#and you can say they shouldn't burn out but I try to deal in practicalities and descriptivism; and people can be burned out

[commonurmoml]

Drunken Mood Swings

Rafe Cameron x drunk!emotional!female

Warnings: fluff, drinking, language, Rafe accidentally makes mc cry

Words: 1.1k

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"Can you just get in the fucking car?" Rafe practically begs, not having any interest in dealing with her attitude today. He had had a really long day and he just wanted to go home. She had to be the single most stubborn person he has ever met. She walks down the road, his truck pulled off to the side, slowly driving at her pace.

"Say you're sorry." She huffs, glancing over at her annoyed boyfriend and picking up her pace as if she's going to out run the vehicle. The increased pace causes her to stumble, her pride doing nothing for the fact that she's five shots and a couple drinks deep.

"Baby, I'm sorry. Will you please just get in?" He seemed sincere, but not sincere enough for her. She stops moving suddenly with a dramatic stomp and turns to him.

"Say it like you mean it." Her words slur together.

"I did. Because I do mean it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have picked a fight with Maybank. I get that he's your friend or whatever. Now can you get in the car? It's starting to get dark and I am not letting you walk home like this." He runs a frustrated hand down his face. She doesn't live too far from here. She's made the walk plenty of times sober but right now she looks like she's about to fall over just standing there. She huffs out, rolling her eyes as a final act of rebellion before she gets into the truck.

"Fine." She puts all her weight into opening the door and Rafe rolls his eyes at her dramatics. She falls back when she tries to get into the lifted truck, giggling carelessly as she does so.

"Jesus christ." He jumps in his seat, reaching out to grab her arm so she doesn't tumble out of the truck. He uses his hold on her to pull her fully into the car, forcing her back into the seat and buckling her seatbelt for her. The second she makes contact with the plush comfortable seat of her boyfriend's truck, she forgets entirely why she insisted on walking. Her feat burn from her stubbornness and she kicks her shoes off. That's when she finally notices they aren't moving.

"My house is-" She stumbles, actually thinking he forgot where she lives.

"I know where your house is, dumbass, close the fucking door." His tone is much harsher than he means it to be and he immediately regrets it. He's not mad at her, he's just tired. He knows she's just tired too, tired and drunk. He also knows she gets quite emotional when she's drunk, and she hates being yelled at always. He doesn't want to look up because he knows what will be there to greet him. And of course, there it is. She looks at him, tears brimming in her eyes.

Rafe can't help but feel bad. He knows it's not that serious but his heart still breaks at the sight of his pretty girl on the verge of tears because of him. He sighs, putting the car in park and immediately getting out. He quickly walks around the now parked car so he can have access to her.

"I'm sorry." She mumbles out when she sees him standing in front of her. She tries to ensure her tears don't fall but, they were getting dangerously close.

"No. Baby, I'm sorry. It's ok. You didn't do anything wrong." Rafe sighs, placing a reassuring kiss on her lips. "Ok?" He asks and she doesn't respond, still focused on not crying. Rafe frowns, bringing his hands up to cup her cheeks and wipe away the tears from her eyes. He then kisses her again, this time giving her a small pat on the cheek. When he pulls back he notices her trying to hold back a smile and it brings a bright smile to his lips. "Ok?" He repeats and she honestly doesn't even remember what he said before.

"Mmhm." She agrees, a small nod and a loud giggle. The sound is angelic to Rafe. He notices her shivering a bit before he closes the door and frowns.

"You cold?" She looks down at her hands and nods, for some reason embarrassed about being cold. He just chuckles, shaking his head lightly at her random coyness. Her drunken mood swings are certainly the single most entertaining part of being in a relationship with this girl. He opens the large glove compartment and pulls out the neatly folded blanket he put in there just for her. He drapes the blanket over her and the second it touches her, she pulls it closer and curls up into a ball against the chair. "Better?"

"Yah." She giggles tiredly and closes her eyes, going into full passenger princess mode. The last thing she hears before she drifts to sleep is Rafe closing her door for her.

She is woken up by jostling as Rafe tries to unlock the door with her unconscious body held bridal style in his arms, the white blanket still wrapped around her.

"Rafe?" Her voice slurs out.

"Shit." He mumbles to himself when he realizes she's awake. "Sorry, princess, I was trying not to wake you."

"It's ok." She mumbles, slinging her hands around his neck and resting her head against his chest. He smiles when he feels her nuzzling close to him, opening the door quickly now that he doesn't have to worry about waking her. He immediately starts walking upstairs, placing her on his blue comforter when he gets up to his room. She finally realizes this isn't her house, the mattress is way too soft. Plus she doesn't have a second floor what is she, a Kook? She lifts her head, furrowing her eyebrows when she realizes she's in her boyfriend's mansion. Rafe laughs, amused that she's just now noticed she's on the complete opposite side of the island.

"I didn't think it would be a good idea to bring you home considering the fact that you're wrecked right now." He explains and she doesn't really listen, slipping back into sleep. He smiles at her sleeping form, god she's adorable.

He slips the white blanket off of her, stripping her out of the bikini and shorts she wore to the beach party and replacing them with one of his shirts. He then carefully takes the makeup off of her face, doing her entire long skincare routine and even brushing her teeth for her. God this man is pussy whipped. When he is done getting ready and getting her ready for bed, he lays next to her and pulls her into his chest. She subconsciously moves into his chest further, cuddling into her spot on him.

[hms-no-fun]

Hi! I just read your post about your opinion on "AI" and I really liked it. If it's no bother, what's your opinion on people who use it for studying? Like writing essays, solving problems and stuff like that?

I haven't been a fan of AI from the beginning and I've heard that you shouldn't ask it for anything because then you help it develop. But I don't know how to explain that to friends and classmates or even if it's true anymore. Because I've seen some of the prompts it can come up with and they're not bad and I've heard people say that the summaries AI makes are really good and I just... I dunno. I'm at a loss

Sorry if this is a lot or something you simply don't want to reply to. You made really good points when talking about AI and I really liked it and this has been weighing on me for a while :)

on a base level, i don't really have a strongly articulated opinion on the subject because i don't use AI, and i'm 35 so i'm not in school anymore and i don't have a ton of college-aged friends either. i have little exposure to the people who use AI in this way nor to the people who have to deal with AI being used in this way, so my perspective here is totally hypothetical and unscientific.

what i was getting at in my original AI post was a general macroeconomic point about how all of the supposed efficiency gains of AI are an extension of the tech CEO's dislike of paying and/or giving credit to anyone they deem less skilled or intelligent than them. that it's conspicuous how AI conveniently falls into place after many decades of devaluing and deskilling creative/artistic labor industries. historically, for a lot of artists the most frequently available & highest paying gigs were in advertising. i can't speak to the specifics when it comes to visual art or written copy, but i *can* say that when i worked in the oklahoma film industry, the most coveted jobs were always the commercials. great pay for relatively less work, with none of the complications that often arise working on amateur productions. not to mention they were union gigs, a rare enough thing in a right to work state, so anyone trying to make a career out of film work wanting to bank their union hours to qualify for IATSE membership always had their ears to the ground for an opening. which didn't come often because, as you might expect, anyone who *got* one of those jobs aimed to keep it as long as possible. who could blame em, either? one person i met who managed to get consistent ad work said they could afford to work all of two or three months a year, so they could spend the rest of their time doing low-budget productions and (occasionally) student films.

there was a time when this was the standard for the film industry, even in LA; you expected to work 3 to 5 shows a year (exact number's hard to estimate because production schedules vary wildly between ads, films, and tv shows) for six to eight months if not less, so you'd have your bills well covered through the lean periods and be able to recover from what is an enormously taxing job both physically and emotionally. this was never true for EVERYONE, film work's always been a hustle and making a career of it is often a luck-based crapshoot, but generally that was the model and for a lot of folks it worked. it meant more time to practice their skills on the job, sustainably building expertise and domain knowledge that they could then pass down to future newcomers. anything that removes such opportunities decreases the amount of practice workers get, and any increased demand on their time makes them significantly more likely to burn out of the industry early. lower pay, shorter shoots, busier schedules, these aren't just bad for individual workers but for the entire industry, and that includes the robust and well-funded advertising industry.

well, anyway, this year's coca-cola christmas ad was made with AI. they had maybe one person on quality control using an adobe aftereffects mask to add in the coke branding. this is the ultimate intended use-case for AI. it required the expertise of zero unionized labor, and worst of all the end result is largely indistinguishable from the alternative. you'll often see folks despair at this verisimilitude, particularly when a study comes out that shows (for instance) people can't tell the difference between real poetry and chat gpt generated poetry. i despair as well, but for different reasons. i despair that production of ads is a better source of income and experience for film workers than traditional movies or television. i despair that this technology is fulfilling an age-old promise about the disposability of artistic labor. poetry is not particularly valued by our society, is rarely taught to people beyond a beginner's gloss on meter and rhyme. "my name is sarah zedig and i'm here to say, i'm sick of this AI in a major way" type shit. end a post with the line "i so just wish that it would go away and never come back again!" and then the haiku bot swoops in and says, oh, 5/7/5 you say? that is technically a haiku! and then you put a haiku-making minigame in your crowd-pleasing japanese nationalist open world chanbara simulator, because making a haiku is basically a matter of selecting one from 27 possible phrase combinations. wait, what do you mean the actual rules of haiku are more elastic and subjective than that? that's not what my english teacher said in sixth grade!

AI is able to slip in and surprise us with its ability to mimic human-produced art because we already treat most human-produced art like mechanical surplus of little to no value. ours is a culture of wikipedia-level knowledge, where you have every incentive to learn a lot of facts about something so that you can sufficiently pretend to have actually experienced it. but this is not to say that humans would be better able to tell the difference between human produced and AI produced poetry if they were more educated about poetry! the primary disconnect here is economic. Poets already couldn't make a fucking living making poetry, and now any old schmuck can plug a prompt into chatgpt and say they wrote a sonnet. even though they always had the ability to sit down and write a sonnet!

boosters love to make hay about "deskilling" and "democratizing" and "making accessible" these supposedly gatekept realms of supposedly bourgeois expression, but what they're really saying (whether they know it or not) is that skill and training have no value anymore. and they have been saying this since long before AI as we know it now existed! creative labor is the backbone of so much of our world, and yet it is commonly accepted as a poverty profession. i grew up reading books and watching movies based on books and hearing endless conversation about books and yet when i told my family "i want to be a writer" they said "that's a great way to die homeless." like, this is where the conversation about AI's impact starts. we already have a culture that simultaneously NEEDS the products of artistic labor, yet vilifies and denigrates the workers who perform that labor. folks see a comic panel or a corporate logo or a modern art piece and say "my kid could do that," because they don't perceive the decades of training, practice, networking, and experimentation that resulted in the finished product. these folks do not understand that just because the labor of art is often invisible doesn't mean it isn't work.

i think this entire conversation is backwards. in an ideal world, none of this matters. human labor should not be valued over machine labor because it inherently possesses an aura of human-ness. art made by humans isn't better than AI generated art on qualitative grounds. art is subjective. you're not wrong to find beauty in an AI image if the image is beautiful. to my mind, the value of human artistic labor comes down to the simple fact that the world is better when human beings make art. the world is better when we have the time and freedom to experiment, to play, to practice, to develop and refine our skills to no particular end except whatever arbitrary goal we set for ourselves. the world is better when people collaborate on a film set to solve problems that arise organically out of the conditions of shooting on a live location. what i see AI being used for is removing as many opportunities for human creativity as possible and replacing them with statistical averages of prior human creativity. this passes muster because art is a product that exists to turn a profit. because publicly traded companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to take every opportunity to turn a profit regardless of how obviously bad for people those opportunities might be.

that common sense says writing poetry, writing prose, writing anything is primarily about reaching the end of the line, about having written something, IS the problem. i've been going through the many unfinished novels i wrote in high school lately, literally hundreds of thousands of words that i shared with maybe a dozen people and probably never will again. what value do those words have? was writing them a waste of time since i never posted them, never finished them, never turned a profit off them? no! what i've learned going back through those old drafts is that i'm only the writer i am today BECAUSE i put so many hours into writing generic grimdark fantasy stories and bizarrely complicated werewolf mythologies.

you know i used to do open mics? we had a poetry group that met once a month at a local cafe in college. each night we'd start by asking five words from the audience, then inviting everyone to compose a poem using those words in 10 to 15 minutes. whoever wanted to could read their poem, and whoever got the most applause won a free drink from the cafe. then we'd spend the rest of the night having folks sign up to come and read whatever. sometimes you'd get heartfelt poems about personal experiences, sometimes you'd get ambitious soundcloud rappers, sometimes you'd get a frat guy taking the piss, sometimes you'd get a mousy autist just doing their best. i don't know that any of the poetry i wrote back then has particular value today, but i don't really care. the point of it was the experience in that moment. the experience of composing something on the fly, or having something you wrote a couple days ago, then standing up and reading it. the value was in the performance itself, in the momentary synthesis between me and the audience. i found out then that i was pretty good at making people cry, and i could not have had that experience in any other venue. i could not have felt it so viscerally had i just posted it online. and i cannot wrap up that experience and give it to you, because it only existed then.

i think more people would write poetry if they had more hours in a day to spare for frivolities, if there existed more spaces where small groups could organize open mics, if transit made those spaces more widely accessible, if everyone made enough money that they weren't burned the fuck out and not in the mood to go to an open mic tonight, if we saw poetry as a mode of personal reflection which was as much about the experience of having written it as anything else. this is the case for all the arts. right now, the only people who can afford to make a living doing art are already wealthy, because art doesn't pay well. this leads to brain drain and overall lowering quality standards, because the suburban petty bouge middle class largely do not experience the world as it materially exists for the rest of us. i often feel that many tech CEOs want to be remembered the way andy warhol is remembered. they want to be loved and worshipped not just for business acumen but for aesthetic value, they want to get the kind of credit that artists get-- because despite the fact that artists don't get paid shit, they also frequently get told by people "your work changed my life." how is it that a working class person with little to no education can write a story that isn't just liked but celebrated, that hundreds or thousands of people imprint on, that leaves a mark on culture you can't quantify or predict or recreate? this is AI's primary use-case, to "democratize" art in such a way that hacks no longer have to work as hard to pretend to be good at what they do. i mean, hell, i have to imagine every rich person with an autobiography in the works is absolutely THRILLED that they no longer have to pay a ghost writer!

so, circling back around to the meat of your question. as far as telling people not to use AI because "you're just helping to train it," that ship has long since sailed. getting mad at individuals for using AI right now is about as futile as getting mad at individuals for not masking-- yes, obviously they should wear a mask and write their own essays, but to say this is simply a matter of millions of individuals making the same bad but unrelated choice over and over is neoliberal hogwash. people stopped masking because they were told to stop masking by a government in league with corporate interests which had every incentive to break every avenue of solidarity that emerged in 2020. they politicized masks, calling them "the scarlet letter of [the] pandemic". biden himself insisted this was "a pandemic of the unvaccinated", helpfully communicating to the public that if you're vaccinated, you don't need to mask. all those high case numbers and death counts? those only happen to the bad people.

now you have CEOs and politicians and credulous media outlets and droves of grift-hungry influencers hard selling the benefits of AI in everything everywhere all the time. companies have bent over backwards to incorporate AI despite ethics and security worries because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and everyone with money is calling this the next big thing. in short, companies are following the money, because that's what companies do. they, in turn, are telling their customers what tools to use and how. so of course lots of people are using AI for things they probably shouldn't. why wouldn't they? "the high school/college essay" as such has been quantized and stripmined by an education system dominated by test scores over comprehension. it is SUPPOSED to be an exercise in articulating ideas, to teach the student how to argue persuasively. the final work has little to no value, because the point is the process. but when you've got a system that lives and dies by its grades, within which teachers are given increasingly more work to do, less time to do it in, and a much worse paycheck for their trouble, the essay increasingly becomes a simple pass/fail gauntlet to match the expected pace set by the simple, clean, readily gradable multiple choice quiz. in an education system where the stakes for students are higher than they've ever been, within which you are increasingly expected to do more work in less time with lower-quality guidance from your overworked teachers, there is every incentive to get chatgpt to write your essay for you.

do you see what i'm saying? we can argue all day about the shoulds here. of course i think it's better when people write their own essays, do their own research, personally read the assigned readings. but cheating has always been a problem. a lot of these same fears were aired over the rising popularity of cliffs notes in the 90s and 2000s! the real problem here is systemic. it's economic. i would have very little issue with the output of AI if existing conditions were not already so precarious. but then, if the conditions were different, AI as we know it likely would not exist. it emerges today as the last gasp of a tech industry that has been floundering for a reason to exist ever since the smart phone dominated the market. they tried crypto. they tried the metaverse. now they're going all-in on AI because it's a perfect storm of shareholder-friendly buzzwords and the unscientific technomythology that's been sold to laymen by credulous press sycophants for decades. It slots right into this niche where the last of our vestigial respect for "the artist" once existed. it is the ultimate expression of capitalist realism, finally at long last doing away with the notion that the suits at disney could never in their wildest dreams come up with something half as cool as the average queer fanfic writer. now they've got a program that can plagiarize that fanfic (along with a dozen others) for them, laundering the theft through a layer of transformation which perhaps mirrors how the tech industry often exploits open source software to the detriment of the open source community. the catastrophe of AI is that it's the fulfillment of a promise that certainly predates computers at the very least.

so, i don't really know what to tell someone who uses AI for their work. if i was talking to a student, i'd say that relying chatgpt is really gonna screw you over when it comes time take the SAT or ACT, and you have to write an essay from scratch by hand in a monitored environment-- but like, i also think the ACT and SAT and probably all the other standardized tests shouldn't exist? or at the very least ought to be severely devalued, since prep for those tests often sabotages the integrity of actual classroom education. although, i guess at this point the only way forward for education (that isn't getting on both knees and deep-throating big tech) is more real-time in-class monitored essay writing, which honestly might be better for all parties anyway. of course that does nothing to address research essays you can't write in a single class session. to someone who uses AI for research, i'd probably say the same thing as i would to someone who uses wikipedia: it's a fine enough place to start, but don't cite it. click through links, find sources, make sure what you're reading is real, don't rely on someone else's generalization. know that chatgpt is likely not pulling information from a discrete database of individual files that it compartmentalizes the way you might expect, but rather is a statistical average of a broad dataset about which it cannot have an opinion or interpretation. sometimes it will link you to real information, but just as often it will invent information from whole cloth. honestly, the more i talk it out, the more i realize all this advice is basically identical to the advice adults were giving me in the early 2000s.

which really does cement for me that the crisis AI is causing in education isn't new and did not come from nowhere. before chatgpt, students were hiring freelancers on fiverr. i already mentioned cliffs notes. i never used any of these in college, but i'll also freely admit that i rarely did all my assigned reading. i was the "always raises her hand" bitch, and every once in a while i'd get other students who were always dead silent in class asking me how i found the time to get the reading done. i'd tell them, i don't. i read the beginning, i read the ending, and then i skim the middle. whenever a word or phrase jumps out at me, i make a note of it. that way, when the professor asks a question in class, i have exactly enough specific pieces of information at hand to give the impression of having done the reading. and then i told them that i learned how to do this from the very same professor that was teaching that class. the thing is, it's not like i learned nothing from this process. i retained quite a lot of information from those readings! this is, broadly, a skill that emerges from years of writing and reading essays. but then you take a step back and remember that for most college students (who are not pursuing any kind of arts degree), this skillset is relevant to an astonishingly minimal proportion of their overall course load. college as it exists right now is treated as a jobs training program, within which "the essay" is a relic of an outdated institution that highly valued a generalist liberal education where today absolute specialization seems more the norm. so AI comes in as the coup de gras to that old institution. artists like myself may not have the constitution for the kind of work that colleges now exist to funnel you into, but those folks who've never put a day's thought into the work of making art can now have a computer generate something at least as good at a glance as basically anything i could make. as far as the market is concerned, that's all that matters. the contents of an artwork, what it means to its creator, the historic currents it emerges out of, these are all technicalities that the broad public has been well trained not to give a shit about most of the time. what matters is the commodity and the economic activity it exists to generate.

but i think at the end of the day, folks largely want to pay for art made by human beings. that it's so hard for a human being to make a living creating and selling art is a question far older than AI, and whose answer hasn't changed. pay workers more. drastically lower rents. build more affordable housing. make healthcare free. make education free. massively expand public transit. it is simply impossible to overstate how much these things alone would change the conversation about AI, because it would change the conversation about everything. SO MUCH of the dominance of capital in our lives comes down to our reliance on cars for transit (time to get a loan and pay for insurance), our reliance on jobs for health insurance (can't quit for moral reasons if it's paying for your insulin), etc etc etc. many of AI's uses are borne out of economic precarity and a ruling class desperate to vacuum up every loose penny they can find. all those billionaires running around making awful choices for the rest of us? they stole those billions. that is where our security went. that is why everything is falling apart, because the only option remaining to *every* institutional element of society is to go all-in on the profit motive. tax these motherfuckers and re-institute public arts funding. hey, did you know the us government used to give out grants to artists? did you know we used to have public broadcast networks where you could make programs that were shown to your local community? why the hell aren't there public youtube clones? why aren't there public transit apps? why aren't we CONSTANTLY talking about nationalizing these abusive fucking industries that are falling over themselves to integrate AI because their entire modus operandi is increasing profits regardless of product quality?

these are the questions i ask myself when i think about solutions to the AI problem. tech needs to be regulated, the monopolies need breaking up, but that's not enough. AI is a symptom of a much deeper illness whose treatment requires systemic solutions. and while i'm frustrated when i see people rely on AI for their work, or otherwise denigrate artists who feel AI has devalued their field, on some level i can't blame them. they are only doing what they've been told to do. all of which merely strengthens my belief in the necessity of an equitable socialist future (itself barely step zero in the long path towards a communist future, and even that would only be a few steps on the even longer path to a properly anarchist future). improve the material conditions and you weaken the dominance of capitalist realism, however minutely. and while there are plenty of reasons to despair at the likelihood of such a future given a second trump presidency, i always try to remember that socialist policies are very popular and a *lot* of that popularity emerged during the first trump administration. the only wrong answer here is to assume that losing an election is the same thing as losing a war, that our inability to put the genie back in its bottle means we can't see our own wishes granted.

i dunno if i answered your question but i sure did say a lot of stuff, didn't i?

[mediocreanomaly]

Love your soulmate au for vashwood so much. What if it was with reader and knives?

Knives would be so confused with feeling random pains like a stubbed toe or a random pinch.

🌻Hope you have a good day🌻

Authors note: Yo! ofcourse I had to turn this into a post!!! My main story will be Vashwood but I'm basing this in the same world as the Vashwood x reader stuff, consider this a little side story I might expand on if it gets enough love lol you don't have to read the other parts to understand this tho

Read the Vashwood Parts Here!: Part 1 | Part 2

Read Part 2 Here!

Knives X Reader Soulmate AU

•Knives had learned about soulmates during his studies with Rem, a person all humans had that was tethered to them in some sort of spiritual or metaphysical sense, one that could feel your pain.

•It was stupid. In all honesty he was glad he wasn't human so he didn't have to deal with something so tedious. It would only slow him down, he couldn't imagine how humans dealt with such a hinderance

•He often listened to Vash ramble on about soulmates and offered little assurance, often saying things like "We aren't human Vash we don't have soulmates", "You shouldn't want a soulmate anyways it's pain for no reason", "Will you stop talking about it already? it's beneath us"

•After the fall Knives all but forgets soulmates even exist. He's focused on bigger things and he doesn't have a soulmate anyways so the thought is nonexistent

•Then the oddest thing happens. He's busy destroying a town attempting to take their plant, it's a routine stop, when he swears he feels a pain shoot through his foot

•He quickly whips his head around, looking around to figure out what exactly could have done that but there's nothing but his own destruction. weird.

•He thinks about it for a couple days because he isn't used to getting hurt but reluctantly chalks it up to him some how being careless with his blades, even though that explanation doesn't really sit right with him it's the only thing that makes sense

•Then a couple months later in the sanctuary of his own quarters he feels a burn across his hand. He furrows his brow and slowly looks over his hand over and over to see where the burn is coming from yet there's no mark, just the feeling

•Fool him once shame on him fool him twice....

•He marches down to Conrads office irritated about whatever's happening. Conrad listens as he explains the two incidents, how there's no mark, how it's annoying and distracting him from more important matters

•Conrad nods and says he's going to run an experiment, before Knives can fully ask what says experiment is Conrad reaches over and roughly jabs him in the side

•Safe to say Conrad almost lost his head that day. In fact Knives blades where pressed to his neck when he felt a returning jab in his arm

•Once Knives realizes what's happening he's furious. He's a superior being he doesn't need a soulmate he's been fine with out one for a century, he doesn't even understand, why now? Why when he's so close to achieving his plans?

•After this he makes it a top priority to kill you. What? you thought he was going to be merciful just because your his soulmate? This whole thing is just a bump in the road of his plans, it'll be easy. He'll kill you and then he doesn't have to worry about feeling your pain. Besides, right now it's just a stubbed toe or a burn but come tomorrow he can't afford to be distracted if you break an arm or get shot

•So he rampages towns non-stop, trying to find you, hoping he'll feel his own blade for a split second before it can go back to normal

•During his rampages...is when you join Dr.Conrad in his studies. You were a plant specialist, the most renowned in your field, yet...the most you studied plants, the more you interacted and saw...the more you hated humans for how you used them

•You felt humans didn't deserve plants, didn't deserve the sentient life force the human race had created, so when you found out about Dr.Conrad you'd practically begged him to let you join the cause

•So ironically Knives was pretty much wasting his time being out causing mass destruction, if he had stayed he might've put the pieces together a bit faster, but he didn't

•Unlike Vash Knives doesn't really let himself get hurt, he does the hurting so Knives doesn't realize you're his soulmate for a long time, but this is good because if he realized right off the bat you'd probably be dead

•Instead he slowly comes to learn of your existence. He doesn't really care much about you one was or the other when he first meets you. Your Conrads help? Okay. That's it, that's all there is really he doesn't care

•Yet for some reason...every time he passes through to speak with Conrad he can't help but watch you work while he pretends to be focusing on whatever the man was saying

•It's almost maddening because he doesn't understand why you of all people have caught he attention so he starts trying to interact with you more. It's a little unnerving at first, I mean...it's Knives. He either silently stands over you as you work or makes less that nice comments about how your doing things wrong

•But you aren't deterred in fact you're pretty interested by Knives. You've studied plants your whole life but Knives...Knives is something different, something more. So you use the time he hovers to ask him questions about himself, how his gate works, if he sleeps or eats, logging each difference between him and humans and him and other plants

•Maybe it's the way your brain is wired from interacting with so many plants, maybe it's the fact Knives seems to pay particular attention to you,(maybe it's the fact you're soulmates lmao) but you're basically the only one who can read him. You don't know how but you pick up on the slight mouth twitches, the shifts in his shoulders, the difference between his "i'm annoyed" grimace and his "i'm enjoying this but I don't want you to know" grimace

•He won't admit it to you, not yet, but he's starting to feel...fond of you. He'll pretend he needs to speak to Conrad about the progress of his experiments but really he's just there to answer whatever questions you have and to talk to you in return

•Now don't forget, you can feel your soulmates pain...and this is Trigun. You are the first to realize you're soulmates. How you might ask? Well let's put it this way, would you want to feel yourself getting destroyed during the events of Ja'Lai?

•The Ja'Lai incident. It's possibly the worst pain you've ever felt in your life, despite the way Knives grits his teeth through it till the end to an average person? It's unbearable. You black out multiple times from the feeling, body laying in a heap as you try to figure out what's happening

•Once you hear about what happened in Ja'Lai...you instantly know. Luckily (and much to his protest) Legato eventually lets you help nurse Knives back to health

•You sit on the side of Knives bed, your own body still feeling like you have third degree burns as you watch the body of the man you'd been falling for. You knew he didn't want a soulmate, part of you wondered if you should even tell him when he wakes up...

•Well...who knows how he'll respond. Doesn't matter now though, he wont be waking up any time soon, so you have time to come up with a plan. Let's just hope your previous time with him has proved enough to win him over.

[twistedtalking]

yo. Can I request a "darn, ur brother's hot" to the basketball club. A platonic and a romantic one please. Thanks!

of course! Though I didn't know Najma was a guy. I'm not sure if you want najma, but I'll add it anyways since I love her.

Ace:

Platonic: groosss stoppp. This is weird. Dude, no. *throws up* ew.

Romantic: Prefect, you're taste is so weird. That's like having a crush on a wet sock. U for real? He kinda gross though. Like, he randomly lifts people(me) up, and he hardly explains anything, and he's really rude. Plus he never cleans after himself!

(Prefect: like you?)

No! I'm not. I'm much better than him. Hey, what's that look for?! I am though! I can do sick hoops, unlike that dweeb.

(You shouldn't call your brother a dweeb-)

Prefect, look at this cool shot!

*ball doesn't even get near the hoop*

(prefect: ah)

Don't laugh! I was just distracted! I could totally do it on my 2nd try. Hey! Stop laughing!

Floyd:

Platonic: *judges you, with the most disgusted look in his eyes* gross.

Romantic:

*gives you the cold shoulder that day. Even when you ask him why he's been weird these past 5 hours, he glares and just leaves. 2 minutes later, you're on the floor with a heavy Floyd on top of you*

"SHRIMPYYYY." *he wails* "chooseeee me insteadddd" *he starts shaking you aggresively, as you look a bit confused* "say yes, say yes, say yes. Shrimpy say yes"

*he keeps shaking you until you say yes, which you do since you're starting to get dizzy. Or maybe you're just a simp*

"Yay!" *he hugs you, crushing your bones in the process* "Shrimpy, let's kiss!" *and you blush, shocked cause you didn't realise that's what you agreed too. Or you did, cause you're a simp.*

Jamil:

Platonic: *so surprised, he missed the shot.*

My what? *realises he missed the shot, and starts focusing back at the ball, envisioning himself in an actual game. Well, trying to. He can't keep his mind out of what you said. That line sounds really romantic out of context. Anyways, after practice, he evaluates you. * "Nope. Najma's a pain in the neck, but she doesn't deserve that." He whispers, confirming his disapproval of you. Then, he realised you were just joking around.

"Prefect, that is not funny. And I'll never give you my blessing"

Romantic: *in between of confused, jealous, and slightly disgusted.* "I...see. I don't understand why since, as her brother, I have to deal with her 24/7. To each their own, I guess. Even if she does leave her dirty clothes all around her room, and only bathes 4 times a week. And burns every meal she makes. But we all have our preferences, I suppose. Ah. Kalim is hosting another party this week. Could you help taste-test my cooking?

but I say, do not swear(as in promise) at all...let your answer be "yes" if yes, or "no" if no. Anything more than that is evil.

Matthew 5:37

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

THE GIRL IS A SWAN : THE SYMBOLISM OF BEAUTY & MAGIC. BEAUTY TIPS & MORE

Every girls dream is to be as pretty & elegant as the swan.

I want to go in deeper about the perception and symbolism of the swan, which is my inspiration for this post I'm making.

The swan is a symbol of beauty through the enactment of gentleness, creative expression, femininity and grace. In this post, my focus is based on the spirituality of beauty, grace, and the prospering of the divine feminine code. The beauty that is Venus, and that Venusian power is full of love, compassion, & understanding. It is imcomparable to other forms of its nature. And has been a blessing to humanity for ages.

The beauty tips I want to express to everyone is through the art of creating a new look and flow for yourself. How the divine essence that you carry can express itself through the power of grace, and doesn't need to be tainted by outside forces.

The swan is a symbol of methamorphasis. Have you ever seen a baby swan grow into itself? Or have you ever heard of the story 'The Ugly Duckling?' Transformation is a theme when dealing with our looks because it's always growing, changing, and trends around beauty are constantly moving. Always on to the next big thing, but one thing that will always stay true is that vibration and energy never lies. And even if beauty and the standards around it change, it doesn't mean that you have to.

So with that being said, let's get into some beauty tips and embracing some swan magic !

Start slow.

There is never a need to rush, darlings. The gentleness that is needed to pamper ourselves is to simply bask into every bit of experience that is left throughout the day. When we force ourselves to rush into an experience, we are taking away from its pure beauty. And that itself is exhausting. If there is one thing that I've learned throughout my years, is that to fully comprehend the energy that is displaying itself all around us is to simply stop, and enjoy the show. The swan is never seen rushing.. even when flying it shows forth its magnificence through its slow burning movements. Its wings carry a force by simply taking it's time. Not trying to speed through anything.

When it comes to beauty, and applying makeup or putting on our clothes, what's the rush? Do you take your time to put things together? To find something worth meaning, authenticity or do you occasional rush from time to time. This works for some but not everyone, being spontaneous is sometimes out of the swan's reach. But for you, it's not always bad. However.. it needs a little bit of thought. And that shouldn't be a problem.

When it comes to our hair, our clothes, our skin, and anything in between we gotta first come to terms with what is it that makes us feel good. The art of taking your time is a sensual grace that can become a powerful force.

Expressing your divine femininity.

Okay, so first off. Let's talk about divine femininity not always being about the most girliest things. Dresses, makeup, lashes, heels. All these things don't make for a feminine individual. It simply has no filter.

So what those this mean? When it comes to your self expression, the power of your creativity is through the act of emotion. The way you flow into the room and make your presence known is your feminine flow. But again, it has nothing to do with being 'girly', you simply just have to walk the walk.

When expressing our divine femininity, it can be through an outlet of some form. If its fashion, cool. If its dance, great. If it's your speech, even better. All in all, practice expressing your femininity through what you love most. That's how the world see's your beauty, through embracing your divine feminine energy in the way you see fit is all that matters.

Always. Stay. Calm.

Swans are notorious for being peaceful, and aren't too prone to being aggressive. Now I'm not saying you can't tell a mf off, but please be discreet. Not everyone deserves it. It's time to start easing yourself into a more relaxing aura. Be cool. Be smart. And stay to yourself. If someone tries to get you out of character just know its them and not you. Some things are better left unsaid, and to be honest with you, some things are just beneath you. It is what it is.

Enjoying The Experience

Being in the now is always perfect timing. You could've been anywhere else, but you're right here. Where you need to be.

Enjoying the moment is all we have in this lifetime, not getting too caught up with whatever is outside of you, and focusing on whats within and around you. It's an art to being in the present, and just taking in the joy of the reality you set foot in. How more magical can it get? It starts with you.

And now, my favorite part of the post. Is getting into the metaphysics of this animal symbolism.

If you believe in animal spirits, and the energy they symbolize then hey, this is for you. Glad you could make it :)

The Swan's Magic

So what I want to start off by expressing is that everything has a vibration. Energy is everything and nothing at the same time. And what I want to express to you guys is that with swan magic increasing into the forefront it means to creatively express your unique senses in every part of your finger tips. Your presence is an authentic source of creation and the flow that you carry is an artform in itself. I said this before but differently, I just need y'all to get it into your school. You are a masterpiece, a canvas, an ocean of art, life, & beauty. You gotta feel that. And own it.

So when I speak about the vibration of swans, it's more of a dark force that can be deeply felt but not easily meant to be explored.

We're not meant to be fully perceived in all our glory. A Muse's beauty is meant to be on a pedestal and to be seen in all her light, what's most alluring about her always stays in the shadows for the right people to see. Most will never be able to see her true light, its a treasure. That's what being a goddess is primarily about.

The vibration focuses on etherealism. A remarkable essence that is built off inspiring others into a calmness, delightful magic. That is the aura of the swan magician. <3

This is a little post on my thoughts on swan magic, and overall embracing the energy that is divinely feminine. I hope you all enjoyed!

[windvexer]

"And it's not like the spell is locked behind a glass wall in some faraway astral space (or at least, it shouldn't be... it can be. This is too much for one post, let's stay on topic)" oh please, please elaborate! 🙏

its all well and good for me to use a metaphor that magic is ever-present and really close at hand, nigh tangible, even,

but there's obviously more than that to successful manifestation.

like it's an actual large deal in practical sorcery of how the hell you get the spell to do something, or much more relevantly do what you want it to do.

so a while ago I used to talk on manifestation using a metaphor that there is a conceptual sphere of glass that separates physical reality from magical reality.

as the metaphor (analogy?) would have it, you can set intent and focus willpower and manipulate astral energies all you want, but those things are stuck in magical reality, blocked from manifesting in the physical world by the glass.

so the spell, obviously it's a good boy and it wants to be helpful, it's going around and around the glass looking for a crack or a foothold to find its way into physical reality.

but this spell is made out of a finite blob of energy. sooner or later, the battery is going to run dry. and all that time it's spending trying to get into our world is burning energy.

by the time it gets here, it could have burned a lot of energy and it doesn't have a lot left to produce strong results. or maybe it doesn't find its way at all.

if this is all true, then the solution is to make cracks in the glass yourself.

overall it's a pretty rough analogy and I'm not even terribly sure if I'd consider it to be more than a parable at this point.

to mash this idea together with the underwater shark thing, the concept would sort of be like...

okay, so let's say metaphorically half of a person is above water and the rest is underwater.

and we're where there are sharks, which means the WHOLE OCEAN is under there.

maybe the ocean is an elegant metaphor for the supreme depths of magical reality. certain layers of magical reality are very close to the surface and truly are interacting with the floating humans, right?

but we can go deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

it wouldn't be true to say that a fish from a mile down is touching the floating humans. it's actually really far away and has a long way to travel before it could touch them at all.

so hypothetically, while all humans are (hypothetically) always partially within magical reality, that doesn't mean that everything within magical reality is close to them or can easily access them.

and this would also be true of spells, when the sorcerer has inadequately developed the spell too far down (or too far up), or failed to properly draw the spell to the surface.

of course, all of these ideas assume it's true that when spells are created they exist somewhere far away, or in any location at all.

just to clarify I think all of these ideas are most useful when treated as thought exercises and not in any sense literal. I think its perhaps true of witchcraft, or at least the kinds of witchcraft I'm familiar with, that one of the witch's primary sorcerous (and mystical) jobs is to "bridge the gap" and learn how to bring things back and forth between our world and the spirit world.

but even that being said, I think there's an element of mysticism in sorcerous witchcraft. I think maybe the best way to talk about it is in stories, or extended spatial analogies, because that's just about the truest way some of it can ever be written down.

sometimes I feel like if anyone can really write it down, like step-for-step for real, then it's got to be one tiny part of it. because it's a big machine out there, you know. it's so decadently complex that it might be more alive than we are.

so it's good to know how one or two cells work, step-for-step. but in the bigger picture, maybe the best way to impart knowledge is in stories and poetry.

and with some step-for-step details of the biology of a few kinds of cells, and with some nice poetry, maybe a person can crest a cliff and see something that will put its own stories inside of their mind forever.

which is to say that I don't know how magic works but i've seen some nice landscapes out there ✌

[flowerpotmage]

Tight Grip, Broken Dam (6)

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You don’t question it anymore, when Miguel appears in your bed at night. He’s not there for sex, no, you’ve never even kissed—though you would be lying if you said you weren’t open to the idea of kissing him. He’s there for comfort. For rest. If only it could stay so simple.

Pair: Miguel O'Hara & GN!Reader

Notes: for series: slow burn, ambiguous relationship, found family dynamics, reader is in their late 20s. for chapter: miguel being... well. if you're here you're familiar with his shit. references to offscreen deaths. panic attacks and grief

Word Count: 3.5k

Read this chapter on Ao3 here. If you like my work, please consider leaving kudos there as well! You do not need an account to do so.

Author's Note: hiii!! you must be thinking "wtf, it's not monday/sunday where tumblr user flowerpotmage is?" and you'd be correct! i'm posting this chapter on my sunday before my night shift, as i'll be away from my laptop on monday/tuesday while i visit my mom.

i'm a little nervous about this chapter for some reason, so i rly rly hope you like it <3

Miguel does not think he’s catastrophizing.

He’s sure that Jess would disagree, if he confided in her what he was thinking. Scratch that, he knows she would if she knew any of what he was doing.

Peter probably would, too. Shocking Peter. If Miguel knew how many shocking Peter Parkers he’d have to deal with on a day to day basis he probably would have thought twice about inventing the damn multiversal watch.

So, as of now, Lyla is the only one saying anything about his behavior. She’s the only one who knows.

“I think you’re catastrophizing, boss.”

“I am not.”

“And I think you owe them an apology.”

Miguel doesn't disagree, but... “What do you know, Lyla? You’re a LYrate Lifeform Approximation.”

“A very good one with a deep understanding of human relationships and emotions since you lifted me out of being locked to your apartment and got me that upgrade from your old friend, Miguel.”

He huffs.

“I think you're self sabotaging out of a PTSD induced fear of loss.”

“Dios mío, Lyla, okay, will you just let me out of this damn bathroom?!”

Lyla does let him out, eventually (despite his growls of “Vete a la chingada!” when she initially refused), but it doesn't mean she leaves him alone. It's not that she keeps pestering him directly on the subject, but rather that she pokes at it around the edges, a toothpick testing the crust of bread in the oven. Little comments about how you would have been the perfect backup for this or that anomaly event, (“They’re benched until they’re healed, do not ping them.”) or randomly wondering aloud what you might be up to when he’s in the kitchen rinsing a plate (that immediately breaks under his abruptly tightened grip).

And his sleep is terrible. It's been a week and a half since he stepped foot in your dimension, longer since—

He tries not to think about it.

“You know, I can think of something that would help with that,” Lyla practically taunts him late at night when he's trying in vain to relax enough to find sleep

“No.”

The thing is, he shouldn't have gotten so used to it in the first place. Shouldn't have become dependent on you for a good night's sleep. Because how shocking embarrassing, crawling into your comrade’s bed like a child who can’t sleep without their parents.

But it helped. And Miguel had never been the best with impulse control.

Dana was proof enough of that, even before everything changed.

And now Gabriella, too.

He lets his mind wander to her, far more willing to linger on the ache of grief and well-deserved guilt than any fresh hurt. A reminder of why he does the work he does, validation for why he keeps everything where it is, why he tries not to let the other Spiders get too close.

He’s royally shocked that last one up, that's for sure.

You hear about the new Miguel before you see him from small group passing you in the hallway where you’re waiting to ambush Peter and chew him out for yesterday’s antics. Secretly, you’re also there because you're curious about this other Miguel and want to get a look at him when he arrives, mostly because of your Miguel having been so firmly against you joining the recruiting team.

So you’re waiting, casually, just past the opening where the lobby opens out into the larger HQ, when you overhear them.

“He’s so much friendlier,” comes one Spider-Woman’s hushed voice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen our Miguel smile so much,” a Spider-Man replies. “Even if it is with closed lips.”

They pass by, off to wherever they’re headed, and then you hear Peter’s voice approaching just around the corner.

“Yeah, whoever designed the place had a real one for architecture–”

You push yourself off the wall, turning on the ball of your foot to stand in the doorway and block his path.

“Peter.” You greet him with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms, feet planted shoulder-width apart. You vaguely register Jessica Drew and the very, very tall familiar figure beside her, but you have your sights forcibly fixed firmly on Peter for now.

Play it cool.

“Oh, there’s Garden-Spider!”

“It’s just Spider,” you suppress a smile, rolling your eyes. “He likes to call me that because I have so many pla…” You turn your gaze to the new Miguel, voice dying in your throat.

The first thing you notice about the new Miguel is how similar—no, nearly identical he looks to the one you already know. His hair is slightly different, a lock of it falling across his forehead instead of pushed back. His suit is darker, more matte and black instead of blue, and he’s wearing sunglasses even though you're all indoors.

But none of that is what killed your sentence dead in its tracks. Because the second thing you notice is how when he sees you, he looks like he’s encountered a ghost.

Peter, of course, goes to introduce you two, waving off your comment about his nickname for you. “New Miguel, this is–”

New Miguel whispers your name in what can only be utter disbelief.

“Oh boy,” Jess says.

“Um,” you say dumbly, the confidence in your posture going a bit slack.

To his credit, the new Miguel seems to pull himself together fairly quickly. He closes his mouth, and you recognize a familiar twitch in his jaw muscle just before his throat bobs in a nervous swallow.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just—didn’t expect…” he gives an apologetic, borderline sheepishly wry smile, and you see a glint of sharp teeth—of fangs—and suddenly you understand his slight mumbling, why he doesn’t open his mouth too wide. “Figures that there’d be a version of you that’s the hero out here in the multiverse.”

You give a nervous, forgiving smile and hold out your hand. “Sorry. Earth-7723,” you introduce yourself.

He looks at your hand, eyes glancing back up at you behind his tinted glasses before he accepts it with his own.

“Miguel, but I’m guessing you already know the other me I’m hearing about. Earth-209.”

“Earth-209 in the year 2099,” you quip. “Fun.”

He lets loose the barest chuckle, more of an amused huff really, as if the tension in his body won’t let him laugh properly. If you weren’t so familiar with your Miguel’s body language you probably wouldn’t have even noticed. It feels strange, being able to read a complete stranger so well. You wonder if he’s having the same experience, and how well he knows the you from Earth-209—because clearly he does know another version of you—and you also wonder if it’s as strange for him as it is for you to see such a familiar face on a stranger.

“Yeah,” he agrees, letting go of your hand; his own falls to his side. “Very fun.”

“We should get you to the Boss’s lab and introduce you,” Peter says after glancing between the two of you.

Jess nods. “I agree. You probably have questions.”

“You’re not off the hook,” you say to Peter with a pointed finger, trying to dredge back up your earlier determined mischief, doing your best to set aside the dizzy surrealism and unbalanced feeling from the brief interaction with Miguel 209.

“What did I ever do to you?” Peter says as the group begins to pass.

“Oh, don’t play innocent after that stunt yesterday.”

“What stunt?” Jess asks, raising an eyebrow, starting to smile.

“Oh, he knows.” You mirror her expression with your own raised eyebrow.

“Nope, I don’t. Bye!” Peter waves, hurrying the group along.

“No, I wanna know what's got Garden-Spider out for revenge,” Jess says even as she walks off with the two men, giving you a wave and a smile.

You watch them go, your arms now more wrapped around your middle than crossed. The new Miguel, Miguel 209, turns to look at you over his shoulder like he needs to check that you’re real.

You give him your own small smile and lift a hand in your own little farewell wave—one that he returns with a matching and equally small smile and the ghost of something sad in his brow as he turns back to watch where he’s walking.

The circumstances under which you had met your Miguel were much different. Part of your story was actually quite similar to Gwen’s, and many other Spider-People: hiding your identity from those you love, balancing the two worlds until one encroached on the other, a full scale incursion that ended in more than one life ruined and at least one snuffed out. An unavoidable event by all accounts, according to Miguel’s theory of canon events and every article about grief and guilt and control that you’ve read since.

It turns out that when you have great power, and a great deal of self-appointed responsibility, the guilt stage is hardest to overcome.

Then your dimension had its first anomaly. A copper steam-powered Rhino had wreaked a path of destruction through the underground subway. It was a miracle that nobody was killed. Well, more accurately it was because of him that people were able to walk away with their lives.

Once the scene had cleared, the panic hit you, raw and fresh as the cracked rubble. Damaged walls brought to mind an image of an entirely different event featuring more structural damage and death. As a result, when he went looking for the Spider he had helped in order to invite them to join his effort to keep the worlds intact, he found you where you were crouched behind a cracked pillar. Your knees were to your chest, your head in your hands, and your breath ragged.

“Hey,” he said, voice low as he knelt on one knee in front of you, barely more than a foot and a half away. “It’s okay. You did it.”

You looked up at him, your hands still cradled your head and your eyes now wide under your mask.

He had a hand held out to you, stretched out in an offer to help with standing up.

You glanced at it, at him, back at the hand. With a sharp movement that seemed to startle even his apparently cool and collected self, your hand darted out and grasped his, squeezing tight. He began to stand. You shook your head, and he froze.

“Sorry,” you managed to gasp out. “I ju—“ a desperate gasp for air interrupted your words, but you managed to continue: “I just need a second.”

He settled back down onto his knee. His hand adjusted to hold yours more gently.

“Breathe,” he said gently.

You did. And then you said: “You have a cool suit. What’s your deal?”

“I— what?”

“Your— your suit,” you said with a shaky, breathy laugh. “I like it.”

He hummed, a quiet thoughtful sound. “Thank you.”

“What’s your deal?” You asked again. “You’re… like me. But I haven’t seen you before.”

Then he gently squeezed your hand, letting go to rest his arm on his knee.

“I’m from another dimension.”

You linger around Earth-928, wandering and pacing the criss-crossed beams of Spider-HQ, exchanging polite hellos with other Spider-People.

Word about the new Miguel—Miguel-209—the one you can only refer to with clarifiers in your head because he’s not your Miguel and you need to differentiate or you’ll feel even more off kilter than you already do, has spread fast.

“I can’t believe there’s going to be another Miguel around.”

“Do you think he’ll co-lead?”

“I wonder how similar they look.”

“I bet he’s just as serious.”

“Do you think he’s as much of a leader type, or nah?”

“I heard he’s just as built–”

You swing up to one of the little used alcoves, a little space that feels like a cozy waiting room or one of those places in that mall you had found yourself in when you visited California as a child, styled with almost too firm armchairs and potted plants that gave the quiet corner the illusion of being shielded from passersby.

That’s where Jess finds you, strolling into the space like her belly has no impact on her.

You offer her a slight smile and a glance in greeting, shifting in your window seat to face her better when she takes a seat across from you, hand resting on her stomach.

“I think you need to talk to Miguel.”

“Which one?” you can’t help it, your mouth quirking up at the corners.

She chuckles. “Well, probably both at some point. But I’d give the new one some time to… adjust.”

You nod, then nod again at her belly. “Looks like everything’s still going well?”

She nods, smiling. “Last check up went great. Ten fingers and toes, two eyes, the whole nine yards.” (You hold back the impulse to quip ‘Wow, that’s a big baby.’) She pauses, and then sighs. “Listen. I’m sorry about the meeting yesterday.” When you look at her with a questioning frown, she elaborates: “Peter told me you hadn’t gotten the schedule.”

You look down, picking at nonexistent dirt on your suit. This one is new, a remake after your previous one had gotten shredded in the road-rash incident. “It’s fine, really. Miguel probably assumed I was still on… medical leave.” The last two words come out more bitter than you had intended.

Jess just watches you. “Your hands doing okay?”

You shift slightly, pulling off your gloves to present your palms to her, and she leans forward to look properly. The skin still has a slight irregular shine from the fresh scars, but only if you know what to look for.

“Looking good,” she says, leaning back into her seat.

“Do you wanna get some food?” you blurt.

She raises an eyebrow, and then laughs in pleasant surprise. “Sure.”

You’re closer to Peter than you are to Jess, but it’s still nice to spend time with her outside of meetings and anomaly wrangling. She’s telling the story of when she first met Gwen.

“I can’t believe she called him ‘Dark Garfield,’” you laugh. “How have I not heard about this before?”

Jess laughs and shakes her head, adjusting her grip on her burger. “I’m as surprised as you are. I guess Gwen tries not to brag, or something.”

You nod. “She’s a great kid.” You sigh. “I worry about her sometimes, honestly. I can’t imagine being Spider-Woman, or man, or any of it, so young.”

Jess sombers. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Miguel wonders how all the Peters do this, how they’ve all adjusted to being surrounded by alternate versions of themselves when it felt so strange for him just to be face to face with one of his own. It’s not that he didn’t know, not that he wasn’t aware of the other versions of himself in the multiverse. 

He just didn’t expect to actually come face to face with one of his variants like this. One that was living. One that was also Spider-Man.

Miguel-209 had just left the lab with Peter following the latter's offer of a tour, leaving him alone in his lab with Lyla. He stands, hands braced against the console, head hanging low from his shoulders.

He pretends his chest doesn't feel tight.

“Do you think any other Miguels also-?”

“Lyla, please,” he cuts her off.

For once, she listens, falling silent.

Miguel takes a deep breath, pushing himself up on the exhale. “Did you add it to his file?”

“I did.”

Miguel nods. “Lock it.”

He doesn’t look at Lyla when she crosses her arms, creasing her brows under the pink glasses.

“It’s locked.”

He nods again, turning away further. One arm crosses over his chest, and much like when he paced the corner of the medical room a week ago, his elbow rests on his crossed arm and his fingers rest on his lips.

“They’re going to find out.”

“I know,” he says. “I know. And they should. But only from him. And I don’t need anyone else…” he trails off, unsure how the sentence ends. “It’s clearly private. For him,” he adds on at the end, gesturing his hand and resting his fingers back on his lips.

“And you trust Jess and Peter not to say anything?”

“Run daily reports,” Miguel says, changing the subject, lowering his arms to perch on his hips.

“You got it, boss.”

It had taken some very light convincing on his part (a portal) to get you to believe his story, and only slightly more after that (basic info on the multiverse and what he was aiming to do) to get you to join the Spider-Society.

Parker had been one of the first to welcome you, eventually dubbing you Garden-Spider when he visited your dimension and saw the greenery of your city, and more specifically, your apartment.

Then you hugged Miguel in his lab.

You still get embarrassed when you remember how the rest started. Another panic attack. More tears. You’d found that person’s shirt in your storage closet, and with nobody to call in your dimension who knew about both your lives, your first thought was him.

So you called. Not to ask for anything really, you’re not even sure why you did it. You suppose, if you think about it, your brain picked him as the most recent example of comfort and sympathy you’d experienced—though in the first month while getting to know him, those wouldn’t have been the words you would pick to describe Miguel O’Hara, even if they were now.

So, in a desperate grab for a lifeline, part of you had reached out before your conscious mind could stop the taps of your fingers.

“Is everything alright?” He asked when he answered, a holo-bust of his suit popping out of your watch.

“I—“ you gasped, trying to speak through your choked lungs. “I—“

“I’ll be right there.”

Not even fifteen seconds later a portal opened in your bedroom and Miguel stepped through. He crouched before you. “Are you injured?”

You shook your head, buried your face into your hands. “Sh-shit, n-no,” you managed to get out, and tried not to look at his thighs and the shape they made where they sat right in your line of sight. “I—Sorry—“

He didn’t say anything more, just moved closer and offered a hand as his mask receded. You nodded, and he rested it on your shoulder, eventually pulling you into a somewhat stiff hug, like he was trying to remember how they worked. Eventually he let go, once your breaths and tears had calmed.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Water,” you’d whispered, beyond mortified now that you had calmed down. “I can-“

But he was already up, leaving your room to find a cup for you. It took a minute, while he figured out your kitchen cabinets, but he returned with what you'd asked for.

“Peter’s right,” he said when he passed the cup into your hands. “You have a lot of plants.”

You laughed, then turned quiet, shy. “Thank you, Miguel. If… if you ever need…”

He nodded. “I appreciate that.”

It surprised both of you that it wasn't long before he called to cash in on your offer.

“Are you… Do you mind returning the favor again?” He asked through your watches, quoting you indirectly.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” you’d replied after a millisecond of surprise. “I can be there in–”

“No. I mean–” he huffed a sigh. “Is it alright if I come there?”

Another second of surprise. “Oh, of course,” you repeated.

“Thank you.”

That happened a few more times, the two of you ‘exchanging favors’ of comfort and rest between regular days around Spider-HQ and missions across the multiverse.

Until one mutually grueling day came around and the exhaustion was too much for even your super-powered bodies, and Miguel had helped you home from a mission.

“Shock, I just–”

“Yeah. I need to fucking lay down,” you’d laughed tiredly, and eased yourself down onto your bed. You didn't even take your suit off; still smeared with soot and grime and a little bit of someone else’s blood.

He chuckled at that, running a hand over his hair. “Yeah.”

By then you had gotten halfway decent at keeping your eyes to yourself, glancing away from the muscles of his arm and the way they moved.

“Come on,” you sighed. You patted the space on the bed next to you, exhausted and already melted into your bed. “You look like you need it too.”

Even with your eyes closed you felt him hesitate. But you left it alone and folded your hands over your stomach, one ankle over the other, letting him decide for himself what he wanted to do.

The soft sound of your floor creaking let you know he was walking around to the other side of your bed. The gentle dip of the mattress let you know when he was sitting, and then the weight next to you accompanied by the sound of fabric told you that he had laid down by your side.

His quiet sigh when he had gotten comfortable told you that he had, in fact, needed it too.

That was the best night’s sleep you’d had in months.

It was for him too.

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[mokeonn]

I finally actually watched Hazbin Hotel because I was like "I really shouldn't be so judgey, how can I say I hate a show I haven't even watched?" And I can safely say after 5 episodes in:

I hate it.

So I will preface this rant about my feelings towards this controversial show with the following positive statements:

I understand why people enjoy the show, it's fun, the animation is really enjoyable to watch, the music numbers are pretty good, the voice acting is also good, and the whole thing feels like it was constructed around a fandom. Though that last part is a flaw in the overall series, I completely see why people enjoy it. If a series was practically built around making fanfiction, ocs, or fun redesigns, people are gonna have fun making those things. I literally can't blame anyone for enjoying this show. It should also go without saying that I don't think people are morally evil for enjoying the show. I do believe, however, that your taste in shows is bad if you love this show.

I came into this show expecting the WORST. Everything I was told about it was how it was such an awful show and all the horrible things it does. So I was expecting the worst thing I've ever watched to appear before me tonight.

So imagine my surprise when the first 3 episodes aren't that bad. They aren't good, but they're not awful. It's just mid! The animation is fun to watch, the songs are catchy, and the pacing is only a little off. There were a lot of little moments where we got payoff with no set-up. Things like a dramatic reveal of a character that appears to want to evoke a "oh woah, it's that guy!!" moment, but we don't even know who that guy is. A character belting out a dramatic emotional ballad that is also a duet with another major character, but we were introduced to that character earlier that episode and we don't know her well enough to really care about her heartfelt emotional song. Moments that felt more awkward than anything else. Other than that, the show wasn't too bad! I was enjoying myself! I was worried that I was going to enjoy this extremely hated series and how it was going to reflect on my public tumblr image!

And then episode 4 hit.

Episode 4 starts off very similar to the others, and all around, I think it's a pretty good episode if it wasn't for the ending, but we'll get to that.

Episode 4 is a heavier episode dealing with Angel Dust's abuse at the hands of his boss. It gets fairly graphic at points, but with the way people were describing it, I was actually expecting far worse. It has a catchy song from Angel Dust about this abuse, and towards the end, he falls into a self-destructive spiral and vents about how much he wants to basically crash and burn in the hopes that maybe the abuse would stop or he would become too fucked up to notice/care anymore. You know what? This is a pretty heavy hitting topic and really spoke to me as a person who is dealing with addiction and struggles with depression spirals. I felt a lot of what Angel Dust was feeling, even if our situations were completely different. What is the response our little pink spider friend gets? An admittedly catchy song about how he's right that he sucks and he's a loser, "but hey, I'm a loser too! So we can be losers together."

Now, I get what the song is TRYING to say. It's trying to say that you're not alone, that "if you're a loser, then I'm a loser too. But we can be losers together." Which is a nice sentiment and all... but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't portray this idea that you're not alone in this world, and there's plenty of people going through similar experiences, so it's important to connect with each other. It instead focuses on feeling more self-depreciating, which is fine and all, but it feels like an inappropriate time to be self-depreciating.

If a person with very low self-esteem vents about their abuse and talks down about themselves, and admits to wanting to self-harm by committing self-destructive behaviors on purpose... I think "seld-depreciation" is the last thing I would want to do with that person.

I get it. The song is trying to be funny and silly with self-depreciating humor to lighten the dark mood and show how Angel Dusk and the weird deep voiced cat-boy (yes, I know his name is Husk) are now getting along and relating to eachother by making jokes about how stupid they were to get into their awful situations... but the song really leaves a sour taste in my mouth because it just feels... wrong. It feels like the wrong response.

The story makes it seem like the song breaks this cycle of self-destructive behaviors and allows the characters to make the first step towards redemption/breaking the cycle of abuse; The song does not fit this theme, it instead just continues that cycle while the story continues on as if it did something else.

I might not be conveying my reasons for WHY the song left a bad taste in my mouth very well, but all you really need to know is that the vibes were off and it seemed like there was something left on the cutting room floor or a mistake between the writers and song writers.

Episode 5 is where I stopped. Like, I can't even finish it. Those previously mentioned pacing issues were nothing compared to the constant wave of hits episode 5 gave me.

First off, we are getting payoff for something that was actually set up! Popping some bottles here! It happens a couple times in the other episodes, but here: a major character is revealed after being talked about and foreshadowed in previous episodes! This really was a first in the series as most of the time, characters were just introduced when the story needed them, causing those awkward moments where a villain or major character got introduced. Valentino was introduced in an episode with some build-up earlier in said episode, but having a character actually be hinted at in earlier episodes before a reveal felt completely new.

And then it was... disappointing. The payoff did not match the set-up. I will state it right now. Lucifer, as a character, caused me to entirely stop watching the show mid episode 5. When you have this big dramatic backstory about how he was an angel of creation who wanted to create, a rebel who went against all he'd ever known to meet another rebel and fall in love with her, a deeply sad man who hid away refusing to take part in ruling hell, leaving it all to his wife? The fact that this is based on Christian theology and Lucifer already has ages of connotation and lore attached to him? Idk I think, "self depreciating, awkward, sad man who doesn't know how to greet his daughter on the phone, and spends all his time making little toy ducks" is... a huge fucking let-down. I understand they're trying to go a more humorous route of "He isn't scary at all, he's just a huge dork!" But it doesn't work, and it just makes me cringe. This alone would be a lot to process in one episode... but Episode 5 still has a LOT of punches in it!

The episode first states that they only have a couple months before the deadline, implying that around 4 months have passed since the first and second episode. Nothing really implies that much time passing between episode 1 and 4, and in the episode, Charlie states all the things they have been working on. Which is things we have already seen in the show. Which tells me that they really haven't been working on anything offscreen during this sudden time skip, so what the fuck happened between episodes 1-4??

Anyways, I could have misread this entire thing and thought far too much into Charlie's stress and the "only a couple months away!". With the word "couple" and the stress the character is clearly going through, I assumed that they were 2 months from the deadline, but maybe I was wrong. I don't know. I didn't finish the episode, and I'm not watching any more.

The first major "hit by a truck" moment was when Lucifer makes his way to the hotel and suddenly, he gets into a feud with Allister. They both sing a song about who is the better Dad to Charlie, and I am sitting there confused because, huh?? Wha?? Where the fuck did this "Allister Dad" thing come from?? NOWHERE in the last 4 episodes (nor the pilot) imply this relationship. Allister is the tumblr sexyman Mary-sue who gets at least 1 new power every episode. Nothing about him out of his entire screen time was paternal. Just as my confusion reaches a boiling point... they introduce a new character suddenly with an unearned "it's ME!" Intro (although unlike past intros, it is ironic).

She's a sassy little flapper who is friends with Allister and whose only purpose this episode is to cause problems to come to the Hotel's way later in the episode, and to give Allister's backstory. A backstory that we really didn't need. Like REALLY didn't need. Seriously this entire show we have been told and shown that Allister is a powerful demon who is feared and not to be messed with. This backstory reveals that he is... a powerful demon who is feared and not to be messed with. The only purpose of this backstory is to reveal a spooky thing he does so he can use it as a threat later in the episode.

Husk confronts Allister about his friend because she always brings trouble, and he snaps at Allister, making a sassy comment. Allister threatens Husk with the previously mentioned spooky thing he is totally known for that was revealed in the backstory.

Lucifer does not approve of the hotel, which makes an awkward scene where Charlie is trying to explain her thinking and her personal experience to her absent father and Lucifer shoots her down by poorly hinting that it just "wouldn't work" because he knows from personal experience. I am not having a good time watching two characters communicate poorly primarily because I hate one of them so much.

The previously mentioned trouble comes their way, and Allister reveals new awesome Allister powers for the 3rd time this episode and goes off to fight off the trouble. Charlie uses this as a way to try to reason with her father. Allister finishes his fight and scolds his friend for using him to fight off the trouble she gets into like Husk said earlier. He then informs here that she either needs to leave or come and stay at the hotel to rehabilitate. She stomps off, and I feel so tired of a third huge payoff with not a lot of set-up.

Allister (who I probably have been misspelling his name this whole time and no I will NOT check) feels like he did a ton of development and growth... entirely off screen. This feels like a 180 to me. This entire show he has been this evil, off-putting guy, that vaguely helps at the hotel, does creepy things, threaten people, and use plot armor powers to save the day or do cool things. So suddenly having an episode where it's stated he has a paternal relationship with Charlie, which has NOT been shown or even HINTED at whatsoever, and where he suddenly turns away a troublemaking friend to protect the hotel he wanted to see fall apart? It's a total 180 from what I'm used to. One could claim that the sudden protection of the hotel was because he wanted to protect his investment, and he knew his friend was using him so he just sent her on her way or offered for her to be tortured in the friendship hotel. I can see an argument for why he didn't threaten or harm his friend when he has killed people or threatened to kill people for less (pretty strong friendship that goes way back when blah blah blah) I can argue about the inconsistencies in how he acts towards the end of this episode compared to the previous episodes of the show all I want.

But come on, you can't argue the sudden paternal thing. That came out of nowhere.

At this point I just, turned off the episode and called it quits. I have heard that the most glaring writing issues come later in the season, and if episode 5 was this bad, I don't wanna keep watching.

Part of me wants to continue watching, as the animation is really enjoyable to watch, and the music is actually pretty fun. But I just know that I'm not going to enjoy myself at all from here on out. It's all going to be downhill from here, and it'll frustrate me. I'm not gonna spend my time watching something I'll hate.

If I wanna watch something frustrating, I'd just watch Jerma play my favorite game for the first time.

[dutifullyshamelessearthquake]

Cyno passing out from illness situations that got me goin brrrrr

he’s been sick for only a day or so, but I’m imagining it’s horrific food poisoning. Maybe his go too restaurant has finally failed him. Regardless Both ends, and both ends a lot. It’s a wonder he still has so much in him kinda wonder like how is he still getting sick?? So he’s dealing with that, and per his and Tighnaries agreement when it hits late at night he wakes nari up. Tells him he feels like death, can hardly talk around the nausea. And while he knows he isn’t bout to puke he does know he doesn’t have long till he needs the bathroom anyways. He rushes off and the cycle begins. Now, I’m imagining later, after a few rounds of illness if your choice, nari is up trying to find something he can take to help calm his stomach. Cyno then comes *wobbling* out of the bathroom and in a full daze seems nari out in the kitchen. Hunched over, and shivering. Maybe Cyno mumbles something to him and as nari turns around he sees Cyno- his brown skin gone practically grey- and sees him DROP to the floor.

tighnari is fast, he does to grab him but not before dropping the tea or whatever he was holding, and maybe Tighnari gets hurt too. A cut or a burn or something that requires attention later 100% plus his anxiety is through the roof cuz holy hell normally he can catch it when cyno is looking pale.. but it’s late at night and the sickness came on sooo fast, and neither of them are awake enough to navigate this normally. And now Tighnari has a passed out boyfriend, a broken mug and an injury to deal with. What does he address first? How does Cyno end up coming around and how does he deal with knowing how much chaos nari had to deal with all on his own? I feel like in the end Cyno would try hard to reassure and calm nari down despite being sick, because frankly Tighnari was * scared *

also I think cyno trying to comfort Tighnari while still in the recovery position and still feeling wretched is both really endearing and kinda funny

WAIT WAIT WAAAAIT I LOVE THIS, I LOVE THIS SO MUCH—

This actually feeds heavily into my brainrot, because even though I'm in more of Lyney mood right now, I have been brainstorming for the next Cynonari fic on my list 👀

Okay I'm absolutely in love with this. First of all, yes to that scenario, I'm really craving a severe sickfic. Like give me a character that borderline has to consider the ER because they're that sick. And of course poor Cyno is a brilliant candidate, because he always is! (I'm so sorry Cyno, I really enjoy making you miserable in my writing)

I've also been thinking a lot more about the whole "Cyno gets light-headed when he throws up" thing, so your timing is brilliant with this ask.

I'm envisioning this already.

Cyno is approaching, his legs like jelly beneath him. Tighnari hears his footsteps and hears him say something, and he's opening his mouth to tell Cyno he shouldn't have come looking for him, he would have been right back- only before he can make a sound he locks eyes with Cyno and sees just how horrific he looks. And it's like everything goes into slow motion because suddenly Cyno's knees are buckling and Tighnari sees his eyes start to roll back, and he just throws down whatever he's holding and sprints to catch Cyno. He catches Cyno in time but his own balance is thrown off and he basically goes down with Cyno, but it's okay, he stopped Cyno from getting hurt or knocking his head on anything.

I can see Tighnari remaining calm on the outside, but on the inside he's panicking. When all is said and done later and he finally gets to breath, I imagine him just sliding down to the floor somewhere with his back against the wall and breaking down into silent tears because he can't remember the last time he was this stressed out and worried over Cyno.

Also that image of Cyno trying to comfort Tighnari while he's still in the recovery position pale as a ghost,,, I can't decide if I want to cry or laugh at that 😭 That is really sweet and loving and wholesome, but Cyno you really are in no state to be doing the comforting

Damn I love this idea, I might need to work it into the last Cynonari Novemetober fic??

[snapeslittlebean]

Baby

CG Snape and Boy Little

First person POV

Word Count: 1623

Snape has brought a student who previously had a bad home life into his home over the summer. What does he do when he regresses to a tiny age?

(TW? Implication of trauma though literally no details are mentioned just that character has had trauma)

Professor Snape has already done so much for me. I cant have him finding me like this. A whine escapes me as I try to force the fuzzy feeling from my mind. I want to cry.

He's already taken me in, given me a roof over my head and allowed me to eat his food. He won't want to deal with me being a baby too. I can tell if I let it this will be a very young regression. My reward for fending it off for so long.

I'd managed to hide it at school, retreating to abandoned classrooms whenever this happened. Even if that often meant in small bruises from trying to get into things I probably shouldn't have or sobbing in a mess on the floor because being alone when so little is quite scary sometimes.

The stairs creak and I wince. That'll be Snape coming to tell me to come down for dinner. I hope he's not too mad I didn’t turn up on my own.

The soft knock makes me jump even though I was expecting it. "Dinner is served."

I wince, his voice holds that sarcastic edge to it that tells me he’s a more than a little annoyed at having to walk up the stairs to call me. When I don’t respond he knocks again calling my name.

I bite my lip. There’s nothing for it, if I cant force myself to be big ill just habe to pretend to be until I can get back to my room. Standing poses a little trouble, I stumble, knocking my alarm clock from the bedside table.

"Are you alright in there?" Snape sounds concerned now. I nod but then remember he can’t see me.

"I... I'm ok." I say relieved it doesn't sound too babyish. Quickly I waddle over to the door, taking a moment to practice walking like a big boy. Then I open it, peeking around the edge up at him. .

Snape peers down at me, a suspicious expression on his face. His eyebrows furrow as he takes a step back allowing me to exit the room. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

I nod, stepping into the hallway, hoping my shaking hands aren’t too noticeable. He gives me a long look then turns his head indicating I should lead. I gulp, pushing down the childish urge to just hold my arms up and ask to be carried. He'd definitely know something was up then.

The stairs are steep, I find myself gripping the banister, afraid I'll lose balance and fall. If my decent is slower than usual Snape doesn't comment, only catching my shoulder when I stumble stopping me from tumbling down the last few steps.

On unsteady legs I make my way to the kitchen, wishing I had something to hold on to like on the stairs. All the while I can feel Snape's eyes burning into the back of my skull.

My heart drops when I spot the food laid out on the table. How am I supposed to eat that when I'm so small?

I sit anyway, staring at the plate nervously. Snape sits opposite me, I know he's watching me. "Aren't you hungry?"

It would be safer to say no and leave it at that but I know that wouldn't excuse me from the meal. Snape wants me to eat three meals a day even if they're small. He’d only tell me to eat what I can.

Besides I am hungry. I try to ignore the part of my brain that reminds me I'd rather have a nice bottle and a nap. That's a babyish thing to want and I’m not a baby. My eyes burn, no no I'm not going to cry.

I pick up my knife and fork, they don't fit very well on my hands. How am i supposed to do this again? I hold the end of the knife stabbing at the meat in hopes of cutting it.

Snape is still watching, he's only taken a couple of bites from his own dinner. He frowns watching my struggle and lowers his cutlery to his plate.

Then he does something entirely unexpected. He reaches across the table, taking my knife and fork from me gently and begins cutting up my food without a word.

I sit rigidly, waiting for the scolding I'm sure will ensue. But he only gives me a raised eyebrow when I meet his eyes. I hope I don't look as close to tears as I am.

Eating is a bit easier after that. Every time I try to cut up more of my food Snape stops me, taking over for me so I don't have to. He doesn't try to make conversation and I'm glad of that, he rarely wants to talk at meal times.

By the time my plate is empty I'm feeling pleasantly full and very sleepy. My eyes are already drooping, I rub them in an attempt to keep them open.

"Looks like you need an early night."

"Mmm." I'm too tired to use big boy words. The thought of traversing the distance back to bed is exhausting.

I barely notice when Snape stands, walking around the table and crouching down in front of me. I frown wondering what he’s doing.

"What's going on with you child? Are you ill?"

I shake my head. I don't think I could tell him even if I wanted too. He cant find out about this. Surely he won't want me living with him if he knew. Tears well up in my eyes, my lip wobbles. Oh no... Oh no.

A sob escapes me. Snape's eyes widen for a moment he looked like he didn't know what to do. Then his hand comes up to rub my arm.

"What's brought this on?" He sounded genuinely confused. I shake my head again aware that my cries are sounding more and more baby like.

I wail when the comforting hand is removed but its quickly replaced with strong arms lifting me up. The next thing I know Snape is sitting in my char and settling me into his lap, a hand cradling the back of my head. "Shhh, its alright, you're alright."

He rocks from side to side slowly. Continuing to murmur soft reassurances. The way someone might do to a real baby. Embarrassingly it's working, my wails subsiding into sniffles and hiccups. My fingers find their way to my mouth.

Snape pauses, running his fingers through my hair, pulling it from my face. I avoid looking at him, instead finding my eyes drawn to the shiny, black buttons down his front. Without much thought on my part my free hand reaches for one, playing with it absent-mindedly.

"How old are you right now?" The question is asked softly and without judgement. I whine anyway because I don't want to be little right now. Surely he'll leave me if he knows.

I'm not a baby I try to tell him but it only comes out in incomprehensible babbles. I squirm in frustration babbling more nonsense up at him.

A very small smile appears on his lips. Wait, why was he smiling? "Perhaps too young to tell me hm?"

I can feel tears forming again. He quickly shushes me when I whimper, resuming the ridiculously soothing rocking movement from before.

"It's alright little one. There's nothing to be ashamed of. This is just an understandable reaction to trauma," I don't quite understand what he’s saying but the steady rhythm of his voice accompanied by the slow rocking has my cries quietening, “I have suspected this may be the case for a while, though I was hoping to avoid this situation before you’d told me yourself. Still I suppose it cannot be helped.”

"You must be thirsty after all that," Snape noted thoughtfully, he drew his wand summoning a glass of what looked like pumpkin juice. I watch it float towards his outstretched hand with interest. He then waves his wand again muttering a spell of some sort and the glass changes shape forming a lid and....

"Bud! Bud!" I reach out for the bottle making grabby hands at it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know I shouldn't be acting like this.

"I know," Snape says putting his wand away, "lets move somewhere more comfortable then shall we?"

I whinge, was he not going to get me have the bottle. I'm being lifted again, carried somewhere new. The bottle floats next to me, just out of reach. I babble, reaching for it only to be shushed whenever my babbles turn into whines.

When Snape sits again I realise where he's taken me. The book lined walls can only mean this is the living room. I only have a moment to look around before I'm gently moved so my head is resting in his elbow. I reach for the bottle that hovers above me but Snape takes it before I can grab it.

Why was he not letting me have it? I whine, my face screwing up as I wriggle in the surprising comfortable hold.

"Hush little one there you go." The bottle is pressed against my lips and I instinctively start suckling. This is just what my dry throat needs. Slowly I open my eyes staring up at Snape who watches me with a thoughtful expression.

I'm too tired and foggy to contemplate what that might mean. My eyelids droop and this time I let them fall shut.

[eric-the-bmo]

Blood and Silicon Episode 15: This Could've Been an Email

[Summary: Blake and Leo head to Harrison to bargain for the Salubri Yen's safety, but first they have to get rid of a body. Meanwhile, Harrison welcomes a newly-awakened Kindred to San Jose...] @kentuckycaverats @zwoelffarben

It's a silent 1am drive to one of San Jose's national parks. Blake has the radio on at a low volume, to fill the silence more than anything as the scenery changes from cities, to suburbs, til finally they can't see lights from the houses anymore.

Blake tells Leo he can stay in the car, and gets out to grab Kyra's body, among other things. He gets a distance away from the car, and begins to gather materials to prepare for a fire. Leo decides he's had enough of people telling him what to do for tonight, and gets out of the car to follow him.

Blake takes out a buck knife from inside his coat and begins to slice off parts of Kyra's clothing to expose the skin and have her burn quicker. He covers her body in a white sheet, covering it with gas and leaving a trail of it so he can safely light it from a distance.

As Leo watches Blake gather material/ prepare to dispose the body, there's a small spark of recognition in the back of his mind; this is somehow familiar. Blake gives Leo a warning before lighting the fire; still it scares him, and her body ignites. Fire seems different now, more like a monster, so Leo takes a step back as Final Death overtakes her. Blake is unphased; he's lit a cigarette.

[It's silent for a moment; anger builds up Leo's chest. Finally he turns to Blake, if only to not look at the fire. "What the fuck was that back there?"]

Blake is taken aback by this sudden question, and admits he doesn't quite know what happened, insinuiating it was Yen's fault. His tone is almost a bit too casual as he looks back at the fire, saying he's never frenzied at another vampire before; the blood normally doesn't make them do that. Leo continues- the point of the mission was to capture Yen, not kill her, and Blake could've fucked it up entirely. Leo keeps going, taking all his frustrations about Blake and from the past week out on him, and finally reveals he's been having headaches. After his outburst, there's silence. Finally, Blake breaks it.

["...I'm sorry, Leo."]

Blake agrees, saying he hadn't been very helpful. He says there's a lot of things that won't be nice to them, and someone you trust shouldn't make you feel like that. He apologizes again, saying he's not very good at talking about this sort of thing, but he hears Leo; he's right. Leo is taken aback by Blake's apology; Part of him had been expecting more of an argument, a byproduct of having been with Jeremiah.

Blake asks if Leo even wants him to come with to Harrison. ["I get the sense you're tired of being told what to do-" and Leo laughs, bitter- "So why don't you tell me what to do?" Leo pauses at this choice. "...I'd like you to come with," he says. "The past two times I've met with Harrison haven't gone well."]

Leo fidgets with his hands, tapping his fingers as he realizes they don't have a plan; Blake advises him that dealing with Kindred business comes with practice, and that he himself also didn't come into this unlife prepared. Some have to learn quick, and it's almost like he's saying that from experience. Blake says what he's doing works well for him, but Leo can find a better route for himself.

["Hopefully you'll have a long time to figure that out," Blake says. He seems to be somewhere else. Leo's hold on his own hands tightens. "...I already have a route I don't want to go down." "That's good," Blake responds. "You have a choice. A lot of us don't get anything when we wake up besides the fact we wake up."]

He tells Leo he's in a special position; a lot of people will try to make him what they need him to be, and people are constantly being used- and it's not great, especially when you're on the other side. Leo nods in understanding.

The body is embers now; Blake extinguishes his cigarette, putting Kyra's remains that didn't burn back into the duffel bag. He tells Leo that killing her was the best option; she would've come back later. For a moment he considers putting a hand on the Malkavian's shoulder, but settles for a nod; in this moment he suddenly seems much older.

The two of them walk back to the car.

---

[Blake: Finished with the first half. On our way to downtown now. Pauline: Understood. Be safe. He has an appointment as of the moment, but he can make your meeting work. As far as I'm being told in this game of telephone.]

---

Meanwhile, in Harrison's office: A man has just walked into in the room. Harrison sits at his desk, an old computer to the side, with his pressed grey suit the same color as his eyes. He smiles.

["Sir Percival, yes? Please, sit down."]

They shake hands, and the man Leo had tried to distract earlier sits down across from Harrison. He thanks Harrison for having this meeting with him, and Harrison asks if there's any ulterior motives. Yes, actually- Percy wants to know more about the movements of the Sword of Caine in the past. Harrison comments he'll ask how Percy knows about that later, but confirms he learned about them as they were threatening San Jose some years ago (Percy taps his foot at the word "threaten," not seeming to like that word being used here)- he mainly learned about their battle tactics; Percy says he's more interested in their scholars, and Harrison rises an eyebrow before saying that scholars, battle tactics and history are all entwined, and as far as he knows the Black Hand doesn't have an active presence in the city. Percy says he's been getting responses like that from other Cainites he's asked these questions to. Harrison isn't opposed to looking into it, wondering if Percy is suspicious of their activities- Percy only says he's following breadcrumbs, as he recently came out of torpor. Harrison says there was recent activity- the Sabbat's attempt to fully pierce the city, somewhere around... 2005? 2008? He suggests to talk to those who were around back then, and says he's not opposed to helping Percy, but what business does he have here besides following breadcrumbs of a failing sect?

Percy taps his foot again, jaw clenching.

He assumes this assistance won't be free, and grabs a notepad to write down any names Harrison can give him. Harrison notes Percy seems agitated, and the man responds that answers like this can be disheartening when looking for something more concrete. Harrison says they should talk more, as he thinks Percy has as interesting perspective of the Sabbat- But a pressing matter came up, and the individuals should be arriving soon; but he doesn't expect it to take long.

There's a knock on the office door- Cynthia, one of Harrison's ghouls, enters with Blake and Leo (his headache spikes as he enters the office). He and Blake had vaguely overhead the last few sentences of the conversation through the door- and he and Percy recognize each other. Harrison introduces them, saying Leo is his adopted childe, before asking if they know each other? Blake's over here confused, since he wasn't aware the two had met (he was busy tearing out Kyra's throat); Anyway, Percy and Leo shake hands (Percy notices the Malkavian doesn't make any eye contact), and the Venture says they met briefly about 2 hours ago.

[Blake leans in to whisper to Leo. "You know this guy?"]

Leo is asked to recount how they met; it was a chance meeting, they didn't realize the other was a Kindred. Percy confirms this. Harrison changes the subject to Yen, and upon being asked he says he only wishes to talk to her- and Blake says he understands Harrison was in the middle of a meeting, but maybe this could be just between us three? And Percy should leave? The man offers to come back later, and as he exits Harrison says he can help himself to the bar; they can finish their meeting later.

Once out in the hallway, Percy gives a polite smile to Cynthia, though his eyes are a bit cold when regarding her. He activates Heightened Senses, and listens in to the conversation.

---

Seeing as the two vampires before him won't sit down, Harrison stands to match their vibe. Leo expresses his concern for Yen after his conversation with her, and Harrison reassures it's fine- What, did they think he'd kill her or something? (They kinda did, in fact) Blake says they couldn't be too sure with a Tremere hunting her, questioning why she was hunting down such a rare vampire anyway- he doesn't trust her. Harrison states Asha isn't that kind of Tremere; won't hurt Yen if she knows what's good for her. Leo explains his concern is because he had spoken to her and she had seemed afraid, and he wanted to make hear from Harrison that she would be safe, so that he could relay that and reassure her- and as he says that, he realizes it isn't a lie, he really did want to confirm Harrison had good intentions. Blake adds that it's hard to get her to come with peacefully when she's only ever been hunted- and Harrison's like yeah man that's the fucking problem, no shit it's been hard to get a meeting with her. Leo wants to know what the meeting would be about; it would satisfy his curiosity.

Harrison knew Yen's sire, and figures she'd like to talk to him once she learns that- and no danger towards Yen would come from him. Blake seems relieved she'll be safe but still doesn't trust Harrison, and apologizes for interrupting his meeting; they thought it would be best to talk in person.

Harrison confirms if he should expect Yen tonight, hopefully around 3, and Blake says "if she wants to"- Harrison tells him that while Yen doesn't seem to want to talk, he's done nothing to her, and after the meeting with her she can do as she wants.

Blake wants to know what would happen if we don't bring her to him- Leo shoots his coterie member a look (what are you doing we don't want to get in serious trouble-). Blake continues questioning if she'll be safe.

["...Will there be a problem, Blake?" The man shakes his head. "Nope. Just curious." "Curiosity... Is the fledgeling rubbing off on you?" "Nope."]

Harrison vaguely answers that there'd be trouble if they did that, and opens one of his desk drawers to pull out an old phone. He calls Asha to bring Yen, and the meeting concludes.

---

 Leo finds Percy in the VIP area of the bar (it's reserved specifically for Kindred), and he apologizes for being annoying when they first met. Percy says it's fine, and really that was all Leo came over here to do so he leaves. Percy bids him farewell, wishing their paths to cross in better circumstances.

---

Leo has gone outside. He's told himself he's just lighting a cigarette, he's trying to convince himself that's the only thing he wants to do out here, but in the back of his mind he knows that's a lie. He's out here to find victims. He's not really present, lost in thought with a mix of that internal dialogue and headaches, when Blake suddenly appears with a tap to his shoulder- Leo jumps.

Blake apologizes, asking if Leo's okay, and he says he's fine as he can be currently. Blake wants to know when Leo met Percy, and the Malkavian says it was at the alleyway- he's annoyed, not from Blake asking, but from his headache. Blake apologizes for not realizing Leo had distracted someone, saying he was caught up in the moment (referring to tearing out Kyra's throat). Leo turns away from him, gaze darkening. He's quiet. Blake tells Leo he did a good job distracting Percy, making a lighthearted comment about how they should send Leo out to do that more often. Leo pauses, saying that after Yen arrives he needs to go... do something- he won't say feed. Blake understands, and asks if Leo wants him to go with, but the fledgeling wants to prove himself. Blake gives a thumbs up at his refusal.

Leo gets a text: [Pauline: Can you confirm the meeting with Harrison truly went well? Leo: Yeah, it went good. We got confirmation that Harrison isn't going to hurt her. He just wants to talk. Pauline: Understood. We will be there soon.]

Eventually a car pulls up, and the girls get out- Asha is holding Yen's arm. The Salubri looks scared, but is reassured to see Leo there. Pauline splits off from those two as they enter building, and heads toward Blake and Leo.

As Leo turns the corner to try and find someone to feed from, Blake can't help but wonder if the Malkavian's headaches are tied to his hunger.

---

 Percy enter Harrison's office; Harrison apologizes for the interruption, and continues where they left off, saying he can introduce Percy to people to ask about the Sabbat, but he'd like to know more about Percy beforehand.

Percy says it depends on what he finds out, but he's not planning on staying long, and currently doesn't have a place to stay- Harrison offers him exactly that in exchange for information, because surely during his search for breadcrumbs, he's learned some things about the Sabbat? And Harrison had taken an interest in them during his own research. Percy says the Sabbat seems to show up, wreck havoc, and be defeated in terms of politics- he's more interested in their dogma. Percy pauses, before adding the Sabbat tries to sever the ties that be; rarely do the Sabbat go out of their way to kill fledgelings. They target elders at the top of the Anarch and Camarilla movements because those Kindred have gathered power and are stepping on those below them; they're targeted to try and take down the system. Cut off the head of the snake for something else to flourish. Harrison says that's true, but unfortunately his understanding runs no deeper than his; he wishes to know more about Percival before introducing him to others.

He answers that he falls closer to being a Neonate, and that he's a Ventrue- but there's a bit of distaste there. ["Ventrue have very little presence in this city," Harrison says. "Any interest in seeing your fellow clanmates?" "No," the other man declines, a bit of a smile on his face. "They won't take kindly to me."]

He explains he's a farmboy, not really from the common origins of a typical Ventrue. Harrison, in exchange for this information, says he knows of a kindred named Van who was around during the Sabbat Incursion- her knowledge of the city layouts were very useful, and while he'd need to explain himself, the Nosferatu of San Jose are always open for a deal. Percival says he's fine with explaining himself, as he has very little to hide.

Harrison asks why Percy is so interested in the Sabbat, anyway- Percy says he was close to the chaos from the Week of Nightmares during July 1999, when the Ravnos Antediluvian awoke. He wants to learn more about the Antediluvians, and figured the Sabbat's Noddist scholars would have more information.

["Noddist scholars?" Harrison grins, almost jovial. "Well, why didn't you say so!"]

Harrison says their interests are well aligned, and hopes Percy sticks around. He can point Percy towards a particular Noddist Scholar- his own grandchilder, in fact! He tells the Ventrue the scholar is called Jeremiah. And the problem is that he seem to have gone missing.

["He may very well be dead. I'm not certain that's true, but even so; I need his notes back."]

Harrison also adds if he is dead, he would like to know what killed him- his strongest lead on Jeremiah's disappearance would be the man's childe; which is Leo, one of the men Percy had just met. Harrison continues to say that he believes in the power of bloodlines and wants to work with Leo, but the fledgling doesn't seem to want to talk to him. Maybe he'd talk to Percy about what's going on, but only if he's unaware the Ventrue is reporting back to Harrison.

Percy is uneasy about lying, but reckons if it's to get Harrison's grandchilde back, the good outweighs the bad. Harrison states he also doesn't like lying, but that being direct wasn't getting him anywhere- he refuses to believe that Leo knows nothing about Jeremiah's whereabouts. He explains he had put Leo into the care of some older kindred to try and ease him into his new existence, and its given him mixed results. Harrison will tell Leo they worked out a deal where Percy will be given a place to stay on their Territory, and he informs Percy to build a relationship with Leo to gain his trust; If questioned on why he wants to know about Jeremiah, just say you want to seek info about Noddism. Percy agrees to this plan.

---

Leos phone rings.

[“Hello?” “Leo!" Harrison's voice. "Long time no talk!”]

Harrison asks Leo is they'd have room on their territory for one more resident- Probably.

["What are your thoughts on Percival?" "Uh- neutral, so far." The two had just met, after all. "How'd you like to improve it?" Leo pauses. "..Are you implying he's going to be the new resident?"]

Harrison tells Leo that Percy is good at protection, adding that that's not to say Blake isn't, but it's good to have more hands. Leo agrees to let Percy stay because what else can he do, say no? Harrison says he'll be in touch later to send Leo Percy's contact info.

---

Harrison confirms Percy will find his own place for the day, and asks for any contact info he can relay back to Leo.

[Percy hands Harrison a note. "Here's my phone number," he says, "But if Shreknet works for you as well-" "Oh. Yes." Harrison makes a face. "About that..." "Did something happen?" "..You could say that."]

Harrison informs Percy of the Second Inquisition, warning him to be careful what he says over the phone. They shake hands again as Percival gets up to leave, and Harrison makes a note that he never did get Leo's last name.

The two Kindred bid each other good evening, and Percy goes to find a motel for the morning.

---

[New Text:] [Cynthia: Leo, Harrison wishes to know who "Michael" is.]

Notes/Commentary:

Leo's gained a point in Streetwise! ☆ (im normal about it)

Love how Leo wouldn't normally have revealed the headache thing but it just kinda slipped out! And now Blake knows!! oughuh vampires normally dont get headaches!!!! love it here

Something about how Leo was expecting Blake to argue back due to how he was with an Extremely Defensive person for three years...

BLAKE FINALLY USING LEOS NAME?? aaaa

All of us losing it over hints of blake lore <3 (blore, if you will)

Leo saying he already has a route he doesn't wanna go down (being like Jeremiah). Hey buddy that's kinda funny bc you're not doing a good job at that /lh

Something about Blake warning that people will try to use him,,, and how Pauline is right there,,,,

Leo being protective over Yen not only cause she lowkey reminds him of himself but also.. he has a younger sister. projection moment fr

It was suggested later that what if Blake is a bit protective over Yen bc he's lowkey blood bound to her after trying to kill her, aaAAAA-

Percy saying he's not planning on staying long as if he's not a main character now /lh

Cue the spiderman pointing meme with Leo and Percy /j

Harrison continues to be funny, sorry. Just standing with us to match the vibe and having? a dial phone in his desk? amazing

Blake wondering about Leo's headaches being connected to his Hunger,,, OGUHHGH.

,,Is Harrison a noddist?

NODDIST JEREMIAH NODDIST JEREMIAH–

I got so incredibly excited over that bit of Jeremiah lore that I had to bite my arm im so fucking normal (i'm ok)

"[Jeremiah] very well might be dead." Hey. Hey Harrison. Hello??

Howdy yall, have we considered that Jeremiah just doesn't want to fuck with Harrison anymore? That he threw his phone away into the Navy Pier? /hj

Oh or what if he's just gone Sabbat? One of the players is still hung up on the "pawns of the Antediluvians" line from ep2 👀

"Leo! Long time no talk!" HARRISON THATS THE FUNNIEST THING YOUVE EVER SAID. You just spoke to him 5 minutes ago /lh

LEO. LEO YOU DIDNT CHECK IN WITH THE OTHER COTERIE MEMBERS IF THEYD BE FINE WITH PERCY STAYING WITH THEM. LEO-

head in hands. i am a fool i should've mentioned he used a fake name oh my god

[lovingvalentines]

Can you do a mela x fem! Reader? Maybe mela confesses her love for the reader?

Of course! I hope it's not too ooc as I've never written for her before.

--------------------------------------------------

Mela watched as the new rookie team members flailed their hands in the air awkwardly. She never tired of watching the new recruits trying to do the star pose.

But mostly, she never tired of watching the beautiful girl that was training them.

The way her passion for battling lit up her eyes, it was like she was staring into a pure Charcadet flame, and the way she always seemed to find a way to make Mela laugh... It was all too much for Mela.

She never liked admitting that she had feelings for anyone. How do people deal with this crap anyways?

The recruits training ended, Y/N turned to see Mela staring at her. She smiled and waved.

She had been caught staring...

"Hey, Mela! Come here!" Y/N yelled.

Mela readjusted herself, trying to seem calmer than she actually was and walked to the girl.

"You saw all the new rookies, right? How d'you think they're doing?"

"They're lookin' good, Y/N. You're doin' a good job with 'em." Mela replied, trying to calm down her racing heart.

"Thanks!" Y/N grinned with all of her heart, causing Mela to blush lightly.

Arceus, why did she have to be so cute!?

"Hey, Mela, do you think you could train me some in battling tonight? I'm trying to get better so I can make sure I train the new recruits well. I need to make sure I'm in my A-Game." Y/N asked.

"Train with you?! Uh, I mean, yeah. Of course. Don' worry about it. I'll help keep you battle shape and ready." Mela responded, looking away to hide her growing blush.

Y/N grinned again, obliviously. "Okay, thanks! Meet me here when it gets dark!" Y/N ran off, without waiting for an answer. Or for Mela to change her mind.

"Oh. Okay. Bye." Mela mumbled awkwardly to herself.

This was the perfect opportunity to confess to her!

--------------------------------------------------

It was a beautiful night for training. The moon was full, the stars were glittering in colors they probably shouldn't be, and there was a small murder of Corviknight flying around and crowing.

"Okay, Y/N. You ready?"

"Yep!"

"Awright, here I come!"

Training ended maybe two hours after it had begun. Y/N's pokemon had gained at least 7 levels and they were all exhausted.

"Whew... Okay..." Y/N fell to her knees, panting. Training was always rough on her as it was for her pokemon.

"Hey, c'mon. Let's go get some snacks or something. You look like you need a Soda Pop." Mela held her hand out to the other girl, who took it and pulled herself up.

"I could actually go for a lemonade right now." Y/N kept hold of Mela's hand once she was upright.

"I... I guess that'd be fine... " Mela stared at their hands intertwined, her heart racing faster than a galloping Rapidash.

They never let go of each other's hands as they got their drinks and snacks from the vending machines.

They found a small hill to go eat on and sat down together.

Y/N took a small sip of her lemonade and stared at the sky. The Corviknight had all went to sleep so all you could hear was the wind blowing through the trees and grass.

Mela looked at the stars reflecting in Y/N's eyes and felt her grip tighten on the other girl's hand.

Y/N looked at Mela, her smile as soft as a Growlithes fluffy fur.

"Y/N...i have something I need to tell you. "

Y/N's face was red, she reached her hand out and placed her finger tips on Mela's cheek.

"I... Y/N I..." For the first time in her life, Mela didn't know what to say. The feeling of Y/N's fingertips, rough from calluses and burns, was like heaven upon her skin.

Y/N slowly leaned towards Mela.

"Y/N... I..."

Y/N closed the distance between them. Giving her a soft kiss on the lips.

Mela practically melted. Cupping both of Y/N's cheeks with her hands and pulling her face closer to hers.

After what seemed like forever, the two girls broke apart.

"I love you, Mela." Y/N stated through gasps for air.

"I love you too... "

--------------------------------------------------

So this was technically the first writing I've ever done on Tumblr, all the others I've ever done were on wattpad :p hope this was okay!

[granulesofsand]

Hi! Hope it's ok to ask this. First some background. We have DID. I don't know our trauma. Recently I told our therapist something I suspect may have caused our trauma. Based on patterns I've noticed and how we react to things. Being very careful not to make any assumptions, beyond what is needed to keep us safe.

But I was so scared. I don't know if I was more scared she would invalidate us, or that she *would* validate it because actually that is frightening too and a lot to process

It felt like a relief to say it. She reacted the best she could, though I thought there would be more shock. But now I feel so much. I want to cry and to scream and to panic. But I can't it's all locked inside and I seem too dissociated to feel any of it properly

Do you have any advice for how to process and express those feelings? Or how to handle them in a healthy way? (and also the inevitable "I shouldn't have shared that, I'm bad, I fucked up, oh fuck oh fuck" which I can also feel is coming)

If this was a normal week I would just take the dissociation but we can't do that this time. Would trying to help another alter to switch maybe help? Or is that an unhealthy way to get through the week? Nothing is written down so maybe I can take the memories back inside with me until they are safe to deal with :) (unlikely, but hey I can hope!)

Hello. We also struggle with expressing emotion, especially when it comes to crying or screaming. I saw a short video a few days ago on TikTok, a survivor raised in a high control group. They talked about having to learn each separately, then merge the skills to get the heavy sobbing that aids in processing.

I agree that outward displays help brains work through the associated emotions, and that it’s less of a struggle to practice crying and vocalizing one at a time.

We actually started trauma therapy by writing down whatever we remember as we’re out in the body, and most of our trauma memories were added after flashbacks. We gave ourselves the words, helped each other through language barriers and poor vocabulary. We started speaking the neutral memories, then some lighter trauma.

We talk to our therapist whenever one of us needs to move boundaries around, let them know whether we need facial or verbal expression of attunement or neither. They’re good with helping us connect memories unless someone asks them not to (though ‘asking’ can look like dissociation or self-soothing, because they know what to look for).

Some of us can cry. We seek them out, always looking for someone to prove our training wrong. Co-fronting with one who can cry shows us that the tears don’t burn, and our support people aren’t bothered by them, and we won’t be punished for it.

Most of us are still at the stage of running away from front when they start to cry, or tossing away the emotions that make them us want to cry. Both of those are dissociation, and we allow both so long as no insider has the job of taking the big emotions on themselves.

For us, the repeating phrases are usually insiders who hide in the mist of our fronting area. We can communicate with them when we can hear them, but we have to demonstrate that their watchers won’t tell on them to our perps. We do this by talking to them out loud, which is making noise that wasn’t allowed growing up.

The lead-up to talking out loud is the same we’re using to scream. We started when we were sick, trying to mouth words to express pain. Then we added in whispering, growing in volume. Once we could do a raspy voiced speech, we tried out keening sounds and whimpering. Our lowest level of vocalizing is either whispered speech or quiet noises, depending on the insider.

We also taught one another with the vocalizing, and we have a select few who can shout or howl or screech. Some angry ones learned how to be loud before the rest, and most of us are at the level of vocalizing. The only groups we don’t expect to learn are the Deaf or non-speaking folks, because we don’t consider disability to need fixing if we can accommodate it, and we make sure they have the choice either way.

For other healthy outlets, consider exercise that raises your heartrate. It can trick your brain into acting regulated after, because it assumes the survival mode chemicals came from that. Punching bags and strength workouts can be good for angry insiders who might otherwise enjoy violence, and it can make the fearful ones more confident in your self-defense ability.

We find some chores to be help us calm down, one way or another. Some folks find laundry cathartic. Personally, I like chopping wood. We sew, and some of us like to rip woven fabrics for later use.

If you can’t do physical labor, there’s also innerworld activities. We have someone who enjoys summoning mugs and shattering them on the ground if you have tactile or auditory imagination, safe spaces if you have visual, good old drawn or sculpted models if you don’t have vivid internal sensation.

Sometimes we just curl up with a warm mug and a hot water bottle, or take a cold shower. Both of those can regulate your nervous system with temperature, though you should probably void shout whether anyone would be opposed to those (neglect and torture can both include these as traumas). If it’s showers specifically that aren’t working, ice packs and stone tiles can be good too.

We prefer making dissociation work for us than making it stop, so we do utilize switching pretty heavily. Eventually, the one switching away will have to confront their problems to heal them, but systemwide problems have systemwide solutions. You can use switches as much as you like, and we’ve seen systems heal by integrating (not necessarily fusing) different members and by healing members individually.

I don’t have a firm solution, as we’re still working on one that suits us, but we have made progress. I hope one of those makes your situation better, too.

[littleladymab]

FebruarOC - Fe + Finn

a TWO FOR ONE DEAL!! They're from the same project and, somehow, have the same initials. They're not related at all. Felicia "Fe" Monahan and Finn Meadows! (The third of their trio will appear later this month)

To start, Washer at the Ford was the project name I had for what I wanted to become a bunch of kind of supernatural murder mysteries, but also it was the story of a girl who (somehow??) came into the possession of the soul of Jack, man who fooled the devil many times and then: got real drunk and died by drowning in a bog and then had to wander through purgatory holding a burning coal. And the Devil went "hey wait a second that soul is mine by rights" and wants it back. Looking at the scant notes I had for it and what I remember of the plotting, oh I could make it so much better now. But it is what it is and it's a low priority project to get back to. 

Fe is the daughter of the local witch, who used to do spirit work before her husband died. Fe herself can see/talk with spirits and ghosts. I unfortunately don't remember how her dad died, but it was a real bad accident and probably had to do with spirits. But her mom shut down everything regarding that after the accident and resorted mostly to doing apothecary and just general plant focused stuff. 

Fe dropped out of school after the accident when she was 13 in part due to ruthless bullying started by another student and also wanting to be with her mom. The other student started calling her "Ghost Girl" and while she's like "yeah I am" he said it in a way that was clearly out to make her something beneath all the other students and this coming at the same time as her mom leaving the spirit business and her father's death, it was just a little too much for a pre-teen to handle! So she left and never went back!! 

She's been trying to get her mom to deal with the grief and in so doing get back to her old practices, but Shelley is having None Of That. Especially now that a murder has happened in the small town, and the fiancée of the victim is saying that she saw a spirit washing his clothes in the river before he disappeared -- well, bean sidhes aren't native to Tennessee, so that's weird, huh?? Shelley does not find it weird and that girl should go to the police. And Fe is just "hm don't think they'll be able to help.... mayhaps.... I'll investigate on my own". 

Finn is probably a Northern Boy, who recently graduated from college and has moved down to live with his uncle and help at his church before he goes to seminary. I have in his character notes that he's got a "closely guarded secret" that was mostly just, he was in love with someone he shouldn't have been, and it got messy. But you know, it would be fun to do some Intense Southern Preacher vibes with his uncle that he gets wrapped up in -- especially since Fe doesn't like his uncle and i do really want to lean into the southern gothic vibes. 

When I originally started plotting for the story, he didn't have much of a personality at all. He was just tall (totally a personality trait) and serious especially when compared to Fe and Othello, but when I actually started writing it (hello 2012 nano) he immediately got a very charming if not a little self deprecating sense of humor and clicked well with Fe off the bat. She gets a huge crush on him from the jump, but he treats her politely and strictly as a friend. Which is fine, she realizes that he's just nice to her and she confused that with romantic feelings because she's not had enough genuinely nice friends in her life. So once they get that figured out, they're besties. 

It should also be noted that Finn has, what the Devil calls, a soul that is sweet and delicious to spirits. He is actually just a really good and nice guy and admittedly his previous love life wasn't too much sin to spoil the taste. 

Here's just some random scene between Fe + Finn for free on my patreon! (I suppose before they're friends with Othello lmao). I sure did read a few wiki pages to see what patron saint Finn would have on his token and the answer is Thomas Becket who is patron saint of diocesan priests but it doesn't come up at all because why would it. 

[infinitelycomplexpuzzles]

// So this is one of those things that perpetually drives me up the wall in terms of internal consistency.

You have a generally cool idea that allows for all these different powers to coexist at the same time without really needing to go any further. Sure, they might all be demons and devils and control entire realities and spent endless amounts of time warring against each other.

But none of them claim dominion over everyone else. Which means that for better or worse, you have a constant state of narrative flux where you can pull any of them out for your story without having to worry about what the others are doing.

You can use Mephisto as your villain without needing to really come up with what Surtur is up to, because they fundamentally don't effect each other in a practical sense. Surtur burns the world? That's bad, but there are lots of worlds. A few burning here and there is mostly no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

But then they immediately undermine this concept at the same time as introducing it by having it clearly stated that the Serpent is basically claiming dominion over all of them, and so the very notion brought up here, that if anyone actually attempted to claim to be the biggest bad he'd be destroyed, is refuted!

And sure, Mephisto is playing the long game, assuming that he's going to lose, but he can't know that, and thus for all intents and purposes, the Serpent is claiming dominion over everything and threatening all of them, and so while he's not literally sitting in that chair, he's figuratively doing so.

This is sort of why in the same issue they feel the need to handwave the issue of other pantheons taking umbrage with the idea that a Norse god is going to burn reality. Sure, it's logical that they all feel that they can just remake humanity as needed, but that's not the point.

Humanity itself might not be materially important, but generally speaking, gods take offense when you suddenly threaten things they consider theirs or dismiss their authority.

I had this same problem in War of the Realms, where apparently, none of the other pantheons gave a shit about their monuments being desecrated or their people being killed and the like.

And I'm not saying you have to entirely undercut your own characters by having the gods always step in and act directly. Most of mythology is about heroes getting fancy new toys from the Gods to go slay monsters and stuff. There's no reason why you can't have someone like Ra or Zeus or Susano-o decide that, yeah, I'm going to fuck with the person who's fucking with me, and give some mortal something fun, because go fuck yourself, person trying to end the world where I keep my shit.

In this very event, Cyttorak's chosen one is usurped, and while someone else does in fact get the nod for a bit, there's no reason why he shouldn't be doing everything in his power to empower lots of people, temporarily or otherwise, because again, divine beings don't like it when you take or steal or touch their shit without permission.

Actually, as an aside, the Agents of Atlas tie in for War of the Realms had a cool idea, where Kali the goddess of volcanoes shows up, due to fire giants claiming dominion over her turf, and then they ruin it by having it be a robotic double.

You had the potential of something really cool, and you fucked it up because you didn't pull the trigger! How is it that you can introduce cool concepts and totally misunderstand why they are cool and how they work and how they add things to your story????

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

"Don't burn down your own country to try to make a point; who materially benefits from that?" THANK YOU. That is the question literally nobody ever wants to answer.

Look, people's frustrations are real and beyond justified and thank you for NOT immediately jumping to call everyone you disagree with a bot or a psyop:/ like i see posts like this doing way too often. That helps nothing and I'm sorry/s to break it to those people...I know for a goddamn fact at least a good chunk of those people are real. Like seriously, yelling "psyop!" At people for all the honestly, excellent reasons they have to be angry and sickened at Biden and his administration right now does literally nothing but make them think (with reason) that you don't really care about these things, and that you aren't listening.

But GOD it's frustrating to see how many times people will say things indicating that voting for Biden is morally reprehensible and it's an endorsement of what he's doing in Gaza and I'm like: ...well, even if that's true, how EXACTLY in practical terms do you think Trump being allowed to win...because at this point, whether you like it or not, and believe me, there's nothing to like about this, those are the options NOW - is going to materially benefit Palestinians in ANY way? The best thing you can say about him is that he's no worse than Biden about it or about protestors and uh. I have a weird feeling based on how he behaved and how his behavior escalated from before, and how his rhetoric has escalated since he left office, that that's not even remotely true. And that's REALLY fucking scary because notice i never said anywhere that I think how this administration (or state and local governments which uh. It does not directly control like a puppet master, not all of them. At the same time. A lot of them are plenty awful on their own. People seem to forget that.) has been responding or what it's been doing is in any way NOT awful and immoral. I shouldn't have to give a disclaimer for people to assume I'm defending war crimes but. I know this website.

But yeah, also a follow-up question I have: so if you think we shouldn't participate in the system: let's come up with a plan B.

Because THAT'S THE OTHER PART. For all the people who talk of revolution and boycotting the system, and I'm not being snarky I'm giving y'all the benefit of the doubt, I'm people in that I agree with you: how many of y'all have seriously dedicated time and energy to what you know. Your alternate plan to fix things is? I don't mean you have to have a total new system planned out from the get-go but. Giving any indication you WANT or are OPEN to actually planning SOMETHING if you insist voting is a sham would go a long way.

Maybe you are but everyone's been so stuck on other steps and getting yelled at for even suggesting an alternative the conversation never gets that far. What I see is a lot of people fired up, plenty with justification, but not a lot of actual planning or even talk of concrete solutions. Maybe I'm not hanging out in the right places, I dunno. I'd love directions. And honestly I'm not even directing that one at like. Palestinians who have family who are dealing with way too much already. I'm looking at the non-Palestinian people in other countries including my own...who, as much as they may be legitimately sickened by what's going on as I am? You are still not helping on the front of you know. Answering the questions of what to DO about it votingwise, if the system is fundamentally broken and rigged in favor of the already powerful (which it is) and thus frankly have no excuse because you are sitting somewhere far from war.

YOU can and SHOULD be expected to have a clear head and plan instead of constantly spreading the idea that doing nothing to like. Stick it to Biden is going to ACTUALLY HELP ANYONE and how that is going to even happen.

Like yeah, okay he lost you really stuck it to him! Now Trump would be...President...and he can appoint even more of his own people who are just as bad if not worse about Palestine...and now a lot of people are going to keep getting hurt. You really materially improved the lives of Palestinians or politically aided them...by...how again?

Like. If you REALLY think say: boycotting voting AT THIS POINT, which is the only concrete feasible thing I've yet seen offered is going to do anything but hand Trump a victory on a silver platter, IF you can get any substantial number of people to do it, you're fucking dreaming. And much as you don't want to hear it: you're going to get a lot of people killed at home and abroad.

Yes, other elections matter! Matter just as much! But for God's sake you HAVE to look around you. There are WAY too many people who WANT Trump back. And they ABSOLUTELY are voting. I've heard some of them. A lot of them are going out of spite and belief his precious "win" was "stolen" in spite of all evidence. Soooo if every Biden voter dipped out tomorrow in protest...that could've worked DURING THE PRIMARIES to just send a message and cost him power and nothing worse.

But that time is way past. Now? That's just going to make that imagined victory REAL. And again: WHAT GOOD IS THAT GOING TO DO FOR PALESTINIANS??? I just wish someone would fucking answer the question when it's asked or try to give any indication you take that seriously as an issue you need to deal with and not just jumping to call people genocide apologists literally just for legitimately asking to try and see what your 3rd plan is.

Palestianians do deserve better than this. I just wish people had you know. A plan instead of just insults for anyone who asks, sincerely (and that's what I think is sometimes lost because often people are being sarcastic but often they aren't. Here I am, asking sincerely:...) what you expect them to do as a third alternative. Because right now, it sure does not look like we have one.

begging the voting population of u.s. citizens on tumblr to vote this year, and specifically to vote in the way that most practically ensures trump doesn't win, not out of a liberal centrist "don't you hate the orange man hoho" impulse, but out of love and fear for the many, many, many marginalized populations whose lives will be concretely worse under a second trump presidency, out of paranoia that the current architecture of our american quasi-democracy will not survive a new formalized attempt at dismantling it, out of having done the research that no matter what you think of biden literally every stance of trump's is noticeably more disastrous.

i hate that these are our only two practical choices right now but hating it doesn't do anything to change the fact that these are our only two practical choices right now. a trump victory will also almost certainly send the mainstream democratic politicians scrambling even closer to the center; that is historically how the democratic machine reacts to defeat! which absolutely sucks, but the best way to lay the groundwork for progressive policies in the future is to start as far from zero as we can.

i am begging you: vote biden, and then protest every fucking thing he does. make that old man's life miserable. just please, please, please don't burn down your own country to try to make a point; who materially benefits from that?