#and other unpleasant stuff like hell trauma mentioned

[dyed-red]

I had a wonderful ask for you, and then I got distracted and forgot it, so I'm going with this one instead. Do you have any thoughts on disordered eating for both the boys? It is definitely shown that Sam has food issues ("Sammy is a chubby 12 year old" and "Organic") and does the whole stress-forgetting-to-eat thing. Food also plays into his body autonomy issues. I think Dean also has issues around food/eating. His just aren't shown as obviously as Sam's, but also are a manifest of his issues.

thank you for sending the ask :) feel free to send the other one if you ever remember it!

under a cut

Sam

i think sam's disordered eating is pretty textual, like you said, and i explored some of my headcanons for it in like a ghost with two voices, but that fic is... A Lot, and it's probably neater to explain them in one place. in brief though, some thoughts.

he grew up eating anything and everything and was not picky, and we know he liked monstrosities like marshmallow nachos

like many kids he put on weight before growth spurts which is where that chubby 12 year old line comes from (mostly him being acerbic about the nickname sammy, tbh) but for the most part he was always pretty lean

he learned about nutrition and the food pyramind in school and sought out more vegetables as a preteen and teen

he felt really self-conscious / embarrassed as a kid at another family's house for dinner when he asked what asparagus (or some other vegetable that wasn't broccoli or carrots) was and they were like ???? it's asparagus??? have you never seen asparagus?? and since then tried to eat a wider variety of foods so as never to embarrass himself over food again like that

he didn't actually have an Issue or a pickiness for food though until after being possessed by meg, after which he found himself feeling more easily put off by meals (like the one not that long later in Folsom Prison Blues)

he started to develop Actual Issues after ahbl when azazel showed him he put demon blood in him as a baby, but didn't directly identify that the unclean feeling was the source of his food issues until much much later in life

he rationalizes his turn toward healthier foods in the year that follows on being a byproduct of needing to stay healthy and strong for the job (he's already died once! not to mention what happened to Dean in Faith. it's important to care about their heart health!) and to keep himself focused and sharp if he's going to save dean

drinking demon blood does Not help his issues, neither does the way it changes him nor the detox/purge of that. what he puts and doesn't put in his body takes on explicit purity leanings around/after this point directly as a result

these issues don't have a chance to go anywhere really as the apocalypse is looming except for him to be eating salads and exercising and then he's soulless for a year and a half, and soulless doesn't really question his own desire(?) to exercise and eat well. he likes keeping his body in peak condition and likes the rewards he gets for doing so

obviously cage trauma fucks with sam's eating and this is where he starts to spurn meat more often because of the smell and texture and how it turns his stomach

these issues persist even after cas takes the cage trauma down to a notch where sam can compartmentalize it, and it would be here that he sort of has space to maybe start acknowledging that he is Different about food but the leviathan really are offering the perfect excuse for him to go all in on clean living and he's able to rationalize and justify his food issues to kingdom come, and he's good with that

amelia and whatever the hell is going on there (fuzzy fake memories) is more of the same

the trials are purifying him, don't you know? real talk, sam probably drinks holy water each day during this period and hides that from dean. he's got to keep his strength up but also he's coughing up blood and starts to look seriously anemic but everything is fine he's fine these trials are purifying him it's fine. he's probably not eating much except when dean makes him. he doesn't see this as an issue except that he needs to keep his strength up for the trials. part of him might prefer it this way. he doesn't want to examine that.

gadreel does not help.

sam started to eat a bit more during that period and felt good and things felt good and then he started losing time and the anxiety killed his appetite and he just had to push himself harder but what if this is just who he is now and he really really needs to look after his health if he's only this old and already has memory issues and he needs to eat healthy and -

gadreel and crowley together Does Not Help.

neither does antonia bevell.

although tbh by that point his food issues are pretty much fixed, not really in flux. they're issues, he knows they're issues, he eats healthy and he's got some idea where this shit comes from and he's got it mostly under wraps, even if it sneaks up on him sometimes and is something he has to work with. dean doesn't always get it and sometimes is insensitive af about it (the bacon incident) but for the most part lets it be so long as sam doesn't lose too much weight.

and so on.

Dean

dean's food issues are somewhat opposite to sam's, and i'll admit i have a lot less to say about them.

like sam, he did not grow up a picky eater. he was probably more conscious/aware of their food insecurity and at points was in charge of feeding sam, so took more responsibility to ensure food wasn't wasted

in part for that reason, he hates food waste as an adult, and will eat food even as it's edging toward probably not safe anymore (we see this in a few episodes actually) and won't turn his nose up at anything, and will finish food that sam doesn't eat almost out of habit

dean's had food poisoning a number of times, but that also means he's developed an iron stomach over time and now he can eat sort of anything and if it's not straight up moudly, he'll probably get no more than a stomach ache for a few hours or feel queasy and gassy the next day

dean also loves free food for the aforementioned reasons. it does not head off his tendency to get food poisoning, but again, that mitigates over time

dean prefers calorically dense food like proteins and carbs because it's less expensive and keeps him going longer. he doesn't hate vegetables but his somewhat arrested development in his teen and early adult years means he never really developed from child tastebud preferences to a more adult palette, at least not until much later, although he had no issue acquiring the taste for beer and whiskey. he seems to prefer sweet and despise bitter though, and i think it's a learned preference more than anything

learned preference by way of that same food insecurity in childhood and his body picking out the calorie rich foods and that never really going away? but protein matters a lot too -- notice that he likes peanut m&ms more than the regular ones, and likes jerky and slim jims and that sort of thing.

to bring this back to disordered eating, it's not really a problem except that he struggles to eat and enjoy healthier foods because he can't really acquire a taste for them and he struggles to pass up food when it's available, even though he can and does go without food on hunts and stretches when the situation calls for it

idk we could make some painful and vile headcanons here about dean in hell, much like with sam in the cage, but if alastair cut off piece of dean and fed them to him, it doesn't seem to have dampened dean's zest for meat or food, so might not have been an especially effective torture on dean

mostly -- dean's got issues, some of them are related to food, but mostly his issues manifest outside of the eating sphere. eating is pleasurable to him (sweet, tasty, beer and pie, hedonism, etc) but also important (protein, energy, strength, etc) and wires can get crossed there sometimes and he can and does give himself a stomach ache at big meals and food poisoning on occasion from not letting things go to waste, but he mostly manages this aspect of his life pretty well, especially considering his experiences

[autisticandroids]

my fics

this post has gotten out of hand, so i'm putting most of it under a cut. also, since this is my pinned, i'll link some other stuff:

[my fic rec post] [my amv rec post] [my amv tag]

alright. my spn fics. listed in increasing order of wordcount.

enjoying it, .5k: A little piece of an AU I've discussed on Tumblr (linked in the note). Linda has recently sold her soul. Meg has recently gotten hers back. They chat about it.

meg/linda tran. sure you could say that i'm mashing dolls together but you could also say that in my mind season nine is a beautiful land where the main characters of the show are cas, linda, meg, and kevin and making meg and linda kiss is just clearly the next step.

a family vignette, .5k: A couple of scenes from the bunker, starring the last men on earth.

man it must have been pretty bad in the bunker during 15x19 huh. like pretty awful. and miserable.

latch, .5k: A miracle happens. Dean feeds Cas.

hello destiel breastfeeding community.

voyeur, 1k: Dean watches his other self talk to Cas.

i feel like endverse fic is a right of passage, isn't it? this is one of only two three four i guess now five fics on this list which makes no mention of godstiel.

to act with intention, 1k: The family Winchester on the road back to the Bunker after Cas kills Billie, and more importantly, after Mary makes certain revelations about Cas' state. A rather unpleasant car ride for all concerned.

#mpregpocalypse, etc.

stability, 1k: Sam has noticed that Cas' feelings toward Dean may be more than purely platonic. He is concerned about the stability of his family.

a short little fic where i make the dynamics among tfw worse.

getting serious, 1k: A small vignette of family life in the bunker, and the difficulties therein. Dean pays no attention to Sam's escape attempt.

established destiel. sam and dean have a horrible little conversation.

no longer your brother, 1k: Michael and Lucifer pose a threat to His reign, though a small one. God pays them a visit.

OLD-ass godstiel fic from when i was like. sixteen. my interests have not changed at all.

cold storage, 1k: Crowley discovers something fascinating about Cas.

a little bit of lighthearted crowstiel fuckbuddies.

yeah, well, i don't want to, 1k: He didn't do it on purpose.

a little brothers-centric deanfic for the pilot. dean is very normal.

the follower, 1k: The world is being restructured. Dean can't stop it. He has a long conversation with someone instead.

an unpleasant and uncomfortable conversation between dean and godstiel. dean tries to make it sexual in order to make cas uncomfortable. it does not make cas uncomfortable.

squeeze, 1k: Soft, sweet Destiel sex. They're still getting used to each other. That's it.

destiel fluff. dean is so lovely when he's neurotic.

just gimme daddy's blunt instrument, 1k: Dean points a gun at Cas.

godstiel gunfellatio fic. they don't fuck in this but they do.

dog pit., 1k: Meg. And bodies. And guts.

meg fetishism.

damage control for a walking corpse, 1k: Meg escapes Crowley's dungeon, at least for a little while. She prays.

meg character study featuring faith, lucifer, masochism, and megstiel.

debug., 1k: Dean gets his crew to steal him an angel.

written for @au-roulette, an experimental cyberpunk au fic.

hunger, 1k: Endverse Cas talks about what it was like to have Dean inside him.

november fifth fic 2022. despite being technically an endverse fic, focuses on cas saving dean from hell.

eros and thanatos, 1k: Cas enjoys himself immensely, and then he doesn't. Dean can't find out.

my entry for @deancas-stabfest! casturbation feat. cas triggering himself and throwing up after.

soft and squishy, 2k: Dean shoots Cas. He processes that.

extra extra come get your hell trauma! come get your fluffy gore porn! written for @destielvalentinesexchange

the beautiful people, 2k: Dean and what it's like to be wanted.

dean has a pretty bad relationship with sex and sexuality doesn't he.

dean winchester really needs to make some gay friends, 2k: There was no way the answer to this question wasn’t funny as hell.

post canon fluff and humor, written and posted during the week of madness between 15x18 and 15x19. an exploration of a dean who is queer, but doesn't really understand how to be queer yet.

there is want., 2k: There is God. And there is a body. And there is want.

*sigh* more godstiel fic. this time with horrific and gratuitous gore. godstiel eats some copies of dean, to see if that will satisfy him. this one, the follower, and just gimme daddy's blunt instrument are a kind of triptych. they don't exist in the same continuity but they all follow the same themes: sex-without-sex between dean and godstiel, mixed with character and relationship exploration.

wink, 3k: Cassie deals with grieving her father, and has a little lesbian interlude.

my first piece for @spntoxicfemslashevent this year. hey have you guys heard about meg 1.0? have you heard about meg 1.0? what about cassie have you heard about cassie? have you heard about megcassie?

smorgasbord, 3k: An incident under the influence of Famine.

my bloody valentine fic (evil) (horny) (evil).

goldfish, 4k: Lisa Braeden opens the door for some strangers.

a study on cas in the aftermath of a slightly divergent moriah where jack did not die, through the lens of lisa braeden and her memory.

three card stud, 4k: A collection of script excerpts for a version of Season Six that goes a bit differently. Cas and Dean conspire. Lisa is oblivious, and they keep her that way. Dr. Freud always said nightmares were based on wishes, too.

finally! some deancaslisa infidelity. mindwipenatural (worse). live free or twi-hard (better). an experimental amv for a version of season six that doesn't exist.

i fold in half so easily, 5k: A study in learned helplessness, set in the Men of Letters Bunker. Cas clings hard to what he has, and doesn't think about what he doesn't.

this is my 15x18 anti-fix-it. my 15x18 make-it-worse. my magnum opus of the winchester family horror in late seasons, or at least cas' experience of it. established relationship destiel (derogatory). it's my favorite piece i've published in spn fandom, and maybe in any fandom. i put a lot into it and i hope you get a lot out of it.

circle, broken, 5k: A series of conversations and resolutions. Cas haunts the fringes of a new Heaven.

my piece for @spnangelbang! 5k of quiet cas angst and angel feelings, with a little bonus trueform stuff.

not him/not her/not me, 5k: Memory repeats itself: first as trauma, second as kink. Isn't that what Karl Marx said? Two pinned butterflies explore it together.

megstiel piece for @spnangelsanddemons-rb. what if you got brainwashed, huh? what if you were always getting brainwashed? what if your whole life was about getting brainwashed? brainwashed and remade?

he's gonna take my files, 6k: Dean goes to the Empty, where Cas is floating through his memories.

dean in the dean torture chamber. featuring guilt spirals, a deancaslisa threesome (arguably), stabbing, relitigation of the canon, and a cameo from the yellow-eyed demon.

so much smoke in a hall of mirrors, 6k: Humans kiss each other. Angels kill each other. Castiel distracts himself from the war he's losing.

doing angel politics, unconsensually watching dean rake leaves (and other things), working on his frustrations on the physical bodies available to him. it's season six and cas is having a terrible time. formerly known as the dean sex doll fic.

the real finale, 21k: Supernatural 15x19 and 15x20, as they should have been.

mainly the work of @beatsheetketch, but it is our shared brainchild. a lot softer and fluffier than either of our usual fair. our go at a finale rewrite.

[hms-no-fun]

I guess this is less a question than it is a critique?

I love godfeels in general and I do realise that it was a story about more than just being trans - it was a brilliant dissection of just how little thought Hussie actually put into how fucked up the powers he was giving to literal children and the things he wrote them as doing were, but there was one point that kind of irked me.

Specifically it was the bit where Dirk, who is (at least in as much as godfeels is concerned) kind of a metaphor for transphobia actually sort of has a point? Because there was that whole thing where June actually did kill most of her friends, topple a building and massacre a bunch of innocent people. Dirk's point that "John Egbert never did anything like this, it's only June that did something like this" is... irritatingly valid?

Once it's revealed that Dirk can somehow remember retconned timelines, his initial actions become irritatingly justifiable? At first his actions have less to do with transphobia and more with the "holy shit this previously quiet, agreeable person suddenly KILLED ALL HER FRIENDS."

Yes, Dirk's manner of confronting June about it is creepy as hell. Yes, Dirk's core motivation is incredibly egotistical and shitty - she's incredibly powerful and these recent changes in her life put that power even further outside Dirk's ability to control it. But a timeline verifiably exists wherein, under the influence of Trickster Mode, she kills a bunch of people including some of their mutual friends. Dirk, as much as I despise him, had a right to be concerned about that.

Real transphobia doesn't have a justification like that? And yes, eventually Dirk does slip into the standard transphobia motivation of "you are not the person I need you to be for my world to make sense in my head." Eventually it's all just trying to beat the world into the shape he wants it to be. But it didn't start that way, it started with June actually posing a threat to people he cared about, and it feels... unpleasant? To have some avenue for "well, actually, he had a point" like that.

you’ve got some real chutzpuh bringing this to me, kid. i respect that!

this is a quagmire i was very aware of while writing gf2 and that i’ve gotten some pushback for in the past, and i’ve always tried to respond to it earnestly and in good faith. but this is a really complicated question to get into for me, more complicated than you might realize, so there’s gonna be a lot of stuff here that might seem irrelevant or dismissive and i’m definitely gonna repeat myself more than once. just try to walk with me here and if you’re still unsatisfied by the end, my askbox remains open. just know in advance that this is a LONG one.

so, to start, a couple quibbles:

first, i don’t agree at all with the idea that andrew didn’t put much thought into how fucked up it was for baby teenagers to have godtier powers. i cannot think of a single arc in the main cast that doesn’t, on some level, involve the character in question realizing how traumatized they are by the heights of power and corruption they ascended to before even being old enough to vote. act 6 is fully half the comic and it’s practically an academic exegesis on just how fucked up it is for teens to have godtier powers. how else would you describe the post-juju quadruple dialogue between the Alphas on their death slabs but as an exhaustive deconstruction of the aftermath of sburb-related godtier trauma? you’ve got Dave’s decision to stop using time travel, Rose’s whole thing about communing with the horrorterrors, i mean shit Alternia as a whole is just “what if kids had superpowers and could kill each other would that be fucked up or what,” not to mention two of the most important conversations in homestuck proper (at least for me) are Jade’s discussion with alt-Calliope about the crushing loneliness of being a Space player, and its immediate followup in Jade’s conversation with Davepeta about the unmitigated freedom of being an anything player. that’s a lot of tension for one dog to process! just because characters never come out and explicitly say “wow, isn’t this fucked up” doesn’t mean the author is unaware of how fucked up it is. but also isn’t that literally Dave and Dirk’s last conversation before the end of act 6?

second, i want to challenge your read on where Dirk in gf2 started. yes, there’s an element of his attack on June that is “you are a danger to my friends,” but it cannot go unstated in any discussion of this work that at this point in the narrative Dirk is explicitly preparing for the events of the meat-timeline of the homestuck epilogues. which, you know, involved more than his fair share of below-board friend torture. this isn’t a trivial fact, as much of what occurs in gf3 is a result of godfeels not being the epilogues (hence the subtitle Divergence Syndrome). so we need to understand that, like June, his decisions are never motivated purely by altruism. yes, he’s worried about his friends, but specifically what he’s worried about is that they won’t experience the specific series of traumas that he thinks will make for a better story. just because WE don’t know that for sure until a bit later doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

but these quibbles are largely surface-level and don’t, i think, get to the core of your criticism. what we’re really talking about here is interpretation, and i think more broadly we’re talking about media literacy-- which is NOT me suggesting that YOU SPECIFICALLY are in any sense illiterate! but rather that this particular line of criticism, i must admit, always comes across to me as woefully shortsighted. it’s a criticism filtered heavily through a post-tumblr lens, and i promise i don’t mean that entirely dismissively. it’s a lens i used for a very long time myself, and it still colors a lot of my approach (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). so i’m coming to you now as someone who has grown out of that approach, and who genuinely wants to suggest an alternative. but i’m getting ahead of myself.

the chief disagreement i have with your criticism begins when you say that Dirk “is kind of a metaphor for transphobia.” you’re not wrong here, of course, but i think you’ve stopped at one circle inside a much larger venn diagram. Dirk is only kind of a metaphor for transphobia insofar as the entire cast of godfeels 2 is kind of a metaphor for transphobia. including the people who aren’t violently retaliatory!

what really motivated me to write gf2 in the first place was my dissatisfaction with the black & white morality tale quality of most conventionally popular transgender narratives. i identified with John Egbert the most of all the cast of homestuck, but when June hit critical mass in 2019 i really felt that a lot of the depictions i was seeing just... weren’t all that genuine to my experience. and look, i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a “June comes out and is accepted by her friends and gets to have a nice time” fic. i’m glad they exist and i’ve read & enjoyed a fair few in my time! but that wasn’t the kind of story i wanted to write, because as a trans woman that just wasn’t my experience of coming out.

my experience of coming out was that no one was ever outright transphobic to me. my friends were initially very encouraging! but as time wore on it became clear to me that their surface level acceptance belied a deep almost metaphysical rift between us, an inability or unwillingness to understand what was actually going on with me. by the time a year had passed, we weren’t on speaking terms anymore and i blamed myself for all of it because those were the terms they couched our conversations in. they saw me as mentally unwell in ways that they insisted had nothing to do with my gender, and they said i needed to “get help” for reasons that had nothing to do with my gender. gender never even came up.

and the thing is, i have no doubt that’s what they genuinely believed. but the fact that it only came to a head the way it did after i came out is really hard for me to ignore, you know? this is why Rose’s “I just have some concerns” comes up over and over again-- a lot of trans people aren’t in the best place when they come out, so it’s easy for well-meaning friends to question whether this is genuine or if it’s just another part of their mental illness. i sometimes wonder how much my friends actually believed me when i told them i was trans, because i was so goddamn depressed and i’d had so many supposedly life-changing revelations in the past that led to absolutely fuckall. from their perspective, how was this different from any other time i swore up and down that i was on A Better Path?

now, obviously they were WRONG, and i wish they’d supported me better. but they also had full-time jobs, they had their own lives and mental health struggles to deal with. so i understand, you know? i’m still mad about it, and i can’t ever really forgive them for how much it hurt me, but i don’t hate them. and i certainly don’t think they’re transphobes. it’s just that most day-to-day transphobia isn’t a conservative saying “you’re not a real [gendered noun],” it’s little shit that no one but you even notices and if you try to bring it up, nine times out of ten you get told you’re just reading too much into things, you’re making everything about gender when it has nothing to do with gender, etcetera etcetera. but it all adds up for us, you know? that’s microaggressions innit

but this gets us to the real sticky part, the part you’ve probably been silently saying muttering “this is a copout you’re not ACTUALLY addressing my question” over: retaliatory violence. and here’s as good a place as any to say that if you haven’t watched my video about writing everything before gf2.3, i suggest giving it a watch as i discuss this topic pretty thoroughly there. i imagine i’ll be saying many of the same things now, just with a bit more perspective.

let’s start with mental illness.

i’m on medications for bipolar and adhd. i wasn’t always. in the years before i came out, i was a bitter, lonely, confused mess of a person. as a child and teen i had anger problems, i had violent fantasies, i felt a really deep desire to react to the smallest injustices delivered onto me by my bullies with cartoonishly over-the-top violence. not all or even most of these fantasies were justified. i was an edgelord teen who loved quentin tarantino movies, of course i was shitty. the friends i mentioned above, like i said, i do understand where they were coming from. they didn’t have access to my mind, they had their own lives to live, and just as they weren’t communicating with me, i wasn’t communicating with them. at the time i blamed myself for everything that was turning sour in our relationships, but i still had nightmares and fantasies where i’d scream in their faces for some kind of recognition or acknowledgement only to become outrageously violent when they failed to do so. i felt guilty for those fantasies, they reminded me of being 17 thinking to myself “man if i weren’t so anti-gun i’d make a really good school shooter.”

that’s a vile thought, right? that’s the kind of thing if someone said it to you out loud, you’d probably have a few concerns.

but i didn’t say it out loud. it was just a thought that popped into my head from time to time. what matters, what really matters in any material sense, is that i never even came close to acting on it. a thought isn’t real, an image of fake violence isn’t real, an unacted-upon desire to inflict violence isn’t real. fiction, too, is not real. and through my entire adult life, the only consistent outlet of any worth i’ve had has been fiction.

the question of how “acceptable” it is for traumatized people to process their trauma in fiction is, i must admit, rather obnoxiously contentious. i’ve seen ostensible leftists genuinely say without a hint of irony, “yeah, okay, fine, you have every right to explore your complicated feelings about [traumatic event] in fiction, but you shouldn’t post it anywhere.” so, what, people who have flawless, frictionless transitions are allowed good representation, but when a messy transition is depicted that’s just universally bad representation? if a queer character isn’t shown to be unambiguously good and correct, then that’s... that’s bad? why doesn’t it count when i say that i feel better when i read a story that reflects how fucked up my life is? why’s it gotta be that every story needs to be for everyone? why’s it gotta be that my story that i started writing for my own reasons with no expectation of getting paid for it, no expectation of any kind of substantial audience, ought to stand as an unimpeachable argument in favor of trans women’s infallibility? trans women aren’t infallible. charlotte clymer exists. caitlyn jenner exists. it flattens and diminishes the humanity of marginalized people to insist that it’s a flaw when a story doesn’t make it unambiguously clear that not all marginalized people are bad. it’s not my job as a trans woman to make sure you, the reader, know that not all trans women are bad. i assume that you know this. i assume that you can look at the circumstances of the narrative and understand that this has always been a speculative scifi story about a world that operates on very different rules than our world, about people who are capable of things that no one in our world is capable of.

you know how sometimes you’ll have a conversation with someone and they’ll say just the most catastrophically stupid shit, but as much as you WANT to roast them for it you know it’d be rude and unproductive? well what if you could roast that person, get it out of your system, and then retcon the whole exchange out of existence? as i’ve said in other answers, the horror of retcon is that it puts you in the driver’s seat of your own personal groundhog day, unlimited and consequence-free throughout time and space. i know this probably seems utterly irrelevant to the substance of your criticism, but to me it’s everything. the feels in godfeels have always been rooted in the dreadful existential weight of knowing that you could get away with doing absolutely anything you wanted with terrifying ease.

homestuck is a violent story. how many times do we see those teens get stabbed to death? so for me, as gf2 soared out of my hands and grew in scope, it felt obvious and natural to take that premise and combine it with the messiness of my own coming out. to explore gender and violence together. when i wrote the scene where Callie gives June her juju, i knew that i was stepping into REALLY dangerous territory, because June is transgender, and a trans person who kills her other queer friends for being above-average in their transphobia is bad transgender representation.

right?

i think that’s the core of what you’re driving at with your criticism-- that Dirk, the emergent antagonist of godfeels 2, the guy who’s essentially demanding that June detransition Or Else, has a point when he says that June is dangerous and can’t be trusted to have anyone else’s best interests at heart. you point out that, in real life, transphobes don’t have a point when they attack trans people, and that’s true. i agree with you.

the first thing i’ll say here that i think will drive you up the wall is that tried and true age-old canard: depiction isn’t endorsement. June Egbert is a character making choices; Dirk Strider is a character making choices. they have their reasons, some good, some bad, but i tried very hard not to make it so the narrative took a side as such. obviously to an extent that’s impossible when our perspective is so thoroughly fixed through June’s eyes, but i tried to show in Dirk’s narration (especially in his fight with Roxy) that he’s not a mustache-twirling villain over this. he’s a guy with a plan who doesn’t know how not to have that plan anymore when something essential to the plan changes. he has his own doubts about what he’s doing. in fact i think you could make a very compelling case that, from Dirk’s perspective, June and Terezi systematically turned all his friends against him for their own diabolical ends. and like, hey! arguably the realityquake is a direct result of June refusing to do what Dirk told her to do. that’s kind of fucked up, right? to which i say that nowhere did i ever promise that June would be The Good Guy of this story. no one who has that kind of power over others is ever ever ever simply The Good Guy.

the second thing i’ll say to this point is that growing up queer in this world is messy. i’ve already enumerated my mental unwellness, now let me add that many of my trans friends share a similar spread of ailments as well as a similarly messy upbringing. something we never really talk about, for i think pretty obvious reasons, is the fact that just by virtue of how awfully closeted queer people in general are treated, a lot of us do have really checkered pasts. to be clear this is by absolutely NO means a universal generalization, i’m not saying all or even most trans people are like this. but a number of us are. and i’ve gotten so many messages from trans people who read godfeels and felt seen by it, felt seen by the very problem you’ve astutely identified. what’s to be done with their testimony in this conversation? is it irrelevant? are they wrong? would you go to them and tell them, well, sure, i guess you can say that, but it’s still problematic and needs to be...

needs to be what? that’s what i’m really trying to understand now. what is it, exactly, that you want from me. if you’re saying the moral quandaries of gf2 need to be interrogated, yeah, i agree. you see something problematic in godfeels 2, and i agree with you that it’s problematic. i put it there on purpose. i thought a lot about that choice. i did it because my life has often been problematic, in ways both fair and unfair, and because most of those problems just don’t have easy answers. sometimes there are good guys and bad guys, sometimes someone is absolutely in the wrong. but a lot of times the reality is a lot greyer than that. and just because we’re seeing painful pushback against even the meagerist of trans rights on a global scale doesn’t mean that my depiction of a problematic trans woman is somehow immoral or counterproductive for “the trans community.” which i know is not what you said, but it’s hard for me not to jump to this conclusion when this is always where it leads. if i seem overly defensive it’s because i’ve had to field a version of this question SO many times over the years, and while you may think yourself disconnected from any wider critical perspective (i have no way of knowing this, obviously), i see an undeniable continuity in terms.

i put scare quotes around “the trans community” because there are plenty of trans communities where i have never felt particularly welcome. as a non-passing trans woman who leans butch, there are so many pillars of the lgbt spectrum that’d criticize or disavow me it makes my head spin. generally i’m okay with that. not every space is or should be for everyone, just the same as not every work of fiction is or should be for everyone. and i don’t want a fucking thing to do with transmed gender essentialist circles anyway.

godfeels is not for everyone. it is a story about violence, ignorance, trauma, guilt, and a whole charcuterie board of other messy emotions besides. i have never been interested in looking at a fictional character and saying “this is a purely bad thing in a cosmic sense that they’re doing,” because i just don’t find that interesting to write about. someone can choose to hurt a lot of people in an act of what could be accurately described as evil, but that person still CHOSE to do what they did. their actions made sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us. even if they scare us. and i think it’s important to decry the actions of real people in the real world when innocent people get hurt. but fiction is not the real world. yes, obviously fiction effects reality in some ways- it shapes how we view the world, how we view each other. but so often in these conversations, there’s simply no sense of scale or severity. what negative social affect can be attributed to a homestuck fanfic written by a trans woman when huge swathes of the american populace are using fuckin marvel movies to justify escalating the war in ukraine? what about jk rowling weaponizing her gargantuan fanbase against trans people? i cannot fathom holding up even the truly vilest of fanfic as representative of some grave social ill or as setting back perception of a marginalized group with any kind of longterm conviction when we are surrounded on all sides by corporate propaganda that cynically puppets the corpse of the liberal lgbt movement to lend their worthless backwards trash an air of Progressive Clout. like i’m supposed to be impressed that there’s a trans person in the background of an otherwise pro-imperialist nightmare of bad CGI and rampant labor exploitation. did they employ trans people? did they get a trans person’s perspective on that character or on the narrative as a whole? did they even talk to any trans people? who gives a shit about depiction or representation, we could have a million trans characters in cinema and still be completely fucked as a demographic if those characters were all written by cis white men who think the feminine essence theory is good feminism. what i care about is whether or not trans people can stay fed and pay rent, and that includes trans people whose lives and stories don’t mesh with the popular narratives about trans people. if your politics involve telling problematic trans women to shut up, to hide their trauma, to get out of the limelight lest our enemies use us as ammunition in their war against all of us, then i’m sorry but you’re just a conservative censor doing the job of a GOP politician for free at absolutely no one’s behest and to everyone’s detriment including your own. when the conservatives come for queer people, they won’t care who among us is “respectable.” queerness itself is their enemy, and they’ll kill the based just as surely as they’ll kill the problematic.

and that’s where it really comes down for me, you understand? i’m totally aware of how soupy this moral dilemma is. i fucking wrote it! i think it’s an interesting tension to have to sit with a character who knows that even though they had (what at least felt like) a good reason, even though it literally hasn’t happened anymore, they still did something terrible that they regret and that they’ll remember for the rest of their life. the flashbacks we see in 2.3 of June going door to door to get folks on her side are explicitly framed by a recurring guilt and doubt that June feels at every step of the process. she knows that she fucked up with the retcon, and she knows she made everything worse by dangling Dirk over a volcano, but she doesn’t know how to talk this out, and Terezi just sort of assumes that their only option is a full-on combat scenario. also, man, once again no one questions Terezi’s role in this! the eponymous “good plan” of 2.3 is HERS. the only part of that plan that’s genuinely June’s is her choice to take Jade to fight Lord English, and it’s the part that ultimately saves the day.

Jade, of course, having had her own past meddled with retcon-ways by June’s own admission in gf1. so we have a June who in the past tried to intervene in someone else’s life to make it “better” from her perspective, now turning around and intervening in that same life for essentially the same reason. only this time she’s giving Jade a choice. or is she? does Jade have a choice? did I as the writer give her a choice?

again, you’re seeing the same thing i’m seeing. you’re seeing that June and Dirk both Made Some Points. you’re seeing that June is not a paragon of virtue even though she’s transgender. the difference is that you think your reaction is not the intended experience. yes, i say, it is problematic, it is uncomfortable, it is unpleasant. but problems exist to be solved, and i’m not the person who can give you the answers. if June isn’t a perfect trans woman, if she did in fact Do Some Things Wrong, then that just makes her human (which, as you’ll recall, was a question very much on June’s mind in gf1). i’m not interested in saying whether or not any of these events are Good or Bad in a cosmic or moral sense because, yet again, that’s just not interesting to me as a writer.

and this is what i mean when i say that you’re coming at this from a decidedly post-tumblr perspective, because again, you’re seeing what i’m seeing, but you’ve stopped at a smaller circle inside a larger venn diagram. this is not a story about how trans women are unambiguously good and correct at all times, it’s a story about lateral violence among queer friends who also happen to be unfathomably powerful gods. these are not normal 23 year olds! if we are to tell a story that even remotely attempts to explore the minutiae and consequence of what these characters are capable of, we simply cannot relegate ourselves to the realm of what is possible and/or acceptable in our reality. the whole point is that it’s not possible in our reality! it’s fiction! and the circumstance that June and Dirk find themselves in in gf2 does not resemble any real life circumstance that exists in the material world. yeah, transphobes in real life don’t have a point and they can get fucked. but if Dirk was like a texas neocon, if Rose was more explicitly TERFy, or if June hadn’t literally murdered her friends and then retconned it, would that be better for the story? like yeah, sure, a TERF would be an obvious villain, a texas neocon would be an obvious villain. despite all appearances i do in fact know how to write a trans character who is not hashtag problematic, i just don’t want to do that. i don’t want to write obvious villains. i don’t want to write obvious conflicts.

all of my favorite art sits balanced on a razor’s edge of some taboo or other, and stares you directly in the eyes and demands that you reckon with it for what it is. i like art that makes me uncomfortable, that pushes into weird difficult messy philosophical territory, because at least when it happens in fiction it doesn’t result in me becoming homeless. that’s the kind of fiction i want to write. and i know full well that we don’t live in an environment that is particularly friendly to that kind of fiction. right now everything in life feels like a mortal peril, all our rights as queer & working people are being slowly pulled back, our very bodies demonized, our youths tormented by cruel governments, so it’s natural i think to react to fiction flirting with this difficult territory in ambiguous terms the same way you would to this shit in real life. that’s the smaller circle in the bigger circle, get it? you’re correct in your acknowledgement of a problem, but the tumblr lens is one aggressively opposed to reading that problem in any terms other than outright dismissal and condemnation.

it’s a binaristic lens, you understand? it’s checking a work of art against an abstract scorecard on a pass-fail basis. and it leads to the elevation primarily of children’s media, which tends to be binaristic in its morals. and that’s not strictly bad! i love steven universe as much as the next gal. and it’s fine if someone doesn’t want to engage with more difficult media, i totally get it! sometimes i’m in the mood for garbage. i talk all kinds of shit about marvel movies but i fucking LOVE thor ragnarok. the thing is that when i talk shit about marvel movies i KNOW who i’m pushing back against and i know why. i can have my annoyances with writers, directors, actors, etc, but the real problem of the mcu is its ideology & its status as above all else a product for mass consumption, which is the problem of hollywood and the problem of america. virtually all american media is produced by a small handful of corporations who have unilateral control over what gets made and what doesn’t. the result is a media culture built around an ideology that TRIES SO HARD to make itself invisible because of course americans don’t want politics in their media. but the politics are there, because everything is political. and when every movie, tv show, and news broadcast tells you to be afraid of black people, to be afraid of trans women, to be afraid of russians, to be afraid of chinese, that gets us to now, that gets us to a culture that simply has not been given the tools to analyze media in any terms other than those dictated by the selfsame corporations that produce that media. so the tumblr lens, the social justice lens, it can identify a problem in a text but it always falls short when it tries to find a solution. and it falls short because it’s not materialist, it’s not based in any kind of class awareness or political dialectics. it’s not even really based in a particularly feminist politics! hell, the sjw keystone that is the bechdel test originates from a comic and artist that absolutely refuses the binaristic ideology that has led to its popularity.

a truly materialist critical analytic lens would understand that, like in activism, a diversity of tactics must be supported. you do not have to like the art made by every trans woman to understand that you have more in common with the most loathesome working class trans woman you’ve heard of than you do with anyone who has ever sat in a position of real political power in your lifetime. a materialist lens would understand that selling out the problematic in favor of the acceptable is the cutting off of one’s nose to spite their face. when you create an environment where the first thing an artist must consider is whether or not it tics all the right representational boxes, all you really do is put a chilling effect on subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like that Dirk kind of has a point about June’s actions. but when you come to me with this criticism as though there’s anything i can do about it, as though i’ve somehow messed up, that doesn’t feel the same as other criticism to me. if you say “parts of chapter 8 are too long,” i can take that and use it as feedback in the future. if you say “i don’t like how little agency June had in gf3.1,” i can disagree and present my own case as to why lack of agency is such a persistent theme in godfeels, but i also understand that it’s a difficult story and that one can certainly get The Point while also not necessarily enjoying the experience. but when you say “this is bad because it looks bad in a real world political context,” i mean, god, what do i even DO with that? again, for the millionth time, you’re not telling me anything i don’t already know. i wrote it. i made you feel these emotions. i wanted you to feel these emotions. there is a reason i wanted you to feel these emotions. but they are, fundamentally, YOUR emotions, not mine. only you can understand them.

so sit with them. reflect on them. ask yourself why this part of the story makes you uncomfortable, why you feel compelled to read it the way you do. don’t worry, no one can read your mind. i mean it, anon. there’s no wrong answers here. what’s beautiful about fiction is that it lets us sit in uncomfortable, taboo emotions and events and situations without fear of retribution or judgment... unless, of course, you problematize the very existence of difficult art. unless you create an environment in which everyone is afraid to tell ambiguous stories of any stripe lest they be subject to a vicious harassment campaign. that’s the environment that ruthlessly attacked Isabel Fall over ‘i sexually identify as an attack helicopter.’ that’s an environment so shortsightedly, bloodthirstily fixated on whatever problematic thing they notice first that it is practically designed from the ground up to annihilate all outsider art and leave only the most corporate friendly pro-empire propaganda in its place.

to close out here (fucking finally lmao), you might say i’m putting words in your mouth here, but i’m just trying to follow your logic to its conclusion. if it is a strictly negative problem, a pure flaw in the work, that June can in some sense at least be partially blamed for the violence done to her, what do you suggest is the solution? in the event of a rewrite, what would you suggest i change? are you looking for an apology? an admission of guilt? maybe it’s something else, i don’t know. maybe you haven’t even thought that far ahead. i’m just asking you to understand that your criticism exists in a context that, whether you meant it this way or not, has a demonstrable chilling effect on the very art you claim to love. i get scared when i get criticism like this because it’s framed like an accusation. it’s framed like i did a crime, which implies the specter of punishment.

and trans women, as we know, are the favored whipping girls of social media harassment campaigns.

anyway, i hope that gives you a thing or two to chew on

[commander-minkowski]

one thing that really strikes me when going back and listening to mcr's back catalog as an adult is how fundamentally compassionate a lot of their music is. so much pop punk/emo music from this era is characterized by a spiteful, dickish attitude that can 100% be fun and irreverent, but that just as frequently punches down in a way that's frankly unpleasant and mean (not to mention misogynistic or otherwise bigoted).

while mcr is by no means immune to this (some of their earlier stuff does have misogynistic undertones imo), what sets the band apart from its contemporaries is the sheer number of songs that approach dark subject matter with an intentional and unfortunately rare degree of sensitivity and understanding.

"teenagers" is specifically about the lack of compassion most adults have for adolescent pain, and the immense harm that writing off the effects of trauma as "teen angst" or "just acting out" does, and it also specifically positions the narrator as an outsider allied with teenagers, rather than a spokesperson for teenagers ("maybe they'll leave you alone / but not me").

almost all of "three cheers for sweet revenge" is about deeply hurt people trying to comfort one another, frequently in self-destructive ways, but sometimes in bittersweet, compassionate ones. for instance, in "give 'em hell, kid", the narrator recognizes that regardless of their personal feelings, the ending of their relationship with the subject of the song was for the best ("so go on, live your life / but I miss you more than I did yesterday"). analogously, "you know what they do to guys like us in prison" is about solidarity in the face of homophobic violence.

most of the other songs on the album are about grief. the album as a whole is deeply concerned with the notion that self-harm and suicide have ripple effects, and that suicide is, at the end of the day, a more selfish choice than staying alive, even if the suicidal person doesn't and can't see it that way ("remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor? I'm not okay, you wear me out" "holding on, well, I hope you do the same"). crucially, at the same time, the narrator themself is drenched in suicidal ideation ("if I die, we'll be together" "give me all your poison, give me all your pills" "oh, baby, don't stop, bury me, and fade to black" "so I won't stop dying") which keeps the message of the album as a whole (which is, not in so many words, “don’t kill yourself because you’re not just hurting you, but all the people who care about you”) from being patronizing.

in a nutshell, it's like the difference between a well-meaning stranger going "exercise cures mental illness :))" and a tumblr post from your mutual going "what the fuck this exercising shit actually does help, I'm so mad." mcr meets its depressed, suicidal teen audience's worst impulses where they are and then tells them there's a way out. you can't skip either step; if you skip step one, you end up with "motivational" sappy schlock, but if you skip step two, you just end up playing into those worst impulses and making petulant, angry music that is ultimately just as shallow as the bubblegum pop it performatively hates. mcr has stood the test of time because, more often than not, it manages to create a balance between these two things: recognizing the depths of your pain and working to heal it.

[variousqueerthings]

About Daniel & Miyagi & Grief’n’Stuff

I commented underneath this awesome gifset that paralleled KK3 and Cobra Kai about some interesting depth of feeling that so far has only been hinted at in the latter in relation to Daniel. 

Lots of people are watching the tv show first and either going back to watch the films (like I’ve done) or deciding to get the story purely from CK, so there’s a small tangent where I mention that I think it’s some pretty cool writing that means depending on what you’ve watched when you understand the story differently, which is just neat meta storytelling (there’s Daniel’s side, there’s Johnny’s side, and there’s the truth).

Spoilers for the Karate Kid movies (but they’re 30 years old, go watch’em)

I mainly focused that little comment on Cobra Kai and Daniel’s trauma, which never really seemed to be about Johnny himself, but rather his presence bringing back unpleasant Cobra Kai memories, but there’s something else I found having watched the three movies after watching the show and it’s sort of related to that and sort of related to Miyagi and sort of related to Daniel’s need to honour his memory perfectly - mainly it’s that Daniel probably needs help processing some grief and guilt + some Moments from those movies that I hope to see in coming seasons.

when I was watching the show (even with a knowledge of the trajectory of the films) I had a sense of Daniel as an avid student of Miyagi’s whose life was deeply affected by his presence in it. Clearly emotionally attached to him and his teachings, but still very much in a mentor/student space, with an allegory of fatherhood attached to it - this did start shifting in season 3 after Daniel returned to Okinawa, but there were still some pieces missing that I needed to actually see their interactions to get.

After watching the movies, I now understand that Daniel was actually very textually Miyagi’s adopted son in everything but name (and that he probably feels like he’s failed him and can never make things right, because he’s dead now and that’s yet another interesting parallel with Johnny in terms of his mother) and that makes every decision he makes in relation to Miyagi slot into place in a much more heart-breaking way.

 - the intensity of his devotion to his teaching style (even though it’s not actually a natural fit to his own temperament and in some ways might be a detriment - there’s a not-quite-tangent here about how combining elements of that style with elements of Johnny’s is what both of them need), his bitterness about Cobra Kai (in tandem with the events of the third movie), his not-at-all Miyagi-like response to the attack on the dojo and theft of Miyagi’s medal of honour, his emotions upon returning to Okinawa, even the more “slanted towards a bit of humorous white people don’t get appropriation” stuff like the scene with the fish and Kyler etcetc. (Although idk how Miyagi would feel about the karate-ads)

Miyagi was his father. Not just a father-adjacent, or a metaphor for fatherhood, no, he just straight up considered Daniel to be his son. And that sentiment was returned. No wonder Daniel’s emotionally compromised when it comes to anything that might tarnish his memories of him.

There are a few scenes in particular that I’m interested in whether they’ll show - 

1. First movie Miyagi gets drunk and speaks to Daniel about his past - while he was fighting in WWII winning his medal of honour, his wife died while pregnant in an internment camp, because she didn’t have access to a doctor (which... there is so much within that little piece of backstory). Daniel tucks a now sleeping Miyagi in and studies the medal, realising that his presence means as much to Miyagi as Miyagi’s does to him. He bows in respect before leaving for the night.

2. Second movie (while they’re building a room for Daniel to stay in at Miyagi’s instead of going with his mum to Fresno, which is unbearably cute. We see him living in it in the third movie) Daniel makes a frame for the medal of honour as a gift - Miyagi isn’t exactly dismissive, but there’s that overtone of how it connects to one of the most painful moments of his life. Still, he’s happy that Daniel took the time to do this for him, even while using it as another teachable Moment about bravery. - in the third movie the frame (same frame as in the tv series) is hanging on Miyagi’s wall.

3. Later on, while they’re in Okinawa, Miyagi’s father dies and he goes to sit at a spot that looks over the sea to mourn him. Daniel finds him there and sits down with him, telling him about his own father’s death, about how he felt guilty as a son that he couldn’t do more for him, but the most important thing was that he was there, held his hand, and said goodbye (cries for the 100th time).

4. Third movie. Before realising that Silver has deliberately manipulated him Daniel’s basically suffering a mental breakdown, comparing himself to a very special Bonsai tree that had earlier been destroyed, describing himself as “broken and twisted” - Miyagi takes him into the garden to show him that he fixed the tree and tells Daniel that he has strong roots and I... cry...

5. In general during the third movie we see Daniel pushing Miyagi away several times (one time after which Miyagi is standing alone with tears in his eyes, fuck ooooffff), because he thinks he’s let him down, while Miyagi is just worried. For his son. And yeah, we have them training again and replanting the fixed Bonsai tree and there’s a sort-of catharsis in that, but it never feels like the core of Daniel’s anxieties in that film are dealt with in the text. 

We know the Bonsai Tree Shop (which Daniel gave his college fund for and was meant to be Miyagi’s retirement) failed. We know that he was terrified of Silver until the end. We know he was beaten half to hell, even if he did win his match in the end. We don’t know what happened to Silver or Barnes. We know that Kreese is back and that Silver at least is likely about to come back.  

Daniel towards the end of that movie feels like he failed Miyagi and the show hasn’t really stated whether or not that feeling ever went away - from the clues so far, I’d say not. 

Quite apart from the fact that the acting in these is fucking stellar (the first of them earned Pat Morita his oscar nod and the third is just... wow. Probably my favourite out of all of the scenes in the franchise), they speak so much to the depth of their relationship and respect for one another and to the theme of parenthood and chosen family that the series later expands upon. 

In a story of terrible fathers, Miyagi was a great one, and with Cobra Kai back - and likely to get worse from here on out - the lack of Miyagi’s presence weighs pretty damn heavily on Daniel, especially if he never dealt with any of these things - of course, now he has Amanda and Johnny, if only he’d ask (Manifests For Season Four). 

The series has so far skewed more towards Johnny, which makes a lot of sense, since there were more unknowns about him to play with going in and it’s at first about building him into the more fully-realised character that Billy Zabka had in his head (+ he’s delightful), but with Terry Silver almost definitely coming into the picture, and Daniel and Johnny finally in the position to really start maybe sharing more of their inner selves with each other, I just really really hope that we get to see these moments as framings for Daniel’s story, not just for Johnny’s perspective of him to start opening up, but so the audience can see and/or remember where Daniel’s coming from. 

This show is very good at deciding when we get to see whose perspective and  the creators are interested in exploring more of that aftermath + have used the medal of honour within the plot already + love Silver as a villain, so all of this is my vague... not really prediction, more of an excitement. 

Daniel’s journey is partially one of realising that Miyagi was always proud of him and that the lessons he taught him mean he’ll always be there to protect him, and I’m just excited for Daniel to understand that.

He’s not as alone as he thinks he is.

[hetalia-has-a-secretary]

more of this! imagine that the child has reached puberty and has become more emotionally unstable/reckless/edgy/distracted from school and etc

they're trying to gain some kind of independence from their parent and do not fall for "childish" stuff anymore, so the level of tension between parent|child is high and it leads to unpleasant conflicts

how will single dad!axis&allies cope with the feeling when their child is growing up?

who would have an easier time understanding and connecting with the teen? (poor england)

Oof- poor england indeed :')

Allies and Axis Dads Dealing With Teens!

Allies:

America Realized his child was getting older the day he wanted to take them to McDonald's and tried to buy them a happy meal. When the kid turned it down Alfred immediately assumed they were sick. After talking it over with England, it turns out that every annoying bratty thing America did as a child has finally came full circle. Then when he realized they were getting older and wanting to become more independent, it made him extremely emotional. He had a bizarre mix of being awfully proud, and kind of scared. He realized that his kid could turn out just like him, and honestly even America himself saw how dangerous that was! All in all it's a solid 8/10 on the getting along with a bratty teen scale. Though he now joins Britain for more drinks over being an exhausted parent.

England had to go through this once, and was hoping it wouldn't happen again. Him and his child had verbal fights at least once a week. England was trying his hardest to understand but he was so set on "losing another child" that he forgot for a moment what was happening. He eventually calmed down after one fight in particular. His now teen wanted to hangout with some friends at a sleepover, but it was a school night. England said no and the kid spat back at him that 'uncle Alfred' would have been a better dad, and they ran off to their room. After being stunned for a second, he poured himself a drink. Eventually the two made up after England shared his feelings about the whole situation. Both the Father and the child felt guilty over the argument. From there on they both agreed to try and compromise.

France is another to get into petty arguments with his child. Most of the time it was over how the kid dressed. They wanted to branch out and find their own style. They felt like a doll and France was the little girl who picked out the outfits. Infact, France's kid felt smothered. One day France had enough and packed away the teens clothes, and then all hell broke lose. Between the insulting remarks, and a few sobs things were left in a sour atmosphere. It took a few days for them to really even talk to each other. Though France was the first to apologize. He was just scared he'd lose his pride and joy. Soon enough this lead to them going on clothes shopping, and France realized that his kid learned something important for themselves. How to be their own person, even if it's against the rest of the world. And France couldn't have been prouder.

China is probably the worst of them all when it comes down to understanding his kid during these trying times. They (affectionately) argue over the smallest things. Foods too hot and or cold? Argue about it. Why are you wearing no jacket when it rains? Another argument. Even though China argues with his kid, by the end of the day, there seems to be a silent forgiveness between them. Only once or twice did the teen run off to Japan, who very fondly understands China's way. Even so, he talks them into going back since China is all they have left, and this situation will blow over eventually.

Russia can be extremely patient when he needs to be. And let me tell you, his patience was certainly tested when his kid started going through puberty! Russia's kid has discovered how to manipulate him through his past trauma as a country. And so for a couple weeks Russia (via slightly concerned) was doing everything he could for his teen. Once someone pointed it out Ivan went through two phases. The first phase was silent parental anger. Which his kid picked up on immediately, especially after they realized they couldn't get Russia to do everything for them anymore. Then a small fight broke out between them. Russia was dealing with the sarcastic remarks up until his kid told him that he deserved to be alone. That's when Russia snapped and spat back, how he'd rather be alone than deal with a terrible little monster. Then it grew silent. And then phase two hit. Realization. Not just that his kid was growing up, but his kid was starting to develope some of his intimidating and threatening habits. Russia tries hard to be nice to others, but he was never fully aware that his antics could hurt this badly. It was a rude awakening for both the kid, and the father. Things got emotional, but it turned out for the better. Even if they still sometimes bicker.

Canada had one hell of a time dealing with a bratty teen. He hardly had it in him to punish his child, and it caught up to him. America had come over to the house and witnessed Canada's kid pretty much walk all over him. It was America who talked to Canada about tough love. And he tried it out. His kid was in shock when his phone was missing off the counter, and started to tear up when Canada explained that it was taken away until they, at the very least, talked about the difference between respect and disrespect. Canada was very close to giving into his kid's pleas to return his phone, but managed to stand his ground. Even after they talked things over. There was an akward silence between them until the punishment was over. But it was going to be a long sturggle for Canada and having to figure out how to deal with this new attitude that pops up every now and again.

Axis:

Germany is very much so a 'I will get respect or else' kind of parent. He's never had to punish his kid before, and usually has the patience of a god. Via a bit confusing sometimes with his parenting skills, but he gets by. But as soon as his teen starts stepping out of line and pushing their boundaries he straight up goes and tells them if they don't like it, tough luck. His rules his house. But with thought love comes the love part. The kid will storm off, and when dinner comes around Germany will bring them food and try to talk more about it. He'll say stuff like 'you might not like my rules, but they're there for a reason' or 'Its okay to be mad or upset, but this is how the world tends to work, and I just want to see you manage'. He really loves his kid, and tries but having two headstrong German's (adopted or not) can be a hassel. They both now understand that sometimes it's better to just walk away and cool off before discussing the topic further.

Japan isn't a real strict dad so long chores are done, and his child is happy. But then puberty hot and the kid became a completely different person. Japan sensed it right off the bat and decided to distance himself from his kid than try and make them see reason. Though this eventually hurt the kids feelings. You see, the kid began tossing out figurines and manga Japan gifted them. He didn't mind if they grew out of it, but at least give it away to another person. His pride was hurt, and it got hurt more when he caught his kid trying to sneak out of the house and run away. That's when he realized he had to deal with this head on. Even if he hated it. The worst part was how okay the teen was with just leaving. They became too dumbfounded at Japan's tears to even register why he was crying. Japan had actually fallen to his knees, quivering. He told them that if they really wanted to leave him that badly it was okay. And that whatever he did to upset them was his fault alone. It only dawned on his kid why he was acting like this when Japan mentioned something about them tossing out memories, and how he should have seen it coming. Japan's crying was a last ditch effort to try and fix what he thought was broken. His kid on the other hand had started to tear up as well, and despite any discomfort, they got done next to him and hugged him. He eventually hugged back, telling them they were his world. No one knows that the two ever struggled, especially since then they patched things up quickly.

Italy was a hot mess when his kid started asking for different foods, and wanted to spend more time away from him. Family was everything and it hurt him that his teen was pushing him away. Italy just got to the point where he accepted that it was happening. His kid started staying out late, and Italy would eat alone, but keep a plate out for his kid. Until one night his kid didn't come home. He panicked and didn't even bother calling Germany before he went searching throughout the night for his kid. So when he returned next day, heartbroken and feeling sick to his stomach, he finally gave in and cried. The door that night was carefully opened and closed and that's when the teen saw the damage they caused. Their father had a phone in hand, and a Missing person paper printed out, along with a gazillion tissues. He had passed out on the couch like this. Morning came around, and Italy just about passed out from joy and relief seeing his kid sleeping on the floor. He was so relieved that he carefully shook his kid awake, and immediately started balling his eyes out when they said 'good morning'. Many years and apologies were shed that morning. Italy had actually gave the kid a curfew, and they were only allowed to break that if they told him where they were going.

Ta-stinking-da! I had way to much trouble with these, but I think they're pretty good. Yet again gave myself the feels with this. Let me know what you guys think! ❤️

[autisticsupervillain]

The Makara Sisters

Ladies and gentlemen, it's finally here. My villainstuck Calliope post. @icedreaper I certainly hope you enjoy my friend.

Now this. This provides me with a fascinating challenge. How do you corrupt someone who is inherently good? Calliope is the heroic half of Caliborn. That seems as close to incorruptible as you can be in the Homestuck multiverse. Well, Calliope is about to learn that good is a very subjective term. The road to hell is paved with good intentions after all.

Our tale begins on Earth C. Calliope had moved in next to Roxy, as she was one of the people she knew best. Calliope is still a bit of a fangirl and casually rooming up with the people she idolized is kinda overwhelming for her. As such, she spends most of her time with Roxy and her friends. It’s not until years later that she gets to have another long conversation with any of the Beta Kids.

It happens during a party. The 5 year anniversary of the day the kids beat the game. Roxy had voided up all the necessities, with a little help from Jane for reference. That night, Calliope sees Dave sitting at a table completely smashed. Calliope asks if he’s doing alright and immediately sees through Dave’s bullshit when he insists he is. Calliope is best friends with Roxy. She knows what grief drinking looks like at this point and that’s exactly what Dave is doing. If he were sober, Dave would be able to keep his mask on and brush of Calliope's concern. But, he’s completely hammered, so he starts running his mouth. Dave admits that, while he was setting up the speakers and trying to get the music to sound right, Dirk surprised him.

The way Dirk was dressed, with his hat and his shades, and with how much he’d grown over the years, for a minute, Dirk looked a lot like Bro. Dave freezes up and flashes back for a minute before Dirk snap him out of it. Dirk comforts Dave about it as Dave vents his heart out at him for a bit. Basically retreading the conversation from when Dave gives him that big hug. Bro’s abuse still happened and that still creeps in sometimes. So, it’s good that the Striders can have these conversations. After a few cracks at how “fucked in the head" they are, the Striders begin pondering their counterparts. More specifically, Alpha Dave. Dave speculates that Alpha Dave was who he would’ve grown up to be if he didn’t have John, Rose, and Jade to lean on. Of course, sense Dirk doesn’t really know him well enough to define Alpha Dave as a person, that doesn’t really clear anything up. That just leaves the uncomfortable question of what a Dave without friends would’ve looked like. Especially with the way Bro turned out.

Soon the party started, and Dirk advised Dave to have fun and take his mind off it. Dave tries, but finds he can’t. It’s eating at him more than it should and he decides to go for a drink. One drink turns to several and then Calliope showed up.

At the end of his drunken ramble, Calliope expresses her sympathy. While she doesn’t know Dave very well, she knows someone in a similar situation to Alpha Dave. She mentions her God-Tier counterpart and reassures Dave that, while Calliope did become a much colder person, she did not become a bad one. Dave is a good person at heart and Calliope assures him that he always will be, regardless of what happens. That’s when Dirk and Rose show up. Dirk thanks Calliope for comforting Dave and explains that he figured something like this would happen and went to fetch Rose to help. Calliope watches them drag Dave home so they could talk to him in private before returning to the party.

The next day, Dave invites Calliope over and thanks her for giving him someone to lean on. The two start visiting regularly and they quickly become friends. They talk about their alternate selves often and Dave eventually mentions that he would’ve liked to meet his Alpha counterpart, if only to put his fears to rest. When Calliope asks if he’s ever discussed this with Dirk, Dave says that it’d be awkward. Bro was a terrible person and all it’d do is make Dirk feel worse about himself. So, Calliope just suggests asking John to let him visit Alpha Dave and Dave goes quiet. He takes a deep breath, figuring that he’s already dumped a lot on Calliope as it is, so there’s no backing out now. He admits that he’s scared to see what his Alpha counterpart is like. Dave has quite a few flaws himself and given how Dirk turned out…

Calliope mentions Davesprite, who had a nasty life himself but still turned out to be a good person, but Dave still remains hesitant. He clams up and Calliope admits that this is probably a conversation he should have with Rose or Dirk. Calliope apologizes for making her company awkward but Dave still thanks her as she leaves. He needed a fresh set of eyes to look at his issues before he began talking them out with his closer friends.

After a few days of stewing on the issue, Dave finally calls up Rose to have a chat with her. Rose brings up a lot of the same points Calliope and ultimately gets to the root of where this new issue comes from. Now that Dave has had time to process how harmful most of what he’s been raised on actually is, he’s worried about how it’s effected him as a person. Basically, he’s worried he might end up as a terrible person because Bro was a terrible person and that constant fear of failure that Bro’s abuse instilled in him is keeping him from just dissipating these feelings logically. Sure, Dave knows he’s not a bad person. He knows, logically, that he’s just a kid trying his best to be a good person. But, Bro instilled a bunch of self loathing in him by constantly beating the shit out of him when he was a kid. That doesn’t just go away. Rose is smart and she knows Dave well enough to comfort him, but she’s not the psychoanalytical genius she used to think she was. The only advice she can give him is from the heart. So, she admits that Dave venting to her was a good first step. But the only one who will know whether or not meeting Alpha Dave will help or not is him. All she can do is listen to and support him. It’s up to Dave to decide if he thinks that will be enough.

A few more days of contemplation later, Dave approaches John and asks him to help meet Alpha Dave.

The two Dave’s talk for awhile, after Alpha Dave calms down from seeing two young men in pajamas spontaneously appear right in front of him. Alpha Dave sympathizes with the younger Strider once he’s all caught up and admits that he didn’t have the best life growing up either. So that’s why he’s being earnest when he says that Dave’s handling it the best he can. Your upbringing doesn’t define you, you define you. And Dave has defined himself a good person who loves his friends and is working hard to work through his trauma. After a big hug, Alpha Dave asks if he could meet Dirk and Davesprite.

On the day of Dirk’ birthday party, Dirk is greeted at home by three Daves instead of two. Cue Strider group hug.

After a long party, Alpha Dave expresses how happy he is to have finally met Dirk. He expresses how happy he is to see two versions of himself grew up to get happy endings and shows how proud he is in Dirk. Even if he’s destined to die, he can die happy knowing that his little bro grows up happy.

Calliope gets caught up by John about the goings on after Alpha Dave returns to his own timeline. She’s happy to know that she helped the Striders, indirectly or otherwise, and Dirk thanks her for giving him the happiest party of his life.

After everything winds down and people start turning in for the night, Calliope thoughts return to God-Tier Calliope, thanks to Alpha Dave reminding her of her. She contemplates if getting to see Earth C and make friends like she did would make her happier.

She waits a few months before asking John for help again, letting him cool off from all the time traveling, partying, and emotional catharsis. She asks him to take her to wear the Green Sun used to be so she can grab God-Tier Calliope’s body and bring her back to be revived by Jane.

God-Tier Calliope is very put off by her new surroundings. A massive, life filled world, filled with other sentient, sapient life forms. She has a hard time opening up and she always comes off as distant next to her counterpart. Not unpleasant, just cold.

She tries to open. Tries to make friends. Calliope insists that this is what made her happy. But it just doesn’t click. Calliope ponders the problem over before coming to a realization. All the ways she was able to contact her human friends. All the technology. All the toys. That had to be given to her by someone. Both Calliopes have vague memories of someone caring for them when they were younger… but they just couldn’t remember who.

So, Calliope asks John for another big favor in order to find out who raised her. When the two find out it was Gamzee, Calliope is ecstatic to have a father figure like what Jane and John had, only for John to cough awkwardly and elaborate who Gamzee actually is. John doesn’t know all the details himself, but he does know that Gamzee apparently killed some of Karkat’s friends and attempted some more horrible stuff. Calliope is distraught but John can’t give any more details. Neither Karkat or Vriska like to talk about it. Dejected, Calliope and John return where Calliope briefs her God-Tier counterpart on the situation.

So, God-Tier Calliope just teleports over to Karkat and bluntly asks about Gamzee. The naked, showering Karkat proceeds to screech his lungs out.

After patiently waiting out Karkat’s tantrum, Calliope clarifies that Gamzee may have been her father. Karkat pauses before shoeing her out of the room so he can finish his shower.

Then John teleports in to warn him about Calliope and Karkat screeches again.

After Karkat finally wraps up and gets dressed, he and John sit down with the Calliopes to explain. John questions whether or not he should be a part of this, but Karkat insists. Honesty is the backbone of a healthy relationship and the Gamzee thing has been eating at him for awhile now. Karkat explains that Gamzee was one of his best friends, even if he didn’t always treat him like it. Which is something that Karkat regrets seeing how he snapped and started murdering people. Karkat would’ve tried to calm him down, stop him, but that plan got shunted aside thanks to the retcon. Karkat goes into self loathing mode, he doesn’t even know why Gamzee started killing people and he blames himself for that. Calliope reassures him and John helps pull him out of his funk while God-Tier Calliope just bluntly asks when and how Gamzee raised her. Karkat admits that he has no idea and that he doesn’t know where to find him now. All he can confirm is that he’s still alive. God-Tier Calliope leaves the conversation at that point, allowing her mortal counterpart to catch up with her later.

Calliope asks about her chilly demeanor and God-Tier Calliope still admits that she doesn’t still fully get this friendship thing. She can see that there’s something there between her counterpart and her friends, but she doesn’t fully get it. She just can’t feel it. After all, she’s a healthy Cherub and Cherubs don’t have friends. Regardless, Calliope tries to help give her a push in the right direction with some nicknames. From now on, everyone will refer to God-Tier Calliope as Callie, calling back to Roxy's nickname. After all, Calliope loved it when she was befriending Roxy, so surely it’ll grow on Callie.

Calliope and Callie start scouring the globe for Gamzee’s refrigerator. However, Jake ends up being the one to find it. Callie coldly thanks Jake for his assistance and awkwardly hugs him. She almost crushes his ribs, but it’s the thought that counts. Hugs are a thing that friends do after all. Callie informs Jake that, while the exact details are personal, Gamzee could potentially still be dangerous and they might need him for backup.

When Gamzee stumble out of the fridge and adjusts his eyesight, the first thing he sees is Calliope. His first instinct is to envelope her in a hug. Nearly a minute passes before he notices Callie hovering over them and Jake training a gun on him.

Gamzee tries to hug Callie as well, but she pushes him back and starts interrogating him. Even when being held several feet in the air, Gamzee is still gushing over his daughter and Callie events puts him down at Calliope’s insistence. Gamzee’s blabbering comes to a dead halt once Callie bluntly asks why he killed Nepeta and Equius. Jake notices the mood shift and awkwardly excuses himself from the conversation, making sure he’s still in yelling distance.

Gamzee sits down, stares up at the sky and confesses to everything. He killed for two reasons. One was in service to his dark master Lord English, whom he believed would destroy reality and replace it with the Dark Carnival. An eternal paradise, free from all the abandonment and suffering he’d been cursed with. The other reason was Calliope herself. When he met her, when he first saw her hatch, he fell in love with her. She was the first person in his life to love him unconditionally.

He goes on into detail about how Lil' Cal, the Gamzee part of Lil' Cal talked about Calliope in his brief moments of clarity. Gamzee didn’t believe it until he met her himself.

Calliope isn’t sure what to make of her surrogate father. He’s a bad person by his own admission and the fact that he was, to an extent, motivated by her just makes it even more complicated. Callie rests a hand on her counterpart’s shoulder and asks Gamzee why she didn’t get this treatment. Gamzee hazards a guess that his counterpart wanted her to survive in that timeline. Cherubs grow best on isolation after all. It was even something he considered doing in the main timeline, given he loved Calliope more than her “brother". Callie suggests that they take Gamzee back to the house. Live with him for a few days. Give Calliope the chance to know him and sort out her conflicted feelings, while also making sure that he’s being monitored by one of the most powerful God-Tiers on Earth should he prove to be untrustworthy.

Jake doesn’t ask what their conversation was about, as he feels like it was a private affair. He’s confident that his dear friend and her alternate counterpart can handle whatever it is they’ve gotten themselves into. However, he is asked a question by Callie: What’s a sister? Gamzee kept referring to the two of them as such. Jake and Calliope explain the concept of siblings to Callie and the two decide too adopt the term. Callie and Calliope. Twin Cherub Sisters.

Over the course of the next few months, Callie and Calliope get to know Gamzee better. Gamzee is fully remorseful for his actions. He reveals more of why he took the path he did to his daughters overtime. He talks about the Sopor. He talks about his faith. He talks about his dad. Eventually, he even brings himself to talk about Tavros.

The sisters notice the way his demeanor shifts. The mood always lightens whenever he talks about Tavros. He looks like he’s somewhere else, somewhere warmer and nicer. In those brief moments, Gamzee looks like Gamzee again.

He refuses to tell them who killed Tavros. He insists he doesn’t know.

Meanwhile, Jake has been incredibly shifty on the details of his exhibition with the Calliopes. His friends know he’s hiding something from them, Jake can’t lie for shit. But, when pressed, he tells them that it’s something the Calliopes wanted him to keep secret. So the subject is left alone.

That is, until Vriska Serket catches wind of it.

It starts innocuously enough. John heard about Jake’s little trip, so he asks about it at the next anniversary party. Jake says the matter is private, so John drops the issue. Vriska overhears and starts hounding him for details. Jake went on an adventure with the two Calliopes and didn’t invite her? This is the most interesting thing to happen in ages! What happened? Who’s involved? What’s going on!?! Jake finds he can’t slip away and ends up accidentally dropping Gamzee’s name. Vriska’s enthusiastic interrogation suddenly turns death serious as she starts squeezing the facts out of him.

Gamzee is enjoying his quiet time at home, waiting for his kids to come back, when Vriska bursts through the wall. A brutal, bloody fight breaks out that lasts most of the night. Right when it looks like someone’s about to win, the Cherub Sisters get home. Callie steps in an demands to know what the hell Vriska is doing. Now that the two are restrained, Gamzee and Vriska argue instead. Calling each other murderers, abusers, manipulators, and every other nasty word the two can think of. Gamzee finally lets slip that Vriska is the one who killed Tavros.

Callie promptly hefts Vriska up by her neck. Even Calliope is giving her weird looks as Callie demands an explanation. Vriska stammers to think of a justification, but she comes up short. Killing Tavros was one of the few things she regretted, after all. Instead, she calls in back up. Vriska fully expects Callie to kill her, so she mind controls Terezi. Everything comes to a halt back at the party as Terezi suddenly shouts about Vriska being attacked down at the Cherub household.

John teleports everyone over there, causing mass chaos when they see what’s happening. Karkat demands an explanation from Gamzee, Callie demands an explanation from Vriska, Terezi demands an explanation Callie, and everyone is yelling at everyone. John, Jane, and everyone else who is trying to get people to calm down are drowned out in the sea of noise, until everything suddenly freezes. Aradia asks everyone to calm down, putting some emphasis on Callie specifically seeing how she’s probably strong enough to just break out of Aradia’s time stop.

What proceeds is effectively a trial, with Aradia reigning as Judge. The question of who exactly is on trial almost sparks another argument, but that gets shut down quick. Both Vriska Serket and Gamzee Makara on trial today and both immediately start flinging dirt at the other. The argument goes in circles as the two throw accusations and excuses at each other, forcing Aradia to break up a few fights. Vriska claims that she had an abusive lusus as an excuse, Gamzee points out that at least she had lusus. Gamzee calls Vriska out on her abusive behavior, John mentions the Pre-Retcon timeline. Vriska calls Gamzee a murderer and Gamzee has to be restrained from beating the shit out of her for what she did to Tavros.

Eventually, the whole thing comes down to a vote. It’s decided that they can’t really hold Gamzee accountable if they’re not going to hold Vriska accountable, as they share a lot of the same excuses and crimes. Regardless of what they’ve done, they still have loved ones among them, especially in the form of Terezi and the Calliopes respectively. Basically, the policy is “live and let live". Earth C is a place of new beginnings for a lot of people. Maybe it’s best to let them start over.

Later that week, Vriska vents at Terezi about being compared to Gamzee. I mean, Gamzee was the big threat that she saved everyone from. Vriska is the good guy here! Terezi points out that Vriska nearly got them all killed and Vriska meekly concedes the point. Vriska decides she should put her money where her mouth is and try to apologize to Gamzee. After all, they’re supposedly really similar and they both just want to me better people, right? So it should be no problem for her to just walk in and apologize.

Gamzee still gives her a chilly reception when she shows up and Vriska isn’t one to take insults lying down. Things quickly escalate into an argument from there before Callie breaks it up and asks Vriska to leave. This pattern repeats for awhile. One would approach the other, an argument would ensue, and Karkat or Callie or Terezi or whoever would intervene and split them up. It happened yearly, then monthly, then daily. Karkat is especially frustrated because he thinks they would make great kissmesises, but neither of them want to go there. Gamzee refuses to give her the time of day for what she did to Tavros and Vriska is so bothered by their similarities that she keeps approaching him about it. This leads to arguments, fights, split ups, and the cycle repeats.

Eventually, Calliope gets an idea. Gamzee’s main hang up with Vriska is what she did to Tavros, right? So, they can just resurrect Tavros, have him forgive Vriska, and problem solved! It worked great with Dave’s issues, so it should work this time. John is getting a bit tired of constantly refereeing their fights himself, so he agrees to help them. They just snatch Tavros’s body from the latest point in the timeline and resurrect him. Problem solved.

Things go off the rails very quickly. Gamzee and Tavros are ecstatic to see each other again and Tav nearly bowls him over with a hug. But, when he asks for a catch up on what everyone has been up too, Gamzee hesitates. Ultimately, Gamzee is serious about wanting to be a better person, for the sake of his daughters', so he decides to be honest. He tells Tavros everything that he did. Everything that happened and why. He even explains what he planned to do to Terezi.

Tavros doesn’t forgive him.

Tavros sees the similarities and they’re enough for him to not be comfortable around Gamzee anymore. He leaves and tells Gamzee not to contact him.

Gamzee tries anyways, to no avail. He begins to shut himself off from the rest of the world. He doesn’t even speak to Karkat anymore. All the good progress he made begins going down the drain. His best bro, his first bro, doesn’t think he’s worth it anymore. What’s he supposed to make of that?

The Cherub Sisters comfort him, try to get him out of his shell. It works, to an extent, but Gamzee quickly becomes possessive. It gets worse day by day, from Gamzee stalking them to him trying to keep them from leaving the house. The Cherub Sisters go to Rose for advice, given she’s the psychologist, but she admits that she’s a little out of her depth when it comes to Gamzee. She advises spending some time away from him and letting Karkat take care of him. He’s his moirail, after all, this is his job.

But, when the sisters go on a trip, Karkat struggles to bring Gamzee out of his shell. He’s far to despondent and doesn’t seem to react to anything Karkat tries. Whenever Gamzee’s about to open up, he looks at Karkat and sees another person he failed, betrayed, and immediately clams up.

When the Sisters get back, he’s an even more possessive, self destructive mess than he was last time, to the point of watching them sleep every night. Calliope decides that they need to time travel again to fix this. John is hesitant, given last time apparently didn’t work out, but he agrees to help. This time, the sisters decide to grab his lusus. But, when introduced, Gamzee’s lusus turns around and swims away, which only sends him further down into his spiral. It’s gotten to the point where Gamzee flat out forgets to eat or sleep for days on end. When the sisters go to him again for help, John tries to refuse, stating they’re just making things worse, but Callie demands that he help out.

This time, the sisters bring Gamzee a recouperacoon to help treat his newfound insomnia. This ends with him diving head first back into addiction. Even Vriska seems concerned when she comes over for another argument, only to find him blankly staring at the ceiling. The more Gamzee’s mental state decays, the more desperate the sisters get to help him. At first, John blatantly refuses to help them any further, because all they’re doing is making things worse, but then he relents when Callie actually threatens him into helping.

When John had dropped them off on a dead planet in the middle of a seemingly Doomed Timeline, he seemed confused. Callie explained to Calliope, once they were out of earshot, that she heard a legend once of a powerful Cherub who got her hands on the Treasure. The Cherub rampaged her way across the multiverse for centuries, leaving countless bodies in her wake, before being killed by a legendary Void Player. They’re there to obtain the Treasure from her body.

None of them notice the torn up Muse of Space outfit hanging on a tombstone. A memorial to an old friend.

When he brings the sisters back, John takes them to Dirk and Dave in order to stage an intervention. They’re creating a negative feedback loop. Gamzee’s falling further into his funk, which is making the sisters more desperate to help him. This causes their actions to become more hasty, which leads to them making short sighted mistakes, leading to an ongoing cycle. The sisters agree to stop meddling and claim they need time alone to sort things out.

But, it’s to late for that now. If some had stopped them sooner, talked to them a day earlier, the sisters could’ve been talked down. But now? It was to late. They were committed now. Their father needed them.

Their plan is simple. Callie reasons that the reason the Gamzee is still suffering, still losing, is that he was thematically predestined to. That’s the theme of his character. Tragedy and comedy. The duality of a lethal joke character. So, if they change what his theme is, what the narrative of his character is, they can change his fate. It makes some sort of sense… even if it is a desperate long shot when you think about it

So, how does one change the themes surrounding one’s character? They just need to change his aspect. Rage is defined by chaos, destruction, discontent, and the aforementioned duality. They just need to change his aspect to something else. And, in order to do that, they need a ritual.

All of reality is made up of games within games. Copies of SBURB that generate copies of SBURB on and on. Those games are made up of code and code can be decompiled. They just need to find the debug tool, reprogram Gamzee’s aspect, and thus eliminate all the thematic suffering that plagues his character.

In order to find the Debug Tool, the Sisters need to jump through some hoops. Using the Retcon Powers, Calliope and Callie approach a random Lord of Light, asking him to use his absolute knowledge to confirm their theory. He obliges, mostly to avoid fighting a powerful Muse of Space. Apparently, in order to find the Debug Tool, you’d have to gather up the fragments of its code that are hidden around Paradox Space. Luckily, the Lord knows where they are, thanks to knowledge being Light's mo. He gives them a list of what to search for and where to find it. The Sisters depart on their journey.

Calliope and Callie come across a Doomed version of Beforus and explain their quest to the local version of Feferi. The Empress admits that she does have something like that and is, in fact, happy someone has come to take it off her hands. The last time she tried messing with that strand of code, she ended up glitching a nearby galaxy out of existence, so she resorted to locking it up and throwing away the key.

Unfortunately, things begin to go wrong once Callie tries interacting with the fragment of code. The Sisters are effectively script kiddies in this “the multiverse is all code" analogy. Meaning, they don’t fully understand what they’re doing and they’re to desperate to fully care. Once the Sisters leave with the code fragment, Beforus's timeline begins glitching. It starts out like a particularly buggy Bethesda game and quickly descends into a lovecraftian nightmare. The Sisters only realize the damage they’ve caused when they see the timeline they just left “crash" and corrupt itself, leaving only buggy horrorterrors and amalgamated monstrosities in its wake. Calliope is horrified to see that they just destroyed an entire timeline, but Callie tries to remain calm. While she’s clearly shaken, she reasons that they can just undo the damage once the Debug Tool is put back together. It’s not like they can save the timeline now, it’s the only responsible thing to do. Calliope reluctantly agrees.

This pattern continues. The Cherubs travel from timeline to timeline, collecting bits of code and leaving buggy messes in their wake. With every piece collected, more damage is done to the very foundation of Paradox Space. Not only do timelines break apart, but survivors who escape said timelines act as viruses that allow the broken code to infest other timelines. People become living, unwitting Trojan Horses, spreading their glitches to other sessions. The spread only gets worse once the infection reaches the dreambubbles. Those who don’t die suffer as unrecognizable abominations.

This just makes the Sisters more desperate to fulfill their goal. Gamzee becomes an afterthought as they start racing to save reality.

Word soon spreads of the precursors of this event. Descriptions of the Capricious Makara Sisters, who would steal the keystones to your reality and doom your timeline to destruction.

The Alpha Trolls and the Ancestors in the dreambubbles team up to try and quarantine the event , with Aranea communicating with Vriska to inform Earth C of the ongoing apocalypse. The Earth C team help out where they can, but they begin to hear things about these so called Makara Sisters. Descriptions and details through the grape vine that sound hauntingly familiar. It’s Roxy who pits the pieces together as her gut sinks in horror.

The Makara Sisters teleport in to find a piece of the code, only to find their friends waiting for them. Roxy, Dave, Karkat, Dirk, and everyone else tries to reason with them. To talk them out of this crusade. The Cherubs don’t know what they’re doing. That’s the whole reason things got this bad. If the complete the Debug Tool, much less use it to mess with something as important as Aspects, they could potentially destroy all of Paradox Space. Quarantine efforts are making good headway, they don’t need to risk all this.

It’s to late though. Calliope is convinced that the Debug Tool is the only thing that can prevent Armageddon. During their argument, Callie breaks down in tears.

Gamzee was the first person she loved. Not appreciated, not cared for, loved. Over time, she’d grown attached to Gamzee. She learned about this things humans called family and she fully embraced it. Gamzee was her father and Callie was going to save him.

Calliope comforts her sister after her breakdown, allowing the two to teleport away.

The Makara Sisters continue collecting pieces of the code, destroying more timelines and making quarantine that much more difficult, until only one remains. The last piece of code, buried deep within Earth C's core. And all that stood between them were all of their friends.

No matter what happens, Roxy will always remember Calliope as her friend.

[septembersghost]

you say you love almost everyone and that's so nice to me since there is a TON of hate and negativity from feuding sides in this fandom against the boys and i find that depressing ): but it also makes me wanna know...who DON'T you love?

my scrap of advice regarding the vitriol, since I was once badly affected by it and found it damaging to my relationship with the show at certain points (cruel negativity =/= constructive discussion/thoughtful criticism, of course, I have plenty of that myself, but there’s definitely some really unpleasant stuff out there that is simply toxic for the sake of it) - people have strong opinions and you, friend, are allowed to ignore them! I admit it is far easier said than done, I am NOT good at doing this when I see hate directed at Dean, but I have gotten a lot better at not focusing constantly on things that make me so upset and bitter that I start to resent characters, and that has really helped me. another thoughtful person mentioned yesterday how it can be useful to try to see various perspectives in the story, even if you do not agree with them (this is where there’s a difference between sympathy and empathy - I find I feel the former a lot for various characters, whereas Dean gets the depth of the latter, but both are types of care). find your safe, good space, and don’t let anyone take it from you. <3

who don’t I love? hmmm. one shall not be named, but if you know, you know. (this is not S or C.)

the D*bb era was NOT good to supporting characters, even ones I love, and had trouble utilizing/handling them well, but there are still many that I have a lot of fondness for.

Lucifer, particularly Lucifer played by M*rk P, should never have appeared again after Swan Song. (if we had to have Sam’s hell hallucinations, they needed to figure out some other way to frame them, because it doesn’t even make sense that he sees Lucifer in Nick’s vessel. it would have been much more horrific if he had seen HIMSELF as possessed by Lucifer, but I get why that would have been difficult to film.) it stole a large portion of his power and effectiveness, and the archangels’ presence kept getting more and more reduced and diluted overall. the fact that we had to deal with him literally down to the wire in 15x19 (and I liked many aspects of Inherit the Earth)...mind-boggling. (we also didn’t need Nick’s storyline? who asked.)

Metatron? I just cannot stand him? laying aside the fact that he brutally murdered Dean in a way I found actively traumatic (yeah! I was indeed messed up about one of his deaths long before 15x20. 9x23 actually gave me nightmares at the time, and that was the WORST hiatus because I was so horrified that I considered quitting, which is the one time that ever seriously happened, although, looking back, maybe that was the smarter instinct...? tuning in to 10x01 and feeling extreme trepidation was not fun, but then demon!Dean was like, “heyyyyy girl, I’m charming and more naughty and unhinged than actively evil and you will actually want to have fun and unleash me!” and I was like...damn, okay, I guess. love my boy, whatever he is! /rambling) the concept of Metatron is interesting and could’ve added some great elements to the narrative (they tried), but he creeped me out and I cannot stand the way they characterized him. (I feel bad because it makes me want to tear Curtis Armstrong’s head off when he shows up in anything else, which I recognize is an unfair reaction!)

Amelia is maybe the one lady (possibly Toni too? idk I barely remember her existence. Naomi’s not my fave by a long-shot, but Amanda Tapping handled the portrayal well) I find nothing worth defending about, it’s not even hate at all, she just is so boring and straight out of a bad soap (it’s JARRING, yes, our show did indulge in all its glamour and its trauma and its fucking melodrama, but she’s from some other genre. it probably doesn’t help that I resent that storyline in S8, and she and Sam have black hole negative chemistry. I do hate the bright filter they used on her scenes).

Chuck as soon as he became a megalomaniacal villain and broke the logic and rules of the entire narrative. again, I understand what they were aiming for, the idea of God as a villain and wresting back your own agency/control/freedom is one that I am deeply drawn towards, I think it’s an important idea, I love the philosophical and gnostic aspects of what they were tackling. I didn’t even mind it when we found out he was God (it had been theorized for so long!), but then the way it was addressed at the very end damaged a lot of key pieces and it forces us to ignore that to even allow the rest of the story to retain its cohesion.

It’s a very small list in a vast world of characters beyond our mains, though! There are even one-off characters who I happily stan. It hurts me that so many of them suffered (SPN doesn’t discriminate on its pain and torment, unfortunately, and no one is more evidence of that than Dean himself now, but when you think about what any of them went through...), but I enjoy more of them than not!

[owljolson-archive]

it got mentioned in my last comic update reblog blurb, but i don’t think i actually detailed what happened to me recently, did i?

sooo. my luck being what it is, back on the 11th i broke my left arm. it’s super frustrating; i was just bringing in the last of my laundry, ready to go to bed after, looking forward to the warm weather starting the next day, and i’d already slipped and banged my knee earlier in the evening and was being cautious, so you’d think i was good for the night, but nooope. and then a few days later i had surgery and my grandma died.

lengthy unpleasantness and ruminating under the cut

slipped on the very last black ice of the season, landing hard on my left arm and breaking it to the point that it sagged in a way forearms should not sag when i attempted to raise it. a neighbor passed by a couple minutes later, and kindly called for help and stayed with me until it arrived.

i’ve never broken anything before. that night was a traumatic one, and had a lot of firsts; my first ever broken bone(s), my first ever ambulance ride, my first ever overnight stay in a hospital. all while experiencing some of the worst pain of my life. luckily for me, i live pretty close to the best hospital in iowa, and one that’s pretty well-regarded in general and even nationally ranked in a few areas, including orthopedics (woo)

it was a rough night; lots of waiting, lots of x-rays and manipulation of my arm. they knocked me out, because they didn’t like the way my bones were set initially, and actually had to remove my cast and put on a second new one. afterwards i threw up all over everything, including my poor nurse, because my body didn’t like ketamine one bit. my nurse was super nice and positive, a real trooper, i apologized to and thanked him a whole bunch.

eventually i went home, spent the next couple days in a daze, and on the 15th i went in for surgery. because when i break bones, apparently i break ‘em good; the doctors needed to install some steel plating and screws to help the healing process. it was pretty nerve-wracking; my first ever invasive surgery, like-actual-real-ass-operating-room-surgery. but everybody was nice, the operation went well (good hospital for it, after all), i didn’t throw up, and after several hours of waking up and observation they sent me off with my lovely cousin and his wife, who’ve been extremely helpful through all this and kept an eye on me as official caregivers for the next 24 hours despite still getting over illness of their own (surgery would’ve been postponed indefinitely/cancelled if i didn’t have one).

and then i found out about my babcia. she’d just had her 98th birthday not even two weeks before, but she had heart troubles and had caught pneumonia, and we knew that that was pretty much the ballgame. she passed away just as i was going into surgery, apparently. it was quietly and my mom was by her side, so i suppose that’s the best it could have gone, and she’d had a very long life.

but...man. it had just been her birthday so recently. she was my last blood grandparent, and was Always There. she never spoke very good english, being an older immigrant, and rarely talked about the past. so i only ever caught snippets of her younger life, becoming an adult in poland just as ww2 hit and ravaged the country, with things like her brother being a pow, and her and her mother traversing the countryside on foot in winter. but they all informed a lot about her, and probably explained how resilient and always-trucking-along she was, and how she cheerfully lived by herself in the village in manhattan even into the 2000s. but she became so frail in the end, physically and mentally, that she couldn’t even stay with family anymore. she quietly died in a little hospital-like retirement home in some small corner of arizona, with almost nothing and few people in her life, just family and most of them spread out far away, quietly cremated.it feels so unfair. i think my mom’s going to try and request a small catholic mass in her memory; she would have liked that.

and it happened in the middle of my trauma and surgery, with my recuperation and sleepy medication knocking me out, so it still hasn’t fully processed yet. i feel so numb and isolated from it, and that makes me upset on another level. i hope i don’t crash too hard when it does eventually hit.

so...now i wait. my left arm’s in an elbow-covering full arm cast, which really sucks, but i get a new regular cast on the 29th. and then i’m in that for another month (and potentially i’ll need another surgery in a year or so to remove the metal, depending on how well my body handles it being in there).  i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do with myself during that time. i have a special project i need to power through and work on, so fingers crossed i can swing that since my drawing hand is mercifully untouched, but my regular webcomic and other stuff is off the rails for months, just as i was preparing to ramp things up.

i’m going to miss out on a lot of the nice cool spring weather, too. my workplace has been very supportive, even sending me flowers, but i haven’t been there long enough to qualify for medical leave or short term disability, and was forced to cancel an upcoming vacation and burn through most of my pto for 2019. hopefully i can get a couple days of bereavement leave, at least. and thank god i have health insurance and an hsa, but i’m still dreading a huge bill even after all that, with everything i’ve been through it won’t be cheap. if i have to create yet another gofundme, i’m gonna be so pissed. capitalism!

that’s me for the next month and a half, i guess. it’s been very difficult but there’s been a lot of support, and i’m doing my best to cope, but, man. it’s rough. it’s going to be a long six weeks. typing this all out helped, but man.

[ethereousdelirious]

Fandom: DDADDS Characters: R.obert & D.amien (S.mallmarch established relationship) Tropes: vomiting, fever, fainting, nausea from anxiety, mild humiliation, trying to hide an illness, C.hristmas, hospitals Summary: Spending the holidays with Damien’s family is harder on Robert’s anxiety than either of them expected. Unfortunately for Robert, his symptoms match up perfectly with the stomach bug that’s been going around as well. Note: There are some headcanons coming into play here, namely that R.obert has social anxiety and was abused by his family members in the past, causing him to have worsened anxiety around other people’s family members

It was too loud in here. Too loud and too bright, and starting to get too warm. Robert tugged at his sleeves, but they were already rolled up to the forearm and disinclined to go much higher. At least Damien’s family hadn’t been able to talk him into wearing an absurdly thick vintage Christmas sweater like the ones they were all wearing. Even Damien had abandoned his usual neo-Victorian aesthetic in favor of a dark green cowl neck Christmas sweater with reindeer dancing circles around the chest area.

Robert found himself staring at it more and more as the night went on. Damien was seated all the way across the table and seemed to be enjoying a conversation with his grandparents, a concept which was largely foreign to Robert. He had never enjoyed the company of his own family, nor had be ever anticipated sitting down for Christmas dinner with them.

But Damien’s family all seemed to like each other, and everyone appeared to be having a good time eating and talking together.

Everyone except for Robert, who was sitting there awkwardly, sweating under his long-sleeved shirt and taking occasional sips of his sparkling cider, which was starting to give him a headache. He wished he’d gotten himself a glass of water before they all sat down, but it seemed rude to get up now.

“Robert, dear.” Damien’s mom looked at him from several seats down. “Have some more ham! Damien mentioned it’s one of your favorites.”

“Oh, uh.” Robert smiled awkwardly, acutely aware of his shirt sticking to his back. “Thank you, ma’am.” He accepted the serving tray as it was passed down the line and took several slices. It would have been rude to refuse, but at the same time… He was going to have to eat all of this, not just the ham, but also everything else that had been pressed on him earlier in the evening, rolls and turkey and roasted vegetables. Not to mention dessert.

Robert’s stomach turned and he took another cloying swallow of cider, which seemed to turn to syrup in his mouth. His head pounded. It had been several days since he’d been anywhere even remotely near his comfort zone, as he was stuffed in Damien’s parents’ house surrounded by Damien’s relatives with very little privacy. He hadn’t even been able to catch Damien alone since they’d come here 4 days ago. Even now, he was too far away to hold a conversation with him without shouting, and there were so many people seated between them that anything he said would become an announcement.

Dinner passed agonizingly slowly. Robert managed to eat everything on his plate, which was then cleared away along with everything else on the table to make room for dessert. His stomach clenched at the thought of spending yet more time trapped in this folding chair, awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact with anyone lest they try to strike up a conversation with him.

He reached for his glass only to realize his cider was gone, replaced with a whole pint of eggnog. Alright. The glass was cool in his hand, which was a relief at least. The collection of bodies all in one place had his face and chest burning with heat.

“So Robert.” One of Damien’s… uncles? grandparents? looked at him. Robert took a quick swallow of his eggnog. His stomach tied itself into a hangman’s knot. “Damien tells me you whittle?”

“Yes.” His voice came out hoarse, so he cleared his throat. “Just little things, nothing impressive.”

“That’s not true!” Damien spoke up. Robert noticed a gentle pink flush over his cheeks and couldn’t help but smile at his obviously tipsy boyfriend. “Robert’s made some really cool stuff!”

“I like to make chains,” Robert said. Suddenly all the eyes at the table were on him. He swallowed hard against a wave of nausea that lapped urgently at the back of his throat before receding to something a little more manageable. “I think maybe--” he turned awkwardly, trying to get at his jacket, which was hanging from the back of the flimsy folding chair he was currently occupying. “Well.” He fished an unfinished chain out of one of the inner pockets and displayed it. “This sort of thing.”

Damien’s relative (had to be an uncle-- he was too young to be a grandfather) acknowledged this with a nod. “I’m working on whittling a chess set.”

Someone else at the table (Damien’s cousin, going by context clues) rolled her eyes. “Ugh, dad. You’ve been working on that chess set for like a year and a half now.”

Robert put his chain away. The conversation turned by degrees until he was fully out of it. He slumped back in his chair.

Damien’s mom brought out pie and pudding and fancy chocolates and suddenly Robert’s pulse was racing. He’d spent the whole day, the whole trip, really, sick with nerves, but Christmas dinner had pushed him over the edge. The heat vanished from his body in an instant as a cold shiver crawled up his back.

As calmly as he could manage, Robert stood up and walked to the bathroom. Saliva was already filling his mouth, but he couldn’t-- If this whole room knew he was about to be sick, he would die. The anxiety would eat him alive. So he walked. Slowly. Nerves jumping the whole way there.

Then he was safe behind the closed, locked door. He got to his knees in front of the toilet. Someone had left the lid up, so he leaned in. For a moment, nothing happened and he had a moment of panic thinking he’d be stuck in here all night and then everyone would know and feel sorry for him and--

His stomach clenched, the pressure coming to a painful head, and he dry heaved a couple times before finally vomiting. He sat back shakily, aware of the tears in his eyes and the string of saliva pooling onto his shirt, but unable to move. He had to go back out there and soon, or people were going to start to wonder.

Alright. Robert flushed the toilet, cleaned himself up, and resumed his seat. No one acknowledged he had been gone, which was a relief. But now there was a slice of peanut butter pie on his plate and oh god he had to eat that, too.

At least the nausea was gone, but it had been replaced by a feeling of empty heaviness  , like he’d been punched in the gut so many times his nerves weren’t working.

Damien caught his eye across the table and winked at him. Robert smiled back.

He took a bite of pie.

It was good, really good, but he couldn’t enjoy it. Eating in this state was extremely unpleasant, verging on painful but never quite crossing the line. The nausea didn’t resurface until he was almost done eating, but it came back with a vengeance, slamming him with a wave of painful stomach cramps. Robert grit his teeth and tried not to curl in on himself. It was just nerves. Just a whole lot of family anxiety and repressed trauma making his stomach go sour and his blood run cold. That was it.

When dinner was over and everyone had gone to bed, Robert was finally able to curl in on himself on the couch (his bed for the duration). His stomach hurt. Gone was the mere discomfort from earlier in the day. The cramps were near-constant, occasionally stepping off center stage to let nausea have a moment in the spotlight. He hadn’t vomited again, but he could sense it coming.

He moaned quietly and wrapped his arms around himself.

“Babe?” Damien hesitated near the armrest, concern painted on his face.

“Hey.” Robert looked up and smiled, happy for this stolen moment even if he currently felt like his abdominal muscles were trying to tear themselves apart. He patted the couch.

Damien sat down, still looking a little unsure. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great now,” Robert said. The living room was dark, illuminated only by the yellow lights that decorated the Christmas tree and windowsills. Robert was internally grateful for this. There was no way in hell he didn’t look like shit, and he didn’t need Damien worrying after him.

“You were really quiet at dinner, and i just wanted to be sure…”

Robert  shook his head. “Nah, you know how I am with… You know, families. It was just weird that nobody got drunk and started yelling at me, you know.”

In the dim light, Damien’s expression shifted to one of horror. He pulled Robert into a hug. “You're safe here.”

Robert allowed himself a moment or vulnerability in Damien's arms, deciding not to mention how being all this familial love had him anxious to the point of nausea. “Thanks. I… You're the best.”

Damien let go of him and leaned back. “I know it's silly because you're right here, but I miss you.”

“I've been missing you, too. It's hard not having any alone time.”

Damien smiled mischievously. “We're alone now.”

Robert leaned back and raised his eyebrows suggestively, ignoring the stab of pain in his middle. “On your parents’ couch? You dirty dog.”

Damien's cheeks went darker pink and he laughed a little. “I'd better get to bed before I make any…” his gaze lingered on Robert, “questionable decisions.”

“On your parents’ couch.”

“Stop saying that!” Damien smiled. He leaned in and kissed Robert on the cheek. “Good night.”

“Night, babe.”

Damien left. Robert counted to 60 before rushing to the bathroom to pray to the porcelain god for the second time that evening. Then the third and fourth.

He fell back from the toilet, groaning.  His stomach clenched as though it knew it was empty and was now trying to turn itself inside out. Robert coughed and sank to the floor. His sweat-soaked hair fell into his eyes and he brushed it to the side with a shaking hand. The possibility that this was more than just nerves loomed large in his mind, but he forced it away. He was not sick in a house full of strangers. He wasn't. He couldn't be.

Most of Robert's night was spent in the bathroom, either curled up on the floor trying to sleep or hunched over the toilet praying for death. In the early hours, he forced himself to go back to the couch. It had been a long while since he'd done anything but dry heave and he didn’t want to be caught in here when people started to wake up.

On the couch, he managed to drift off into a light, fitful sleep before Damien's family members woke up and started to clatter around in the kitchen.

Sick of lying there on a couch too short for him under a quantity of blankets that seemed both too much and too little simultaneously, Robert went to join them.

Damien was still asleep. Robert didn't care. He bid Damien's parents good morning, accepted a cup of juice from Damien's father, and parked himself at the table.

“Did you sleep okay?” Damien's mom asked. “You look a little tired.”

“Oh, um,” Robert rasped. He took a drink of orange juice. “Yeah, I had a little insomnia last night.”

“Eat a little too much?” Damien's dad winked. “Me too.”

Robert laughed awkwardly and took another sip of juice.

“I know you're not one for breakfast, but I'll set aside some pancakes for you in case you change your mind.” Damien's mother came around to the table and set a cup of coffee in front of Robert. “A few of us were planning on going to the mall after breakfast. Damien thought you might want to join us?”

Robert was silent for a moment, his head fuzzy and slow. “Yeah, sounds great,” he said after a moment's silence. God, he was so tired. He finished off his juice, then took his mug outside for a smoke. He was still wearing his clothes from yesterday and the cold breeze bit right through his shirt. He shivered and lit up a cigarette.

He had planned to hide outside for a while, savoring his coffee and smoking in the driveway, but he was way too cold. He downed his coffee so fast he blistered the roof of his mouth, put out his cigarette, and retreated back inside to the couch still clutching his empty mug.

There he sat, shivering compulsively until someone took notice of him and he was forced to act like he wasn't dying until their attention faded again.

Damien came in after a while and Robert scurried off to the bathroom to try to clean himself up. If he looked half as crusty as he felt, it was a wonder that Damien's mom hadn't thrown him out onto the street.

The bathroom, at least, was clean and quiet and gave no indication that Robert had been up all night puking.

He took a quick shower, brushed his teeth twice, and came out sweating under the shower water that still dripped down his neck.

“Morning, babe!” Damien smelled the cigarette smoke on his breath and opted to kiss Robert on the cheek instead of the mouth.

“Mornin’.” Robert sat down beside Damien at the table, pleased to find that someone had refilled his mug with more coffee and set it down right next to Damien.

In the light of day, with a little caffeine in his system, Robert found that he was feeling better. The headache that had kicked up in his head around midnight had faded from gut-wrenching to a mere annoying pulse every so often. The nausea in his belly had gone completely, replaced with a sort of leaden numbness. He didn’t feel great but at least he could function.

-

Robert was dying.

Robert was dying in a shopping mall.

It was lunchtime and their party (Robert, Damien, Damien's mom, Damien's aunt, and 2 of Damien's cousins) had stopped by the food court.

The assorted smells hit Robert like a punch to the stomach. He staggered, nearly tripping over a wayward chair.

“I'll get us a table,” he said, taking the bags from Damien.

He wandered over to the first empty table he saw that would be big enough for all of them and collapsed into a chair. His vision blurred and his head spun, sparking a wave of nausea so vicious as to be painful.

Robert gasped for breath, his knuckles white on the edge of the table. He sat there and tried to collect himself and just couldn't. It was all he could do to not hunch over and start gagging, though he doubted anything major would come up. He hadn't eaten since last night, and it was afternoon now.

Damien's voice pierced the haze in his head but Robert couldn't make sense of the words. “Babe, do you have change for-- Hey. Are you okay? Robert!”

Robert looked up. Damien. Damien wanted something.

He half-rose and the world tilted sideways. He couldn’t feel his fingers or hear the din of the mall over the roar in his ears or see anything but Damien's face as his vision tunneled.

He blinked to clear away the black spots but they only multiplied in number until his whole vision was nothing but black.

It was over. Robert had made it back home to his bed, lying comfortably on his stomach with his face pressed into hard, unforgiving tile.

Wait. That didn't track.

He was on the floor somewhere. The mall. His eyes flew open. The sounds and smells of the food court hit him in the back like a sneaker wave and he couldn't help but gag, his muscles rending, pulling his knees in toward his chest.

“Robert!” Just from his voice, Robert could tell that Damien was near hysterics.  “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

Much as he wanted to answer, Robert just couldn't. The stomach cramps that had plagued him throughout the night were back with a vengeance and it was all he could do to not cry out in pain. He closed his eyes.

Dimly, he was aware of Damien talking, but not to him. No god no god no. He had made a spectacle of himself and was drawing a crowd. This was so much worse than simply admitting he was sick to Damien's whole family. Fuck.

He tried to sit up but his whole abdomen cried out in protest. He let out a harsh exhale.

“We're calling an ambulance, okay?” Damien said to him. “It's gonna be okay. It's okay.” He brushed Robert's hair out of his face.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Damien was crying and Robert was face down on the dirty tile floor of a shopping mall surrounded by onlookers and Damien was crying and Robert's head was so fuzzy and his whole body was hot and Damien was crying and he couldn't move a muscle or do a damn thing but curl up against the pain that laced from his stomach to his chest, up his neck to his head.

“M’okay,” he rasped. “Help me sit up?”

He pushed himself up onto one arm and Damien hauled him into a sitting position with some difficulty.

“Babe, I'm fine.”

Damien looked at him in disbelief. “You can't even sit up on your own.” He sniffled and wiped his eyes.

“Hey, Dames?”

“What?”

“I don't feel good.”

“I know.” Damien sat down and let Robert's head fall onto his shoulder. “You're burning up!”

“Yeah,” Robert agreed. He closed his eyes.

-

“Why didn't you say anything?!”

Robert ignored the question. “This is the first time I've been in a bed for a whole work week. Don't ruin this for me.” He scratched at the tape holding his IV line in place, then held it out to Damien. “Think I'm allergic to this stuff.”

Damien dropped his arms helplessly to his sides. “What's wrong with you?”

“Um, some sort of virus, I think the doctor said. Weren't you listening?” When Damien just stared at him, Robert scooted over and patted the empty space on his hospital bed. “Got you to stop crying,” he said with an uncharacteristically gentle smile.

Damien laughed in disbelief and sat down beside Robert. “But seriously. Why didn't you say anything?”

Robert shifted uncomfortably. “I was anxious. I thought maybe it was all in my head, you know? Like stage fright, except the audience is your boyfriend's whole-ass family.”

“You can't anxious yourself into a fever of 101,” Damien said. He wrapped his arm around Robert's shoulders. “I was so worried about you. I wish you would have said something.”

Robert swallowed, confident this time that it was truly just nerves making his stomach thrash. “I… Dames. I'm sorry.” Despite himself, Robert yawned. He blinked, trying to keep his eyes open.

Damien noticed this and hopped off the bed. “Get some sleep, babe. I'll be right here when you wake up.”

Robert smiled and closed his eyes.

[rollinsgrant]

Location: Betsy’s Office Date: August 13th Time: 9:30am Trigger warnings: some references to trauma as a result of sexual assault

“Grant, welcome back,” Dr. Dobson said, offering up the ever present mug of hot chocolate. As usual, Grant shook his head. Dr. Dobson placed the mug in front of him anyway. “Did you have a good trip? We missed you this summer.”

It was a relief, actually, being back in Dr. Dobson’s office. Grant knew most of the Foxes tended to see her with some reluctance, and once upon a time he’d been the same, but things had shifted as the years passed. Seeing Dr. Dobson was good for him, just like the medicine she’d prescribed him was good for him, just like the Foxes were good for him. The sessions left him feeling vulnerable and raw, but he’d rather deal with this shit here—on his own time, on his own terms. 

Normally, he would’ve met with Dr. Dobson over the summer, continuing his therapy even when the school year wasn’t in session. This year’s trip to Texas had been the rare exception, but he was back now, at least. "Actually, I did,” Grant said, his spine straight in the chair and arms neatly at his sides. “I visited Zia.” In some ways, he spoke to Dr. Dobson with the same brusque tone he used with the press, even knowing that this wasn’t a trap or a threat. 

“I remember you mentioning that you two were close last year. How’s she settling in?”

“Good. I mean, great, really. She got drafted for Atlanta,” Grant said, a proud smile tugging at his lips. “And uh, we’re dating now. I mean, we started dating at the end of last year, actually.”

Dr. Dobson’s smile widened. “Really? Congratulations!” She paused, and Grant knew what she was going to ask, even before she stared speaking again. With others he might’ve changed the subject, but he waited it out with Dr. Dobson. This was his fifth year with the Foxes, and he trusted her by now. She would never see him as a sob story. She saw far too many Foxes for that. “How’s that going? I know you’ve spoken to me in the past about the fact that too much physical contact can bring back unpleasant memories.”

A nice way of saying he used to flinch or throw punches when people got too close. These days he only stepped back carefully, firmly, kept people at a practiced, safe distance. Most people, at least. Not everyone. “It’s different with Zia.” He didn’t quite know how to explain it, but—“I trust her. She’s been through some similar stuff, and she understands I’ve got…more boundaries than most. Besides, we’re taking it slow.”    

Dr. Dobson nodded, taking a sip of her own hot chocolate. “That’s great, Grant.” Another pause. “Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about this session?”

Grant hesitated. For the first time in years, he didn’t want to get into it with Dr. Dobson. He’d exhumed plenty of skeletons from his past for her, but this time? That memory of standing on his mom’s doorstep, and walking away? That was fresh. That wasn’t something that had happened to him a decade ago, it was something that had happened only a few weeks ago. It didn’t help that he’d walked away because it felt like too much, too fast—bringing it up here and now would just ensure that stayed fresh.

He also knew better than to hide things from Dr. Dobson. For all that she made him uncomfortable, she helped too. Even Grant could see the way he’d changed since he started seeing her.

Once upon a time, Grant had thought he was stronger because of what had happened to him. Like surviving Haskell, and foster care, and the separation from his family made him stronger than anyone else, because they hadn’t suffered like he’d suffered. Now, after years of therapy, Grant had changed his tune. He was strong, but it was in spite of what had happened. Grant had fought like hell to get here, and that fight had shaped him, had impacted him, but that strength? That had always belonged to Grant, and Grant alone. Haskell didn’t get any credit. Haskell was nothing.

A few months ago, he’d assumed that meant he didn’t need to think about it any more, but he knew he had more work to do. The way he’d panicked on his mother’s porch proved that, so Grant cleared his throat, and didn’t lie to Dr. Dobson. “I found my mom’s address this summer. I went there, even. She’s still in Illinois. I didn’t make contact though.” Straight to the point. If he was going to do this, it was better to get it out in the open right away.

Dr. Dobson nodded, her expression carefully neutral. “Is there a reason for that?”

He’d spent the last few weeks considering that. Why had he tracked her down? Why had he walked away? “Zia’s family got me thinking about my own,” he admitted. He had no idea what was waiting on the other side of his mom’s door though, and things were good here in Palmetto. Games would start soon, recruiters would be coming by, the draft waited for him at the end of this season—if he let his attention slip for a moment too long though, if he messed up in a single game, he could lose it all. “But I can’t talk to her right now. You’re going to call this avoidance, but it’s not an emotional decision,” Grant said, firmly. “It’s just pragmatics. I’ll reach out after I’ve signed a contract with a pro-team.”

Dr. Dobson watched him quietly for a moment. “Grant. You’re smart. You know how to say all the right things when you’re in here, and that’s okay. I just want you to tell me how you were feeling, alright?”

Grant nodded, his motions somewhat stilted. How had he felt? “Scared. A little,” he admitted, slowly. “Talking to her again—even just seeing here again. I don’t normally have to think about that stuff.” He cleared his throat, making a conscious effort to keep his expression open, rather than letting his usual mask shutter down across his expression. “It’s my fifth year. The team’s better than we’ve ever been. We’ve got a real shot at the Championship title, and I’ve got a real shot at getting drafted. I don’t want to fuck that up just because I’ve got some nostalgic urge.”

“It’s okay if you aren’t ready, you know,” Dr. Dobson said. “But you’re the one who looked for her in the first place right? Don’t you think there was a reason for that?”

Grant sat in silence for a moment, eyes on the woman in front of him. “I don’t know,” Grant said. His least favorite sentence. “I need to focus on the draft. On this season. If we win, I have a chance. If we don’t...” And that was the problem. He didn’t have a plan for what happened if no one wanted him on their team next year. He didn’t want a plan for that. It simply wasn’t an option.

“Sounds like you’re having some anxiety about the end of the year already. Have you spoken to anyone else about this? Zia, maybe? Neel? Eliana?”

Grant shook his head. Not really, not yet, not beyond the superficial can you believe this is it conversations. 

“That’s your homework for this week then, Grant,” Dr. Dobson said, with a smile. “You’re a long way off from the draft still. You’ve got time.” She glanced up at the clock, nodding to herself. “We’ve only got a few minutes left today. Does coming in every other week still work for you?”

[the-voice-of-hell]

Rent is Theft, part 21

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here.  Note:  My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not.  If you have notes on that or anything else, hit me up.

                                                        ***

      When I woke the next day, head aching as bad as I expected, but there was a sort of pulling sensation I didn’t quite get.  I pawed at my temples.  There was a fresh wrap on my head that I did not remember putting there.  Leimomi must have done it in my sleep, and maybe a bit tightly.  I adjusted it.

      Then I realized that meant she would have had at least a few moments alone with that fucking bitch Reverse Courtney.  I was very alarmed by that.  What if she made it seem like that was my inner thoughts, that her hateful trash was my real feelings?  I couldn’t stand that.

      Leimomi was nowhere to be seen.  I stood up too quick, grabbed my head, and staggered around a moment.  She appeared in the doorway, all clean and wrapped up herself, the daylight lining her body.  She looked at me in concern, and I searched her face for a hint of Reverse Courtney trauma.

      “Did my stupid-ass head mouth say anything mean to you when I was asleep?”

      “I think so, but I don’t remember.  I only had it out for a moment, and I covered it.  I was real tired.”  She came into the darkness with me and held me in her arms.  “Are you OK?”

      I closed my eyes.  “Real hungover, but really good too.”  I lolled my head at unpleasant memories.  “I’m gonna try to forget my apartment exists for a few more hours, heh.”

      She kissed me and it turned into a little makeout session, right there.  I loved wrapping her in my scrawny arms, rubbing her all over.  I hoped it didn’t feel too much like being flogged with skeleton bones.

      Leimomi got me a bottle of water and then joined me on her bed.  I was still in the bathrobe from the other night, she was in capri leggings and a t-shirt.  We stayed on top of the blankets.

      “Thanks for helping me clean up, baby.  We gotta figure out a cleaner way to do all that.  Or just set my apartment on fire when we’re done with everybody, heh.”

      “It’s OK, Courtney.”  She ran a palm from my chest down to my belly, parting the robe.  “We’re both nice and clean.  You wanna fool around?”

      “Maybe just a little.  I dunno if I can go all the way with this headache.”

      “Aww.”  She pulled her hand back.

      “In for a penny, in for a pound?”

      “What?”

      “You don’t wanna fool around a little, gotta have a big climax or it isn’t worth your time?”

      “I dunno.  Why just do sex stuff a little?  That would be frustrating.”

      “Sometimes it can feel nice.”  I rolled onto my side to better look her in the face.  “Like, I’d love to kiss your *redacted* but I don’t think I’ve got the stamina to finish what I start.  But you might still kinda like it, even if it’s frustrating?  I know I’d like it.”  I made a grabby hand gesture in the air to underscore my point.  Give me those things, please.

      “Mm, OK, but if I get lady blue balls, I’m gonna be mad at you.”  She whipped off her shirt.

      *sex scene redacted for tumblr*

      Maybe we both fell asleep after that, or she just let me sleep for a bit, until we were roused by a knock at the door.

      I wrapped myself up to answer it, because Leimomi still had to wrestle her bra back on.

      “Marcie, hey.  Sorry I can’t invite you in just now.  You wanted to see Momi?”

      “I just wanted to see you, thank you for helping Mikey!”

      “Hey,” he said.  The daylight in the apartment had me a bit blind for looking into the hall, with its weak electric lights.  I hadn’t noticed him lurking behind her.

      “Mike, hey.  Feeling better?  Or worse?”

      “I’ll be alright.  Being green was kinda like being high, so I’m not too hot right now, but Marce is takin’ care of me.  She’s a saint.”

      “Well great.  I love you guys.  Have a nice one,” I said.

      “Love you too, girl!”

      I came back in, feeling nice, despite the low thunder in my head, and lay down on the bed again.  “Mike seems great.  It’ll be good to get done with this shit, but I just can’t do it again tonight.”  I laid a paw on her arm.

      “I figured.  That was rough.”

      “I know we can’t afford to wait for the next full moon.  Maybe we’ll just take one night off and go back to it.  I can try to come up with different spells for all our problems.”

      “Would you kick me in the stomach like Mike?”

      “Never.  Might have to shave your pretty hair, though.  I hope not.”

      She had a moment of alarm at the prospect but then shook it off.  “That’s silly.  I’ll be glad to go bald for a while to get rid of this problem.”  Then she looked sharply at me.  “But will you love me if I’m bald?”

      I grinned.  “Hell yes.”

      “But why?  That would be so ugly.”

      “No way, baby.  You’re real cute.  I love your hair but I haven’t seen it in a while, y’know?  I’m still coming around.”

      “If you say so.”

      “I do.”  I was about to say it would make her look more gay, and I’d love that too, but I knew that conversation would tread into territory where I’d find out whether she really thinks of me as a woman, and it killed my mood.

      “What do you like about me?  Is it just my big *******?”  She was looking coy, which is great, because I couldn’t handle her self esteem problems right then - not as well as she deserved.

      “Yes, hahaha.”  I squeezed * ***** maniacally and she pushed me back until my head squished into the pillow, threatening to lose the headwrap.  We settled down and I grabbed her hand.  “Seriously, I love everything about you.”

      “You don’t know everything about me.”

      “You aren’t who you used to be.  You’re who you are right now, and I know who that is.  You’re my girlfriend.”

      “I guess that’s true.”  She put an arm behind my head and I snuggled into place.

      “I was thinking about it.  I don’t know if I ever dated an Islander before.”

      She smiled.  “Just how many people did you date, Courtney?”

      I gripped her around the waist and shook her around.  “Grrr!”  I flopped back down beside her.  It was too much effort.  “You win, I’m a huge slut.  Huge hungover slutty slut.”

      “I love you, slut.”

      “I love you too, honey.”  I relaxed again.  “Anyway, I just mention that Islander thing, because it feels significant.  Like, I’ve never dated anybody that looks like my people.  You don’t look like the average Pinay, but if you flipped the islands probably a few Leimomi lookalikes would fall out.”

      “That’s weird.  Why you say that?”

      “I can imagine a different life, where we were from the same place.  Same neighborhood.  Where we grew up together.”

      “Oh no, you don’t wanna be in Pearl City with my family.”

      “That’s not what I mean.”  I touched her face.  “Get with me on this.  Just hear me out.”

      “OK...”

      “We’re in some kinda place that never existed.  Pilipwaii.  It’s a nice island, low key people working hard and not so many hustlers and problems.”

      “Pilipwaii?  What’s it look like?”

      “There’s a mountain but it isn’t an active volcano, pretty worn down.  The reefs around the island got so big they shelter it from storms.  The city is on a little plane, growing stuff like cane, bamboo, coconuts, bananas, mangos.  The only school is a catholic school, so we grew up being chased around by nuns with rulers.”

      “Why mean nuns?  You want the story to be nice.”

      “I want it to be believable.  So trouble in paradise, baby.  Anyway, you and me are schoolgirls together, best friends.”

      “How could I be friends with you?  You’re smart and--”

      “There aren’t so many kids in a small town.  Everybody knows everybody, and we just like each other, right?  I hope you can find that believable, because you’re my girlfriend.”

      “I’m your girlfriend in the story?”

      “Not yet.  Listen.”

      “Hmm.”

      “We’re just friends.  Best friends.  It can happen all kinds of ways.  You know, I’ve always had friends that are different from me.  Maybe I got hurt and you helped me out, or I helped you with your homework, or you were sad and I was nice to you one time.  And it stuck, we stuck together.  Best friends, in Pilipwaii.”

      “At the school with the mean nuns.”

      “That’s right.  So one day, I’m in love with this boy, and he’s mean to me.  He tricks me and then says he doesn’t like me in front of some other girls and everybody laughs and stuff.”

      “This is too sad.  Did the nuns laugh too?”

      “They did.”

      “I’ll kill ’em.”

      “It’s OK.  So I run home, I’m all sad and it’s terrible.  You find me and help me feel better, hug me and say nice things.”

      “I love you,” she said, and gave me a little squeeze.

      “That’s right.  Something like that.  We’re there, say, in a gazebo.  Big blue dragonflies are flying by.  It’s hot but there’s a cold breeze blowing off the ocean.  We’re schoolgirls, best friends, and you hold me and say, Hugo is a stupid ugly boy and I deserve better, and you love me and stuff.”

      “I hope the nuns don’t hear that.”

      “Well, you just mean, you love me like a friend, right?  We say that stuff, like friends.  But this time I’m looking you in the eye and I realize, maybe we could be more than friends.  But it’s a little island, so nobody ever told us that being gay is an option, right?”

      “This story is weird, Courtney.”

      “Is it OK?”  I searched her face.  She nodded in approval and I resumed.  “Well right, so you and me, we’re there, we’re schoolgirls, and we never heard the word lesbian in our lives, but I’m still super into you.  And then I kiss you, and you start to get it.”

      “Whoa.”  She looked at me, then away to the ceiling, and back again, thinking about it all.

      “Is that a good whoa or a bad whoa?”

      “Wait.  Now I know why people think schoolgirl skirts are sexy.”

      “Hehehe, nooo, I’m not trying to be a pervert.  I’m just saying, for all it matters, we could love each other any kinda way.  Like, it doesn’t matter how we got here.  Let’s just say we came from Pilipwaii.”

      “OK, but tell me about our skirts.  Are they kinda short?”

      “No, they’re long.  It’s a little island.  Very conservative.  But our shirts have short sleeves and we have little bow ties.”

      “That’s cute.  And you kissed me, and I start to get it, like, hey, we could love each other.  No Hugo.”

      “Yeah.  So we kiss and it’s kinda sloppy and stupid because we don’t know what we’re doing or know what to do.”

      “And I start to figure it out,” Leimomi said, “like what I wanna do.”  She reached inside my bathrobe, *redacted*

      “Oh no, I gasp!  I shy away.  It’s all so fast.  What are we doing?  Have we gone crazy?”

      “Whut.”

      “It’s part of the bit.  Like, there’s a push and pull.  Will we or won’t we?”

      “Oh.  But we will, right?”

      “You fucking know we will, baby.”  I kissed her savagely.  “But right now,” I panted a little, “I’m terrified of this forbidden love.”

      “I’m so sad, I can’t handle it.  I guess I’ll cry.”

      “Don’t cry, Leimomi.  I come back to you, take your hands.  What is this?  What are we doing?  We’re both girls.  It isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

      “But why?  Nobody is around, we can do whatever we want.  I want to love you so much, Courtney.”

      “It works, I’m like, oh shit, I can’t handle it anymore.  I open my shirt up.”

      “Heeheehee, yeah, now you’re talking.  I open my shirt up too.”

      *redacted*

      “It’s time for freedom.  Young ladies inventing lesbianism for the first time in the Universe, since all the other times it happened for other girls.”

      She pulled off her t-shirt again.  “Cool.”

      I unfastened her bra and *redacted sexy / emotional content*

      Were we being romantic or dirty?  Both by turns, but those turns proved awkward to navigate.

      We *redacted* and talked dirty and sweet until we both *redacted*  She’d already worn herself out some that morning, and I was surprised she was able to go again like that.  *redacted*

      In the afterglow, she didn’t jump up or freak out, which was great.  And I hadn’t gone down on her, so there was no question about kissing afterward.  We snuggled up, just the thin material of my bathrobe between us to reduce sweat.  I was tempted to *redacted* but I resisted the urge to avoid coming off like a total freak.

                                                        ***

      There was another knock at the door.  I rolled my eyes, put my robe on, and answered it.

      “Hey Patrick.  Were you looking for me?  Does Perry need help with something?”

      “Kinda.  I was wonderin’, how do we say who gets ta go next?  I’d like to go, get it done.”

      “My priority has been whoever is in the most danger of ratting us out, getting us in trouble.  You have something like that going on?”

      “Naw, it’s just somethin’ personal, bothers me a lot.”

      “Well I think we all need some rest tonight so not now, but maybe tomorrow we see about some kind of plan?  I don’t think anyone else seems likely to be a problem.  Like if Olivia’s head pops up, she can join a circus and make some real money.”

      “Thanks, Courtney, you’re a doll.”  He reached out to shake hands.

      My hands were both behind the door, only my head poking out.  “Ah, hands are full.  Thanks, Patrick.”

      “See ya later!”  He smiled and walked away.

      I looked down the hall after him.  His walk was a little awkward, but was that a clue?  What was going on under his clothes?  Marcie had two holes in her upper chest, I’d found, little squares that puffed out smoke.  Most of the time she could keep it down, but several times a day she had to open the covers to let it out, or she’d feel a burning in her lungs and throat.  Never did hear what Patrick and Perry had going on.

      I pushed the door closed with the backs of my arms, avoiding getting my wet hands on everything.  But that meant my hands were close to my face when she wasn’t looking.  I avoided touching my face, but I took a deep inhale, and one little lick of a finger.  It was awesome.  Sue me.

      I washed my hands and went back to her, sitting on the edge of the bed.  I was going to just stay another moment, but couldn’t resist laying down again.  This time I was on my belly, face propped up with one arm, the other draped over my lovin’ lady.

      “I was thinking about the haircut.  I think it would be real cute.  You could grow it out again later, but for now, it’s fun to play with a different look.”

      “Huh.  That’s weird.  Is it because you’re a grunger?”

      “Hehe, maybe.  But more than that, it’s like...  I know you’re bisexual like me, but you’re in lesbian love now, baby.  It might be fun to see you play the part.  Girls like me have to be girled up all the time just to have a chance of people treating us like we want.  But you?  You could get big flannel shirts and tank tops and stuff.”

      “Whaaat?”  She crinkled her forehead all to Hell like I was trying to teach her quantum mechanics.  “Dress like a lesbian?  Like, butch?”

      “I know, you aren’t really a butch.  You’re a sweet lil’ girly babe.  But it can be fun to play a different style, y’know?  What do you think?”

      “I never thought...  I guess I could.  But how would people look at me?  What would they be like?”

      “Some people might be mean.  A lot of people will be pretty nice.  And in this town?  Ladies will be on your jock, like twenty-five deep at all times.  You’ll have to keep them off you with a baseball bat.  Probably some weird fellas too.”

      “You’re lying.  No way that’s true.  Why would they?”

      “Lesbians like butches, but most of them are not.  It means you’d be a precious rarity.  Plus you’re so cute and tall and strong, you’d kill them dead.  They’d have trouble walking because their legs would go all wobbly around you.  It would be hilarious.”

      “Oh my goodness.”  She touched her face, which was hot and pink.

      I kissed her cheek to steal a little of that heat.  It was mine.  I put it there, after all.  “My cutie.”

      She shook off the embarrassment.  “You just wanna make the lesbians jealous.  That’s mean.”

      “I know.  I’m horrible.  But we gotta eat.  I’ll make us something.”

      I sprang out of bed and put on the clothes I’d brought over the previous night.  Leimomi dressed too, still lost in thought at the prospect of a makeover.  She followed me out and sat down across the kitchenette island from me, on one of the tall stools.  I got to work on some spam, macaroni, and cheese.  I found the sauce from the packets was less gross with some milk and spices added, and randomly found part of a red pepper to mix in.

      “You didn’t think much about being a lesbian before, huh.  What do you think now?  Gonna get those intertwined Venus symbols tattooed?  Doc Martens?”

      “I dunno.  If you think it’s a good idea.”

      “Again this power I have.  I feel like an evil hypnotist from Scooby-Doo.”

      “I just don’t care what I look like, I guess.  Like, you know why.”

      “Sorry, babe.  But yeah, I think it’ll be real fun to get you dyke clothes, at least to wear ’til your hair grows back.”

      “You’re a weird weirdo, but you’re my girlfriend, so I gotta do what you say.”

      “Lovers are supposed to be partners, equals.  If you gotta do what I say, then I gotta do what you say.  Any requests?,” I said, gesturing to the food I was making.

      “Naw.  You do it pretty good.”

      “Just ‘pretty good’?  Sounds like there’s room for improvement.  You don’t have to know how to cook to know how to judge food.  Just think, would I like this better if we did it like that?  I’ve made this for you before.  Didn’t do the pepper last time, but I had green onion and cayenne for garnish.  What did you think?  Was that alright?”

      “Green onion, is that the little green rings?”

      “The way I cut it that time, yeah.”

      “I didn’t mind those, but I didn’t like them either.”

      “That’s OK, I don’t have any this time.  How’d you like the texture?  Like, how it felt in your mouth.”

      “It was OK.”

      “Coulda been better?”

      “I dunno.”

      “Don’t make me follow through on that clown thing.”

      “Hehe.  OK, so what do you want?”

      “Was it too creamy, too thick, too sticky, too rich, too thin?  Do you prefer a different kind of sauce with macaroni?  If it’s really OK, then it’s OK.  But if it’s not OK and you’re pretending just to be nice, I’m gonna make us have clown sex.”

      “Is that a promise?”

      “Alright, so now I see how it is.  You really don’t care about macaroni sauce, and you might be into clown sex.  These are important things to know, for our future together.  I will take these mental notes and never reverse or overwrite them with contravening information.  No matter how much you protest, from now on, I will know that you want to look like a clown when we fuck.”

      “Don’t make it so complicated.”

      “So like, a simple clown outfit, nothing too fancy.  A few polka dots, big shoes, a red nose?”

      “Yeah.  But I thought you wanted me to dress like a butch dyke.”

      “You know the ‘D’ word now?  You’ll be ready for Pride in no time.  Hm...  I gotta figure out where to get combat boots with novelty foot length.”

      “A butch clown?  I don’t think the lesbians would be jealous of you anymore.”

      “Damn!  This is too complicated.  Maybe you were better prepared to go lesbo than I was.”

      “Heehee.”  She got shy.

      “Hey, you’re thinking about something and not telling me.”  The water was up to a boil so I turned the heat down to seven and poured in the pasta.

      “We both weren’t prepared.  We don’t have a double dildo.”

      I stood up straight in shock, though by then I should have been getting used to the idea of her knowing more about sex, in her own way.  “What.  What do you know about double dildos, girl?”

      “Well, usually lesbians use a double dildo, right?  Like one side goes in my pussy, and, uh...”

      “Best place for me to put my end is the back door.  But I’m sure plenty of lesbians don’t have double dildos.  Where did you hear about that?”

      “I just saw a porno once.  Some ladies used a double dildo.  Guess I thought...”

      “We could use a double dildo, if you want.  Sounds fun.”  I stirred the macaroni, had to bust some apart as they had started to clump in the freshly released flour goo.

      “Heehee.”  She played with her hands.

      “What else do you know about lesbian stuff?”

      “Ya know, I never thought about it, but the pornos I saw are different from the lesbians I see around town.  Like, in the pornos they have pretty hair and makeup, wear skirts and heels and stuff.”

      “Sharp.  That’s right.  Most of those pornos are made for straight dudes.  Might look different if ladies made ’em.”

      “Why don’t ladies make ’em?”

      “I dunno, but I could take a few guesses.  You wanna be like a real life lesbian, like the ones on the streets, or would you rather be a porno lesbian, like in the movies?”

      “We get a choice?”

      “Always.”

      “You are like a porno lesbian.”

      “Guess I made my choice.  How about you?”

      “If I have short hair, I’ll hafta be like a real life lesbian.”

      “Or you could mix it up.  That’s what they call ‘queer’.”

      “So if I have short hair, but I still wear makeup and stuff, I am queer, but if I have short hair and I wear a flannel shirt, I am butch?”

      “That’s close enough to right.”

      “I dunno.  I don’t like to be wrong, to say the wrong thing.  Maybe I won’t talk about this stuff with real life lesbians.”

      “Just porno lesbians like me, right?”

      “Umm, maybe just you.  Not another porno lesbian.”  She considered that.  “Wait, are there porno lesbians in real life, aside from you?”

      “Not a lot of us, and I’m sure most of us wouldn’t want to be called that.  They also say ‘lipstick lesbian’ for ladies that stay lady-like, though most of them are still gonna do things their own funny way.  I kinda like that porno lesbian thing for myself, because I’m not gonna dress like the singer from 4 Non Blondes.”

      “I don’t get that one.  You lost me again.”

      “Hahahaha, you’re in for a treat.  I’m gonna look that up for you when we’re done eating.”  I served up the food.

                                                        ***

   Read next chapter here.

[crimsonrevolt]

Congratulations Taylor you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Marlene McKinnon!

↳ please refer to our character checklist

I’m so happy that you decided to apply for someone fresh, Taylor! Your application for Marlene was deep and thought through and left me with a very clear picture of how you were planning on portraying her. I could tell how much work you’d put into thinking through her past (specifically in this rp) and how it could potentially shape her future. I love how many different roads there are to her journey, and how you completely embraced the fact that she’s a less stable character than many we have in the rp. I can’t wait to see what you do with her and to witness you bring her to life within the rp! *your faceclaim change to Madelaine Petsch has been accepted!

application beneath the cut (tw: Torture, Kidnapping, PTSD, mentions of Eating Disorders)

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

It’s Taylor! 18 (almost 19, geez.), CST, female pronouns!

ACTIVITY

Erg… normally, I’d say a 6-7/10, weekly. I can post some every week unless something comes up.

TRIGGERS

*removed for privacy

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

I’ve been here nearly a year now!

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

Oh man, uh – Ron. I do get angry and jealous, especially with those I love, but I would like to think I have a strong sense of loyalty for my friends. But there’s also a lot of deep-rooted insecurity and fear that he’ll never amount to the greatness of others that I really relate to, especially recently.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Ya’ll are angels. Pass it on.

Also, said I’d put in a new app to stick around, so here it is!

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Marlene Isadora McKinnon

FACE CLAIM

Madelaine Petsch. Or, Sasha Pieterse.

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

When looking through the open characters, Marlene was one that I kept coming back to. She’s one of the first Marauder era characters I ever had a true fascination with, although I’ve always done my admiring from afar, instead of taking the chance to play her myself. There’s something about her that’s so fascinating to me - after all, the McKinnon family is killed personally by Voldemort himself; but why? Surely, he’s capable of sending his followers to take care of anyone he deems a threat. So what made Marlene and her family so special to be sought out personally, by the darkest wizard of the time?

Aside from that, the skeleton here for Marlene leaves so much to be considered, and honestly I’m amazed she hasn’t been taken yet. There’s so much about  her that is left to be discovered and explored, especially in wake of the torturous kidnapping she endured at the hands of Voldemort already. The sort of pain he inflicts is bound to leave psychological marks, the sort of which can never truly be brought back from. Any return from trauma is something that can happen in many ways  - some people use it as strength, using it to build themselves into better, less fragile versions of themselves. Others use it as a way to be broken down, never returning from the brink of agony; and then there are those who fester in it, putting on a face, pretending as if nothing ever happened in the first place. The latter of which is where Marlene falls.

She wasn’t always that way; no, as a child Marlene was a wild card. That much hasn’t changed with age. She was a very bubbly, charismatic girl, someone willing to jump in head first, make friends first, ask questions second. Her addictive personality was something that could be pulled in only by her beloved twin Marcus, the true heart walking around outside her body. He was always the one person Marlene adored without reason, or promise - some may say her affections toward him were obsessive or unhealthy; but in their Pureblooded family, Marcus McKinnon was the only one to truly love her. The one to remind her that her gender and personality were not reasons to be hated. She loves him for that, more than she loves herself - but in the wake of her trauma, it’s so hard to let him in.

Trauma has become a very pivotal part of Marlene, but don’t be fooled; that is not all she is. Her addictive personality once manifested in terms of nothing but having a good time - now, it has personified into an eating disorder and a drinking problem. Coping mechanisms are how she chooses to handle it, never allowing anyone to see the habits she’s fallen into. Aside from that, so much of her personality just speaks to me. The woman she is, is someone I can relate to very much, in many ways - she’s essentially just a child, who has had to endure so much agony and terror with no choice. It’s broken her beyond relief, but she’s a phoenix, trying to rebuild herself in the ashes, find a way to exist. There is so much to the woman that is so utterly fascinating, so many paths she could travel down in respect to finding a way to not only survive the war, but to exist with the battle scars she continues to be inflicted with.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

Marlene identifies as a pansexual female. Sex isn’t something she gives much thought to; if it happens, cool, but she doesn’t put many labels to it. As far as she’s concerned, life is too short to put much thought into who she shares a bed with. As for her gender, she truly hasn’t ever given it much thought; never has Marlene ever felt like anything other than a girl. It’s simply what she is.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

Aesthetic 1

Mock Blog

Playlist:

Trouble - Natalia Kills - absolutely her theme song Learn your lines, get your story straight, Broken bottles gonna seal your fate Happiness is just a glass away, I’m trouble Good Time Girl by Scouting for Girls You took me in and shook me up inside. You got the stuff, the stuff that drives me wild. Carmen by Lana Del Rey She said ‘you don’t wanna be like me- Don’t wanna see all the things I’ve seen.’ Hurricane - Halsey I’m a wanderess, I’m a one night stand Don’t belong to no city Don’t belong to no man I’m the violence in the pouring rain I’m a hurricane

Just One Yesterday by Fall Out Boy Anything you say can and will be held against you And now I’m here to give you all my love So I can watch your face, as I Take it all away

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it: “Well. I’m shit with names, so we’re not going to do that, but– a spell to fix hangovers. Not somethin’ many people would find ‘practical’ these days, I know, but bloody hell if it wouldn’t make things easier sometimes.”

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you:

“Obviously I’d want Marcus. If I’m going into that place, there’s nobody I want by my side than my brother. No bloody idea what I’d take though - wait, I take it back, I’d want my broom. Just because I’m in the forest doesn’t mean I’ve got to trample along the ground waitin’ for those damn spiders, yeah?”

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make? “The sort that take time - ‘least, that’s what I’m told. Guess I’m impulsive.”

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you? “I went down without a fight. Call me a crazy bitch all you want, Merlin knows people do; but don’t say I was a coward.”

WRITING SAMPLE

TW: mentions of torture, kidnapping, and PTSD

When Marlene’s eyes opened, she had no idea where she was; she couldn’t move and her head felt as if it had been filled with static. It was as if all of her senses had been taken from her; she had no idea as to where she was, or what the date was. Any memory of what had happened to get her into the blind situation she seemed to have been put into were gone; the last thing she was capable of remembering was…gone. There was nothing.

A strong and horribly unpleasant burning filled her throat and spread to the back of her skull then, and a sharp wail of pain escaped from her before she could process the pain that shot through her. Pain welled behind her eyes and took away the already slight amount of vision that she had managed to regain. Breathing suddenly became very difficult, and Marlene became all too aware of the fact that her wrists had been shackled to a wooden chair by metal cuffs as her lungs began to feel as if they’d collapse unto themselves at any minute.

Memories began to flood through her mind then, incoherent and frazzled, none making any sort of sense in the sense that she was seeing them. Her eyes were shut and stinging from the tears that had sprung to the surface in her current pain-filled state, but she could see every memory flooding her mind clearly. As much as the physical pain seemed to be out to kill her, the things that had begun to go through her mind were much worse.

“What is happening to me…” The thought was fleeting, as it went through her mind, and another pain shot through her entire body, radiating throughout every limb and causing her to scream out in pain again. It was a feeling much like burning, and Marlene could barely form a feasible thought for what had begun to happen to her, let alone try and begin to figure out where the pain was coming from.

Pain continued to shoot through her, numbing her, until eventually the pain dissipated altogether and she drifted off back into unconsciousness.

Day 2 |

The next time that Marlene awoke — that she was aware of, anyhow — everything in her mind was hazy. She couldn’t remember what was real and what she had seen while she was unconscious; she knew for a fact, however, that she hadn’t slept in a day, at the very least. The burning had stopped sometime within the last twenty-four hours and had instead turned into a dull ache that had never gone away.

At some point during what Marlene could only assume had to have been a day, she had been untied from the wooden chair she had been forcibly spent the better part of two days strapped to, though she had yet to be released from the room she was still being held prisoner inside of. Her eyesight had returned at some point after the burning had stopped, and with that, she had managed to see that there was no way out of the dirt hole that she’d been trapped in; of course, there were doors somewhere, so she knew it had to in fact be some sort of room, but from where she was forced to be standing, there was absolutely nothing but dirt and mud all around.

There had to be doors. That much, at least, she was nearly positive of, if nothing else. How else would she have been released from the chair? How else would she have seen….but had that happened? She couldn’t remember. The line between things that had happened and the things she’d taken to imagining whenever she slipped into unconsciousness was becoming more and more blurry by the day, so much that it was nearly impossible for her to remember which things had happened even before she had ended up…wherever she had ended up.

The next day, it only got worse, as that was the day that she began to recognize the faces of the people who’d come to see her. It was the day that the physical pain became nothing on that of the pain she began to feel in her heart, the weight of which had suddenly become more unbearable than it had when she was a little girl, when she had become a disappointment. No, this was much worse than that.

Marcus appeared first. Then, her parents, James. Over and over again, until the words and the disappointment and the unbearable realization that not a single one of them truly had ever loved her or was proud of her, hit her with enough power that she doubled over. The weight of it all made her collapse, falling against the muddy floor without a second thought. The voices continued to get louder, the disappointment swallowing her whole, and her hands went to clutching at her head, nails digging into her scalp in a way to force her to focus on another kind of pain, on anything other than what she was hearing every person she had ever loved say , the words getting louder and louder by the minute.

Time continued to pass, feeling like hours, and then days, when in reality it had only been a couple of minutes. Marlene’s breathing became more and more labored as she attempted to stable and calm herself, to convince herself that none of what she was hearing inside of her head was true—but it didn’t work. The more she fought to ignore the noise in her head, the louder it got. Hot, fresh tears continued to leak out of her eyes, despite how tightly she had them shut, and eventually, she couldn’t keep the pain suppressed anymore. She let out a long and hollow, high pitched wail of pain that managed to block the noise out momentarily, before it came back altogether, this time bringing the burning with it.

When she came to again, it was thanks to her own screams. Her throat felt raw and as if it was on fire, her screams becoming more and more hoarse and hollowed with every wail that she released. Despite how dark her hole was, her time locked inside had allowed her to become used to the darkness—and she saw the blood that smeared her skin with perfect clarity, despite the darkness and her tired, drained mind. Her entire body felt as if it was made of lead, and then the voices came back again. They became louder and louder, the sounds swirling together inside of her head, while the red stains that streaked across her and mixed with the dirt stained onto her skin stood out more and more vividly with each passing moment.

The burning returned then, more vividly than before, and Marlene’s lungs began to feel as if they had stopped functioning altogether yet again. The pain all of a sudden blasted back into her, just as intense and horrible as it had been in the beginning, until eventually, she cradled her head in her hands again, paying no attention to the dirt and blood that inevitably was tainting the fair color of her hair.

A sharp, high pitched scream of agony shot out of her, so unlike the screams she’d grown accustomed to hearing herself make in the long hours in the hole. Hot tears of pain flooded out of her again, so much that it nearly surprised her—of would have, if she could feel surprise anymore. The pain grew more and more unbearable, breaking her down more so than it had before, until eventually the wailing died down and the final piece that had kept her sane until then broke. Then, she drifted back off into the darkness that came with the unconsciousness that she’d grown so familiar with.

… And then she woke up. Sweat matted long tendrils of hair to her face, salty tears swelling in her eyes as her frame shot up. Thick blankets were soaked through and clung to her legs, a reminder that she could never escape. “Bloody hell, McKinnon.” She mumbled, throat closing again. “Not again.”

[elizabethrobertajones]

Not sure if you or someone else has touched on this yet (so much meta out there right now it's hard to keep up!) but after seeing a gif set of Dean poking around with the voodoo doll, I saw someone mention in their tags that that could've been a call back to Dean's trips down torture avenue. Thoughts?

Oh I am not keeping up with the meta at all. I’ve got like 10 tabs of my dash that are circa 12x10 to read, never mind more asks than I know what to do with (sorry, I’m working on it and WANT to answer them :P) 

I think that reading makes sense because Dean lost his memory in great big chunks of SELF not TIME, so we didn’t get him regressing in age we got him losing identity. Like, he seemed boyish and dopey but that was because he’d forgotten who he was and literally every expectation the world had of him or all his character-specific anxieties, not because he had forgotten his way all the way through his life down to childhood… Considering how abstract those memories are they probably went first, tbh, which is why he seemed cheerful right from the start, since even by the diner, he lost his germphobia, and a lot of social anxiety and other little details which you could imagine building up subconsciously over the years of trauma and general unpleasantness of his life. 

By the end he was reduced down to a very instinctive version of Dean who was operating on very very basic principles that he understood his environment without knowing it, and in a way knew what he was for when it came to loading a gun and going into a house to shoot witches. I guess it was like being in a dream at that point - you never have any context to your life and you often forget everything about yourself except for what is right in front of you. But even then you still kind of know how to react in a scenario and Dean probably just kept on reacting like, the instinct to examine the car, to load a weapon when he was told, to spot a creepy house and head towards it, and then to react as he did because of the conditioning to be a “hero” and to kill evil that’s so deeply ingrained.

(For some reason I’m thinking of the action figure in 9x07 that was like “i clobber evil!” all the time before they roasted it on the oven :P But yeah, more seriously, had all the shades of his real season 9 stuff, with the Mark and Cain telling him he was a killer even before he gave it to him…)

Back when Dean was messing with the doll, he could still talk and I think had a better sense of self still; I have my headcanon but at least the surface text seemed to be he remembered Sam at least as late as hearing him get captured by the witches. If we take that as the second to last step of losing his sense of self before as far as we saw him go, I think it’s possible it was a reference to torture and how it’s a part of him, but in that kind of way where they don’t have to go really dark with it. Since Dean wasn’t losing memory backwards, but losing chunks of self, the main part of which was his memory (he managed to lose the actual clear idea of what hunting was just by the end of investigating at the bar, as Sam had to explain it to him, but even just arriving at the bar, he was struggling to keep up with stuff like the FBI cover but I think he still knew somewhere he was a hunter, and Sam just had to remind him of the specific job, not the entire concept, and that slipped somewhere. I mean they got to the office while Dean could still remember how they’d started the case and some details of it…) I think it’s only really when Rowena shows up that we start to see Dean losing actual huge chunks of personality and self - we see him losing everything in front of the mirror that makes up his individual identity but before that Sam had managed to briefly remind him of who he was and bring him back to himself for a quick chat before it went again. So only after Dean loses all that stuff in front of the mirror is he truly sort of a blank slate instinctive Dean.

At which point I am reminded in 4x16 of Alastair telling him that he “carved him into a new animal” - because before that we almost never/just didn’t see Dean torturing anything, but after Hell it became much more normal for them to do, and especially later seasons when Dean stops angsting about it so much and I think resigns himself to the fact that’s just a part of who he is - so for example torturing demons to find Lisa in 6x21, or torturing monsters to find Cas in Purgatory, is just his reaction to a situation like that. At the core, he has changed, and it’s a big part of his self-loathing and that sense of himself he has as a killer.

Rowena giving him the doll to play with is pretty funny on the surface (lots of fandom comparisons to Trump because of the hair :P) but Dean has no idea, and he still takes to poking it with the pins as a fun game. I don’t think he knows he’s causing actual harm, but that gives it a kid with a magnifying glass and some ants feel. He doesn’t have a concept of torture, but they’re still showing him doing it? He has a lot of human empathy for Rowena and her story (he thinks she has a lot of snuff! I melted :D) but the doll is given to him almost like an inhuman enemy, and he’s given the weapons to torment it, and away he goes, quite curious, and sort of vicious when he’s jabbing it repeatedly. 

As someone else has pointed out, him sliding the pin under the stitching for the eye is directly the threat Toni levelled at him at the start of the season when she was boasting about how much torture she knew. I think the proximity of those is more than enough to suggest there’s a solid link >.> She studied intentionally, while Dean was forced into that, and it changed him to the core, and now this reveals that at a certain level of losing himself, Dean still retains all that information about how to be a torturer. 

I still think he was pointed like a weapon at the witches, as a last resort from Rowena I guess… If they’d had a different circumstance and someone had urgently made him torture, I wonder if he would have done it. He didn’t have a problem killing the witches, and he still had the vague idea somewhere in there that he was a hero fighting evil even if he didn’t know any of the hows and whys, it apparently still called to him. If someone had convinced him a thing was very evil and needed torturing, despite Dean looking so uncomfortable about Rowena calling him a killer, would he have accepted it had to be done and got to work torturing? The doll suggests there’s at least half a chance >.>