#cat screaming at the void

[cai-tan]

Hot take: The Half-Life series was NEVER about zombies.

Overall, zombies make up, like, 20% of encounters between both Half-Life 1 and 2.

The majority of Half-Life 1 was battling aliens of all types; more commonly things like Vortigants, Grunts, and the like. It was also about trying to escape from an active military coverup operation hell-bent on killing you. Your major antagonists were human military units and Very Alive Aliens That Are Not Zombies.

Half-Life 2 only ever showed you zombies that were a direct result of a dystopian fascist regime using biological weaponry to wage bloody war on the humans. The overwhelming majority of Half-Life 2 was a story about fighting back against literal fascist cop aliens. You got one or two chapters dedicated to zombies, with maybe a handful of encounters with them afterwards. Your first few combats in Half-Life 2 are with Civil Protection.

Calling the Resistance Crossbow a "weapon for hunting the undead" is incredibly insulting. No sane HL2 player ever uses the fucking thing for zombies anyways; it's a ranged sniper weapon for taking out the motherfucking space cops. It's a waste of ammo to use against primarily melee enemies that go down to a single shotgun altfire.

Gordon Freeman is not your Walking Dead or Last of Us protagonist, he is canonically an anti-military, anti-cop, anti-fascist Right Dude in the Wrong Place.

Half-Life was never about fucking zombies.

[psycohousecat]

If you feel that your mind is succumbing to the lure of the void be sure to bring lots of treats and catnip .. 😱❤️😱

[turtle-steverogers]

Consider: Bucky lets Alpine wander all over their kitchen counters if she pleases. Steve, however, tries to keep her off the counters. Sometimes Bucky walks in on Steve having a dead serious conversation with Alpine (sometimes even in his serious, disappointed Captain America voice), like, c'mon, girl, we talked about this.

OKAY CUZ ALPINE AND STEVE'S FEUD FEEDS MY LITERAL SOUL LIKE ON FUCKING GOD THIS IS EVERYTHING TO ME. now this isn't about kitchens or sandwiches, but you get the gist.

also norman is their dog. here is a picture commissioned from the super talented @hopelessartgeek by my dear friend @buffyscribbless !!! coolest thing ever!!!!

Enjoy!!!

-

“Bucky, get your fuckin’ cat, Jesus Christ!”

Steve resists the urge to throw the goddamn thing as Alpine bats his head with her paw for the millionth time since the movie started. Norman was growling up at her, drowning out the sounds of Indiana Jones in the background.  

“If you wanna murder her already, I’m not gonna stop you,” Steve grumbles to Norman, ducking his head as Alpine takes another swing at his ear.

“No, no one is murdering anyone,” Bucky snaps, padding into the room and plucking Alpine up from her purchase on the back of the couch. “You coulda just moved her if she was bothering you so much.”

“I tried!” Steve cries, sitting up indignantly. “She just hissed at me and started doing it again!”

Norman was whining now, turning in circles by Steve’s feet and casting furtive glances towards where Alpine was grooming herself on Bucky’s lap.

“That fucking gremlin seems to only like you,” Steve says, not bothering to keep the distaste from his tone.

“She can sense that you’re bothered with her,” Bucky says, staring lovingly down at Alpine, who is now asleep against his stomach.

“I don’t think cats work like that,” Steve scrunches his nose. “I just think she hates me.”

Bucky shrugs. “She’ll warm up to ya.”

“Hip hip fucking hooray.”

-

“Norman, no! No, Norman, leave her- no- fuck, BUCKY!”

Bucky barrels into the room freezing momentarily to take in the scene of Steve holding Norman back while Alpine shoves soil at them from her perch on one of the windowsills.  

He stifles a laugh and Steve shoots him a glare. “Shut the hell up and get your fucking demon out of the succulents.”

Swallowing his laughter and putting on a solemn face, Bucky crosses to Alpine and sets her on the ground.

“She’s just restless,” Bucky insists. “I just need to get her a cat tree or something.”

“Then fucking do it and don’t let her mess with my plants!” Steve just barely stops himself from stomping his foot.

“Okay, okay.” Bucky raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll go do that now. Go walk Norman or something.”

Steve huffs, grumbling to himself as he grabs Norman’s leash off its hook. On his way out, he tosses a middle finger in Alpine’s direction.

“Steven Grant!”

“She deserves it!”

-

It’s the middle of the goddamn night and Alpine is scratching. Bucky had kept to his word and gotten Alpine a cat tree, but since then, the fucking terror has done nothing but scratch the fucking thing. Steve wouldn’t mind if Bucky hadn’t insisted that they keep the tree in their bedroom so, ‘Alpine can sleep near us, c’mon, you let Norman sleep in our bed.’

Steve had lost that argument as soon as the Norman card was pulled. You can’t really argue with hypocritical logic.

“Will you please stop already!?” Steve hisses into the dark quiet of the room, careful not to wake Bucky or Norman up.

He sees Alpine’s yellow eyes turn in his direction and they hold eye contact for a tense moment before she hops up onto the bed next to Steve.

“Oh no you don’t,” Steve says through clenched teeth as Alpine begins to knead her paws into his stomach.

Steve groans, letting his head drop back onto the pillow. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

-

He’s home alone, fist clenched tightly in his hair as he tries to regain control over his breathing.  Norman’s hovering nearby, providing company and comfort, but not coming closer for fear of overwhelming Steve.  

He hadn’t expected the movie he’d been watching to trigger him, but one loud fight and a door slam later, he was 7 years old again, cowering under the kitchen table while his ma and dad screamed at each other. 

The shaking is getting worse and Steve has half a thought to call Bucky, but he’s in a meeting right now at the Tower and that would be unfair to ask of him. No, he could handle this by himself. Everything was going to be okay.

Another shout sounds from the TV and Steve gasps, reaching for the remote and forcefully shutting it off.  He braces his forearms on his knees and leans forward, opening his eyes and attempting to tap back into his surroundings.  Norman comes a little closer, nudging his hand with his nose until Steve begins to run a shaking hand down his head.

It does a little to calm his nerves, but his heartbeat is still too erratic and his senses are still foggy and anxious.  Across the room, Alpine meows loudly and Steve looks up in time to see her knock her plastic food bowl off the counter.  It’s empty and bounces when it hits the ground and Alpine fixes Steve with a look as if to say, ‘feed me’.

Steve huffs out a surprised laugh, panic forgotten as he stands from the couch, crossing to pick up the bowl before filling it with cat food.  He sets it back on the counter and watches in surprise as Alpine nestles her head against his arm before digging into the food.

“Ya know, you’re not actually that bad.” Alpine purrs in response and Steve smiles. “I think I might not hate you.”

Alpine cuts herself off from eating and begins to convulse violently, spitting up a hairball a few moments later.

Steve blinks. “What the fuck.”

Alpine just looks at him again, meowing.

[naamahdarling]

Today's medical update, please pardon any weirdness as I am using speech to text, and please excuse how long this is. I put an excellent picture of Fancy at the end for you. Here we go.

The shortest version is that my GP is going to try and centralize this. I have made an appointment for Monday. We are going to start over from the very beginning. New specimens, new cultures, everything.

The long version is kind of wild ride. It's going under a cut

My GP is now telling me that on two of the occasions that I went to Urgent Care or the hospital for a UTI, the records say that I did not actually have one.

This makes no sense whatsoever. I was symptomatic and I could smell it. On both of these occasions, I was told in no uncertain terms that I did have one.

I do not believe I was lied to at either facility. That means the only possibilities are that the testing was done improperly, the results were charted improperly, the records were sent over improperly, or I didn't understand what was being said to me.

At this point, with this absolute clown show that has been unfolding around me, this ridiculous circus where each act is fraught with nonsensical antics even more baffling than the ones before, I am literally unable to come to any conclusions. This is absolutely maddening.

And it's frightening, because there is something wrong, genuinely, and it might be something that they are unable to detect with the methods they are currently using. That's scary for a multitude of reasons, one of which is that they are not going to be willing or able to treat something if they do not think it exists. The other is that it opens the door to the possibility of their being further testing, which makes me violent to even contemplate. I want what is wrong with me to be simple, easy to treat, and relatively benign.

This has been frustrating, and drawn out, and I am sick of it. By itself it isn't enough to completely break me down. It's been almost unbearable when combined with the facts that I have serious concerns about the health of three of my cats, that my father seems to be worsening in his condition, that I have several other medical storylines going concurrently with this one, one of which is extremely stressful and frightening, and that all of this fuckery and running around has caused me to have to cut out most of the very, very few enjoyable and meaningful activities that are present in my life.

It has impacted my ability to be present for my partner, and for my pets, for me to sustain communication and relationships with people who are not my boyfriend or my best friend, and to simply fucking relax.

Also I can't fuck. Like, I know that this is the laugh at horny people website, but that is significant. Receiving not just physical touch but intimate touch is one of the very few ways I have of assorting ownership over my own body at this time.

I feel my identity has shifted from an internally defined "struggling person just going about their business" to an externally defined identity as a patient with a body that is sick and who must now structure their life around the demands of a system that does not care about me in the slightest, even though the providers usually do.

From the outside I know that this doesn't seem that terrible. I've spent the vast majority of this with no pain, and the times I have been in pain haven't crested a 3. If it weren't for the fact that I don't know what it is, it would be relatively trivial!

Unfortunately, because this isn't all I have going on, it's been really fucking things up. I space my appointments out so that I have time to recover between each one. I have PTSD, I have medical trauma, I have emotional reactions after stepping into a medical facility for any reason, and when things go wrong even in a very small way they can be intense. I manage this by allowing myself to have the reaction, experience all of the feelings, and come back to myself. It is a healthy way of doing things. It doesn't work, though, if I'm having to deal with one thing after another and no time in between to recover from it. This is essentially what has been happening to me for 2 months. Appointments, phone calls, messages, fixing mistakes, having to explain my history repeatedly as it gets ever more complicated. There's a lot more to it than just one appointment a week, which is already a lot for me.

I know this is something that chronically ill people deal with all the time, often for years, often for life, but the extent of it is new to me and very difficult to bear. My personality is vanishing under the weight of all of this crap. I do not feel like myself.

So yeah, sorry for rambling so much but this is just been...I don't even have the words to describe it. Nonsensical, but in an unfortunately consequential way. I've been going in circles all this time, apparently.

I don't really expect anybody to read all of this. But if you did, thank you. It means a lot to me. This place, and all of you, function as a sort of pressure relief, and a source of constant, pleasurable entertainment. I know many of you empathize with what I'm going through, and that helps me to feel less alone. That all by itself is so important.

Anyway, here's my cat.

She got to be on the puzzle table and was very smug about it.

[rabbitsonthemoon]

I think that giving Aizawa these sketchy-styled despair eyes is such a huge fuckin' emotional whump in the smallest detail. Mic is the one who reacts loud and feisty, perfectly in-character. Just like Aizawa is, here, answering the question of how his character would react to a moment of something horrifying. Hiding his face with his hair, his hand, his scarf, but that one scarred, uncovered eye conveys his despair more than anything else could. It's a gesture saturated in so much of his character as a person who doesn't like the spotlight, who prefers to be stoic and private, who's still human despite being a pillar of strength and discipline for his students to follow, whose eyes are his weapon and his vulnerability and I'm feral about it.

[shummthechumm]

speaking of goosefeather and yellowfang i actually gave a reason for why they have powers at all in the rewrite.

it essentially boils down to starclan being terrified at the near immediate promise of superpowered beings being born from their collective action to allow/vote for skyclan to be exiled; because they pissed off whatever higher power that resides beyond them. it's established in canon that starclan is not responsible for every prophecy, INCLUDING the po3 one.

so, in an effort to combat these future threats, they attempted to create the three on their own. and if that failed, they could still use these cats as tools to fight whatever was to come.

goosefeather was the first "blessed" cat, and it shows. his powers tap into that higher source of prophecies/omens, things that the mortal ear was never meant to hear--it fucks with him. he gets bombarded with visions and warnings of scenarios he will never live to see, and it ends up causing more trouble for himself and the clan than good. starclan realized this and goes "oh shit" and backs off for a while.

yellowfang is next, though her power is reeled back a fair amount. it's still intrusive, specifically when she's younger, but it does something. she's pushed into the healers den because of this.

i have more thoughts about brokenkit being framed as a harebringer of destruction by starclan to take some heat off their back, but that's a very WIP thing atm.

tdlr; starclan fucked around and found out...and unintentionally unleashed multiple tyrants onto the forest. one plus is that a certain ginger kittypet is brought to their attention because of this chaos, though.

[yipeewahoo]

i love when his stupid little ears do the stupid little thing

[starsbugsbones]

[ * artistic rendition ]

[akkivee]

cute bad ass

[bunnariii]

would you still giv huggies?

[px-px-pc]

[touyasdoll]

if you don’t think Touya gets clingy when he’s drunk you are so wrong

[qourmet]

we will get thru thins togethr i promise, cos we Gotta

[rabbitsonthemoon]

No but where the fuck did Alastor live before he decided to slap a radio tower on the hotel does he just have a bunch of radio towers scattered around the ring of hell with overnight bags stuffed under the broadcasting chairs.

[peaches2217]

Since I work the day of, my girlfriend and I are celebrating Valentine’s Day today. So I decided to go get myself a flower… and what do you know, Peter took an immediate shining to it!

So of course I’m cooing over my baby boy and his adorable curiosity, because look! He’s being so gentle! What a sweetheart!

Alas…

[distant-screaming]

Ray is sooo funny. Mew interacts with another guy for three (3) seconds and he's gearing up for a fight. Said guy starts hitting on Mew and Ray gets so blackout drunk he can't even get home. He's so dramatic I love him