to get proof when they look, they decide they're right anyway and keep giving that person shit. Ford doesn't give her shit. That's the opposite of an asshole move.
When he discovers his Portal To Knowledge (And Fame & Fortune) is actually a Portal To Doom (But Still Possibly Fame & Fortune, Maybe Even Godly Power), he isn't tempted for a second to keep working on it anyway. There is no moment where Bill manages to tempt him. No matter what Bill offers, no matter how long Bill offers, never, at ANY point, does Ford have a SECOND of "but what if I did make a deal with the devil?" the way so many heroes in similar situations often do.
You ever notice that? So often moral moments in the show are presented as choices the characters make. Will or won't Dipper give Bill a "puppet" in exchange for knowledge. Will or won't Stan fight a pterodactyl to protect Mabel's pig. Will or won't Mabel hand Bipper the journal. Ford is never given a "will or won't he" moment over Bill's threats, offers of friendship, or offers of infinite power—he steamrolls straight past them without a second of consideration—because, to him, the selfish, cowardly, easy choice ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION. He doesn't even SEE it as making a choice because the possibility of doing the wrong thing is invisible. A character who wavers first before turning Bill down would look more noble for "overcoming" temptation—it's harder to notice just how much stronger Ford's moral compass must be to not even feel temptation in the first place.
Greed and pride never tempt him to join Bill's side. Exhaustion, despair, and fear never tempt him to give up. He bears up under weeks, possibly months of extreme sleep deprivation, physical torture, psychological torture, emotional torture, threats of death, threats of brainwashing, threats to his family. He doesn't hold up so that he can pat himself on the back for being a hero—if that was all it was he would've gone "screw it, this isn't worth it and nobody would know I'm the one who gave up" a week in—he does it because he simply knows it must be done and because he's so isolated (half because of Bill's influence!) that he believes he's the one who must do it, all alone.
Thinking he has to do it by himself isn't egotism or pride; it's helplessness. He thinks no one else stands a chance. He thinks he's alone.
And, when he discovers his Portal To Knowledge is a Portal To Doom, he immediately feels guilty. No trying to deny the situation to protect his ego. No shuffling the blame off to someone else. No "maybe the apocalypse could have a silver lining!" No locking the door and trying to ignore the problem. He blames himself for being fooled—he IMMEDIATELY takes full responsibility for his actions—and he CONTINUES to take responsibility FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS.
He takes more responsibility than is even warranted—he treats himself like he's an idiot for believing in an APPARENT GOD who's been practicing manipulating humans for thousands of years and who had never given Ford reason to believe the portal was anything but what Bill said it was. He beats himself up to no end every single time his past with Bill comes up. He even keeps beating himself up thirty years later when he's shoving warning notes to future readers in Bill's evil unkillable book!
When he falls into the multiverse, he dedicates his entire life NOT to finding a way to rescue himself, but to finding a way to permanently stop the CHAOS GOD who's still at the threshold of destroying Ford's world and countless others. He makes himself a hated criminal in the process, just to stop Bill. He's ready to spend the rest of his life trying to protect a world he doesn't think he'll ever see again. He does it because, as he sees it, somebody has to stand in between the children and the obnoxious folklore cryptid menacing them, and he's the only adult in this damn cave with the skills and knowledge for the job.
When he gets home, he doesn't tell his family about Bill and his quest because he's afraid that doing so will get them involved and endanger them too—and because he's too deeply ashamed of himself and his mistakes to stand the thought of his family knowing about the horrible things he's done (AGAIN, WHILE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE GOD OF MANIPULATION).
He loves his great-niece and great-nephew the second he lays eyes on them; he nevertheless tries to steer away from them to keep them safe from Bill; and yet he caves to the very first temptation to emotionally bond with his great-nephew he gets, because in spite of his noble "keep them safe" intentions, he wants so so badly to be close to his family.
As pissed as he still is at Stan and even though neither of them can look at each other without hissing like cats, he still makes an attempt to start bridging their divide by inviting him to play DD&MD.
When the apocalypse happens, he immediately puts his life on the line to try to kill Bill.
And when he's captured, isn't fazed for a second by Bill's offers or threats... until his family is threatened. The exact thing he'd been trying to avoid & prevent from the very start.
And when he's reunited with Fiddleford, his immediate reaction is to point out that Fiddleford's well within his rights to hate him—which isn't a new revelation, it's not like Ford had to do any soul-searching to reach this conclusion, he'd concluded that 30 years ago the instant he realized Bill had played him and that he'd been lied to about Fiddleford.
And then he tries to kill Bill again.
And then he's ready to sacrifice his own life to kill Bill—and the only reason he doesn't is because he has a metal plate preventing him from making the sacrifice... but, Stan doesn't have a plate. If Ford hadn't had the metal plate, he would have gladly done the exact same thing Stan did—and he would have thought it was right for him and only him to make that sacrifice, because it's VERY clear he feels (and has felt from the start) that this is all his fault and he's obligated to fix it.
Over and over and over, these are Ford's two defining character traits: getting so pissed off at injustice that his common sense shuts off and he goes into terminator mode until he's righted this wrong as best he can, even when he can't actually do anything about it; and feeling like he's Atlas, weighed down with the full responsibility of fixing everything he's done wrong and made to believe that, for everyone else's sake, he has to do it all alone. Even when doing so puts himself in harm's way, even when he has to put his entire life on hold for it, even if it might cost him his life. Scrape off his awkward social skills, his loneliness, his nerdiness, his endless curiosity, his zealous love of the strange, his starry ambitions, his yearning for recognition and success—scrape his personality down to the bone and that's what you're left with. A man who believes in defending the exploited so strongly that it makes him a little stupid.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you probably don't think Stan's fundamentally a bad person, and that you probably think that isn't even worth questioning. Stan's made a whole career out of swindling people, conning them out of as much money as he possibly can, stealing, lying, committing a long list of goofily-named crimes, and attempting douchy pick-up artistry on women; and to cap it all off, he held the safety of the entire universe hostage to demand a goddamn "thank you." Don't send me any "But he had reasons—" "But it was only to—" I don't need it, I don't want the essay, I'm not arguing that Stan's a bad guy, it's fine.
But. You can look at Stan's moments of cruelty and unkindness, his uncharitable thoughts, his character flaws, and think, "that doesn't define him. He's more than his cruelest moments and worst mistakes. He's imperfect, but he cares so much and his heart's in the right place, and beneath all the flaws his core is good."
And if you can't do the same for Ford, it's not because he's a worse person. It's because we got two seasons with Stan and five and a half episodes with Ford—and while we saw Stan yearning to fish with the kids or encouraging Mabel to whoop Pacifica's butt at minigolf or crying over a black and white period drama or punching zombies to save his family, we only saw Ford at the worst moments in his life and under the stress of a prolonged apocalyptic crisis—and, it so happens, all the moments he was pissed at the guy we spent two seasons learning to love.
Ford's got moments of cruelty and unkindness, uncharitable thoughts, and character flaws. But, at his core, he's a good person, and he always has been, and he still is.
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