#but. it also feels so weird to think this way. in the sense of like. yeah. you're only thinking this way because you Have To.

[transformers-spike]

Heya :3 I saw a "what if Cybertronians saw a human with Tourette syndrome" ask and I was like... oooooh what about Autism? I mean like high functionning *cough cough* me *cough cough*

You know with the overstims, the "eww I hate *insert texture here* it feels weird" , the huuuge hyperfixations, the probable constant wearing of noise cancelling headsets when there's too much noise?

Like OMFFGGG NOW I'M IMAGINING RATCHET JUST BEING SO UNDERSTANDING WHEN I'M LIKE "help me I need peace or else I'll fucking explode" DURING A SENSORY OVERLOAD AND HE JUST HELPS ME GET TO A MORE QUIETER SPACE AND WAITS FOR ME TO FEEL BETTER AJDSIUFYARUKSYFHAWI-

(sorry for the rant + luv ur writing and art :>)

Bro I'm 100% into this. It's something I'm keenly familiar with because I'm also autistic.

I think the constant metal grating against metal would absolutely kill me, so noise-cancelling headphones it is.

Ratchet can be helpful in a "remove human from overstimulation" sense, while Bumblebee is a lot more keen to just hang around you until you feel a bit better. Dunno if his beeps help tho...

Smokescreen fucks up at first by being loud, but he'd pretty willing to learn, and certainly does his best to make you feel ok

Just hang around Ultra Magnus and Optimus if you want general quiet

Soundwave is helpful in the most basic way. He's a silent motherfucker, and this automatically gives him an advantage

[cheralith]

feat. karasu, otoya, yukimiya cw: fem!reader, she/her pronouns, is implied to have smaller hands, smoking, roommates au, implied aged-up characters (20s)

hi here are some more a345!tabieitaken roommates au headcanons, this time they involve more of reader :] part one here

karasu

during the warmer weather, when you and him make a habit of going to the farmer's market, there's an elderly shopkeeper that sells some peaches who had once complimented on how lovely of a couple you and him are, that you remind her of her and her late husband. feeling awkward and guilt-ridden, not having the heart to break it to her that you guys weren't actually a couple, you both laugh nervously and thank her. from then on, she gives you and karasu free peaches whenever she sees you both together and you have to pretend that you are for that fleeting moment you and him are a young couple in love within her presence.

even when he's just at home, he often still waxes his hair. he eventually lets it down and breathe properly for the weekends when you had one time smiled and complimented how nice he looks with his natural hair.

a smoker but only when he gets stressed. he tried to hide it from you when you first moved in, ashamed of his coping method, but you had told him you indulged in one or two as well from time to time since your work often put you in stressful scenarios as well. does the cigarette kiss with you when you and him smoke on the balcony together.

speaking of which, you indirectly kiss him the most. you use the same spoon he'll use when he offers you a bite of his food, drink from the same shotglass, and use the same chopsticks that he'll use to gently place food in your mouth.

when you and him open up to each other more, he enjoys hearing you talk; your voice is soothing to him (as it's canon that he has a voice fetish). sometimes may ask you to read to him if you're just lounging around and catching up on a book.

(per last hc post) he tries to teach you bass one time, but you make him nervous just by standing so close to him that he barely survives the first lesson when he has to stay behind you and help move your hands accordingly. he tries so hard not to notice how smaller your fingers are in comparison to his.

you always buy a jar of kimchi for him when you're out grocery shopping, something that he appreciates very much so as he often eats rice and whatever meal he has with kimchi.

yukimiya

loves to cook with you. he always sends you some recipe he saw online and asking if you'd like to try it out. all you'd have to do is respond yes and wow magically the ingredients have appeared before you in the loft... he'd love an extra hand to help him with all of this perhaps 👀

you are the only person that he'll ever let borrow his clothes when he found you struggling to piece together an outfit one time. had said to you that you can pick out whatever you like from his closet if you so wanted to and when you do, he feels this weird sense of ... pride? seeing you in his clothes just makes him feel giddy, knowing that your fashion senses often correlate with each other.

however, he is also not afraid to be honest and tell you upfront that your outfit may just not be right for the day if he thinks so. but you appreciate this—his honesty is refreshing.

sometimes visits you in the office if he has an upcoming shoot that he has to go to his agency's headquarters for, where you work. maybe will drop off a lunch or a coffee/tea pick-me-up he got on the way. your co-workers often tease you for it, asking you if you're secretly dating one of the models to your embarrassment. ("that can land you an hr case, y'know," an intern had joked.)

the most modest out of the three, but there will be times when some of his skin shows and it's like seeing a victorian's ankle for the first time. especially in regards to his legs, when he wears shorts, there's just this hug that surrounds his thighs so securely that the muscles can sometimes be visible through the fabric.

often gets you a small, yet artfully arrayed bouquet of flowers from the local flower shop just because "he felt like it." always feels like such a delight for him when he finds them the morning after in a vase with flowers sitting somewhere in the apartment.

otoya

mentioned this in an earlier post, but he'll often curate some monthly-ish playlists for you with songs he think you'll take a liking to. helps you introduce yourself to more genres and more artists, though he's already quite impressed with how knowledgeable you are with music.

lets you borrow his good headphones—the one where the bass booms perfectly and the melodies sound more crisp to let you fully enjoy the music.

when you first came to the loft, wow did he try his hardest to impress you. walked around shirtless even in cold weather and would try to subtly flex his muscles. often would help you grab things that were above you even if you could easily reach it ("let me help you with that, babe." "go put five bucks in the douchebag jar.")

second-best dressed next to yukki. often will post a fit check on his insta and if you're ever around, he'll insist on capturing his photo with you in it. it both serves as him flexing he has a cute girl by his side and may just boil the jealousies of his side chicks. he won't tag you though, aware of the other people that may ask who you are if they slide up (also because he likes the attention to be on him)

touchy. likes to put his head in your lap during movie nights so you can play with his hair (he uses men's 5-in-1 shampoo, how the hell is it so soft and healthy?!) or will "accidentally" lean against you on the couch if he's really zoning in on some video games.

gets a bit upset when you befriend his hook-ups. he'll sometimes wake up to you and whatever girl he had the night prior chatting and laughing about at the table as if you've been best friends for forever and can't help but feel disappointment for whatever reason.

a/n: @okkotsuus for u my dearest 💐!

[clockwayswrites]

The Haunting of Danny Fenton Chapter 2, Part 1

masterpost - this is just a first draft, please no editing or concrit! I have had a migraine for over a week now (。﹏ 。)

“Are you even sure that they’re here with us now?” Mina asked as she shuffled her tarot cards almost absentmindedly.

Mina was taking Danny’s request apparently very seriously. They had moved from the cozy kitchen into the appropriately mysterious reading room. Mina sat in her navy blue, wingback chair. Danny stood next to the more demure guest chair at the table. The candles were even lit.

He picked up on of the coins scratched with odd symbols and turned it over in his fingers. He knew that Mina would use them as oracle coins with her cards, a way to add more depth to what was being told, but they were basically a complete mystery to him.

Danny set the coin back down. “They’re here. I think they feel bad for the seizure so they’ve been sticking close. There’s this… you know old monitors and screens? The big chunky ones. If you got close to them you could basically feel the static electricity coming off of them? That’s what their presence feels like to me.”

“Oh, huh. The cards can sometimes feel that way to me when I’m picking them,” Mina said. Her head was tilted thoughtfully, her eyes just slightly absent. “I wonder if they’re less ghost and more magic. Or if they were magic when they were alive? Magic of course being used loosely here for a variety of otherwordly and arcane forces.”

“Maybe,” Danny agreed with a helpless little shrug. “Like I’ve said, they don’t feel like a normal ghost, but if they’re not a ghost I don’t know why they came to me. Someone like you would be better at helping them if they’re magic and not dead.”

“On the surface, sure, but like, you don’t feel like a ‘normal’—” Mina made airquotes with her fingers around the word normal. “—human yourself.”

“Say what now?”

“Well you don’t!” Mina finally set the cards down so that she could motion freely as she talked. “It’s not something that the average person is going to pick up on, but to an adapt like me you also feel like you’re an adapt or something. Heck, I bet that you’ve met some people that you just weird out for no real reason you can tell. That’s the otherness.”

Well, she was right, he had freaked people out before, but he had always thought that was just a bad day and his ghostliness was bleeding through a little or something. He wasn’t magic.

“Now sit down,” Mina said.

Danny blinked. “I’m not who you’re reading.”

“No, but I can’t read them, so I’ll have to read them through you,” Mina explained like it was the most obviously thing.

It was best just to trust Mina, Danny figured, and took the seat across from her. Immediately, Hubris jumped up in Danny’s lap and nudged at his fingers for a pet. Mina stacked the deck straight and slid it over.

“Shuffle these for me. Don’t try to focus inside or on a question or anything, just focus on them.”

“Them as in them and not them as in the cards, right?”

Mina rolled her eyes. “Yes, Danny.”

“Look, I’m just making sure! I don’t do magic,” Danny said as he started to shuffle. It was a little hard to do so, what with Hubris trying to bat the cards away, but Danny did his very best to focus on the ghost. He thought about how it felt to interact with them. What they looked like. What the echo of their nearly there voice sounded like.

The tags on Hubris’ collar zapped Danny with a sudden zap of static electricity and Danny put down the deck to shake his hand out. Mina snapped them up as soon as he did. He guessed he was done shuffling.

“Ghost friend,” Mina called out. (Danny thought the ‘friend’ bit was generous.) “If you can hear me, focus on what got you in this mess.”

Danny leaned forward to try, as always, to see if he could sense something from Mina as she cut the cards, fanned out several on the table in front of her, and ran her fingers along them. As always, he didn’t see a damn thing about what made her pick the card she did.

Mina gave the sort of sucked in breath that pulled her bottom lip into her teeth as she flipped over the first card. It was the Tower. The bricks detailed by gold foil outlines that paled in comparison to the large lightning bolt striking it.

“Not good?” Danny asked.

“Very not good. You know how Death isn’t actually a card to fear?”

Danny nodded.

Mina tapped the card. “This is the card to fear.”

“Huh. Damn.”

[starberry-cupcake]

It took me longer to sit down to do the recap than to read the bit. Note: please don't tell me anything that might be a spoiler or a reference to things that will happen in the future of the book! I'd rather not know anything as I read, I'll be happy to engage in conversation of the details after I'm done! Also, please be kind if I make a mistake, English isn't my first language and these books sometimes are difficult 🙏 Thank you for your patience and continued interest ♥

previously, in nona del 9:

this happened

this is the general tag of the recaps, for anyone wondering

DAY FIVE ("the saddest girl in the whole entire world" girl, same "paul gets born" happy birthday paul??? I guess???)

CHAPTER 20 (first house, we better run)

nona wakes up yet again, this time after a tantrum

she's throwing up and palmolive helps her out

they're in the BOE meeting room with the wake portrait again

palmolive had to do some necromancer operation shenanigans to remove the bullet from nona's head

and sriracha girlie decided to exit the chat

BOE freaked out about the operation and put a shackle on camolive and locked them and nona together

nona is embarrassed about the tantrum but palmolive is like "fuck them, actually"

palmolive is mad about them leaving the gang in the dark in so many ways and thinks they had it coming for doing that

I agree, I mean, I get where BOE is coming from with the hesitancy to trust people who were on the other side of this

but it's not like you have a chance to win against nona, pyrrha and camolive, if it gets to that

and there's so much you don't know to even think you can win

so, maybe this could have been planned better, is all I'm saying

in any case, nona finally tells palmolive about gideon dream girl

and palmolive says that if camilla and him didn't love her so much they'd throttle her and give her magazines to charity

nona thinks that's bs because she's "the most deserving person on the planet"

this ego thing she has going on sometimes takes me by surprise, I forget she thinks like this

I guess it's a kid way of thinking, but still

nona also decides to continue with the reveals and tells palmolive the Secret that I believe is the same she told sriracha girlie a while back

and it's that she's dying

1) how? 2) who, in that clown car of a body, is dying exactly? 3) did it have to be now??????

palmolive is looking like spock up there, actually

(would palmolive be a spock fanboy? because I think very yes, but we don't always agree on our palmolive headcanons)

palmolive has to roll up his sleeves and do some necro magic again

"Cytherea the First must have enjoyed those games she played with me"

I could have told you, my guy, but you were being a weenie, like gideon said

I feel bad about it, though, poor guy

*patting palmolive in the head in my mind*

so, nona apparently is starving, but energetically

because her soul is trying to leave the clown car of a body she's in

harrow's body, I think we've established at this point

it makes sense to me, it's not her body, allegedly

and maybe also nona's soul is extra weird, because this is ice cube barbie or some other weird thing that is too powerful for harrow's poor little clown car body

like trapping a genie in a glass dropper

that's kind of palmolive's train of thought too, actually, except he uses terms like "melange" and "gestalt theory" instead of "some other weird thing" and "clown car body"

what I remember of gestalt theory from uni is the concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

I don't know if he means, in this case, that maybe he thinks her a combination of souls and that, if that was the case, it'd give her bigger powers than harrow or gideon would have had on their own

differently from lyctorhood, in which their combination is more on the advantage of the necromancer, who keeps steering the wheel

unless you get og!gideon'd and die, leaving the car to pyrrha

but anyway, palmolive doesn't know about ice cube barbie, so he doesn't consider her in his train of thought

(that's why you need me in the polycule *drops cv*)

I'M TAKING TOO MUCH TIME WITH ONE PARAGRAPH OF PALMOLIVE TALK, WE NEED TO MOVE ON

palmolive tells nona that he can't let her body die because he has to give it back to harrow

nona asks further details of her potential identities

palmolive tells her that, if she's one of two people, he's not harrow

or not solely harrow

this is very funny to me personally because, as I mentioned back in this recap of chapter 2, when I didn't know anything from these books except for the covers and the names of gideon and harrow, I thought nona was their child in the future

so this idea that nona was born from a combination is really hilarious to me

disrespectful of me, laughing at this time

palmolive describes yandere twin as a very obviously dead person with fashion hair, so he roasted her for me

(we'll talk about the chad of it all in a minute)

he tells nona that dream girl gideon might be her, but nona doesn't want to be a redhead and a zombie

palmolive goes "then what are we all?"

not in those words, but that's the sentiment

he also says sriracha girlie "is a very young woman who has been living on her nerves for so long that I imagine she doesn't have anything else. She'll regret what she did at some point"

ouch, man

I think this isn't the last we've seen of sriracha girlie and she'll come to ruin the party at some point

well, not party, that's a sensitive subject

can't blame her, though, she's been harmed by these people and got her family killed, I can't judge this child

palmolive explains that the shackle they have is explosive and that we suffer and coronabeer have been planning things somewhere without them

kinda wild they ended up trusting coronabeer more than camilla, but I guess it isn't a matter of cv but of how they acted when they were brought in and how coronabeer became one of them

"I hate being locked up" "So did Gideon, I gather"

palmolive, if I told you how this whole thing started with gideon wanting to not be locked up anymore

well, it started with dr reverend emperor john becoming a streamer, but that's another story

"I haven't been able to save many people in my life, I'm afraid, but I'm intent on saving you"

camilla and palmolive switch places and in comes we suffer, without a mask

nona says she'd think her pretty if she wasn't so upset

does nona think everyone is pretty or is everyone pretty here?

is there a difference?

we suffer says that BOE was very impressed with nona going apeshit

she also doesn't want to tell them who angel teacher actually is

she does confirm that angel teacher is a member of BOE and that it was an awful idea to have both the gang and her in the same area

we suffer is also kinda upset at camilla for not telling her that she can do necromancy (which, technically, she can't)

and mentions that the whole thing that went down has made the BOE factions more undecided on what the hell to do with them

we suffer mentions someone volunteered to go face the house people because it wouldn't be a death sentence for her

immediately, I think this must be coronabeer twin

camilla doesn't think this is a good idea whatsoever and we suffer says she needs camilla to translate the stuff that will be said in the meeting

and that coronabeer claims that she's expendable whereas camolive is not

which yeah, to me personally, that's true, but I'm not the standard opinion here

apparently they tried to bomb yandere twin out of existence but we all know that doesn't work on a lyctor

unless you're palmolive, who is an expert on exploding and lyctors

we suffer also thinks it's time for BOE to attack because wake always had them on the defense and it hasn't worked so far

camilla says coronabeer is giving in and that we suffer has been, played because she can't lie to yandere twin

at this point, we suffer is just gonna have to sit there and listen, though, whatever happens

we have an idiom here, "estamos en el horno", which literally means "we're in the oven" and it's used to describe moments in which you're in a very rough situation that is inescapable

kind of like "we're fucked", but more metaphoric

that's what's happening over here

I'm teaching you guys very local idioms but I need you to see what I see

coronabeer reaches the houses spot and this happens

wild to hear someone say "my sister is a lyctor", since most lyctors we knew were a william years old and had no surviving family

that I know of

also, cohort dude at the door will have an awful day because I think coronabeer is the one person who has the most Let Me Speak To The Manager attitude in this whole book series

all she's been doing this time is speak to managers, actually

yandere twin shows up and hugs coronabeer and now I'm realizing she's using chad's body

which is so stupid of me, because nona mentioned yandere twin had brown hair in the video and I was like 'wasn't she blonde????'

but sometimes I don't understand things and you guys are like 'that's not what happened' and I feel dumb, so I was like 'ok, maybe all this time I was wrong about the twins being blondes'

but no, she's using chad like linguini from ratatouille

so that she can set foot in the planet because of the blue light and all that stuff

chad and yandere twin

(or yandere twin channeling chad idk)

roasts coronabeer for her jewelry and the state of her hair

yandere twin says she didn't know coronabeer would be there and that "he" (I assume this is dr reverend emperor john) will think she went there on purpose

so coronabeer unveils her very sick girlfriend judith

yandere twin is like

coronabeer goes "didn't harrow tell you?" and yandere twin is all defensive "when did you talk to harrow?"

this situationship yandere twin has with harrow is very complex

yandere twin doesn't want to help judith

she says "Judith Deuteros, who, when we played Marry, Kill, Reanimate, you used to say reanimate because nobody would be able to tell the difference?"

(I need to make a poll with those options in a recap at some point)

coronabeer being all helga pataki with judith throughout her life is great

she was so doomed

I need more of that, I live for the coronabeer/judith ship

I was trying to explain why I like their dynamic so much and while I was writing it I REALIZED THAT THEY REMIND ME OF

YUZUKI AND MAKOTO FROM SKIP AND LOAFER

pretty, popular, extroverted girl who doesn't want to be reduced to her looks and gets infatuated with the strict, formal, overthinking student council girl, you get me??????

I'm gonna root for them forever

yandere twin wants to crush my hopes and dreams, though, and kill judith, because she's already been putting down necromancers

she's also very upset because the third doesn't care about her becoming a lyctor but are grieving coronabeer instead

a lot of problems would have been solved if these girls' family wasn't such shit

coronabeer asks about gideon and yandere twin says "so you remember her name"

yes, yandere twin, thank god we've moved on from that problem

our current issue is a clown car body of a girl

it seems that chad can get thoughts through to her, or so she says

chad's comments are about coronabeer's accessories, though

also, at this point, when realizing that it was chad's body, I also realized that's who palmolive called "handsome"

palmolive and chad, in another life, you could have been like coronabeer and judith, with an unlikely bond

apparently, yandere twin doesn't want to be seen as "the bad guy"

yandere twin alerts those listening that she knows coronabeer was wired and uses the link to establish her demands: the sixth oversight body (which is not the oversight of losing gideon's body), camilla and harrow "as intact as you have her at this moment"

meanwhile, camilla thinks coronabeer is trying to tell them something through the overheard conversation

yandere twin insists on how judith never paid coronabeer any mind and coronabeer tells her she's a dick

when they get in the facilities, though, there's pyrrha

remember pyrrha? here she was all along

yandere twin says she's taking her (she calls her "him" because I think she still thinks this is og!gideon and not pyrrha) back to dr reverend emperor john

"if Poppa can look up from his mid-dismyriad crisis long enough to pay attention"

SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE SAVING HIS ASS

"You might be the Saint of Duty but I've been on call as Teacher's whipping girl for the last six months"

SHOULD👏HAVE👏THOUGHT👏OF👏THAT👏BEFORE👏SAVING👏HIS👏ASS👏

pyrrha also wants to kill judith, which is bad for me

leave that wet mouse alone

coronabeer asks if pyrrha told yandere twin about harrow and camilla

(I assume she means nona)

yandere twin says she has

is pyrrha triple crossing people? quadruple crossing?

acting like she's og!gideon in front of dr reverend emperor john was crossing 1, then she's acted like she's part of the gang as crossing 2, acting like she's actually on yandere twin's side is 3 and maybe being infiltrated here to pass on info or something would be 4

that's quadruple crossing

no wonder she was a cop

CHAPTER 21 (broken third skull, the girls are fighting???)

nona is happy that pyrrha's whereabouts have been secured

the rest, to her, is confetti

camilla tells we suffer that, all things considered, it all went better than she deserved

we suffer is having a mental breakdown because coronabeer has stolen judith and ran to her sister and they lost the bug they had on her

camilla advises her not to make nona angry and to scan for other bugs on the frequency

because camilla is wonderful and amazing and thinks of everything

camilla mentions nona, during her tantrum, attacked the guards with a chair with a two-handed grasp she never taught her

which is points for gideon in the leaderboard

but idk how ice cube barbie fought, it could also be her, for all I know

the sword was old and mysterious

it's not harrow because harrow had a toxic relationship with the sword

nona stares at camilla and "looked up into the eyes that used to belong to Palamedes, long before she knew either of them" and her nose bleeds

not sure who that's a point for

camilla and palmolive desperately want to talk to each other, which is so exasperating, poor babies

we suffer comes in all happy because camilla was right (did anyone doubt that?????) and there's a bug in the area

camilla assures her it must be on judith

I wonder where and how it was placed there

she also says nona was right about pyrrha giving them codes

and that pyrrha will do anything to get at the shuttle

palmolive and camilla switch again and nona has to update palmolive on everything that went on

nona thinks yandere twin wearing chad's body is coronabeer's boyfriend and is happy to know he's not

idk if she's interested in everyone romantically at the same time or she's not and that's how she expresses her feelings

palmolive introduces himself to we suffer and asks whether they'll give them the sixth if they retrieve gideon's body ("the key to the Locked Tomb")

I assume the bit about the key to the tomb was told to him via pyrrha, who's the only person with a memory present and aware at that time of the whole wake-augustine-mercygirl-emperor conversation

we suffer says she'll give him anything she can for the key to the tomb (including the sixth)

wild how the destiny of the universe was kind of hanging by a thread in baby blender's and kid jesus' playground in the ninth for a while there

palmolive thinks yandere twin is at a disadvantage with the limited abilities she has in the planet as well as with pyrrha, who he still completely trusts

palmolive doesn't know why yandere twin brought gideon along, he suspects it was to bait out harrow, but both him and we suffer need that bod

we suffer, because of the tomb

palmolive, because he thinks it will help nona survive, if that's her actual body, or the body of a part of her soul combo

he is more cautious than we suffer though, because she went from "we're en el horno" to "we've got this, team" real fast

and palmolive is like

palmolive is, though, very optimistic about his and camilla's chances of making this happen

or he's just risking it all for the sixth

when they switch, nona tells camilla that palmolive revealed it all to we suffer and camilla says "I don't know why I bother"

which is a mood

we suffer tells camilla that the whole sixth thing is complicated because BOE has factions that aren't always aligned and that wake could move them at will but she can't

I'm guessing they didn't know wake was having a close encounter with two sides of the same lyctor

camilla said she'd try to do it and we suffer goes "Palamedes Sextus thought you could"

if camilla is harmed here istg

I'm gonna eat these pages

I'm gonna rip them with my teeth and eat them

we suffer also requests that, if they leave planet, they take a package with them

unclear what it is

hope it's not a living being

or a kid, unless it's kevin

meanwhile, in the new audio coming from judith's intimates, coronabeer is talking to pyrrha and is upset that they're putting gideon in pretty dresses and parading her around like a doll

me too, actually, I mentioned it in the last recap

coronabeer is also disappointed that yandere twin didn't come for her specifically and it was only a mission to her

she missed you, though, back in the emperor's bolthole

between the lyctor orgies, the arm stuff, the nudes in the walls and the soup

yandere twin has apparently told pyrrha to not let coronabeer help judith

she starts doing a ward but also has time to both insult coronabeer's non existent necro abilities and act disgusted by the prospect of touching judith intimately

she also goes "What did Harrowhark use to always call you? Tortoise? Blorgus?"

is she trying to say "ortus"?

girl, I'm the one with the funny nicknames when the names are complicated, but ortus is definitely not

coronabeer wants to hear the whole story of the brain tampering that resulted in that

meanwhile, camilla seems to have de-coded pyrrha's message in there somewhere

and what she thinks is that nona is the key to something they want

which might be the body, but also who knows

camilla promptly asks for supplies because I think we're gonna try a heist!!!

a heist in which nona might pretend to be harrow?????

but A HEIST!!!!

love it for them

JOHN 9:22

"His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue."

WELL, THEN

pov person who was called harrow but might not be entirely harrow talks about their regenerative powers

they seem to be walking in the ruins of the place where dr reverend emperor john used to reside

so like, post apocalyptic earth?????

are they astral projecting????

apparently, going theatrical and calling himself a necromancer did the trick to reach big audiences

maybe if one of the lyctors had been a marketing specialist, this would have taken half the time

"It even scared A— He was all, Matter doesn't play by these rules! You are doing bone parthenogenesis! I told him his mum did bone parthenogenesis. A— told me he'd kill me one day"

GOD, I WISH HE HAD

they're still going around the fact that, since he can't recuperate the soul, he can't really bring people back to life

he was happy, though, that some people showed up and were pushy enough to be shot so that he could witness people dying live

I'm glad it worked out for you, asshole

he also gets kind of hooked on witnessing violent death because of how it makes him feel

so, he just started killing people remotely

pyrrha shook him and stopped him and was like "what in the fuck are you doing?" and he gave a ukelele apology

"Guys as careful as you shouldn't have accidents"

when the cop is talking reason, you know how twisted things are

they brought in all the corpses for the "skeleton army" he was no longer joking about

pov girlie asks if he know what caused his accident and he said "guys as careful as me don't have accidents"

I don't want to kill him anymore

that'd be too kind to this man

that'd be too merciful, he doesn't deserve that

AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW!!! Sorry this was a long one again! These are taking so little time to read and so long to recap >_< I end up finishing them at ass o'clock and sleepy, but I wanted to get it out!! See you in the next one! Please be kind ♥

[weirdmageddon]

#Jackson said this one is gonna have all my issues Doc you take Dean #I’m sorry but that was definitely Jackson going 🙂😐 #venture bros #vbros #this show is literally Man the show #Ik it wasn’t on purpose but the relationship to Masculinity and what makes you a man is a repeat in this show #Dean trying to separate himself from his dad just to realize he’s a clone then realizing so is his dad #his fear of not being the orginal or the real one in reality terms men trying to figure out what type of man they are especially if they #were never traditional or grew up with the tradition mindset end up having this vibe #I also think in a weird traditional way Dean is Rusty do-over which freaks him out #the idea of legacy is something Dean keeps running from the idea you end up similar to your parents too etc #hank is the opposite in he is secure in his masculinity and being a man #Hank thing is heart so he feels lacking in love am I loved? can I be loved? who can love me if i didn’t have a mom? #hank is torn up about a mom bc the traditional stereotype is love #so no mom is hank wondering if all his relationships are doomed to be devoid of care. especially with women it nags at him #and ultimately is proven in the show his relationship with women isn’t god awful like his dad but it’s not good either #Hank accepted that Rusty loves Dean unconditionally and louder if he had a mom would she love him like that? #would she once she sees him look at him and see herself and they have the relationship Rusty and Dean have? take after her footsteps? #weird enough Hank’s focus on this makes the topic of mothers far more important in the show which still isn’t shown #wish they had more time to get into Hank ik they wanted to #I think Hank was gonna be the end part of vbros no matter what. his story to me felt like that #I can see him once he figures out his personal stuff leaving bc Hank once he does like Dean was always going to leave #I think also there’s something to be said how Hank’s relationship with femininity is the same as masculinity #a can-do gung-ho attitude which is Hank yeah but that’s interesting to me still especially on the idea of women in hanks head #I think he has a lot of hope in his mom. a hope he would get disappointed by now knowing who it is lol #the hope is “maybe I’ll see myself in someone and they’ll see me and love me”

wait what’s this about jackson OH

source: A repository for our obsessions: Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer talk Venture Bros. season 7

i’ve heard and read countless interviews with them, i already knew they wrote so much and designed so much after their own life experience but that fact about jackson not having a mom never came across my radar. but that makes so much sense because the emotions feel real coming through hank.

honestly the venture bros deals with some heavily jungian topics even if entirely unintentionally. it’s like they’re stumbling over the same basic things but exploring in a different way, brought out through a cartoon as a vessel for it. when i got to this page that’s the first thing i thought of was, “oh what the hell. that’s exactly the differentiation concept jung was on about. they’re demonstrating that journey through the writing process of the show itself.”

i think that is because doc hammer and jackson publick’s socionics types are LII (Analyst) and ESE (Enthusiast) respectively. i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, while enjoying listening to interviews, commentary and and reading the art book. i wrote extensively about this dual relationship on a forum.

i’ve also talked about these sociotypes before in other contexts, but here i want to point out that carl jung was LII too, as am i. which i guess is why i’m so gripped by these people and their work independently, since they’re a reflection of my own modus operandi. magnetized to it because it feels like it reflects the same way i process and emphasize certain aspects of reality.

jung’s ideas were a big ingredient in the socionics psycho-informational model created by aušra augusta (along with the theory of information metabolism developed by the psychiatrist antoni kępiński). this is what this social-psychological typology model attempts to capture:

“I’ll draw some attention to a typology that was created by Carl Jung and which I slightly improved using the Theory of Information Metabolism of Antoni Kępiński. It makes it possible to look at each individual as a carrier of a particular function in society, which is conditioned by their type of personality or intellect. The type of intellect determines how an individual perceives information from the external world and how this information undergoes a process of selection. This determines the ability to pay attention to one or another aspect of external life: the interests and aspirations of the individual, the direction of their behavior, and their relationship with other people.” (Aušra Augusta, Model of Information Metabolism)

“Through testing his model, Jung became convinced that most if not all of a person’s relationships with animate and inanimate objects were determined by the mental structure of individuals. That is, people have different relationships with things around them, and the reason for this difference is the difference in the mental structure of individuals. Therefore, by using relationships as a starting point, it is possible to construct not only one model of the psyche, as Freud did, but several of them, as Jung did. One might immediately ask: Why were relationships the starting point? As we will see further on, it is because of the fact that the author of the typology was an “introverted” type, whose conscious perception was directed not to objects, but to the relationships between them. Jung discovered the mechanism of how signals perceived by the psyche get selected. This mechanism can be called the code of information metabolism (IM), or the rules of the language of information transmission. The mechanism is formed of eight elements, different combinations of which make sixteen codes of IM. Each person is the owner of one of these codes, and therefore, from the standpoint of Jung’s typology, a person is not only an individual and a representative of the human race, but also a representative of a certain type of IM. Types of information metabolism are qualitatively different constituent elements of humankind.” (Aušra Augusta, Commentary on Jung’s Typology and an Introduction to Information Metabolism)

it doesn’t mean that people of the same type will have the exact same life path or go into the same occupations, as that’s evidently not true. for example, i’m pursuing a more of a medical occupation (i’m extremely interested in neuropsychoanalysis though but it’s such a niche field. becoming a radiography tech is economically safer and more flexible and accesible in these uncertain times), doc hammer is an artist musician-writer-painter. but the types of information and things that they pick up on more distinctly in their mind compared to other people do correspond to each other. the best definition of what encompasses a socionics type is “type of information metabolism; what one wants from others and what one wants to give to others in the most general sense; large-scale behavioral patterns and strategies” (from this article on the limitations of the system.)

“It turns out that the human mind breaks down the world around us into various constituent parts — aspects. Each type of personality receives highly differentiated and realized information about one of these aspects, while information about other aspects is perceived in an undifferentiated, compressed form. Therefore, different types of personality, despite being in the same situations, remember and describe completely different things about them with different words. Stories are described with different facial expressions and emphasize different aspects of the situation. The main reason why one person listens pleasantly and alertly and the other feels unpleasant and tired is precisely due to what kind of patterns in phrasing in which they express their thoughts, as well as the facial expressions, gestures, and intonations they use in tandem with their speech. When an individual hurts another, it is not done so much by their actions, but by the way they explain their actions, which is the motive that they put forward. That is why one individual can be forgiven for something another individual cannot be.” (Aušra Augusta, On The Dual Nature of Humanity, Part 1)

^ i noticed the venture bros actually uses this a lot to comedic effect. having characters in the same situation and the comedy comes from emphasizing their different reactions to the same information.

Orpheus: And the bucket?

Shore Leave: Oh, that’s for the GEYSER of pea-soup vomit.

Orpheus: And the camera?

Hank: Also for the vomit. ;D

Orpheus: Do I even have to ask?

Dean: They said there was gonna be vomit...

that is also honestly THE way to highlight personality differences if you’re writing something, it’s simple but incredibly effective and natural. now that i think about it, it’s also pretty much aligned with scientific principles of experiment design since it’s analogous to having the independent variable (a situation all subjects are put in), and dependent variable (the reactions).

to come back around to what you were saying in the tags though, absolutely. you probably know that doc and jackson commented about this.

Doc: “To me, if you're a creator of something, find out why you do it. And if you're not doing it to, I don't want to sound big pants over here, but try to fucking better the world. I mean, try to make the world a better place. Try to spread the little things that you've learned and the love that you have, and Jackson and I have this very distorted idea of, you know, we grew up weird and we're doing our best to just spread our version of love. Which is trying to find out who we are, which is why we stumble upon these things that would be called toxic masculinity. When we started doing that, that wasn't a term that we thought about. If we even knew it, it was really like, Jesus, why is our dad?... And for Jackson and I, our dad is not just our father, but the media we consumed, and James Bond, these are all our dad. Like, why are they such assholes? (Jackson laughs) You know?” (Interview with The Venture Bros. Creators Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer — Swimpedia)

1:56

Interviewer 1: For inspiration, do you guys go back and read comics in the offseason? Are you guys big comic fans?

Jackson: Uh, I am. You’re not as much, right?

Doc: No.

Jackson: I go to the comic shop every week, but I only buy like two things, so… but no, I’ll get big old Omnibus things… “Omnibi”? of like… Jack Kirby Fantastic Four or something, just to kinda get jazzed about it again, but I never make it all the way through.

Interviewer 2: He’s more into punk rock.

Doc: I like music, it’s correct.

Interviewer 2: So how do you bring that passion? …. into this space?

Doc: It shows up in the show. It shows up in the show. Plus, you know, comics; music… it’s all culture. And that’s kind of what our show is about. It’s not a direct parody of anything but the crap we ingested in our lives, and then we cough it up in jokes.

Interviewer 2: How do you feel the comic book world has really evolved now with the web and how people are interacting with characters in different worlds. How does that impact how you create these stories? Or it doesn’t?

Doc: Probably doesn’t change anything for us other than we have more viewers.

Jackson: (laughing) I didn’t even really know that’s happening. Right?

Doc: Well I mean, you could say that the comic books of our youth and the media of our youth is now the canon of our adulthood. You know? Star Wars has lost its “hey, remember Star Wars”-ness and it has become the mythos of our culture. It’s… it’s big stuff. Our Zeus story is fu- Star Wars.

Jackson: It’s in our DNA now.

Doc: Yeah, and a whole generation grew up on it as a very big part of their lives. So inside of that, we’re indebted to it as much as anybody is.

8:02

Heidi: You know, the Venture Bros. was a show about toxic masculinity-

Jackson: (smiles) Heh.

Heidi: And uh, without giving too much away, this movie does sort of address the female element in it. But it’s still, you know, it’s a boy’s world.

Jackson: Yeah.

Heidi: I mean, was that on purpose? is what I’m asking.

Doc: Well, it’s— you are SO correct, cause you want to say it’s a “man’s world”. It is not. It’s a “boy’s world”. This whole world is not about…

Jackson: Yeah. Yeah.

Doc: I mean yeah, we can go and sit there and armchair diagnose our characters very quickly. Doc [Venture] is a… he’s a… narcissist. He was made that way by his father. And it’s a horrible fucking thing that is real and we have to deal with it in… government. I mean it’s a real thing. It’s just that with the Venture Brothers we were able to talk about it in a way that wasn’t shaming, and wasn’t condoning. It’s a very unique thing that we did, and I don’t think we set out to do it. Just��� the topic of toxic masculinity from the first episode of the Venture Bros. was just out there, or at least episode 2. Doc had a father that was an asshole.

Jackson: And specifically also just, yeah… adolescent male fantasy is what the adventure genre is; it’s what superhero comics are. To play in that world—and these are dumb men’s worlds—and then for us to go, “Yeah, well, this is what happens when you don’t have a mommy (laughs) or a reasonable female voice.”

Heidi: (laughs)

Jackson: And any woman you meet is either a femme fatale or a potential love interest and that’s reductive and damaging to the- this is why none of these characters have grown up. This is why they’re trapped in circles of their lives. You know? And our characters are the first ones to start breaking out of it. Like, this is kind of about escaping your… you know… um, generational, parental kinda bullshit to some extent. You know?

Doc: Yeah, not just toxic masculinity, but hopefully looking at it where people could… find a roadmap out! We’re not giving you the answers but we’re definitely pointing and going, “Ehh, you should recognize this paradigm…”

Jackson: (laughs) Yeah!

Doc: This… this is… this is everywhere. That this is the road to forgiveness, that you have to embrace this and not perpetuate it. You know?

Heidi: Right. Right.

Doc: Venture Bros. wasn’t trying to be a public service announcement.

Jackson: (laughs) Right.

Doc: It was trying to entertain you in a way that made you kind of uncomfortable, but go, “…I.. I think I’m learning something about myself watching this mess.” And that’s all we ever wanted to do.

this is why i said this show was incredibly jungian in its essence. it has all of this within it. (see the section starting page 32 in particular)

you’re absolutely right about hank’s arc seeming like the end game territory of venture bros and that “his story felt like that to you.” and i think i could explain.

like jackson himself, hank is also ESE. he also has the ESE structure. both doc and jackson seem to talk about their characters as their inner traits, like about having parts of [character] in themselves when talking about themselves, stemming from an alignment or comparison in some trait parameter(s). the phrase “that’s very Hank of you” in-universe is just a great example of that talk leaking into the show.

they are of course separate people, but the reason hank’s character growth arc feels so right coming at the end of the venture bros is because hank’s own processes are core to the DNA of the show’s creative process itself. hank learns the lessons of differentiation which is exactly what the show is doing and the creators are doing in the process of making it. doc literally spelled it out in one of the interviews above, “we're doing our best to just spread our version of love, which is trying to find out who we are”.

Hank: I mean... I guess I could give it another try out there. Yeah, but I don’t think they’re gonna want to go back. Look at them!

Orpheus: Then leave them. They are the stuff of fantasy, conjured by a hurt and frightened boy who has outgrown his need for them. They belong in this place.

Hank: But they’re! ...(thoughtful) ...Me.

Orpheus: No more than the Hank whose diapers your father once changed, or the Hank who lost his first tooth, or scanned the December sky for Santa’s sleigh. You will carry them inside you always. But their time was passed.

seen a lot of people take “hank has DID” at face value without much thought probably because it’s a trendy diagnosis. my mom is a mental health worker, a very discerning of people’s psychology one at that, and she says majority of the people online who claim to have DID have complex ptsd or borderline. and she’s gotten them as patients and could see it wasn’t really DID. in her almost 30 years of psychiatric nursing she says she’s only seen two cases of actual DID. it’s not nearly as common as you think. so i actually highly disagree that hank has DID. but i totally agree with dean and comatown phineas phage that hank has ADHD and an overactive mind though. hank is definitely neurodivergent and i say it as an autism adhd person recognizing something of my own kin in him. (and hey so is doc hammer, he’s on the spectrum.)

also, remember that this is a cartoon so it can do things in ways that aren’t possible in our reality to represent psychic forces. we can see this intention based on the directing choices, like when The Bat disappears off the screen after hank walks past him saying “I’ve got this one”. hank is having an internal conversation with himself. but you know what’s more likely and universal since we’ve already covering how intermingled jung’s ideas are with the creators’ experiences? complexes. i think hank’s alter-egos inside himself embody complexes with their own archetypal figure.

similarly, you could also see hank venture as a character representing a personal complex (a cluster of thoughts and emotions and wishes) around being motherless that jackson publick could be exploring through the character, among some other traits.

“Publick, who felt Hank (and the Monarch) were the characters who contained the most of him, drawn from “[his] own dumb thoughts, and actions, and misbeliefs […]”

when you think about it you start noticing a fractal.

a couple of last things: all of this reminds me of the values of dual pairs from Romanov’s website.

“According to the author's hypothesis, further developed, all 7 dichotomies of dyadic values ​​are associated with how the subject positions himself in the connecting chain of generations. This is how these features differ between the 8 individual dual pairs that play a role in positioning themselves within their generation. The difference in the poles of features in marriage partners is necessary to ensure maximum genetic diversity of offspring. In this situation, they seem to look at each other, seeing their opposite in the other. But the coincidence of the poles of dyadic values ​​is necessary for completely different purposes - to ensure the success of raising offspring by the couple. In these matters, coordination of actions in the couple, its internal unity is already necessary - so that both partners look, so to speak, in the same direction, and also make efforts in one global direction.”

and what it says about LII-ESE:

LII+ESE (obstinate, farsighted, judicious)

The key value is the willingness to give of oneself to one's children.

The first altruistic dyad. The altruism of this couple is of an emotional nature, connected with empathy towards one's children, the joy of realizing that children continue and develop the best that is in you. Thus, the most important element of life here is parenting as such - as the process of forming the personality of one's child in the process of everyday communication with them in the family or small group. ESE is an ideal mother, sensory caring, involved in the child's life at its early stages, when affection and instillation of a general positive image of the world are most important for the developing personality, LII is an ideal father - non-aggressive, finding pleasure in developing games with children, able to collect the most valuable knowledge about the world and pass it on to children in an accessible form, without threats and coercion, based on interest alone.

saw an interesting link there. doc has said “our relationship is the show.” so in this sense, the show was their “child”, technically. it was their creation. and that’s exactly how they developed it.

also doc hammer is so so so much like me in so many ways. lots of overlap both in internal experiences, our own taste. i was also listening to jg thirwell foetus before i even heard of the venture bros. that kind of if-you-know similar taste. the alternative new york gen x scene he hung around was the same clubs my own mother frequented, like danceteria, CBGB, mudd club, club 57 (irving plaza). she told me his face looks familiar, and they know mutual people (e.g. dj patrick cusack). obviously we’re not the same person but he’s genuinely the closest person to myself i’ve ever known to just exist out there, and for me at least i’ve noticed that’s really fucking hard to do. i mean it. i remember in particular kicking my feet listening to the post-punk podcast interview which i have never done, because hearing what he had to say were my own realizations that i have had and will have. i learned so much about myself listening to his own self-insight at his age older than me; it held this particular weight for me because of that. if you scroll up on that same socionics forum thread i linked earlier you can see me passionately get into it.

last but not least i think this totally explains why hank brings me so much joy and he’s my favorite character my comfort character my imaginary yume person and i feel for him the most out of the whole cast. makes sense i have this deep psychic spiritual hunger for someone like him, cause i feel like he’s complementary to my own self. it’s like your last tag about hank’s hope in what he’s searching for, “#the hope is ‘maybe I’ll see myself in someone and they’ll see me and love me’” like ummm wait i’m doing that. hopefully you’ve absorbed everything i was saying in this post and understand why i feel that’s substantial?

so many reasons i love this show in such a personal way and its creators so fucking much.

whereas dean was tormented by being a clone and hank wasn’t, not having a mom or mother figure seemed to torment hank a lot more than dean which is interesting.

[mediumgayitalian]

4 and 7 for will, percy, nico and jason!!!

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

will:

sitcom. easy.

the very real way that i want a summer camp sitcom of will and his big siblings at camp.

dude if i had infinite money to fight cease and desists and copyright claims i would just hire actors and artists to make tv shows of every fic idea that has ever come into my head

percy:

i genuinely think percy is so so perfect as a first person narrative.

so i wouldn't change that.

BUT i would LOOOOOOVE to see a the office style mockumentary about percy and annabeth in new rome.

like that would be THEEEE funniest thing of all time

"and how do you know that x monster can be defeated in this way? what is your source, mr. jackson?"

*office stare of misery*

nico:

nico needs to be in a video game so badly it's ridiculous.

now i dont even like video games. never have cared never will. cant get into them.

BUT a video game with nicos bajillion side quests would be so goddam cool. visuals would go INSANE.

it would also be sooooo funny for him to have an inventory of weird shit and its just infinite

jason:

i need on on stage play hamlet style and it needs to be so haunting and lonely

imagine that. for a second.

the pain of jason's life

with jason as the character watching

lemme articulate this better.

we are introduced to jason, the adult character

this calm, quiet, kind, happy man

and then he dies

and he wakes up on stage alone

and he asks, aloud, what is going on

and no one answers

because he is a character

and then he watches every day of his past, hazed in smoke

and he is horrifed

the entire play is just the audience watching in complicit horror, not answering as jason demands, with increasing desperation, "why? why did she give me up? why was i alone?why did no one come for me? why did no one help me? why was i alone? why did i lose? why did my heart have to be the one to break? why was i alone? why did no one stop my sacrifice? why did i have to be sacrificed? why was i alone? why was i alone? why was i alone?"

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

will:

looooove Deaf/HoH will.

love that will has No fashion sense.

love southern accent will.

love will who has been burning the torch for nico for one hundred years.

percy:

love when he has an obvious and shyly embarrassing crush on annabeth.

love when he is incredibly emotionally mature.

actually i will be real i dislike a lot of fanon percy. i feel like people try really hard to make him dislikeable, like stupid or mean or thoughtless and i hate it

nico:

whipped nico my beloved.

nico is a little closer to percy in terms of fanon dislikes for me actually. hate hate hate how he is treated like a little meow meow that everyone has to protect.

jason:

LOVE Black jason. like he is Black to me i get jumpscared every time i see White jason or thalia.

love sweetheart jason like he is i love him

[justuraverageweirdo]

So we know the Astrals seem to refer to Libra as some sort of god/deity (with the 'oh my libra' thing and all the referring to scales in the last comic). I wonder how does Libra feel about that??

Oooo ooo I’ve been wanting to yap abt this part of the culture for awhile now ty for asking

Soooo, it’s more of a common phrase that anything! Kind of how we say “oh my god” or “what on earth” or “god damn it”. Stuff like that! Except since the astrals wouldn’t use phrases like that, I decided to come up with my own! For clarification, the astrals don’t see Libra as a god. She’s just an astral just like the rest of them, only with more power. They use phrases like that more as in an “oh this exists so we’re gonna turn it into a phrase” kind of way, if that makes sense.

For example, instead of saying “god damn it” or “damn you” they say “Libra go damn it”, “Libra damns you”, “Scales will damn it” or “The scales damn you”. Why? Because Libra is the one who damns people :3

Another one is “go and beg the scales”. It’s basically an insult lol. They’re basically telling them in short terms “hey so you suck so hard you’re gonna have to go beg Libra not to kill you”.

They also say stuff like “oh my stars”. Another common one is “go throw it in a black hole”, whenever they find something they think is gross. Libra definitely isn’t the subject of ALL of these phrases, but since her judgement is a very big part of the culture that’s why her name appears a lot.

The astrals also kind of have insults specifically targeted towards dark star entities. A very popular one is “Cetus spawn”. Sometimes the astrals will use these against each other. For example, “what are you, a Cetus spawn?”. I’m still coming up with these ones lol. Oh and the dark stars have insults for the astrals too. A popular one is “scale kisser” lmfao.

Whenever something bad happens, the astrals say things like “Cetus cursed it”. The dark stars took that and changed it to “Cetus blessed it”.

As for how Libra feels about it? She doesn’t necessarily care all that much. She doesn’t use the phrases herself because it’d be a little weird to say “oh Libra go damn it” when you’re Libra LMFAO. Shes also a lot more mature than the other astrals and doesn’t use a lot of these anyways.

Oh and have a little Libra doodle since we’re talking abt her. I’m giving her a bit of a redesign because I want to make her dress a little better. I may or may not be prepping her up because I intend to make her and all my other astral designs into vrchat models 🤭

Anywaysssssssss gladiator au by myself, @deirunn and @alasylunatic!

[alternate-real-ities]

Research Report: Subject J - Asian Flu

Prepared by: Dr. Amara Patel & Dr. Liam Chen

These diary entries, obtained through confidential sources, detail the personal experiences and transformations of a young man identified only as "Jake" who has been unknowingly infected with the recently emerged Asian Flu (AF). His accounts provide invaluable firsthand insights into the virus's effects on its host, spanning from early symptoms to advanced stages. Thus, with these entries, we aim to better understand the virus's effects and timeline.

Diary Entries:

Dear diary,

I woke up feeling a bit off today, but nothing major. Probably just another case of the common cold going around. I didn't let it stop me from starting my day as usual - working on my laptop at home while sipping coffee. My muscles were kinda sore too, but I thought it was just from my workout yesterday.

I did notice something strange though - when I caught my reflection in the mirror, my pecs looked a bit bigger than usual. Probably just my imagination, right? They're not exactly massive to begin with on my scrawny frame. But hey, maybe I'm finally making some progress at the gym!

Anyway, enough about me and my silly feelings. I'm going to bed early tonight. hopefully I'll feel more like myself tomorrow.

Dear diary,

Woke up today feeling even better than yesterday! I breezed through my work and couldn't wait to get back to the gym. When I stepped into the locker room, a few guys checked me out appreciatively. Normally that would make me blush, but now it just gave me this weird rush of confidence.

At first, I thought the gym machines felt a bit too easy today. Like my body was used to working at higher intensities than I realized. And why were my pecs tingling so much? Probably just a funny nerve thing, no biggie.

When I got home, I caught another glimpse of myself in the mirror and… holy shit… are my muscles bigger? Like, way bigger than they should be after one intense workout. Also, I didn't look as pale as I usually do?

This can't be real - something's going on, I just don't know what it is… Hopefully, I'll have more time to think about it tomorrow.

Dear diary,

Okay, so something is seriously wrong with me but I can't put my finger on it.

I can't stop sweating, even when I'm just sitting around doing nothing! My clothes are always soaked and I stink like a damn animal in heat... And don't even get me started on my fucking pecs - they're so sensitive right now. Like every brush of fabric against them sends a jolt straight to my dick.

I called in sick to work today, couldn't handle trying to make sense of all those spreadsheets and emails. It's like everyone's talking in a foreign language now, I just don't get it no more. I keep telling myself this is all stress-related but deep down, I know something ain't right.

At the gym today, I kept having to increase the weights because anything less felt like a joke now. There were these two Asian guys there who kept glancing over at me admiringly between sets. Normally I'd be flattered but nervous about such obvious stares. Instead, I found myself flexing subtly in their direction, feeling this bizarre urge to show off my body.

And to top it all off, I've been having these crazy horny urges nonstop. Like, I'm constantly rock hard and leaking pre-cum like a fucking faucet. It's embarrassing as hell. I ended up jerking off about three times today already but it did nothing to satisfy this insatiable hunger in my balls.

I'm scared… I don't know what's happening to me. Maybe this is all just a bad dream and I'll wake up soon. Please.

Dear diary,

Fuck… what's happening to me? I'm struggling to type this entry because my fingers feel too thick and clumsy on the keyboard.

I went back to the gym again today because I couldn't stay away, even though part of me knew something was seriously off. The Asian guys from yesterday were there again and this time… fuck… I walked up to them and started chatting like it was the most natural thing in the world. Talking about protein shakes, the best ways to sculpt chest muscles, shit I wouldn't have given a second thought to before.

They kept touching my arms admiringly as we talked, marveling at how fast I must be growing. And I fucking liked it. Craved more of their attention and praise. We ended up in the locker room together…

I'm not proud of what happened next but I couldn't control myself. I was too drunk on this new sense of power and desire coursing through my body. The next thing I knew, we were all naked, touching each other, moaning like animals…

I can't think straight anymore either. It's like all the smart stuff is leaking outta my head and being replaced with nothing bro.

And the smells… everything smells so much stronger now. My own stink, sweat and musk, it's so intense!

I'm losing control here diary… I feel like I'm turning into one of those dumb gym bro stereotypes and it scares the everloving shit outta me. I almost can't recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

Tomorrow, I'll go see my doctor to finally understand what's going on.

Yo diary, it's your boy Jake and lemme tell ya, today was fuckin' EPIC dude! Like, the most awesomest day ever since this crazy shit started happening to me.

Woke up feelin' like a million bucks, muscles all twitchy and ready to dominate. I hit the gym real quick, just a lil warm-up ya know? And oh man, did I catch some looks! All those bros were starin' at my gains, probably wishin' they had a physique like mine hehe.

After that, I decided to take my rock hard bod for a walk in the park. Felt good to let the sunshine warm up my bronzed skin and show off these sick pecs. I was strutting real confident-like, just basking in all the attention from thirsty bitches and dudes.

Then, get this diary… I bumped into this super cute lil twink at the park! He was practically drooling when he saw my massive package tentin' in my shorts. I couldn't resist, had to show him what a real man feels like down there haha.

We found a lil spot behind some bushes and I bent that boy over and gave it to him HARD, diary. Pounded his tight boyclit so good he was screaming for more. Fucked him so deep he'll be tasting my cock for days! Blew the biggest load right up in his guts too, hah!

I'm gonna hit the gym again later for some more gains, maybe see if I can find another thirsty boycunt to bust in after. Life is fuckin' great diary!

Remarks:

Based on Jake's diary entries, we can confirm the progression of AF symptoms aligns with our current understanding: rapid muscle growth, cognitive decline, personality changes, and increased sexual aggression. His accounts also highlight the virus's insidious nature, as he remains largely unaware and unconcerned about his transformations.

To better understand the virus's transmission dynamics and long-term effects on secondary hosts, it is imperative that we identify and locate the twink (hereafter referred to as "Subject TW") with whom Jake engaged in sexual activities at the park. There is a high probability that Subject TW has been infected with the Asian Flu through this encounter.

Locating and monitoring this new potential subject could provide crucial insights into the virus's sexual transmission rates, incubation periods for secondary infections, and further manifestation of symptoms in diverse hosts.

This final surveillance footage from a concealed camera in a bustling city gym captures Subject J (center frame) engaging with his newly acquired "bros". This clip represents the most current documentation of Jake's behaviours and physical state, obtained while maintaining strict contamination avoidance protocols. The timestamp indicates this recording is approximately three weeks after his initial diary entries.

Caution: Viewers are strongly advised not to approach or engage with Subject J or his associates without proper protective measures in place, as their sweat and other bodily fluids pose significant infection risks.

Please direct any inquiries or resources needed to pursue this lead to Dr. Patel or Dr. Chen.

[End Report]

[khaire-traveler]

Hi! I uh, I'm having a struggle here. I understand that the Gods are not their myths, but also like... is that just for personalities? What about their relationships to each other? What if X isn't married to X. What about the creation? Parents and children? Like how far does the "Gods are not their myths" go? What myths are true vs just a story?

Like from my experience with like, Hera and Dionysus it *seems* like their spouses are the same as the myths but also I've never personally interacted with Zeus or Ariadne one on one, yknow? Also thats a weird ass question to ask. Am I just overthinking or is this something other people struggle with? I ofc believe that in terms of personality, the Gods don't act like their myths. I mean, I work with Hera, who is so cold and vindictive in the myths but is actually kind and motherly to me personally.

I don't want to doubt the Gods (and I'm kinda not, I'm more doubting the humans writing about them?? Kinda??) but I'm just... how much is Myth and how much isn't? Does that make sense?

Khaire! This is a fantastic question, and one you get to decide for yourself. c:

What do you feel is the truth? How much of myth do you choose to believe? And at what point does it become overthinking? At what point is the answer more about the unknowable nature of what a god is and their relationships to one another? What things are left entirely to the fact that we simply don't know and that's actually ok?

Myths are a fantastic guideline. They reveal to us how the ancients likely viewed certain life lessons, deities, and even how they may have worshipped. However, how much of a myth we take to heart is up to us, ultimately. You are right to doubt the stories that we're told, but to what extent do you wish to doubt? Are you overthinking things at any point, in your opinion? Are there some things that you can simply shrug off for now? Myths are not the entire basis of worship in ancient Greece, so while some things, such as family relations, are confirmed in myths, it's also important to acknowledge that 1. myths often contradict each other, depending on where they're from, and 2. things like epithets and recorded festivals tells us how the gods were worshipped outside of myth and how they were viewed. As I said, myth isn't the entire basis of this religion; myth was more of a guideline for knowledge that was heavily based on the culture and location at the time (which is why there are different social rules, symbolism, and similar in them).

Another important thing to consider is the role of symbolism in myths which is something that's pretty difficult to discern in the modern times. What things were exaggerated to make a point to the audience? What lessons does this myth teach, and how was someone meant to learn from it? Myths of a god's wrath, as an example, likely bolstered the message that the gods were to be respected, not trifled with. Also, maybe reaching out to your deities and asking them to make these topics clear to you. How do they want you to worship them, with the knowledge that myths are often stories meant to teach something? Remembering, too, that the gods were often worshipped with their relationships to each other for hundreds of years (with some differences based on location and such) is also important, so even if they didn't have those relationships with one another in a human sense, what harm would it do to continue that ancient tradition? Keep in mind that these types of aspects of worship are also linked with respecting the culture of ancient Greece as we go about our practices, which I, personally, think is important to take into consideration. I think of it as paying homage to the ancient Greeks, in a way.

This is the conclusion I've come to in my own practice, as it's a question I've asked many times as well. You're absolutely not the only one asking these things, and doubt is a good thing! It helps us develop our beliefs further and seek more knowledge. Doubt makes us curious, and curiosity feeds learning; don't feel bad for that, it's entirely natural! c: Hope this helps! Take care, and I wish you the best of luck on your journey ahead. 🧡

[bruciepennyworth]

new hc: bruce + the batkids + distracting chatter

so this is inspired by the latest chap of @frownyalfred's lovely fic 'hold me loosely' (chapter 4, jason POV) — but i feel like i've also seen other people use this scenario? like, i feel like it's an oddly common recurring bit of bruce characterization in fanfics. anyways, what i'm actually referring to is bruce, when someone around him gets injured on the job, defaulting to listing random facts at them as a way of keeping their mind occupied/off their injury. [fairly often, but not always, it's specifically facts about said injury (ex. "on average XX takes X number of days to heal in a healthy person" "Y% of people will experience XX in their lifetime" etc. etc.)]

...so i was thinking about the thought process bruce would go through in order to arrive on that being his go-to strategy for this kind of scenario, and if you think about it, it actually makes perfect sense? bc i can totally imagine him being like "hmmm so a Normal Person incapacitated in the manner of scenario 259(c)(iii) would likely appreciate/require a distraction from their condition" —> "the most appropriate/comforting distraction that does not hinder my ability to actively continue assisting them is to fill the silence —> "slight problem: i am bad at making conversation" {the genuine kind, not the brucie frivolous-lifestyle-bullshit kind} —> "i can speak about a subject that the injured listener has an interest in" —> "i can speak about a subject that will already be on my mind and will be directly relevant to the listener, as well as assure them that i have the requisite knowledge and am therefore capable of taking care of their injury properly"

...of course, the part that bruce forgets to anticipate is what Injured Party makes of him suddenly turning into an audiobook encyclopedia, and how they might actually respond to that beyond just shutting up and listening to him monologue lmao. thankfully, he gets plenty of practice individualizing his Distraction ManeuverTM accordingly on all of his batkids!

dick: EFFECTIVE. the one this strategy was invented for in the first place — does not deal well with tense silence, also just really loves listening to the sound of his loved one's voices, finds it super relaxing/comforting. used to fall asleep easiest in his family's tent at the circus when he could listen to his mom and dad chat about anything late into the night. he had the perspective to recognize that batman monologuing at you all about the mechanics of the injury you've just received yourself is more than a bit morbid, but hey, he was a bit of a dark-humored morbid kid himself, he doesn't mind 🤷🏽‍♀️

jason: EFFECTIVE. isn't averse to silence in the way dick is, maybe even prefers it mostly — but, when he started out as robin bruce monologued at him when he got injured the first couple times out of habit, and jason definitely noticed and picked up on the pattern. then bruce stopping would have made it weird, so after that he comes to find it comforting in the sense that it's like an endearing habit of bruce's/a familiar routine. so like, he ignores it mostly, but if bruce ever didn't start monologuing at him while he's trying to hold it together he'd definitely notice and be all "hey what the fuck happened" lmao

tim: NOT EFFECTIVE. does not like just listening to bruce growling out mildly-alarming injury statistics, thank you very much. if he can talk, he'll do the talking himself; if he can't, he'll take silence. (also a hand to hold— which bruce eventually learns to provide.)

steph: NOT EFFECTIVE. bruce learns the hard way that steph will interpret him going on about her injury as condescension (which tbf, by definition it kind of is?). his second try is to talk about her performance in the field re: whatever she was doing right before she got injured, which is unsurprisingly received equally poorly. if she can talk, she's definitely talking, and bruce reluctantly learns to tolerate the fact that said chatter is 99% of the time completely unrelated to their current situation. the first time post-war games that he ends up stuck with a steph injured badly enough that she can't fill the silence on her own, in a fit of panicked inspiration he starts telling her about the historical value/sourcing of purple dye, which she teases him endlessly about once she's able to later, but he's just glad that it seems to be implicitly approved of.

cass: SITUATIONALLY EFFECTIVE. cass comes in after tim (and i guess kind of during steph's initial integration into the fam?) so bruce has already been made aware of the possibility that she won't appreciate it. but it turns out that whether cass prefers or dislikes silence varies by the day, honestly, so bruce tends to go for it, and then about 60% of the time he'll get a soft "batman, stop talking, please." (or the equivalent in sign) after a couple minutes lol. (also, even though cass is generally not particularly impolite about it, bruce somehow always feels very effectively chastised by the specific way she tells him to stop: it's like her version of the 'alfred voice'.)

damian: EFFECTIVE. with the unfortunate caveat that if he's capable, he'll certainly be snarking back at bruce the whole time about how he "knows, Father, i memorized the relevant information on these topics when i was five" — but he likes it. he'd never say anything about it, of course, but bruce realizes after some time that being left in silence when bruce is there kind of makes him feel like he's waiting for punishment for being sloppy enough to get injured in the first place.

duke: EFFECTIVE. he doesn't particularly mind silence, but he loves having random general knowledge in factoid form, so he definitely appreciates the monologues. he tends to mostly be content with listening, but he'll also pipe up with corrections occasionally bc he'll tend to have read more recent data.

[utilitycaster]

As a DM if some of your players are more Ok with dying and losing characters should you target them more in combat or equal opportunity? Im thinking about things like Travis willing to let Chet go or Liam already having his backup ready for Orym vs other players who may be more tied to their characters and stories.

So first: I get what you mean and I am assuming you do not intend it in a critical way so I'm saying this just to serve as clarification, not correction (slash if you did mean this as criticism, you're getting talked over by me now, such is the fate of anon asking) but I do not think being ready to play a backup character/willing to have your character die/letting them go necessarily means that person is any less committed or attached to their character or their story! Death is part of stories, and sometimes the best thing for a character is to let go. I would not consider Taliesin to be less attached to Molly than he was to his other characters; it was just that when Molly died, he felt it was truest to that character and concept to let the death stay. Indeed, I think one of Liam and Travis's strengths as players is that they care deeply about their characters without being overly precious or cautious with them, allowing a greater depth to their stories because they will make big risky moves.

Anyway: depends on the combat and the character. I think for Chetney and Orym, it does make sense in many cases to target them as they are both significant physical threats and are typically in melee. However, it really depends! Sometimes a specific enemy is targeting a specific person due to said enemy's motivations - think the Ripley fight in Glintshore clearly targeting Percy, or Uk'otoa's minions targeting Fjord. It would be weird to target someone else given the narrative of the combat. And there's a difference between "treating a tank like a tank" vs disproportionately targeting a character in a fight where the enemy doesn't specifically want to kill them, but just the group in general. This becomes especially apparent if the enemy, for example, has ranged attacks and a spellcaster has done some serious damage. At some point you do have to shift focus.

I do think that making character permadeath a possibility - especially a more likely possibility than RAW, as in Critical Role Campaigns 1 and 2 - is a conversation that needs to have the full buy-in of all players. Obviously different people will have different attitudes, but if someone really isn't prepared to have a character perma-die after you've explicitly discussed this, then I understand that people's feelings change but it's also not fair to the rest of the table to make exceptions for that one person. You can make compromises (the character coming back as a revenant; them playing a character with close ties to the same backstory) but it's not fair and usually not logical within a narrative to treat one character like the universe's punching bag and another like spun glass without some other balance (eg, if the spun glass character is a level 1 child princess and the punching bag is their L15 bodyguard). The point is to have fun; but sometimes that means saying no to one player so that they don't unbalance things for everyone else.

[xmencompletionistgirl]

Alright, I guess this is my "yap about the Fall of the Mutants" post? This is my first major milestone completed while I'm running this blog so I'll ramble for a bit. This isn't really an event in the traditional sense, like, none of the X-titles actually cross over in meaningful ways other than a member of one book learning about the goings-on of another book via the news or something. So there isn't a grand narrative to comment on, the connecting thread is thematic, I guess. It's really just a glorified status quo change-up, which all events are in theory, but it doesn't actually really have the crossover element of the event which is kind of the selling point, so??? either way I'll talk about each book one at a time

(Uncanny X-Men #225-227)

May as well start with Uncanny. Shockingly, I don't have a ton to say. I think it was fine, but not amazing. Tbh I feel like Clairemont's writing falters a bit whenever he's writing about 'end of the world' type stuff on a cosmological scale. The Phoenix Saga is great, but beyond that when he does these 'end of the universe' things it's all very similar, like a mini-Phoenix Saga repackaged. He's in love with these sweeping concepts of the world being in balance, very New Age, and he gets sort of lost in it. I don't have a great way of articulating it, though, and I'll save some of my deeper thoughts on his writing for a big fat Clairemont era post once I finish his run. Some cool visuals anyway, and I'm glad that Storm has her powers back. We'll see where the 'world thinks the X-Men are dead' stuff goes, but I'm guessing it's not going to last very long.

(Power Pack #33)

X-Factor, also fine. Also not a ton to say. It was probably the weakest of the 3 overall, but not for lack of trying. I just find these early Apocalypse stories kind of dry? They aren't really saying much with his character, at least not yet. Not a fan of the 'dumb Beast' stuff either, no idea how long that last. I hope this leads to a power reset with him and getting his blue fur back, I really don't like looking at hairless Silver Age Beast. That being said, thank GOD X-Factor as Mutant Hunters era is over. Jfc what a bad concept. Simonson did her best to salvage it but you can physically feel her grating against the concept with every issue she writes. I feel so bad for her for inheriting Bob Layton's mess.

Oh I almost forgot; I hate Caliban in this?? Like, I really don't buy his turn to Apocalypse at all :( Probably the only part of this event that made me a bit irritated.

Every non-X-book tie-in was related to X-Factor, for some reason, also. It's really the only part of all of this that feels like a big event, but it's downplayed. Power Pack and Daredevil all the clear standouts. Really good. Pictured above, the Power Pack issue does a phenomenal job of selling the scale of it from a kids' perspective. Everything is on this incomprehensible scale and watching this giant rectangle of a spaceship knock into stuff in New York really sells how big of a threat Apocalypse is. And Daredevil is an on-the-street version of that, moreso focused on how New Yorkers react to this battle and think that the end of the world is here. It's a very human story and I really should read Nocenti's Daredevil run sometime, it seems pretty good.

The Fantastic Four tie-in was painfully average and the Captain America one was awful. Avoid them lol, they are very mired in their own continuity. Luckily I was familiar enough with the F4's history that I caught on quick, but they are in a VERY weird era here. No Reed or Sue, the Thing is in his pointy rock-skin era, She-Thing just got made, Doctor Doom has been ousted from Latveria... just madness. As for Cap, it's more comprehensible but it's just not very good. They're in the John Walker era and Steve has been forced out of the role (and is wearing USAgent's future costume), but he and Falcon and... *checks notes* Demolition Man a.k.a. D-Man and Nomad-but-not-the-Steve-Rogers-one,-the-Jack-Munroe-one (alright?) go and stop Famine from destroying a fuckton of crops in Nebraska or something and that's it, that's the whole tie-in. No mention of X-Factor iirc. Really weird book.

(New Mutants Vol. 1 #60)

And now, the New Mutants. Once again the BEST X-Family book. I'm a New Mutants girlie, I will stan them until my dying breath and that is THAT. I have so much to say. The book is great, Sunspot and Warlock are back, and the falling out with Magneto and the death of Doug actually sells the event!! It really feels like only they go through a status quo change worthy of the name 'The Fall of the Mutants'. It's a fairly average adventure for them to start with, and there's a bit too much fixation on a fairly uncompelling villain for my liking, but at the end of #60, a switch flicks. Doug dies in a really brutal, unceremonious way. He's just shot by the villain of the arc and that's it. He's dead.

(New Mutants Vol. 1 #60)

(New Mutants Vol. 1 #61)

I love. LOVE. Watching Illyana go demon mode on these guys. No notes. Please more of this before she's uh, out of commission until like 2007 lol.

(New Mutants Vol. 1 #61)

And then #61 is mourning. Everyone lashing out at each other and Magneto... being Magneto, ultimately pushes everyone away out of fear. I don't think my screenshots can capture it, it's really great stuff. (Also, that panel of Illyana crying about pretending to be a normal kid while sitting next to the body of her dead friend? Art.)

(Uncanny X-Men #227)

I almost forgot about this, but in Uncanny #227 we get a checkup with Kitty and Kurt, who are back! The sigh of relief I let out omg. I didn't even realize how much I missed them or how long it's been. Excalibur soon!!!!

Overall, it was alright! I'd say it's a step up from Mutant Massacre at least, which I thought was a bit all over the place. Events were a new concept back then though, and very clearly an editorial mandate, so I guess that's to be expected. I'd say read it if you're a Clairemont era fan or an event completionist, but otherwise, eh. Not terrible, not mindblowing.

Except for New Mutants. That was great. Did I turn my Fall of the Mutants post into a New Mutants shill post? Yes I did and I won't apologize

[lune-moon-nuit]

I’ve seen a handful of people talking about Will possibly trying to get over Mike and maybe getting together with another boy (Chance) and I wanted to know your thoughts on that. I personally don’t think it makes sense because it’s not going to be super easy for him to just get over being in love with Mike or to get with someone else to start getting over Mike. If Mike and El were spending all there time together like they did in s3 and Will was getting super jealous and didn’t want to be maybe then I could kinda see him trying to find someone new but it’s the 80’s he can’t exactly just go up to some guy and ask him out. There would need to be buildup for it idk it feels weird to think about Will looking at someone else.

I think this theory is rather unrealistic. During the van scene, Will definitively lost all hope that his feelings for Mike could ever be reciprocated. If the series were set in our era, the idea of him trying to move on by dating a boy from high school might be plausible. But as you pointed out, we’re in the 1980s, in Hawkins, Indiana—a small rural town where everyone knows each other, and even adults, like Troy’s parents or Mike’s, have internalized homophobia to the point where they saw nothing shocking in a 12-year-old boy being “killed by a queer” or in lines like “See, Michael? See what happens?” when referring to a kid being assaulted and kidnapped just for looking somewhat gay.

Will would never take the risk of making himself an even bigger target for homophobic bullying and harassment by pursuing a relationship with someone who could potentially expose him or put him in danger—especially not with a member of the basketball team, considering they were actively leading a witch hunt against so-called “Satanists,” including the Hellfire Club, where Mike, Lucas, and Dustin were among the most wanted members.

This scenario could have been an incredibly interesting addition to Mike and Will’s romantic arc under different circumstances—forcing Mike to confront his conflicting emotions as he watches Will try to move on with another guy, exploring the complexity of their situation within the backdrop of 1980s homophobia and secret, forbidden love. It could have also created a compelling contrast between the gay character who takes the leap into a relationship with a man and the one who hasn’t yet, instead staying with a girl. But realistically, there just isn’t enough time for this with only one season left, plus all the supernatural events and the other characters’ arcs that need to be wrapped up.

That being said, I have to admit I’d love to see a 16-year-old Mike being openly jealous—visibly jealous—and confronting Will because of it. We’ve already seen how even subtle jealousy from Mike in Season 4 spoke volumes, so it would be a great tool to highlight his feelings for Will in a way that finally allows the general audience to connect all the dots.

[pumpkinsy0]

even MORE PaperCut hcs bc yknow what we live in a society

•they both gain happy weight while in the relationship, but like,,,more so later down it. its more noticeable w pony cause hes just always ate a lot, but hes also just not eating as heathy as before. w curly bc pony cooks and he will not hesitate to eat it he does gain weight but it is NOT a lot, his metabolism is fast as shit😭😭technically w pony its not by a lot either but look WHATEVVERRRRR WE R MOVING ONNNNNN

•the summers ponys spent w curly vs the summers he didnt, its so obvious he gets more tan w curly bc curly would get him to STAY outside. before pony WOULD go outside im not saying he wouldnt, but hes not the biggest fan of the humidity (especially cause if his asthma/eczema whoops) and just went right tf back inside to avoid it. w curly however he can ignore it for longer, which means more sun if his skin which means tanned skin pony!!!! YES before u ask curlys diggin it

•curly bites ponys lips when they kiss, pony thinks its a lil weird but hey its curly ofc hes weird so he lets him do it, but once two bit busted in to scare them and curly bit REALLY hard out of surprise and pony was bleeding for a bit. the whole gang knows about that one💔💔💔

•when i say they would sing good together, i dont mean it in a graceful way, i mean it in a “theyre yelling lyrics in the middle of the street while basically climbing each other, its not off key but its not the BEST singing either the angels arent coming down for this, and theyre trying to yell over each other, its great bc its them” way

•pony REALLY likes the way the sunset makes curlys skin glow, meanwhile pony doesn’t know it but when ponys looking at the sunset hes squinting HARD and rubbing his lips, curly thinks its the funniest thing ever, hes staring at it like hes in the back of the class staring at the board. pony refuses to get sunglasses he says it ruins the beauty of the sunset

•curly never went over to ponys house when ponys parents were still alive, never had a reason to, so he never met ponys parents, NAMELY, ponys mom. pony says she woulda loved him but in reality??? curly wouldnt have liked mrs curtis!! she would remind him too much of what he wanted his mom to b and curly being a mamas boy wouldve tried to find any reason to hate mrs curtis, wouldnt find any, THAT would piss him off more and its just a endless cycle. the curly we have now though doesnt know he wouldve felt this way either!!! this is an unknown thing to literally everyone, didnt happen so nobody knew this was even a possibility (i hope this made sense omfg)

•i feel like theyve both had a few dreams of a boy and girl version of the other kissing them, papercut is so bi4bi to me, let me have this god damn it

•curly draws pony but his art style is one that like, looks like it could be on early 2000 nickelodeon, just more detailed. 60s pony would totally tease curly for this art style but modern pony would think its cool

•curly sommeeee what lived the country life pony imagines back in haiti, pony would ask questions about it and curly says its rlly not allat, pony just thinks curly didnt like it bc hes curly he wouldnt get the greatness of the country side😒😒

•speaking of haiti curly loves talking about how pony wouldve been if he was born in haiti, its like he has this whole other version of pony in his head, he knows where pony woulda been born, how he would act around others, ALL of it. alternatively pony does the same talking to curly about how he wouldve been different if he was born in the us

[sockatoothewafflebird]

AHEM AHEM SO i have been provoked. oh my god this got long. like. loooong. oh man i am SUCH a yapper. so like 60% of it is under the cut. oh also @robotgutzz you asked to be tagged in this so here ya go buddy

first things first my hatchling is named Elbaite. the best way to introduce them to people, in my opinion, is just: they're a slightly taller (and gabbs would say prettier if you managed to get it out of them somehow) feldspar with added geologist and linguist interests. basic info, ellie is a linguist first, geologist second, an an astronaut... well, for about seven hours (how long the loops last in their universe).

they're reckless. they put themself between danger and other people, which has gotten them plenty of scars and plenty of fun stories to tell hatchlings. (tephra is their favorite, the little troublemaker, but you didn't hear that from me!) they legit got a chunk of their ear taken off by an animal attacking their group on a camping trip. they fought it off while the others ran.

basically they're a mini feldspar, except they're a nerd as well as a hero. the people around them think of them as a hero, anyway. they,,,, uhm.. dont really have much respect for themself.. and they cope by having no self-preservation instincts and joking a lot and being a people pleaser..... yaaaayy (a sad little poof of confetti appears out of nowhere)

so, now, gabbro! putting the rest under the cut because i wanna explain how i characterize gabbro before i explain how they work together so. teehee this gonna get longggg

*ahem ahem* just saying this right now so it's blatantly clear: gabbro is autistic when i'm the one writing them. i autism-beamed them and now they're an artistic, autistic, astronaut. AAA if you will.

with that outta the way, gabbro is first and foremost an artist. in every sense of the word. they write more than they draw and they sculpt or carve more than they write but they Make Things. lots of things. that's why they were so excited about the statues- proof the nomai were the same as them, in a way. oh boy when they find the quantum trials they freak tf out because "OH MY STARS??? IM NOT CRAZY LETS GO"

and WHY do they think they're crazy. well. that's because everyone made them think that way! because their autism makes them Weird. they like to be alone, they enjoy their own company just as much as the company of others. and in a tight-knit communal society that values togetherness immensely, that just won't do! so as much as the others care about gabbro, they don't really understand what they need, and that leads to some interesting issues (that i plan to touch on eventually).

(AND. they're one of the only members of OWV that doesn't officially have a profession. gossan trains astronauts, slate is an engineer, hornfels is an educator and curator. riebeck has archaeology, chert has astronomy, even elbaite has linguistics and geology!)

they found it hard to make friends when they were younger. they tried, and failed, because they simply didn't get it. so they instead made friends with trees, bugs, rocks.

aaand this is where elbaite comes in. this is there the time buddies become buddies.

so, elbaite has a very strong sense of justice. everyone should be included, everyone's needs matter (except their own, in their opinion...) no matter what, and there should always be compromise. this leads tiny little hatchling elbaite to feel bad that hatchling gabbro is never included. so, a little eight-year-old hatchling with bandages all over their body from their escapades, approaches a twelve-year-old in an oversized sweater holding a bug in their hand, and says, "let's be friends."

gabbro is confused. "uh... why?" they say, because no one has ever asked to be their friend before. and they're like a lot younger than them. elbaite says, "because! i wanna!" thinking this plan will go perfectly, like half of their plans don't end in them getting hurt somehow. and somehow it does. and now gabbro's got a little buddy that drags them into games and activities, and they don't know what to do with that because half the time the social interaction ends up stressing them out (though they appreciate the effort ellie puts in. they appreciate that they try.)

gabbro does make other friends eventually. spinel and chert. and by association, halite, though hal has opinions on gabbro that they simply keep to themself. wahoo.

anyway, yeah, long story short they're buddies before they're time buddies. when people say things about gabbro behind their back, ellie is there to give them a death glare or flick them in the ear or however they decide to defend their buddy that day.

on with The Big Thing. this refers to gabbro's launch day. they graduated the program a lot later than most as previously mentioned. their disability paired with how others treated them made the last bit of training a lot harder for them, and they had to take a break from it.

long story short, a lot of STUFF happened right before they launched, so they left without any goodbyes. and then a year later, at 20 (they got their sapwine ceremony done early because they wanted to get it over with(and launch slightly early lmao)), elbaite launches.

(THIS IS WHERE I ACTUALLY GET TO THE POINT SMHHH WHY DID I DUMP SO HARD)

so then the loops start. and this is where my ramble actually gets to the point stars above this is wayyy too long--

ahem. ahem. so the loops start. and at first, elbaite is like, okay, this is something new i can do. i have a goal, a mystery to solve, so i'll be okay. i can figure this out, and i can get us out of it, and i'll be fine. we'll be fine! everything is fine. i am fine. (ellie is not, in fact, fine!!)

gabbro is kind of, well, stuck, so. they just chill. the wind threw a rock straight into their skull and knocked them out for a loop, once, but other than that they just chill on their island. they don't even know what's happening, just that chert says something about the sun over the radio every loop and hornfels doesn't remember that they lost their ship.

their mindset? eh, guess i'll die.

the first twenty-two loops ellie aboids giant's deel like the plague. eventually they get over themselves and the find gabbro. they talk, establish that yes we are still friends, have a couple insane revelations because holy shit i'm not alone in this? and decide to start traveling together.

here's the gist of it: elbaite always takes the brunt of the most brutal deaths. they keep shielding gabbro from space debris with their body and getting hit, or pushing them out of the hatch of the ship when the reactor explodes, or.. a lot of other things. elbaite is naturally inclined to put themself between gabbro and whatever danger is hurtling towards them. they cant handle when someone else suffers, if they could have helped it, or suffered in their place.

meanwhile, gabbro is just along for the ride. they adapt pretty quickly to the whole "death doesn't matter" thing and they often have to remind ellie that it's not the end of the world (figuratively, i feel like i should specify) if they run out of time. gabbro notices how hard ellie is overworking themself, and they know if they say "ellie you gotta take a break" they'll just brush it off, so... they use things like "ugh can we have a break loop? im starting to get a headache" or "ugh im soooo tired, i need a nap, buddy." as excuses and stuff. and of course because ellie cares about them they comply. teehee.

while gabbro naps (they do actually sleep a lot, true to their word, but if they didn't want ellie to take breaks gabbro would try to stay awake for them), ellie studies nomai text, and starts to teach themself how to write in nomaian. (which becomes very helpful in the au idea i have where they are able to travel with solanum due to funky quantum time business.)

they keep each other sane, unintentionally, and in the process they become ride-or-die besties. and they begin to appreciate each other more. and more. and become closer. and closer. until they start making flirty "jokes". and eventually neither of them know if they're joking anymore.

and then ellie has an "...oh... oh no" realization moment when they discover their feelings have, indeed, become romantic. and gabbro is like "...huh... hmm..." like they're just letting their emotions do their own thing. long story short they're both inexperienced but gabbro's mindset is "woahhh... feelings are weird..." and ellie's is "i CANNOT let this distract me from The Goal."

...im gonna end this here, probably make another whole post if i feel like it and people want it. if i do it'll mainly focus on the romantic parts of their relationship.

so.... toodles!!! time buddies for life!!! sorry for yapping so much lmfao i cannot believe how long this is and its so terribly organized.... i promise i'll flesh these dynamics out in fics soon enough!! pinky swear!!!!! i shall offer more snippets and yaps if provoked!

[bigandgreedy]

I also saw a similar Reddit post (maybe the same one?) where some social worker was complaining about how the poor people they work with wouldn't have money to pay rent but they would have money for cigarettes and alcohol and bc of that they can't feel sympathy for them anymore....like do they not know that rent is expensive as hell and alcohol and cigarettes are much cheaper? Why are they even a social worker? I mean tbh I kinda get it I'm also from a low income background and I get how some people can make decisions that are baffling to outsiders looking in but I also remember having to deal with shit ass social workers when I was a kid. Like when I was in foster care for a few years as a kid bc of my parents' drug addictions the social workers I had to deal with were some of the most awful people and the one lady who was nice actually had a mental health crisis and had to quit. Honestly I was kind of mad when she quit though now that I'm almost 30 I kinda get it.

I am also kind of under the impression that a lot of people who want to get into social work are like, from extremely sheltered backgrounds and they have this weird kind of 'noble savage' view of minorities such as poor people and then when they actually start interacting with them they immediately lose sympathy cause they're not 'acting rationally' and so the image they made up in their heads of these people gets destroyed. But like if you've grown up in this kind of background it may not be shocking to you, you get why these people might act in ways that are confusing cause you've been there yourself but IDK. I'm not a social worker but I've been around tons of people who will do things that I think are dumb or confusing, and I still want to support them anyway!

Literally I have seen it plenty in my own life people make baffling decisions and I fully understand it. If you have ever had to make seriously tough financial decisions with just not enough money no matter what decision you end up making it makes perfect sense to spend your last $30 on a discount bottom shelf 3.5 and that increasingly expensive and increasingly worser 7/11 turkey and cheddar sandwich. That is the last meal you can get for $7. Used to be we had a $1 mcchicken for you and a $5 7/11 pizza for 2 and I actually really feel like the loss of those two specific items at those price points drove food insecurity up amongst any household that lives paycheck to paycheck.

Anyway these people are extremely sheltered and neurotypical and should go into a different field if they are getting frustrated with the behavior of poor people who are perpetually in survival mode and traumatized. Kids who can’t even think of school kids who can’t even make it into school and adults who can’t even think of rent. There are people dealing with things that were done to them that were truly sinister to the point where that is all that they think about all day. People without access to effective therapy who are trapped and usually do end up evicted or expelled because they can’t hold down a job or make it to school anymore because of having no sense of safety because of things they’ve experienced or people in the world who they could run into who have harmed them and would do it again.

That’s an extreme example there are infinitely more people who can’t even think of rent bc they NEED medication or money for an uber or gas to get to work or deal with the cost of the car they might need to sleep in next month. Those people are also getting evicted simply because they can’t keep up with rent and professor over here is recycling the avocado toast argument to explain why they actually can’t stand these people.