#Vaseline is even worse

[symbioticsimplicity]

They should invent a lotion that isn't Gross.

[imfinereallyy]

any color looks good on you

for @spoookysix who requested fluff, and I will never deny them anything.

“I can’t believe this.” Eddie groaned as he banged his head against Robin’s bathroom counter.

“What? It looks good!” Robin pushed her hands through Eddie’s hair, the tips of her fingernails stained red. She was trying to fix the mess Eddie made, pulling his own hands away from yanking any hair out.

“Robin, the box said blue! This is so very clearly not blue! It’s red!” Eddie spun around to look at her. He expected her laughter or even a grimace at his new look, but instead, she simply had on her “you’re an idiot” look.

It was a special look she reserved for only Steve and Eddie.

“First off, did you bother checking the dye before you bought the box? People just switch it sometimes.”

“Well—“ Eddie was prepared to lie, but one scathing look from the lanky girl stopped him in his tracks. “—no.”

Robin tsked, “Classic dying one-oh-one, always check the box.”

“Get off your high horse, Robbie; what do you know?”

“Clearly my ‘you’re an idiot’ face wasn’t enough—“ Eddie knew the look was special “—you’re an idiot, Munson.”

“Hey!”

Robin rolled her eyes and pushed on. “You literally came to me for a reason, as I have experience in the at-home dye process. As you can tell from the lovely highlights I gave myself.” She fluffed her shoulder-length hair, clearly impressed with herself.

“It still looks terrible.”

“Jesus, Eddie. You’re such a drama queen. It looks great! Besides, it's not like you bleached it; your hair is just tinted red. You look hot."

"Says the lesbian!"

Robin looked like she was about to protest until a sudden noise came from the living room.

"Robs! I'm home! I got the Vaseline you asked for, which I still don't understand what you need for." Steve's voice echoed throughout the apartment.

Robin got a wicked grin on her face, one Eddie had never seen before. It was worse than her idiot face. "Well, if my lesbianism offends you so greatly, why don't we get someone who's more your style? Hmmmm?"

Eddie scrambled after Robin, who was already wrenching the door wide open, "No, please. Robin, I'm sorry! I won't ever question you again!"

It was too late; Robin was a woman on a mission. "Oh, Steven dear! Would you please make your way to the bathroom? I want your opinion on something."

Eddie debated making a break for it through the window. His hopes were destroyed seconds after when he remembered they were on the third floor.

Steve sighed, but his footsteps approached the bathroom. "Not even my name, Robin. And I swear if you are asking me if you have a mustache again, I will—" Steve stopped at the sight of Eddie. Silence filled the room as he stared.

Maybe Eddie could survive with a broken foot.

Robin pinched Eddie when she noticed his line of sight. "Ow! This is homophobia!"

Eddie's yelling seemed to snap Steve out of it. "New hair?" He hadn't moved from his spot in the entryway, seemingly rooted to place. A faint blush dusted his cheeks as he eyed Eddie.

Eddie pulled a piece of hair in front of his mouth, suddenly nervous. "Yeah, it—uh—it looks silly, I know. The box said blue, and it was supposed to make the black deeper, and someone switched the dye—"

"Can I get a closer look?" Steve interrupts.

"What?" Eddie startled.

This time, Steve stepped forward, placing himself in Eddie's space. His fingers brushed the hair out of Eddie's hands to behind his ear. "Do you mind if I...?"

Eddie nodded frantically as all words escaped him.

Steve's thumb brushed Eddie's cheekbone, a gentle rhythm to soothe him. Steve moved his hand into Eddie's curls, never once breaking eye contact. "Pretty."

It was Eddie's turn to blush, "Tha—thanks. I am, uh, know it's strange."

As Steve hummed, Eddie could hear Robin fake gagging in the background. Eddie kicked her shin. "Sure, it could be strange. But I think that's fitting for you. Besides, I think any color would look nice on you. This one is especially gorgeous, though." Steve's hand lingered on the back of Eddie's neck as he stroked his hair.

Eddie was going to pass out. "Really?"

"Yea, Eds. You're always beautiful."

The two stared for a moment, lost in each other. Eddie wondered if this moment meant something. The glimmer in Steve's eye told him yes.

A throat cleared behind them, "As lovely and obviously very straight as this moment is, are you over your breakdown now? Can I go study?"

Steve laughed but didn't let go of the back of Steve's neck, the moment not quite as broken as Eddie thought it would be.

"Yea, Robs, go study. Think I'm going to braid Eddie's new hair for him."

Eddie was sure his cheeks matched his hair, red and blotchy. Steve seemed to like them both, though, so he made sure not to complain again.

"Disgusting." Robin pushed her way through the both of them, throwing an "A thank you would be nice!" over her shoulder.

"Thank you, Robin!" Eddie shouted, eyes never leaving Steve.

Steve tugged on a curl and grinned, "Yea, thanks, bobby!"

**

[luigiblood]

Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.

[intotheelliwoods]

May have gone a little overboard with this ask hahahahaaaa... @wakerrife

If you are asking how to write ports from a story perspective:

Ports/prosthetics are still under lots of development in real life, which leaves such a big fantasy element to them for starters! Theres no right or wrong way to entirely depict them in stories you know? So theres my first advice, write them in a way that ties in to the theme of your story!

Slapping some good old FMA comparisons here since I saw you were a fan!

In FMA, when attaching the actual arm to the port its depicted as a very painful process that totally just takes the wind out of you for a while. This is since the whole motivation of that story is to retain the flesh arm back, shoving in your face how painful the ordeal is drives that motivation home and so that writing style makes complete sense!

In 2AL meanwhile, the whole story is about acceptance, therefore I opted not to have the whole ordeal of attaching/detaching the arm be a painful process. I wanted to drive home the idea that its is completely alright and normal for Leo to have a robot arm, as an every day painless thing just like a regular arm, and so my opting for it indeed being painless helped drive that theme of acceptance home

Meanwhile if you are asking from a more medical perspective:

I am going to be flat out honest and say I am pulling half of this out of my ass hahhaaa, apologies I have no resources since I did not put in much research! Most of what I say just comes from background knowledge, but hey do give me some slack here, I am a biology student who is still learning!

Although most of my inspiration for care and all, I actually loosely based off infected ear piercings believe it or not! For example, did you know if an earring gets too badly infected and is not removed in time, the ear can start re-growing around the piercing and just sorta,,, consume it?? Its entirely possible for nearly any foreign implant to get rejected by a body and I find that concept so cool. So hey there is food for thought, if you dont properly take care of a prosthetic port skin can start growing over it! Or the body can reject it!

I do have some more thoughts regarding care and such that ive been thinking about as of late if you happen to be interested, who knows maybe something can inspire you!

Make sure the skin directly touching the metal doesnt dry up! Since the skin there is used to being fully enclosed by a warm shoulder, not thinned out and pressed against metal! Its easy for the skin to start drying and cracking around there. Preventing it from doing that can be done easily by just using a q-tip or your finger and rubbing vaseline or lotion of some kind around the skin. Reason you dont want it to dry up and crack would be since the cracks can crawl further up the shoulder and tear perfectly fine skin, which would definitely get irritating after a long while if your whole shoulder ended up just being decked in scabs. Even worse of one of the splits in the skin got infected. No one wants an infected port just like no one wants an infected ear piercing.

Be sure to clean the area where the skin and metal actually meet! Same reason as above, you do not want an infected port! An infected port can potentially lead to a rejected port which is never a good thing! Cleaning it meanwhile usually looks like taking a toothpick soaked in hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol, and scraping out dirt/germs from the slim space in between the skin and metal, this is so the skin there doesnt grow over whatever gunk may be there and cause infection.

Make sure the inside of the port itself stays relatively clean! Clean out grime and gunk! Make it so the arm can actually fit into the port! The arm cannot fit into the port if you have 2 inches of mud stuck inside the rod, or meddled in the ratchet system, or whatever fantasy cool system you have! If you try and fit an arm into a port with stuff all up inside it you could potentially break the arm! Or if it doesnt break then overall quality would definitely be lowered through the more funked up movements trying their best when covered in stuff! Anyways cleaning the port itself depends on what materials you have half the time, looks different for different people ig!

Oh and reasons no one wants an infected port:

The slim chance the body just starts rejecting the port and trying to force it out

The slim chance that if the port was not put in correctly/out far enough from the body, the body will start trying to regrow around the port

The fact that infections are extremely painful especially in such a large surface area in comparison to just an ear

If the infection pain was not enough, adding a massive metal arm that pulls on the skin would be even more painful

Would also want to add that if your body rejects the port, its a god awful experience. Rejection means that your body tries to push the port itself out of the body, a very painful experience, it usually does this by growing in such a way that puts force to sorta try and pop the port out. Issue is, the port is very much bolted down via ball joints onto the shoulder blade and collar bone, and so the flesh that grows under it to push it out ends up just gushing out the sides of the port as gross as it sounds. Its a really nasty experience. So without help via surgery to remove the port, have fun being in agony the rest of your life! If this happens and you do manage to remove the port, you would have to undergo waiting for the shoulder to heal up again before even daring to put in the port once again. Should also note that this can only be done so many times, since with each surgery to remove and install, more and more excess flesh gets cut of, until you may eventually reach a point where there is not even enough healthy flesh to sustain the port any longer.

Hope some of this was helpful!! Oops I had too much fun writing this up!

More asks under the cut!

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@archieagain AOSDJNOSDFJKF HII HELLO!!! IM ELLIWOODS!!! I DONT KNOW!!!! have a great day you made my week btw <3 <3

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@gemini-forest everyone.. everyone point and laugh at the typo everyone!!!!! giggles!!!!!!

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@snipersiniora 2 Left Arms my favorite fanfic ever!!!!!

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@skylabrea Annnddd bookmarked for later! :) Thank you so much!!!

[goofyahhchicken]

Blankets ~ Gideon Graves/Gordon Goose x Sick!Julie Powers fanfic

cw: sickness (flu), Gideon Graves, Julie Powers, hugs!

very fluffy fic be prepared

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Gordon dragged his feet off the couch, he felt an immense craving for some sort of fast food. His girlfriend, Julie would still usually be doing her hair at the bathroom sink at this time in the morning, so he seized the opportunity to politely ask for food.

“Julesss!!!” he whined, “can you order me a Burger King pleaseeeee???”

No response.

“Weird..” he loudly exclaimed, he didn’t expect Julie to say yes, she usually would tell him to leave her alone, (but still get it for him.) so he decided to check on her and shuffled to her bedroom.

There lied a shivering Julie wrapped up in a plentiful of blankets. Her headphones were in, but Gideon could hear whatever she was playing as she had her music on ear-damaging volume.

“Jules, what’s wrong?”

He gently tapped Julie’s shoulder, she quivered and slowly cranked her head around and took her headphones off. Her lips and nose were red, puffy and smothered with vaseline.

“What… the f*ck do you want Gordon?”

His eyes were fixed on hers, he gently stroked Julie’s cheek.

“I’m so sorry Jules, I had no idea you were sick..” he mumbled. Julie’s gaze softened, her cheeks which were already red due to the cold turned crimson.

“Can you c-call Stacey and say i’m sick..? If she yells at me tell her to give me a f*cking break! o-ok” She whispered through chattering teeth.

“Right-o!” Gordon excitedly responded, a day off with his semi(?) girlfriend felt like a miracle considering Lucas Lee had already ditched him. Things got lonely around the house, and Julie had stopped paying for Gordon’s crunchy roll subscription which only made things worse.

After Gordon said Julie would be absent from work he hung up the phone, he did not want to tell Julie that Stacey (unsurprisingly) was unhappy with her sick leave so he decided to stop the conversation before it got to that level.

“Ba-ack!” He sang.

“W-what did she say?” Julie croaked,

“That she hopes you get better soon~” Gordon was obviously lying out of his teeth, and Julie knew that; however, she thought it was kinda cute so she played along.

“I’m gonna go make some special soup for you, my mom’s remedy to any flu!” He geeked. Julie hummed in agreement back, wrapping yet another layer of blankets around her.

After many fire alarms and weird scents, Gordon came up with a tray which entailed grilled cheese, orange juice and a very obviously tinned tomato soup. Julie chuckled to herself and ate up, Gordon watched her the entire time with content.

When Julie was finished, she and her cocoon of blankets rolled over on the bed to face Gordon, who was grabbing a blanket from a drawer. He slowly snuggled up beside Julie who was thankful for the heat. They sat in silence, staring at eachother longingly.

Julie eventually looked down in disgust, “I wish you didn’t see me like this, i look like a zombie..” she groaned, Gordon was shocked by this sudden statement that it took him a while to compute it.

“I DONT THINK YOU’RE A ZOMBIE!” he exploded. Julie laughed out of shock, gobsmacked by the volume and severity of Gordon’s statement. “And even if you were a zombie, WHICH YOU ARENT! you would be the most beautiful zombie in the world.” he ranted.

“Can i have another blanket, Gordon?” Julie asked softly, as her eyes met his again.

“Of course!”

He slowly got up and reached for another blanket, then wrapped it around Julie. He pulled both ends of the blanket towards him on the bed, moving Her closer, then latched his arms onto her; after a while of Julie being warmed by the blankets and Gordon, she drifted off to sleep.

Gordon watched her eyes flutter and listened to her breathing becoming slower, he then took off her glasses and placed them beside his on the cabinet.

“Goodnight my love.”

A/N: my requests are open now, so are my rules so check them out before requesting!

[pollenallergie]

Eddisms

The much more aptly named sequel to “Eddie-isms”

As always these hc are miscellaneous and not in any particular order. Enjoy!

best friend!Eddie masterlist

reblogs are most appreciated!! :)

taglist: @gaysludge @heavymetalbabyy @luvrsbian @munsonology @tayhar811 @stolen-in-moonlight

Eddie is so insufferably loud in every single thing he does. It’s honestly a mystery how he managed to sneak up on Chrissy because that man can be heard from miles away. He’s so heavy-footed when he walks that it rattles the trailer a little bit from time to time. Nothing about that man is deft or graceful. <3

He snores and I mean SNORES. He always has, even as a little kid. At first, his snoring scared the crap out of Wayne, but now it’s just sort of become background ambience for his uncle. Wayne almost finds it reassuring, in a way; at least Eddie’s breathing, right? <3

Despite what Dustin says, Eddie has a very short temper. Granted, it takes a lot for him to get truly angry, but it doesn’t take much at all to get him cranky. In fact, Eddie’s just as much of a mean girl as Steve. Though he lacks Harrington’s resting bitch face, he’s absolutely just as bitchy. <3

Eddie’s always been obsessed with cars, but not in the way you might think. He doesn’t really give a shit about the typical sports cars or anything like that, what he finds the most fascinating are the niche, funky-looking cars. Citicars, Firebirds, Scarabs, he loves ‘em all. He’s especially a fan of station wagons and vans, probably because those were the kind of cars your mom always drove. His favorite of all time has to be the 1948 Tasco because it combines his favorite types of cars; weird looking ones and vans. He won’t ever admit it to anyone but you and Wayne, but he also really likes pick-up trucks; specifically the old, somewhat worn ones like Wayne used to have. <3

Eddie definitely had race-car bed sheets growing up. Honestly, he still uses them in the winter because they’re a lot warmer than his usual sheets. <3

He asked Santa for a race-car bed for six years in a row. For his ninth birthday, he finally got one. Though it was a hand-me-down from your older brother, he loved it like it was brand new. <3

As kids, you and Eddie used to “rescue” (kidnap) wild turtles and beg your mom and Wayne to let you keep them. <3

When he was six, Eddie got kicked out of little league baseball for mooning the umpire. </3

Eddie doesn’t use 3-in-1 shampoo, he does something way worse. He uses Irish Spring on every square inch of his body; hair included. His scalp is practically pleading for death at this point. <3

Eddie doesn’t see the point in using lotion, so he simply doesn’t. The most he’ll do is use vaseline on his lips when they get all dry and cracked in the winter. <3

Eddie’s routine is so simplistic that it’s really not much of a routine at all and, yet, it takes him nearly an hour to get ready every morning. Does that at all make sense? No. Nothing about this man makes sense, he’s an enigma, a silly lil enigma. Well, not so much of an enigma… The reason it takes him so long to get ready is because he moves like a sloth in the morning, getting ready in 0.25x speed due to his residual sleepiness. <3

Eddie watched Zardoz and made it his entire personality for like two years. Seriously, he quoted it non-stop for two years straight. <3

Eddie has a thing about toenails. Not feet in general, just toenails. They absolutely disgust him. He gags every time he cuts his own toenails. So, yeah, Eddie’s the kinda man to chew with his mouth open and belch in your face just for shits and gigs, but cower in fear when he’s faced with a human toenail. <3

I know I already said that Eddie cries when he watches emotional movies (The Color Purple, Old Yeller, etc.), but here’s the thing about Eddie… He’ll sob like a baby while watching those movies, sure, but while he’s actively sobbing he’s also making fun of you for doing the exact same thing. He’s like “You’re such a crybaby. *sniffle* It’s not even that sad. *sniffle, sniffle* God, who cries during the happy parts of movies?? *sob*” <3

Eddie used to steal your clothes so much that eventually you just cleared out a drawer in your dresser and filled it with clothes that you were willing to share with him. Of course, your clothes are too big for such a lithe lil stringbean like Eddie, but he still loves wearing them. You don’t mind much, though, because you get to reap the benefit of your comfiest t-shirts and sweatpants smelling like Eddie. <3

In direct response to you making a drawer for him in your dresser, Eddie went out, bought a bunch of comfy clothes in your size from Goodwill, and filled a drawer of his dresser with them, that way you’d both have drawers of shareable clothes at your respective homes. <3

One time Eddie walked into the living room wearing a baby pink t-shirt with some CareBears and a vibrant rainbow printed on the front, and Wayne almost keeled over from laughing so hard. His amusement was doubled when he noticed the matching pastel scrunchie in his nephew’s hair, something Eddie had also “borrowed” from you. <3

Eddie’s weirdly into soap operas, especially Dynasty. The man loves Dynasty. However, he’ll only watch soap operas when he’s high because he thinks it makes for a better viewing experience. <3

Eddie never wears boxers underneath his sweatpants nor under his pajama pants. Why? Because he’s a whore. Because he firmly believes that you should only wear underwear with uncomfy pants (for example, jeans) and that cozy pants do not warrant underwear; it’s just a waste of good, clean boxers to wear them beneath sweatpants and pajama pants. <3

All of Eddie’s shirts are either just a bit too tight or entirely too big for him. This man does not know his real shirt size. <3

Eddie does not wash his feet when he showers. He also rarely washes his arms or legs. He feels that you really only need to wash the “essential” parts when you shower; the essential parts being his armpits and naughty bits. <3

Eddie once got you a purse for your birthday… sort of. Really he just haphazardly sewed one of the straps from his backpack onto an old, cloth sack and painted the words “Miguel Cores” on the front of it. It actually works really well as a reusable grocery bag for all of your nonperishables. <3

Eddie’s right eye gets all twitchy after sleepless nights. The boys always see it and think that he’s pissed off about something, but really the sweet man just needs his rest. <3

Eddie sucks at holding grudges. I’m not kidding, the man is genuinely horrible at holding grudges, mostly because he often forgets about whatever has happened within a few days; his anger vanishing along with the memory of what’s transpired. Case in point, you both had a severe falling out during the summer before your freshman year, which ended up in the two of you being at odds for two whole years. Or, rather, it ended up in you being mad at him for nearly two years. Eddie, however, consistently kept forgetting that you were mad at him during that time. In fact, he would often approach you in the halls of Hawkin’s High so that he could banter with you like he had in middle school, only to be reminded of your steadfast dislike of him by your short responses, refusal to meet his gaze, tense posture, and clipped tone. </3

He chews his gum like a cow munches on grass, just annoyingly loud and with his lips constantly smacking together. <3

Eddie’s fancy, old-fashioned silver lighter -the only good thing he ever got from his shitty old man- also doubles as his preferred fidget toy. The man always needs to have something to do with his hands. <3

He’s a wizard with some sidewalk chalk. It used to drive you crazy as a kid because he would always do these really detailed drawings with the crumbly chalk that your mom got from the dollar store, meanwhile you were always just stuck writing your name or drawing hearts and stick figures. <3

At 10 years old, Eddie invented his own language while cooped up in the back seat of his uncle’s car on an annoyingly long summer road trip to Myrtle Beach. He hasn’t taught the language to anyone, not even to you, but sometimes you’ll hear him mumble things to himself in his strange tongue. You, Wayne, and your mom have picked up on the meanings behind certain words and phrases over the years, simply because he uses them so frequently, but other than that, it’s mostly gibberish to the three of you. <3

Eddie spent a solid two months trying to convince his elementary school crush that he was, in fact, Mick Jagger. He even nailed the Mockney accent from listening to his radio interviews. Unfortunately, they weren’t buying it. <3

Eddie refuses to touch you when/if you’re wearing anything made out of velvet simply because the feeling of velvet makes his skin crawl. So, no hugs, no playful wrestling, and absolutely no cuddles while you’re wearing velvet. <3

In the summer of ‘85, Eddie won a goldfish at one of the carnival games at the local fair and named him Tater Tot, but he knew that he couldn’t afford all the stuff the little guy needed to stay alive, so he gave him away to some little girl that had been trying to win one of her own for nearly an hour. <3

Let’s be real here for a second: Eddie’s not straight. Actually, due to a lack of terminology available to him, Eddie doesn’t really know what he is. He knows that he likes women, he knows that he likes men, and he knows that he likes people who are neither women nor men, but, given that it’s the 80s and he lives in rural Indiana, he’s not really sure if there’s a word for that. Truthfully, he’s not really sure if anyone else in the world even feels the same way that he does. Obviously, there are tons of people out there with the same sexual orientation as him, but, fuck, he doesn’t know that. When he was much, much younger he felt incredibly isolated and insecure about his sexuality, but as he’s grown up he’s become less unsure of himself and more accepting of his sexual orientation. Of course, he still likes to keep a low profile, at least when it comes to his sexuality, because, as I said, it is the 80s and he does, indeed, live in rural Indiana. However, he’s at least become confident enough to come out to his closest friends and family. Hence, the rainbow mug in the Munsons’ famous mug collection. <3

Eddie’s a crafty lil goblin, he loves to craft. Papier-mâché, fuck yeah. Hot glue, hell fuckin’ yeah. In fact, many of the props in the theatre room were crafted by Eddie during his time at Hawkins High. Even after he stopped doing theatre, he still always volunteered to help the drama club set up for their performances and craft their props. <3

“But why did he quit theatre?” one may ask. Well, there was the Great Egg Incident of ‘82, in which a bunch of upperclassmen (mostly jocks) literally threw eggs at the drama club during their spring production of Guys and Dolls. More specifically, their onslaught began right as Eddie began uttering his most iconic line in the show, “Nicely, nicely, thank you,” so Eddie, understandably, took that pretty personally. As a result, he left the drama club at the end of sophomore year and, instead, opted to focus all of his creative energy on the hellfire club. </3

You and Eddie took the same art class senior year and it was honestly one of the only classes he passed that year. Every Friday, you guys had to turn in a weekly sketch for that class and his favorite one that he’d done was of you; he’d drawn it while you were working on homework together at the picnic table near his trailer. At the end of the year, he’d asked the teacher for it back so that he could keep it. <3

Eddie’s a massive worrywart when it comes to the people he loves, that’s especially true when it comes to you. <3

Eddie once risked further social ostracism to help you take the little kids you babysit to Build-A-Bear when Starcourt Mall first opened up. In the end, you rewarded him by making him a stuffed animal of his own, a spotted dog named Ozzy who’s adorned in the most metal (or metal-adjacent) outfit Build-A-Bear had to offer. Perhaps that shouldn’t have been so rewarding for a 19 year old guy, but 1) he’d never really had many toys growing up, at least none quite as nice and soft as Ozzy the Dog, and 2) watching you kiss the little cloth heart before gently stuffing it inside the toy did funny little things to his supposedly cynical heart. He’ll never admit it, but he sleeps with that stuffed dog far more than a guy his age probably should. <3

Although Eddie never makes his own bed, he’ll gladly help you make yours because he knows that fitted sheets are the bane of your existence. <3

[mchlgayser]

EXPOSED?! ft michael kaiser ✮

synopsis: after a long week of important tournaments, you can finally have your boyfriend all to yourself but not without the paps 😤

warning: random quick escalation, slight hurt/comfort, mention of panic attack (not proofread) tq.

nana's note: HEYCHEYHEY BITCHES BESTIES! im back hehehehehe, how are y'all????? im good tho ik no one asks i just thought i would inform y'all about it 😹 im back with another not so good fic (no pun intended) rotflmao hope you guys have fun reading, happy reading mwahh!! (reblogs or comments are very much appreciated xoxo) tq.

You are in the bathroom doing your hair and face routine and getting ready. The door creaks open while you are applying moisturizer and you see your boyfriend standing by the doorframe, hand crossing while he looks down on you with a small grin "Hey, mein liebe." You look at him with a furrowed brow "What do you want?" He chuckles, snaking arms around your midsection.

"Do I need a reason to be sweet to you, Liebling?" You scoff "Yes, it's usually because you need something so what is it?" His smug grin to a frowny pout "That's not true! ...Actually, it is cuz' I wanna being you out on a date-"

"No." He started to whine, burying his face on the crook of your neck "Why not?" You put on your Vaseline lip balm and sigh "You know why... Kaiser, I don't plan on getting caught by your fans again, worse, not by the paparazzi."

He groans into your neck "I promise I will be more secretive this time. Come on," You bite your lip in anxiousness "I'm not sure Besides we aren't even in Germany, and I don't wanna get caught by your fans in this country. They are known to be your most fanatic, and obsessive fanbase." He laughed, head throwing back a little "I promise I'll be secretive. I super promise."

You roll your eyes at him "...Fine but just this once, okay?" He nodded clinging on to you and peppering your face with kisses.

After some time, Michael hop into the shower cubicle and you left to get ready.

You put on your most promising top and bottom. You did your hair, put on your make-up to dolled up a bit. Kaiser got out of the bathroom, groping your ass lightly before tuning his way to the closet room.

"Where are we going?" Kaiser turns to you for a brief second "It's a surprise, remember?" You roll your eyes at him again "So cliche. We've been together for three years and this is only your fourth time surprising me but let me remind you, the rest of the three didn't end well."

He laughs, looking at you gleefully "So only four times surprises is understandable, no?" You snort, humming even though you are not that agree with him.

Kaiser stops by a fine dining restaurant and then turns to you. You look at him with wide eyes "You-" He chuckles, looking at you and unbuckling his belt "I made a reservation. You don't wanna waste my money now, do you?" You bit your lips, looking at him with angry eyes "I hate you."

You get out of the car and Kaiser hands his key to the valet guy. He swoops an arm around you with a smug smile "Let's just enjoy our time, okay?" Two doormen that stand by the entrance open the door for you both.

A host came by to you and Kaiser asking for your reservation name "I put it under the name Kaiser." The male host nodded and led you to your table. It's on the second floor of the restaurant whereas most of the table is designed in private rooms. You tread on the imperial staircase to your table and sit with Kaiser.

The host handed you both menus "Would you like anything from the bar, sir and ma'am?" Kaiser hums "Yeah, we'll have your finest- No, second finest wine." The host nods, bowing down before leaving the room.

You look around the room. The panel window is adorned with curtains but is withdrawn able you to look out at the night city and the busy roads "Just how much money you've wasted for all of this?" He simply shrugs, palm prodding under his chin while he looks at you "Not much, barely 0.001% of my net worth."

You scoff at him "You brag too much." He pouts, "You know nothing is too much for you, mein liebe." You shake your head at him "Still, we can just go somewhere less lavish than this."

"Yeah, we can but I don't want to cuz' you deserve the best out of the best." You were about to argue again before the host came with your wine and a bucket of ice.

"May I take your orders now?" Kaiser looks at you before nodding "Yeah, I'll have your Lobster pasta and this sweet lady here will have..."

You can get comfortable after some time and manage to prop a conversation with your boyfriend whilst you two eat. The night and date ended smoothly until you were about to head out. As soon as you two got out, flashes of cameras and chaos tending.

People started to swarm in right by the entrance of the restaurant aching to get near you but more importantly Kaiser. Paparazzi began to circle your forms flooding you with questions in their language to which you do not understand. Kaiser is trying to pry you two off but they're so persistent.

To make matters worse, there are a few of his fanatic fanbase - no matter what gender but they just started flooding forward to get in touch with Kaiser. A few even dare to throw comments randomly about you.

"Hey, please step off. You are interrupting my girlfriend's space." He commanded but they didn't seem to budge. Your head had started to feel heavy, chest tightened and breath quickens. You look up Kaiser for help and he nods almost immediately "Please step away, everyone!"

After what seemed like an eternity, guards started to appear and help push people and give you some space. Kaiser immediately took the chance to bring you inside the car and drove off.

You are getting ready for bed, lying down as you wait for Kaiser to come. Speak of the Devil, he swings the door open and turns to you "I made a call to the restaurant. They said they'll investigate as to how the paparazzi and my fans knew about us being there." You hum, sitting up and head resting on the bedrest "It can be a coincidence, you know? Maybe someone saw us and leaked it on the internet?"

"Or maybe the staff that knew we were there leaked it!" He assumed "Stop with the shenanigans. The restaurant is for high-status people and I'm sure the policy is right. The staff must've known the consequences of leaking the customer's information especially a famous person like you." He grunts, plopping beside you on the bed "Well, who gives a damn about that anyway? All that matter is now we are home and you are fine and whoever fucker that did this, intentionally or not, I'm going to sue them." He mused, tucking himself under the duvet beside you.

He linked his tattooed arm around you and kissed your cheek "I'm sorry, mein liebe. Next time, I promise we'll be more private-"

"Oh, shut up!" He laughs.

[manicplank]

So your 4 years free of Self harm right? I was just wondering if you could tell a teen friend of yours on how to stop and prevent self harm? Hehe :[

- The chaotic Grimlen you know your moots with

small TW for this one

answering this as an ask, just in case other people need to hear advice like this. (if you're not comfortable with it, lmk and I'll take it down and dm you the tips instead.)

So it's hard for me to put it into words but I'll try my best!

My best tip is to find a completely different coping skill. Find something that brings comfort and releases endorphins/dopamine. Stims help a LOT!!! My favorite is to rub a soft blanket until my hand tingles. I also just feel things in my hand (example: I have a fidget cube that I don't use often, but I'll just kind of play with it absently and feel the shape).

CRYING IS THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO!!! Crying is the best way to release negative emotions! Don't be afraid to sob into a pillow. It seems bad, but it's actually a REALLY good coping skill.

I've gotten to a point where when I'm having a meltdown or breakdown, I don't even consider SH. It took a while for me to get there.

For me, SH was temporary relief but invoked more stress anxiety afterward, so keep in mind that it absolutely makes things worse!!! I still look at my scars with regret.

Whatever you're going through WILL get better! It always will, and it always does! I know that sounds cheesy, and everybody says it, but it's true! If I could go back and tell that to my 14 year old self, I think she'd be happy.

It's okay to not be okay. Just remember to take care of yourself. Finding comfort when you're feeling down is the best thing you can do. Whether it be a blanket, a stuffed animal, or a person, it helps so so so much!!!

Almost baby yourself in a way. When people cry, especially with meltdowns or breakdowns, they revert to a childish state of mind, often wanting to be held, comforted, etc. Thing is, it isn't childish. It's normal.

Don't judge yourself when you're upset. Don't judge yourself for crying. You're gonna think all sorts of bad things about yourself, but don't believe it!

Oh, and when you cry a lot, remember to drink a lot of water! If your face gets chapped from rubbing your tears, Vaseline will help that without burning your dry skin. Another thing I like to do after a good cry is use an ice pack on my face. It's soooo soothing.

This was a super long read, but I hope it helps!

[klapollo]

here's what you're gonna do. as the temperature gets low you start buying chapstick. you buy one anywhere you see them -- a drugstore, ulta, the supermarket. they cost a buck and change individually. buy whatever flavor you want, there are five thousand of em. marshmallow and cake batter are really good. buy em individually or in multipacks. you get a veritable weapons stockpile of chapstick. then you disperse. one in a pocket of each coat you wear in the winter. one in each bag you take out. one by your bed, one in your locker at work. let no crevice of your life be without a lip balm within arm's reach. if one goes missing, replace it immediately or they will all begin to disappear one by one because that is the nature of those wily things. do not get caught unawares. there are few pains in this life worse than having your lips be dry and sore with nothing to soothe them. heed my words. yes you can substitute burts bees or vaseline or whatever but for the love of God do not even entertain buying that eos shit i dont care how pretty it looks. i say this for your own good. be well.

[peterhollandkait]

Everything I Know Leads Me Back to You - Prelude

If You See the Shell That's Left of Me

Pairing: eventual Frankie Morales x afab!reader

Word Count: 1.5k

Warnings: Mentions of drug addiction, depression, anxiety, ptsd, trauma related to the military, angst, hurt MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Author's Note: Hello everyone!! I am so excited to share the first part of my Frankie Morales series! I have been working on this idea for over two years, and I am so nervous for it to see the light of day. Please reblog and comment with your thoughts, or feel free to send me an ask!

Everything I Know Leads Me Back to You Masterlist

He hadn’t meant for it to get this bad, but god his sinuses hurt. He sneezed, and then again, before refilling the humidifier next to his bed. He’d just gotten his nose to stop bleeding again, the skin above his mustache aching and dry from the constant rubbing. 

He grabbed the Vaseline from his nightstand, rubbing the thick gel over his dry skin on his face before he climbed back into his bed. The sheets scratched at his skin, a smell emanating from them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had washed them. 

Frankie sighed, glancing at the bag of coke sitting on his nightstand. He glanced away just as quickly, ashamed of himself. 

It was only meant to be recreational, something to take the edge off after he got shot the second time. He needed something to escape the thoughts, the demons. 

He had it all under control, until he didn’t.

The cravings increased ten fold once he got out. The nightmares had gotten worse, plaguing his sleep every night. 

A therapist diagnosed him with PTSD and gave him some kind of medication for the anxiety and something for his sleep, but Frankie was impatient. He wasn’t willing to wait a few weeks for the medicine to work through his system, he needed relief now.

At first, it was a couple of lines a week, something to take the edge off and keep him awake so he wouldn’t have to face his demons. 

He tried to quit a few times over the next few years, once even using vacation days at work to put himself in a treatment center. But he always went back, surrendering to the high. 

Someone reported him at work. Who it was, he had no idea. He only did lines at home, never while on the clock. And yeah, maybe he was high a few times on a shift, but he never compromised any one’s safety. 

They ran a drug test, and that was that. The FAA suspended him, took his pilot’s license, pending review. 

He’d dug himself into a hole with no way out. 

He no longer had a reason to leave the house, so he didn’t, unless he was meeting with his dealer. He stayed in bed most of the time, black out curtains closed. He barely ate, almost always takeout. He couldn’t remember the last time he went to the grocery store, or whether he’d taken a shower that week.

All he knew was the coke. 

-

The air was heavy around him, the humidity making his clothes cling to him uncomfortably. The ground squished as he walked, the area muddy and slippery from a recent rainstorm. 

Pope flanked his left side as they approached the target location. Three hostages, 15 hostiles. The Millers approached the building from the opposite side, taking out hostiles as they went. 

Frankie’s rifle felt heavy in his hands, a tactical backpack weighing him down as he walked. Something felt wrong, he couldn’t shake it. He’d been here before. Panama, he thought. 

Pope walked ahead of him, shooting enemy men as he went before smashing in the door between them and the hostages.

Frankie realized the problem then. Two of the hostages sat dead, tied to wooden chairs in the middle of the room. Single bullet sounds to the skull. 

The third hostage sat in the middle of the room, crying as she was held by her hair. Frankie glanced quickly at the man holding her head, a gun pressed to the side of her cranium, before his eyes fell down to her face.

His stomach dropped. It was you. You were the third hostage. 

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. His finger moved to the trigger, gun pointed right at the man’s head. 

You sobbed against the gag in your mouth, voice muffled but crying out for him. The man pulled against your hair again, pressing the gun further into your skin. 

“Don’t,” Frankie warned. He hesitated with the trigger, afraid of what would happen to you if he took the shot from here. 

“You hesitate too late,” the man muttered, pulling the trigger.

-

“NO!” Frankie shot up in bed, screaming your name. Tears streamed down his face, sweat covering every inch of his skin. 

He pressed his palms into his eyes, body wracked with sobs. He had to call you, make sure you were okay.

Hands shaking, he reached for his phone and dialed your contact as quickly as it could. He hoped your ringer was on, though it was sometime in the middle of the night. 

When you didn’t answer, Frankie pulled himself out of bed and into a pair of jeans before he ran out the door and drove the few miles to your apartment. 

-

A continuous knock rang out, waking you from a deep slumber. Groaning, you sat up and took a look at the clock. 

4:04 AM.

Who in the hell was knocking on your door at four am?

You slid out of bed, searching for your slippers in the dark. The floor was cold, making you shiver as you walked around your bedroom. When you couldn’t find them, you sighed, pulling on your robe to meet whoever was at the door.

But when you swung open the door, you weren’t expecting your best friend to be the cause of the noise. “Frankie?”

Frankie pushed past you, walking into your apartment while he muttered to himself. He looked like hell. Eyes bloodshot, dry blood crusted under his nose from a nosebleed, hair damp from sweat. He smelled disgusting, as if he hadn’t showered in days. 

He walked around your apartment aimlessly, hands tugging at his hair. “Girasol, I love you.” He looked at you then, tired brown eyes peering at your own.

“I love you too, mi amor. What’s going on?” You took a step toward him, but he took a step back. You held your hands up in a quiet surrender, searching for answers on his face. “Frankie?”

“No, you don’t understand. I love you; I’m in love with you. We…we can go to Mexico right now, like I promised. We can get married, just like we talked about when we were kids.” He rambled on, spewing memories that only brought pain to you.

“Frankie, what are you doing here?”

He walked over to you and fell to his knees in front of your frame, hands gravitating to your hips. “Marry me.”

“Francisco, this isn’t funny. Get up,” you muttered, trying to pull him off the ground. 

“Funny? I’m not jokin’ cariño. Please,” he begged, hands pulling away from your frame to dig through his pockets. “I’m sure I’ve got something-“

Frankie froze as a bag of white powder fell from his hands. The room stood still as the coke hit the floor of your living room, silencing him. Your eyes widened, the realization hitting you. The man in front of you was suffering far deeper than you could have imagined. 

Within seconds, you sprang into action. You lowered yourself to the ground in front of him, holding his head gently in your hands. “Let’s get you in the shower, yeah?” 

He nodded slightly and you grabbed his arm, tugging him up and then down the hall to your bathroom. You sat Frankie down on the toilet and reached to turn on the shower head so it could heat up while you worked. 

You grabbed a towel from the hall closet before digging through your dresser for some of Frankie’s old clothes. He hadn’t worn the shirt or sweats in years, but you hoped they would still fit him.

When you returned to the bathroom, Frankie was still sitting on the toilet, staring silently at the wall in front of him. You sat everything down on the counter before making your way to stand in front of him. 

You tugged his shirt off gently, whispering thank yous with every movement. You helped him stand, undoing his shoes and removing his socks before you moved to his pants. 

“You’re going so great, Frankie. We’re almost there.” 

He made a small noise of acknowledgment, holding onto your shoulders for balance as you helped remove his pants and boxers. 

You’d seen him naked years ago, when things were simpler between you, but you averted your eyes as best you could to keep a semblance of privacy. Once finished, you helped him into the tub and under the warm water flowing from the shower head. Placing a washcloth into his hands, you pressed a light kiss to his cheek before pulling the curtain back. 

“Call for me if you need help, okay?” 

“Thank you,” Frankie mumbled, almost inaudible over the sound of the shower. 

You quietly slipped out of the bathroom, closing the door gently behind you. You leaned against the wall next to the door, knees giving out as you slid to the ground. Your head fell into your hands as you crumbled, body shaking with sobs.

---

TAGLIST: @meveispunk @chaotic-mystery @i-own-loki @harperdoodle @wildemaven @tightjeansjavi @wonwoosthetic @im-the-daddy-here-5

[beardedmrbean]

Black radio host and comedian Charlamagne Tha God blasted DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs and initiatives as "garbage" on The Daily Show, a political satire television program.

DEI practices in corporate America grew in popularity, with companies promoting the value of creating a welcoming atmosphere where people from diverse backgrounds can excel. Now, however, DEI programs have become a frequent target of right-wing activists in recent years, and Republican lawmakers are backing dozens of bills targeting DEI initiatives at universities and other public institutions.

Progressives tend to back DEI programs as a way to combat institutionalized racism that they say is ever-present in society. Conservatives, on the other hand, have fought against such initiatives as they worry that DEI aims to push a narrative against some classes of people (whether that be based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.) and create an unfair advantage for others.

During an appearance on The Daily Show on Wednesday night, Charlamagne showed a few ads from companies like Microsoft, General Mills and Vaseline promoting their DEI initiatives, and then showed clips of media personalities bashing such programs, saying things like "DEI is just a rebranded version of hating white people."

"These right-wingers are crazy. Right? Jesus," Charlamagne said. "But here's the part where you all stop applauding everything I say. The truth about DEI is that although it's well-intentioned, it's mostly garbage, okay."

Charlamagne then joked: "It's kinda like the black Little Mermaid—Just because racists hate it, doesn't mean it's good. And you know, I'm right, because every one of you has sat through one of those diversity training sessions and thought this is some bulls***.

"And it's not just you. Over 900 studies have shown that DEI programs don't make the workplace better for minorities. In fact, it can actually make things worse because of the backlash effect."

Newsweek could not independently confirm which studies Charlamagne referred to.

However, a paper published by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in Anthropology Now, a peer-reviewed journal, in 2018 wrote, "Hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that antibias training does not reduce bias, alter behavior or change the workplace."

The radio host pointed out that even with DEI programs, Black people still lack leadership positions in corporate America.

"The biggest failure of DEI is that the number of black people in power at big companies is basically the same as it was five years ago. In fact, maybe the only thing that DEI has accomplished is giving racist white people cover to be openly racist," he said.

Charlamagne said that DEI programs don't work because it's "just corporate PR" for companies who "want to cover their ass."

"We don't need corporate DEI. Yes, we want diversity and equity and inclusion. But we don't want it from Vaseline," the comedian joked.

He continued: "Real DEI is only going to come from black leadership. I don't know how to do it because I'm not a black leader, but I do know how to tell if it's working—Just keep an eye on right-wing media, the more they're freaking out, the more progress we're making."

[youaremysunshine-court]

please elaborate I'm so curious about this

Wow this is so late! I've been looking at this ask for weeks and wanting to reply, but I finally have the time now!

(apologies in advance if you dont know anything about bnha) (but thanks for this opportunity bc idk if ill ever write the fic)

so, way back in the day, endeavour is running around as a starter hero, and one day while hes stomping about, he runs into a civilian. instead of stuttering or shying away, she stands up to her full height of 5 foot nothing, puts her hands on her hips and yells him into apologising to her.

endeavour is, of course, immediately enamored. he lurks around her workplace when hes off duty, and nearly messes up an operation because she passes by and waves at him in the middle.

so of course hes crushed when he asks her out and she turns him down immediately. deciding to try the 'good guy' route, he backs off completely, only for her to march up to him a few weeks later and yell at him for not pursuing her.

so he takes her out for coffee, and they soon have standing dates that are only interrupted by the most urgent of hero business. but endeavours rank is increasing, and the strict morals of the country stop him from running around with a woman hes not married to.

its around this time he gets the idea into his head that he needs to make the greatest hero ever. but this lady (who hes pretty sure is the love of his life) doesnt have a complementary quirk to his. after all, how is the ability to self moisturise going to help his potential hero offspring.

of course, he doesnt tell her any of this because he doesnt exactly need the world to see him beaten into the ground by a civilian, but he does start to search more aggresively for a more suitable bride.

he finds a lady with the ability to produce ice at will, and starts the marriage negotiations with her family. he doesnt like her much, but of course, no one will ever match his personality the way mitsuki does.

he tries to break things off with her as gently as possible, but she sees right through him, which is unfortunate, and also why he bears a steak-knife-shaped scar on his right hand. she storms out of the restaurant in the way that means shes holding back tears, and endeavour has never felt more like a piece of shit.

not enough to call his marriage to rei off though. they get married, and endeavour gets increasingly frustrated when each attempt at the perfect hero comes out worse than the last. when shouto is finally born, endeavour near runs to the closest temple to take a vow of celibacy - if he never has to sleep with rei again it will be too soon.

he sees mitsuki once soon after shoutos birth; a drunken mistake that she assures him they will not repeat. shes engaged to a nice man, she tells him, following along the lines of the flames above his face, a little boring but kind to her. endeavour thinks shes going to have a duller life than him, and hes bored to tears.

16 years later, he's stomping through the grounds at UA, watching his 16 year old son get his ass beat at the sports festival by a little blond goblin whos kicking and screaming and biting, and endeavour has never felt so much anger in his life.

it only gets worse when he goes up to aizawa after to inquire about the brats origins, only to have aizawa quirk a smile at him and say, half sardonically, 'i thought you would recognise bakugo mitsuki's' son.

thats when the seed of suspicion is planted. it's when shouto starts questioning the origin of quirks, that endeavour decides to pull mitsukis files and figure out what a her quirk really is. because how could ms vaseline produce wannabe hero dynamight.

he kicks himself when he sees the uses of glycerine in the industry. even if they hadnt had a child who could shoot ice from his fingertips, combined, their kid would have been the most powerful fire quirk user alive. then, curious, he pulls masarus files.

its then that he really begins to suspect mitsukis been lying to the world for 16 years. sure, its not unbelievable that the blond brat could have got his quirk from masaru and mitsuki, but it does sseem more likely that he can produce fire on will because of a relation to endeavour.

he doesnt confront mitsuki about it; what good would it do. he doesnt say anything to anyone else either, just kicks himself repeatedly for not keeping the one good thing in his life when he had it.

and thats what i have so far in the way of conspiracy theories about bakugous birth.

TLDR: bakugou is secretly mitsukis and endeavours kid but no one but mitsuki knows

thanks for letting me rant about this massive hc i have that has altered how i look at the bnha verse!! hope you enjoyed ♡

[meditating-dog-lover]

Skin update

I woke up with some dry skin this morning and I could not close my fist all the way. So I applied some Vaseline to my hands and face, and my hands feel better.

I've been eating well and drinking aloe juice in the mornings. Aloe is great for general gut health - it reduces inflammation, it's anti-bacterial, soothes the intestinal lining, has enzymes which helps with digestion, and increases nutrient absorption. And I don't mind the taste. It's a great addition for gut healing, but it doesn't replace an anti-inflammatory diet and stress management.

I had some coffee and chocolate on Thursday after my therapy session. I was invited to my friend's house yesterday (I have not seen my group of friends since 2021 so I was so happy to see them as I felt so lonely for a long time). Obviously I didn't eat the healthiest, but that's fine because I was at a party. I also had mozzarella sticks at work too (I can never say no to those).

I know I want to focus on an anti-inflammatory diet. Though I don't notice my skin becoming sensitive and flaring up after eating something "unhealthy". But it's worth it to eat better so I don't experience any buildup of inflammation. It might cause some inflammation without it being an immediate effect (like an allergic reaction).

I stayed pretty late (until 11) at my friend's party. I was exhausted and it took me an hour to drive back home. Then I come home and had to do some cleaning. The combination of being awake, having to drive for an hour and having to clean did make me feel alert and energized, which did cause my skin to itch and feel inflamed.

I know stress causes me skin to feel worse. But sleep deprivation does too. And generally feeling excited, which is not a bad emotion at all, but it does give me a sense of high energy and alertness. I got excited at work yesterday because I was going to see my friend after leaving for the day. So the entire day, my hands did feel inflamed.

I do want to find ways to relax and calm down and soothe myself to avoid these high energy feelings, both the good and bad. Of course I want to be happy and excited though. I'll find ways to minimize my stress and to definitely get enough sleep! Again I'm not a night owl, but it's been forever since I last saw my friends and staying with them until late at night was so worth it to me. Even though I was exhausted and had to drive for an hour and felt some skin inflammation. And even if I didn't eat super healthy. These are valid exceptions because I loved going out and socializing was another goal of mine.

My doctor recommended some ashwagandha and l-theanine supplements which can help with anxiety/cortisol. I'll see if I want to try that out. I did purchase a singing bowl and can't wait to try that out.

So overall I think the combination of a poor diet and stress causes my flareups. Even if it's just one junk food day, it can add up. Stress is a huge contributor. Again I love my anti-inflammatory diet and aloe juice. Now it's time to minimize my stress and maybe consider the supplement my doctor recommended.

Other things to consider in the future is liver health and toxin/heavy metal exposure. I know spirulina helps with that, but to be honest I don't like the taste. It's not as bad as wheatgrass, but it's still bad in my opinion lol.

[lokilysolbitch]

how i make my eczema skin be nice to me: post shower edition

nobody asked but i wish id known it when i first got diagnosed: here's my moderate-to-severe eczema post-shower routine

it's especially useful for when you don't have the energy to shower or moisturize every single day bc chronic illness is a bitch. if you are like me and autistic and hate the feeling of lotion, this is going to feel like the devil.

pre-step one is to take a minute to charge up bc you will not be able to sit in your towel and stare at the wall right after the shower bc ur skin will dry out. so if you have pots like me, maybe get ur salt and water intake done before the shower bc you will need it bad

okay so you've just turned the shower off. ideally you got the dead skin off the eczema patches without giving yourself scabs. the first step now is to get a washcloth, get it wet and squeeze the water out, and pat dry yourself. i need to stop to squeeze water out again a few times during this

then, immediately start putting your preferred hypoallergenic, nonscented, sensitive skin friendly etc lotion on (or bath and body works bc for some reason their lotion is really nice on my skin while still being scented). and i mean like. there should still be a bit of a white cast/lotion streaks sitting on top of your skin. it will probably feel gross and bad. put a little extra on any eczema patches if you want

okay it gets worse. put your clothes on immediately. your clothes will get lotiony. (if you have scented lotion they will smell nice tho) ideally the clothes covers a lot of skin especially the skin with eczema patches. this traps all the moisture in and the extra lotion from the white cast will be absorbed right after your skin eats up the first layer of lotion. my skin gets dry and flaky 10 Minutes after showering and lotioning if i don't have those lotion streaks and cover my skin.

the end. now you can sit and stare at the wall

does this feel like the devil? yes. have i recently developed sensory issues with pruny fingers that makes this process even worse? yes. but. my skin stays soft and hydrated for days (the eczema patches need a little more attention of course but it still lasts a long time).

this whole thing takes like maybe 10 minutes if you move fast for the lotion and the lotiony feeing lasts. idek like. 15-20 minutes. im not really sure because it just slowly transitions to feeling lotiony to just normal hydrated skin.

if you need a lotion recommendation i would suggest something like vaseline (not the petroleum jelly, just the normal lotion and intensive care ones, the back might say something like "non greasy formula)

the end

[mejomonster]

So like. Gentle mentiom in case you ever have rosacea like me: inflammatory rosacea, the one with redness and bumps and pastules that Look Like Acne

So like. Yes it looks like acne. But putting on salycic acid or the typical skin drying acne fighter sometimes makes Your skin break out even more. Why? Not sure, im not a dermatologist. But the short of it is: rosacea skin is sensitive, it flares up from MANY things just Anything irritating it, and acne fighting products often (you guessed it) irritate skin. Thats why for example people get told whrn using acne fighters like for retinol, differin, chemical exfoliators, to also moisturize. To maybe not use them daily, so you dont increase skin irritation, so you dont increase dryness, so your skin barrier isnt compromised. But basically: they can be irritating on the most ordinary skin, and their use needs to be tempered to an amount that helps but doesnt irritate enough to damage skin barrier, on ordinary skin. So on rosacea? Hahahahha. Haaaa.

Well i made the mistake of using a drying incredient 2 times,daily, skin started getting redder, more acne, and eventually peeling (vitamin c). To be fair, at first vitamin c was lowering redness, and lowering my acne. But i used too much in too frequent a period and go figure, damaged my skin barrier. Made clear by my rosacea being worse and me now breaking out and getting irritated by even my safe products.

(As a side note, if you have inflammatory rosacea thats red and Also has that acne looking bumps ans pastules? A lot of the antibiotics dermatologists give, seem to work better for our kind of "looks like acne" rather than typical acne products. I cant tolerate harsh shit so the popular M starting antibiotic cream for rosacea made me wayyyy worse. But clyndamycin lotion for rosacea is what im on now, its very gentle, and does lower redness and "looks like acne" bumps and stuff i get. So if you can get ahold of thqt stuff? Idk seems to work fairly gently and well on rosacea "looking like acne.")

I am now putting only water on a clean face to make damp, then a thin coat of vaseline, once a day. Within 2 days the redness and skin peeling is gone. So wooh, skin barrier is on track to feel fine again relatively soon. My redness,was already down significantly (until the vitamin c overdoing it increased redness, "rosacea acne" and skin peeling) so my redness is mostly down as well. I think most of my redness is still due to the skin barrier being irritated. I think once irritation calms down, hopefully, ill be able to use my old products i like again.

But the short of it is: if you have rosacea and start getting worse/arent getting any improvement, consider if youre using qnything harsh? Cause my first attempt to stop the "acne" and redness from too much vit c drying me out, was salycic acid for acne and differin. Cause for non rosacea, on regular acne, that would solve massive amounts of pimple breakouts right? But on me, since im getting acne more from rosacea and skin irritation having increased? Well of course the acne stuff like salycic acid made me even worse ToT

[shellofaretard]

As you can imagine even when he was in prison jesus christ couldn't keep from acting like a fucking freak maybe even worse. I think he actually got jealous whenever it was someone else getting raped. So what he did was take a slice of bread, dip it in the blood, shit, vaseline and whatever else of the last boy and eat it in front of everyone. Then he started waxing poetic like, "I am right here on my knees thanking my creator because what would i be without this raw, textured taste on my tongue. Like Anthony Bourdain said the great thing about cuisine is what it tells you about the soul and character of the people making it. So what i believe is each one of these sandwiches is different but brings me closer to the same universal mystery". Of course none of the prison dudes took kindly to this kind of pompousness and beat the shit of jesus every chance they had.