#eating strategies

[ir-dr]

Day 3474 - 25 March 2023

🌭..?

.//projectTiGER

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hey, I was wondering why you think Roxy was destined to end up with Eridan? I get the shared wizard interest and the quirk foreshadowing I guess, but that still seems like a large stretch. It's kinda like saying that Equius and Dirk are going to end up together because they both like robots and horses. It's just seems like the sort of character remixing that Hussie uses a lot in Homestuck. But what do you think?

Roxy

- fucking LOVES WIZARDS

- is a hipster and literally wears a colorswapped version of eridans scarf

- is pink and bubbly

- uses riflekind

- has a perfectly opposite powerset to eridan (can create anything by stealing its void away vs. can destroy anything with pure belief) and are connected to each other through the matriorb

- has a crush on a troubled, eccentric prince so you know that's her type

- quirk cameo with momlonde

Eridan

- Is a wizard

- Is a hipster and literally wears a colorswapped version of roxy's scarf

- Uses riflekind

- Had a huge crush on Feferi, a bubbly pink girl whom he (wrongly) believed to be so nice she might not even be capable of pitch, so we know that's his type

- The equal and opposite powerset & quirk cameo

At the end of the day I can't tell you what to ship, nor am I interested in making anyone ship anything, but I'm kind of just saying, the things that make Roxy predisposed to liking Eridan are, like, the biggest parts of her character, and Eridan is very easy & would pretty much say yes to anybody, but Roxy is also definitely His Type and Eridan is a simp who thrives under any sort of positive attention & would do anything someone asked if they were giving him positive feedback. or attention at all. case in point kanaya fucking hates him but at least she talks to him and he's constantly praising the shit out of her

Jane and Jake also have their introductions IMMEDIATELY followed by talking about how they've got a thing for "cobalt" hunks and "cerulean babes" respectively, so setting up roxy with eridan also fits into a pattern of the b2 kids being set up to date a dead troll. still rereading this part of the comic, but it really jumped out to me how blatant it was for jake and jane

[rolandkaros]

really a shame holger rune isn't actually a homo because he would be a huge hit all around with the non-tennis gays. like easy way to get a massive fanbase. holger are you writing this down. homosexuality is your calling

[iguessricciardo]

they fact that he’ll go out this way is what’s devastating to me

[roboticchibitan]

You ever have a moment where you're like "oh god I've become my father."

To be fair it's in like the most benign way but still

So, when I was a kid, my dad was really into canning and preserving fruits and vegetables. But he was also cheap. So if he saw a fruit tree on someone's property where the fruit was clearly just falling to the ground and rotting and not being eaten he would knock on their door and be like "hey can I have your fruit?" As a kid and teen this was INTENSELY embarrassing, of course.

But now. Now I am an adult and last fall I noticed one of my neighbors has a nut tree of some kind and the nuts were rotting on the sidewalk. I'm pretty sure they're walnuts considering what season it was. So I am strongly considering asking them if I can have their nuts for yarn dyeing and candied nuts purposes, with an offer to share some of the candied nuts if they'd like. I've convinced myself this is "building community" and "reducing food waste" not "your neighbor being weird." Who am I. What have I become.

[copperweave]

Dr. Kel has done more for helping my ED than any therapist tbh. This man will literally be hunted down by the burger god and starve to death over eating the same shitty, unfulfilling easy meal every day. Like yeah man, I don't want to get hunted down by burgers, guess I better eat a variety of foods.

Did leave me with an unreasonable enjoyment of shrimp tho.

[pollenallergie]

“do the hardest task first”

no. just… no.

hot take: this doesn’t work for people with adhd (in my experience/from what i’ve heard from other people with adhd in my life). i recommend doing the easy/moderately difficult stuff first, that way you can convince yourself that it’s all going to be this easy and undemanding. then hyper-focus will kick in because your brain is like, “yeah, we can do this, we’ve got this.” then, before you know it, you’ve completed both the easy tasks and the hard tasks while hyperfocusing.

like, on a serious note, it’s always been easier for me to convince myself to get the most difficult tasks done when i’m already working/in the working frame of mind, not when i’m laying in bed or sitting on the couch, mindlessly scrolling through stuff on my phone, and struggling to start at all.

if the choice comes down to you not starting at all or starting with the easiest task first (which, for me, it often does), always, always pick starting with the easiest task first. sometimes you need a small victory, a little bit of an accomplishment, to give you the courage to take on bigger challenges.

[angelsdean]

me pulling myself out of the grips of fanon cas and realizing one of my wips (pretty much abandoned) would need to be completely overhauled bc it makes no sense to me anymore (post-canon dean grieving and starting a garden / keeping bees / visiting the farmers market every week bc these things remind him of cas. like he can still do all these things, but not because of cas). and gonna have to rewrite a scene in my long time travel wip where they stop at a roadside market and dean buys cas some honey as a gift bc honestly i don't think canon cas would care abt that anymore. the whole bees / honey!cas thing in canon stemmed from his completely broken down mental state and he only admired the bees so much because they reminded him the structure and hierarchical order of heaven. but it's not like one of his genuine interests

[jimkinnz]

homunculus facts¡

every year' thousands of homunculi are unmade by the callousness of their masters• your gift of just §1 a day can help this•

commonly effective enrichment strategies for your homunculus can include introducing new scents like doe urine or peppermint' as well as putting their food inside of little compartments in a box• just make sure the gnomes don,t escape¡

i fucking love to squish berries between my fingers i could do it all day•

while homunculi often eat other living things' the most treasured are those imbued with elemental magic• this explains the gnome thing' but also includes sylphs' undines' and salamanders•

there,s a loose rock in the masonry of one wall of the lab• i,ve been able to pry it out' but there were no treasures there• ಠ⁠ᴥ⁠ಠ

you guys ever heard of video games¿

[somepsychopomp]

Monster!Odysseus AU

Well then! I'm now writing an AU where Odysseus is Scylla. (Literally making him the monster, literally making him the "same" as Scylla, etc etc etc.) This was supposed to be 1 scene but now i have a whole fic outlined 😭 So yeah, here's the rough draft of the first portion.

Basically, Odysseus failed to reunite with his family and in his grief, he transformed into a monster. He's now doing Scylla's thing and eating men alive but also he's super sad still.

Word count: Approx. 2k

Warning for blood and all that stuff.

The wooden ship groaned softly in the current, the sound of waving lapping against the hull everpresent. They were five days behind schedule due to a litany of bad luck: poor winds, violent storms, cloudy nights obscuring their view of the stars. They lost a good number of men to their misfortune. 

And the food was running ever lower. The farther they travelled, the less fish their nets turned up. 

Half of the two-hundred man crew laid below deck, sleeping in their hammocks after a full day of rowing. The other half took up their oars in an attempt to propel themselves home before hunger had its way with them.

The ship’s captain steered the vessel, studying the way ahead. For three days and three nights, he hadn’t slept in an effort to guide his men home. Ithaca should only be a day or two away, and at last, they had a mild wind to their backs. 

They needed to return home not only because their families were waiting for them, but because the King of Ithaca was not a patient man. He’d no doubt lash every man ten times, one for each day and night delayed. He’d do worse if he were in a foul mood by the time they arrived. 

The captain was no war general or soldier. He was merely a seaman who was paid to bring a ship to Sparta with goods to trade, and to come back with the king’s gold. All he wanted was to finish his job so he could close his eyes and rest. 

The route he had in mind was tricky and dangerous, however. He knew that up ahead, only a few hours away now, was a vast series of rocky islands jutting from the sea. They formed a kind of labyrinth, one large enough for a ship to pass through if they were careful. The captain didn’t fear some rough terrain, though. The most terrifying aspect was that, at an inevitable point in their passage, the rocks on either side of their ship would rise up and tower far above their heads. The narrow strait made of jagged stone could easily rip their ship to shreds if they weren’t careful. 

There were plenty of tales of wayward ships losing themselves on the rocks. Sailors said there were all sorts of hazards there, anything from shallow spots to run aground, to sirens waiting for them. It was risky to take the shortcut, but sailing around the oceanic canyon would add at least two more days to their voyage. 

The captain felt his stomach growl and steeled his nerves, issuing a silent prayer to the gods for safe passage. 

Ahead of him, the men rowing the oars were murmuring stories to each other to stave off the boredom and exhaustion. 

One man asked, “You know what they say about Ithaca’s previous king, right?”

This again. 

It was no doubt the most famous story to come out of rocky, weather-worn Ithaca in centuries.

“He killed himself, didn’t he?” a second man asked. 

“Wrong! They say that Odysseus of Ithaca still lives.”

“How can that be?” a third voice asked, still carrying the lighthearted tone of a boy, “He threw himself from the top of the palace into the sea over fifty years ago.”

The captain rolled his eyes. Everyone knew the story. No doubt the men will now embellish it to give the poor lad a scare. 

Over half a century ago, the great and terrible Trojan War raged for ten long years. When it ended, every man that remained sailed home without issue. All but poor, unlucky, wayward Odysseus. Despite the supposed sharpness of his mind, he wandered the sea and its islands, encountering all manner of people and beasts, for ten more miserable years. He went from a proud king to a haggard old man. And due to his foolishness, he lost everything. 

Every last soldier under his command, his ships, his mind. But he didn’t die, no. When Odysseus returned home at last, empty-handed and alone, it was to find Ithaca turned over to a new king. Odysseus walked into his former home to find his wife married to a much younger man.

All the world had assumed Odysseus was dead, leaving him in the past. And his young son, who might not even have existed, had long since been slain by the new king to keep him from attaining any political power. 

In his grief and madness, it was said that Odysseus leapt from the palace wall to meet his watery death below. 

Although, the captain had heard other versions of the tale. He heard men say that the new king drove Odysseus over the edge by spearpoint. Others proclaim that his former wife took one look at him that was so full of pity or disgust, that Odysseus killed himself in shame. The captain wasn’t so sure of that last variant, since the previous queen did die quite soon after she remarried. And that was its own river of rumors: poor Penelope died of a broken heart, poor Penelope was already in failing health when she married, poor Penelope happened to be a victim of her new king when a younger, prettier piece of meat walked by. The captain didn’t much care for those sorts of stories. 

Whatever way Penelope died, some dared to believe that Odysseus never made it home at all and that he was still out there, somewhere, wandering in circles. 

It was all in the past, as far as the captain was concerned. That young usurper, still their current king, was a white-haired elder himself by now. And the name Odysseus was nothing more than a ghost story that sailors used to scare each other with. 

The older men at the oars all chuckled, snapping him out of his thoughts. One of them said, “Aye, it’s all true! My grandfather swears it. When I was a young lad, he told me he was there on the day that Odysseus returned home. My grandfather worked in the palace, you see. And he watched with his own eyes as that old fool threw himself from the highest wall. But!” 

He paused, no doubt to savor the attention drawn to him, “But my grandfather swore on his own life that as Odysseus fell… he changed. What leapt from the wall was a man. What hit the water was a beast, no, a monster more horrible than anything else in the sea. It swam away, never to be seen again.”

There was a pregnant pause. For a moment, all that sounded was the occasional ruffle in the sails and the slap of oars against the water. 

“Really?” the young lad asked. 

A gruff laugh. “Of course not! My grandfather used to fill my head with all sorts of those crazy stories. Gave ya a good run around, though. Didn’t I?”

The men all fell into laughter, even the lad. The captain let them have it, knowing that any distraction from the fatigue and hunger was a good one. Within minutes, the first rocky spire rose from the sea. It was slate gray in the dull moonlight, an omen for what was to come. 

Soon, there were as many rocks jutting from the ocean as there were stars in the sky.

“Steady!” the captain called out as he guided the ship. By then, the rest of the crew had woken from their slumber to man the oars and adjust the sails. It was a constant fight to keep the ship from crashing into any of the stone pillars, running aground on any of the tiny patches of flat rock that claimed to be islands, or losing their oars as the ship was constantly being bumped and jostled from choppy waters. 

They were nearly to the strait. 

Overhead, the moonlight began to die out. The captain risked a glance above, only to see dark clouds forming over the strait. The rest of the sky was only sparsely populated with clouds, but for whatever reason, it looked like a terrible storm was brewing over their only exit out of this nightmare. 

The captain grit his teeth and commanded his men to light enough torches to see by. 

They soon entered what felt like a vast, endless cavern. The only source of light was the orange glow of their fires. It cast elongated, warped shadows across the stone walls to their side of the vessel, constantly tricking the captain into thinking the walls were closing in on them. 

When he thought he saw the smallest shaft of moonlight, he called out, “Nearly there!” 

A few voices cheered in response. No doubt the entire crew was out of breath and terrified by now. 

Just as they dared to hope, the whole vessel came to a grinding halt. The captain was nearly thrown off his feet, but managed to stay upright. The ship had come to such a sudden stop that he didn’t think they’d hit a shallow spot. Rather, it felt like they were caught on something. 

“Captain!” a voice toward the bow of the ship called, “Captain! Come look, it’s a man!” 

More and more men were gathering at the bow. What was going on?

The captain pushed his way to the front of the ship and gazed down at the water. 

He didn’t believe his eyes. Just barely illuminated by the glow of their torches, a man waded in the water. He kept his head bowed, allowing his gray-streaked hair to fall over his face and obscure most of his features. His skin was bare, he was treading water without a chiton or cloak. 

Something felt terribly off here. But their ship was stuck and there was a man in their way. 

“Hail!” the captain called, “Are you in need of saving?”

The man did not respond. A shiver passed through the captain’s body. The more he looked, the more he was sure that this strange man wasn’t wading. Though they could only see his head and part of his upper body, his shoulders didn’t move. His chest didn’t move. He looked completely still. 

Perhaps he was standing. Perhaps they did hit the ground and the water in this portion of the strait was so shallow that a man could stand in it. 

The captain said, “Stranger! What is your name?”

How long had this poor man been here?

At last, the man looked up. 

The captain nearly staggered back, suddenly sick with fear. 

The man before them bore wide, unblinking eyes that wept with silent tears. But his eyes were not full of sorrow. They were full of hunger. 

Something burst from the water behind them, snarling like a wolf but ten times as loud. A man screamed but by the time the captain turned around, he could only catch a glimpse of a black blur retreating into the water. A torch rolled across the deck before someone else snatched it up. 

The captain shouted, “Take up arms!” 

The men drew their spears, but they soon learned it was all futile. 

A sound like snapping jaws drew their attention back to the stranger in the water. He didn’t make a sound as he began to rise. He revealed his full torso and looked like a normal man. Muscled, tanned skin, scarred. He looked like a seasoned sailor, a warrior. But he just. Kept. Rising. 

Instead of two legs, a massive trunk followed. It was almost impossible for the captain’s eyes to make sense of. The best he could describe it, it was like seeing a creature that was half man and half serpent. The beast’s lower half was covered in scales the color of tarnished bronze and speckled with black. 

The trunk widened and widened as the man rose above their heads. 

At last, the captain saw what had snatched up one of his men. He wished he had the courage to weep. But all he could do was stand in terrified silence. 

Six long necks sprouted from what could be considered the monster’s waist, each covered in those same tarnished scales. Each neck terminated in a snarling wolf’s head, one of them still gnawing on the remains of their crewmate, but the heads were wrong. 

They bore the long muzzles, amber eyes, and triangular ears of a wolf, but their skulls were wrapped in leathery, black scales. The eyes glowed with more light than their torches and bore slitted pupils. 

As the wolf heads snarled and growled, the captain caught a glimpse of the teeth within their maws. Three rows of needle-like teeth layered upon each other like a shark. 

The scent of rot and death filled the air. Some men started to gag, others cried out to the gods to save them. 

The captain did not remember what happened next, only that the smell of blood overtook his senses. 

The crew tried to row and tried to fight back, but it was futile. The beast had them in its clutches as its heads moved faster than the eye. One by one, each head stole a man and left behind his trembling, screaming companions. There was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. The captain was sure they were all going to perish. 

All while the face of the man looming above them never changed. He watched them die, he ate them, all while weeping his silent tears. 

But as soon as he had arrived, he was gone. 

The monster sank below the surf and their ship was moving freely again. They rowed for their lives until they were breaching the other side of the strait. The moonlight cast its silver glow upon the endless bloodstains soaking into the wood. 

They lost six men, but none who survived dared to stop rowing for the fear that they were being followed. The captain risked a glance back only one time. 

In the exit to the strait, the upper half of a man watched them flee before vanishing under the water.

[randomnameless]

Land 1 done!

Without crossing the bridge to get rekt'd by the final boss and trigger a bad ending, of course :p

I know the game puts more emphasis on gameplay than on characters, unlike, say, FE 8x2, but damn if every little situation you recruit random characters makes me think of past FE events in different titles and it just... fits? Somehow?

Like, evil empire has trouble conquering a party of Cornia, but behold! A mysterious plague pops up, that is totally not tied to the shady as fuck necromancer who works with the evil empire and says it'd be annoying if people find a cure.

So we have some guy and his army of cleric wearing plague doctor masks trying to find a cure by, uh, experimenting/working on people who already caught the plague, even accepting to work with the evil empire because curing the plague is more important, right?

Ends justify means yadda yadda... save for the part I earlier mentionned, that it is heavily implied the evil empire is the one who created that plague to begin with!

Now, imagine in a FE game if, in the background, we had to rescue people or hear about people being afflicted by a strange and unknown disease... and if that disease was engineered by people for a further motive...

8x2? Nah.

We also have quests where people are fighting for the evil empire who is occupying their land because they believe as long as they obey their people won't be put to the sword...

(I watched my bro play the final chapter, we know how it ends lol)

Not!Cyril fighting against bandits, finding and helping a witch fend off people who are trying to "catch her" - we even get a flimsy excuse for a bikini attire in the process and an answer to the "why do i use spells to rejuvenate myself in a sexy body? It's because I won't be able to move as fast as I can now if I was a crone" other flimsy excuse, etc etc.

Now it's time to enter the land of fucked up siblings relationship (sure Virginia is Alain's cousin - who looks like his mom - and can end up with him, but this is not the kind of Jugdralian stuff I had in mind) and let me tell you, all those plot bunnies I had in Jugdral about Lester believing he was going to become Lord of Jungby all of his life, only to have his role/throne snatched before his eyes by a bum who's apparently his cousin and can use the legendary shiny bow of legend is... basically Drakengard (Drakenhold in english?), but up to eleven.

Ah, and it wouldn't be a post from me if I don't find a way to rant about the localisation lol

Josef, upon meeting Virginia, basically goes in the audio "it's been a long time since I last saw you". In the english version?

Like what are you implying Josef, she wasn't a princess when you saw her last time or didn't have the "standing" fit for a princess?

Besides, I hope the release of the october book won't blow a hole in the Josef's "you were a teenager when we last met" by releasing character ages, but that's not really that important.

This however

Alain greets his long lost cousin, nothing wrong here right?

Well, in the JP audio, he calls her with the "hime" suffix, showing as much deference as Josef, who is a retainer of the royal family. Virginia doesn't use any suffix because that's her, but in Alain's various support convos, we learn that he had to learn and to behave like a proper noble after escaping from his castle 7 years ago, and all this noble/formal stuff is something he doesn't use with his commoner friends.

Ergo, this minor thing here is important, especially in the Drakengard themes : siblings/relatives used to be close, but reuniting after a long period of time or several life changing events, they are changed and even if they want and try to, cannot be as close as they once were.

[shirozen]

Strategize buffet timing

[feketeribizli]

williams looking like the most put together team at the moment is really fucking funny all things considered

[stormandmoonlight]

two common talking points about non-voting from the left:

1. depriving the Democrats of your vote will show that you will not empower genocide and punish them for doing so

2. the Democrats will not be affected if the Republicans win power because they are the same class

does anyone else see a contradiction in terms here?

[mariatesstruther]

okay but a fic following tommy in jackson as he watches sarah’s look-alike grow up and have her baby. maybe he develops his own relationship with this girl and her kid, and it helps him deal with losing sarah??????? perhaps????? stay with me!

like we see how hard it was for joel to see her just once in 1x06. assuming tommy’s been in jackson for years, which i do, he has probably watched this young woman grow into an adult, getting struck with that pain of distant familiarity every single time he sees her. i imagine it would lowkey torture him until he truly confronts his grief over sarah and the life she could’ve lived

and imagine when she—im gonna name her kiara bc i hate when characters don’t have names—gets pregnant. tommy has to watch as kiara’s belly gets bigger and bigger, watch as the jackson community frets over her hand and foot because jackson takes extra special care of it’s pregnant residents, watch from the sidelines as kiara gets a future that sarah will never have while looking just like her

but THEN maybe he gets to know her a little bit???? maybe kiara knows he does housework and eventually asks maria if anyone can help fix-up and baby-proof her little two-bedroom house to prepare for the little one. maria knows tommy would be the perfect man for the job, but she also knows that he keeps careful distance from kiara on purpose

she sees the way his shoulders tense and his easy expression drops every time she’s in his line of sight. she saw how one time, when kiara had come over to talk to maria while she was sitting with him, tommy could barely handle looking at her up close: he ended up staring at his plate and clearing it—even the squash medley, which she knows he fucking hates—until he had reason to leave the hall completely.

but there truly is no one else she would rather help kiara; the only other person that does housework as good as tommy is fuckin jacob, and jacob is seth’s best friend, which means he’s a lowkey bigoted asshole that will only do “favors” for maria if he gets something in return. she, frankly, doesn’t want him anywhere near kiara. so maria still talks to tommy about it, and because he’s the most selfless loving man she’s ever met, he agrees. they talk about backup plans and what tommy should do if he gets too triggered—they’ve been working at distress tolerance and detecting when his mind is going fuzzy, so he knows to get straight to their home and wait for maria when it happens. privately, maria talks to kiara and tells her that tommy is still dealing with some stuff that triggers him and might need breaks once in ahwile; she knows to go get maria immediately if this happens

so tommy helps kiara out, and along the way they get to talking and being more friendly with each other. kiara reveals that she’s extremely nervous to be a mom, that she’s doing it alone (the asshole that was with her split jackson when he foundnout because men still be menning in their apocalypse). she tells tommy that she’s never been more scared to do anything in her whole life, and she lived alone as a young girl in FEDRA-run QZ

and suddenly, tommy realizes he has had almost this exact conversation before. with joel. he remembers standing by and watching joel freak out over baby-proofing their place, raving and ranting: how am i supposed to do this, tommy? we have too many fucking cabinets—look at all of these fucking cabinets! aye, im gonna ruin her. and tommy had been speechless in the face of all that fear. he knows how scared they both were, and he knows what he would’ve wanted to hear then, too. with the gift of time and wisdom, he finally knows what to say

so he comforts kiara, and by some miracle, it actually works. he tells her about joel raising sarah alone, and how terrifying it all seemed, right up until she actually got to them: he tells her how all that terror turned into love the moment he held that little ray of sunshine in his arms. he tells her about how sarah used to be what he and joel called a boo-boo magnet, constantly falling over and knocking into shit, always having bumps, scrapes, and bruises as a result. most importantly, he told kiara, she was always just fine: as long as she felt loved, sarah was always just fine. kiara’s baby would be just fine, too

and this convo changes kiara’s whole perspective, her whole vibe. tommy see’s the difference in her now, when he spots her in the dining hall or walking across town with a hand on her belly, tense with excitement instead of anxiety. he feels the difference in himself, too: he’s no longer struck with the abstract pain of remembrance as he sees her, now. he just feels honest friendship, true familiarity, and a rush of fond protectiveness for her that reminds him of the way he felt for sarah. it doesn’t hurt, or at least not the same way. it feels good, knowing kiara as kiara, not as the ghost of his niece. it feels right

she always makes sure to stop and talk to him when they cross paths, asking him about his work around town (or teasing him about he and maria, because at this point they’re trying to keep it lowkey but. kiara knows. talia knows. half of jackson suspects it and kiara wants the inside scoop okay so SPILL tommy just tell me!!!!!). somehow, tommy has developed a good relationship with the girl he thought he’d never have the guts to speak to

when kiara is on her last couple weeks of pregnancy, mostly bedridden and definitely ready to give birth, she asks tommy to stop by once every few days to have lunch or dinner with her. it always suprises him, but he always goes. they talk mostly about raising children: how different it seems to be post-2003, how scared kiara still is even despite her new confidence, how tumultuous sarah’s first few months were. he realizes, later, that he hasn’t talked about sarah this much to anyone but maria since she’s passed. he finds their conversations ease the ache in him more than avoiding kiara ever could’ve

when kiara has the baby, tommy accidentally becomes a quasi-godfather-uncle-grandparent without even having been asked. it’s clear that, from their time together, kiara is very fond of him—judging from the way her baby, kelsey, always settles down and stares at him in wonder whenever he’s around, it’s clear she likes him too. when kelsey becomes old enough to smile, she’s never ever around tommy without grinning and giggling, enamored by his silly face and silly voice and silly mustache, which she’s always trying to pull off. when kelsey becomes old enough to walk, kiara can’t bring her anywhere near tommy without the toddler trying her best to baby-sprint over to him. more than once, she’s fallen smack-down onto her face and gotten right back up, arms outstretched to tommy as she continues determinedly to toddle over. when kelsey becomes old enough to speak, she’s constantly calling for him and babbling to him when kiara finally brings her over. kelsey can’t even really pronounce her t’s until she’s three, so for awhile she calls tommy “mommy,” and kiara thinks it’s hilarious. she’s called mama anyway, so it doesn’t really matter to her that her baby calls this semi-random grown man mommy. everytime, it makes tommy want to simultaneously laugh and cry

by the time joel shows up, kelsey is six and not-so-obsessed with tommy anymore. her and kiara still join him and maria for dinner at least once a month, and kelsey has distant memories of calling tommy mommy, then uncle mommy, then finally naming him tim-tam-tommy when she turned four, the nickname for him that still stuck. he thinks about warning joel about her, when they talk in the bar, because he sure as hell could’ve used a goddamn warning—but the conversation goes left, so they never get there.

when joel sees kiara and kelsey for the first time, it’s hits him as hard as it once did tommy

tagging @ameerawrites because i feel like u always indulge in tommy trauma brainrot with me and @clickergossip bc this idea started on tommy day :)