#everything else i've listed i've been able to at least see how they relate

[velvetvexations]

Hey velvet, glad to see you’re back. I’m sorry you got powerjacketed by your own sisters and allies— you’re an easy target for exclusionists and crypto-radfems/transradfems because of your discourse alignments. I may not agree with all of your positions, and at times do believe you could be more receptive to other transfems’ points, but you dont deserve to be harassed out of your own safe space.

Please don’t feel the need to put yourself out there for your transmasc siblings. You got off pretty consequence-free this time, but i imagine much more severe hearsay could easily spread about you if you dont prioritize your safety more. being a transfem with an opinion on this site is hard and i wish you the best ❤️

If it helps any, I literally had tears in my eyes recently because I had a really nice conversation with a self-identified TMA for the first time. I'd talked before about how it would be easy for good and rational people to adopt a system that disadvantaged them but it would be more inherently selfish to do so when it advantaged you, but in retrospect maybe that WAS wrong of me to say. Maybe I WAS being a bit transmisogynyistic, because I was still wrapped up in frustration with other transfems at least partly as a group, even if I tried insisting I didn't think it was most of them.

But I was working with the data I had at the time, which is that I was able to come to borderline wholesome agree-to-disagree conclusions with TMEs while TMAs seemed to exclusively be hateful no matter how hard I tried to approach as a civilized being (and have continued to do so, despite declaring I'd give it up awhile ago), or if I did start out confrontational was specifically because they had takes completely unrelated to gender that smashed my berserk button, at which point that eclipsed anything else.

But then I talked to a TMA who made a post I thought was unfair, and they were like "yeah sorry I was just venting if I was talking about this in a way that was actually trying to spread awareness I'd have worded it better because I agree with you that it's a situation where the problem is people trying too hard to be respectful and the best way of actually dealing with that if one was to attempt it isn't getting angry with them".

And like! That very brief interaction wasn't even about TMA/TME, but they just had it listed as an identifier, and that made me completely reconsider the way I'd been viewing transfems, even if only a portion of transfems involved in an extremely specific discourse. Because I'd seen such a range of self-identified TMEs, from asshole pickmes to people who were just genuinely trying to be good allies, but here at last was a TMA I just disagreed with over TMA/TME language.

So I literally cried over that.

I mean, I didn't investigate her blog. Maybe if I looked into it I would indeed find that she believed in really awful things, TMA/TME-related or otherwise, but the actual content of that interaction was emphasizing that kindness is important when one is feeling that "TMEs" are making well-intentioned missteps so it still gave me a measure of faith.

The other thing is that something I had been worried about was my deep lore that made me a bit obsessively paranoid about dragging back up, but I talked about that a little while ago (cw for CSA) and since then I've felt safer about Velvet Nation being understanding and caring since I've already brought up the context of everything that happened.

And, also, as much as I do love people and try to live the Superman quote in my pinned post to the very best of my ability, I also have a bottomless need for attention, so.

[swordswoman97]

Pirates SMP Chekhov's Guns

So I decided to throw together a quick list of all the Chekhov's guns I've noticed in Pirates SMP. Basically, anything that's been mentioned where I'm very certain it's going to come back into play eventually, though with some of them I have no idea how

The robed people from day one. We know they did something bad to Guqqie, and they somehow turned the corrupted isle into stone, or at least mostly to stone. I almost guarentee we haven't seen the last of them.

The corruption, and Cruppy's connection to it. Cruppy is a pretty constant presense, and we know not all of the corruption was turned to stone cause apparently Acho found some. And brought it back to the faction isles. Why did star think that was a good idea? I don't know. Also Ros seems to building with blocks the corruption was made of so...

The crypt on the sandy isle with the pit. It's tied to whatever is going on with the Gabriel plotline, and with the Slayer claiming that opening it will doom them all, I will be very surprised.

Whatever group is trying to find the treasure Gabriel is after. This is an easy one, but I do think the repercussions are going to be major. This is a group of Kestrels. Not just some group of rouge pirates. One of the other factions. They locked the Slayer up in cage, tried to hold Gabriel captive under the Kestrel base. This is not gonna be good for relations between the Herons and the Kestrels when this secret gets out, and honestly a part of me wonders if this might lead to just full out war between the factions. Kestrels and Kites vs Herons and Nightingales maybe?

That weird ship that attacked Owen. For anyone who didn't see the stream, during his stream yesterday while completely a treasure quest, Owen got shot in the face by a cannon from a larger ship. This is not one of the ships the players can currently buy, plus the only other pirates online at the time were Ros and Martyn, and it definitely wasn't them. Owen said that it was probably a Kite, but other than that theory we really don't know who or what they were. The ship was too far off to really see who might have been on it, and Owen's death message didn't show a username for whoever killed him. They also didn't stick around, by the time Owen returned they were long gone, with the only sign is happened was an odd grave made for his death. And as far as I know this is the only sighting of this weird ship. It wasn't the one that chased them during the Saving Gabriel quest, and it hasn't attacked anyone else (that I know of.) Everything about it is just... weird.

The ice wall Martyn and Sausage found. While exploring today apparently Martyn and Sausage found some weird ice wall, that also might have made strange noises? This information comes second hand so I don't have details. Now I will say, I'm fairly sure this is probably Martyn finding something he's not supposed to be able to access again but who knows? It's especially weird cause the climate of the isle and the surrounding seas is very tropical in vibe. Lots of jungle and palm trees, plus I think one single island with oak and birch. What is a giant wall of ice doing in a tropical sea? This is especially weird cause the only other example we have of a cold area is the area the robed people brought Guqqie to. Did Sausage and Martyn manage to find that place? Were they supposed to be able to? I don't know and I don't think so. Edit: People who watched the stream said it seemed like the pair were meant to find it so I take the bits about Martyn finding something else he's not supposed to be able to access back. Considering he's done it twice already though, can you really blame me for thinking it might have happened again? Further Edit: Yeah, the official twitter just posted about it, that was definitely meant to be found.

[symbioticsimplicity]

Just got to season 7 and I have some thoughts on souled!Spike.

So my whole worldview on rewatching this series has been different from when I watched it when I was younger. There's been a lot of things I liked or thought were fine the first go around that I don't see the same at all now.

Spike getting his soul back is one of those. I have incredibly mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I fucking love him for looking at himself, deciding that he wanted to be better than he currently was, and making the effort to change. That's a huge thing, especially for someone who supposedly is "evil".

But that's the entire reason I hate it too.

To me, a soul in this context is very much a representation of the idea that people are intrinsically good and therefore worthy of love and respect. That being good is the only way someone could or should truly love you. Its certainly what Spike believes and the narrative backs it up.

Setting aside how reductive that is, I dislike that idea because it ignores choice.

Before Spike got his soul back, whenever he did something good, that was a choice he consciously made. He chose to go against his nature and do things that made him a pariah with his own kind, regularly.

Sure, you could argue that he started that because of the chip, so it wasn't necessarily a choice. But he didn't have to start slaying demons. He didn't have to help Buffy, or get close with her friends and family. Those were all choices, the only thing the chip did was keep him from being able to cause meaningful harm. Everything else was a choice.

I personally think that its far more noble to chose to be kind and helpful when you have no reason to.

Like yeah, he eventually wanted Buffy to love him, but he didn’t start off that way. Falling in love motivates plenty of people, and I think it was pretty telling that he could do that even without a soul.

Idk, it just leaves a bitterness in me that they only genuinely start treating Spike like a person after he goes through such a drastic and painful change. Like that makes him more worthy of their care, like he hadn't already been a friend for years.

I know it was also in part a response to Seeing Red, but I've also got a laundry list of complaints about that too. I think it was OOC as all fuck, it was shitty for the actor, and overall an unnecessary character assassination in a season that was already really full of S/A overtones, I don't get why they'd toss something so horrible at a ship they planned to make endgame other than to get to the soul plot which could have come about literally any other way, especially when even at his worst Spike never showed any sort of proclivity towards that.

It just.... I really don't like the idea that love is something you have to be worthy of. I dont like the idea that you have to change your entire person and suffer for it to be meaningful. I don't like the idea that everything that Spike had done for them up to there was ultimately meaningless because he didn't have a soul to back it up. Especially after all the emotional abuse season 6 puts him through.

I would at least have liked for there to be a scene where he's clearly suffering soul related issues and Buffy just apologies to him. Because she knows he did it for her, she knows how much pain he's in because she's seen Angel going through it, and he's been doing it for longer so fresh must be even worse. Just an apology because someone she cares for is in deep pain because all he wanted was to be "better" for her, because she made him feel that way. I just want it to be shown as the desperate, hopeful, scream for love that it was rather than an obligatory requirement of earning that love.

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

How do all the Med Cats get along? Aside from uh, well I doubt Runningbird is too excited to talk to any of them.

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for over

a

YEAR

I remember that it was sent while I was doing those "ask a character and have them respond in drawing form" because that's what I was gonna do with this ask, and that's why it was taking so damn long to answer

but I'm in my second year of university now, so chances are I'm not gonna have the chance to draw the answer as I've been hoping to do since *checks notes* MAY OF 2022.

So let's just answer it now, shall we?

(I SUSPECT that the person who sent this is someone still following the blog 00 so hopefully they can see their question go answered at last!)

The Medicine cat Community in The Place of No Stars

Many would at first think that no one helped anyone but themself in the Dark Forest, and they're partly right.

Why do medicine cats get together?

Well, that could be for many reasons. They genuinely enjoy the company, they're with someone they can relate to, they enjoyed healing in life and still do, they want to be special, or maybe they just like to help with herbs so that they can stave off their own boredom.

Individually, it's the same as in life--everyone with proper med cat training knows everything that a medicine cat should know.

In groups, particularly in the med cat community, tasks are more divided by skill.

Fleathistle, for example, is a wonderful healer, but even more than that he's great at growing plants. He's responsible for at least 80% of the herbs that grew and can be useful in the Dark Forest. He, with the help of his mate and close friends, created the 'Dark Garden,' where a field-full of different herbs and medicines grow, many of which unheard of in life, as Fleathistle experimented with them, creating some herbs from scratch.

Now, Fleathistle is still a medicine cat. If you need healing, you can go to him as much as you can go to anyone. But if you need particular herbs, it's better to go to him above anyone else. (This is in a similar sense of 'all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads' if that makes sense?)

++

Myrtlewing is another case of 'the best one to go to in a certain situation.'

True, Myrtlewing would also be the scariest one to go to, as in life he experimented with his patients, putting their lives and health at grave risk for his own curiosity and entertainment, but it's due to these experiments and others he performed on cats that makes him so useful.

Myrtlewing would tear cats open and apart and test out how to keep them alive for as long as he wished in spite of their horrible injuries. Because of this, if a cat were to receive a horrible injury, he's the best healer to go to because of his knowledge of how to keep the cat alive.

In simpler terms, he's the "surgeon" of the group, the only one able to heal a cat's torn up insides--though he's nowhere near as talented as human surgeons.

He's the one to go to if someone is in grave trouble and / or if someone has a particularly horrible injury.

++

Shiverrose's talents as a healer lies most notably in how she cures sickness.

Like all medicine cats, she's great at healing wounds, but illness is where her skills really show.

She has great memory and fantastic critical thinking skills, which allows her to come to a diagnostic conclusion much quicker than other medicine cats.

She only needs to hear a list of your symptoms to figure out in a matter of seconds what is wrong with you and what may be best to heal you with (she may also go to Fleathistle for the second part, as he knows more about the Dark herbs than anyone else).

She would probably be just as good with wounds if such injuries were troubling to figure out too. It's tricky to figure out why someone may have a dry throat and bellyache, it's rather easy to see why their leg was broken.

----

There are also those who were medicine cats in life but no longer wish to heal, and therefore do not count as part of this Medicine Cat Club.

Sageleaf, for example, would very much like for everyone to leave her alone forever, thank you.

=========

@ambitiousauthor @frightnightindustries @starfalcon555 @wills-woodland-warriors @umbranoxs @elementaldeityoffood @liberhoe

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

arjuna bby ofccc 🥺🥺🥺

gonna wrap this up by doing arjuna and arjuna alter! shockingly the arjuna blog got a few entries for arjuna...incredible....

but yes, this is the last ask i'll be doing i did 11 of these so i think thats probably fair

favorite thing about them

everything. well

for arjuna i like that he feels pressured to perform perfectly at all times but still cant help resenting that that same performance doesnt come naturally to him like it seems to do with other people. i find it very relatable. i like the gap of him simultaneously being incredibly confident to the point of seeming smug in his abilities in things that he is familiar with/can practice, and his deep insecurity with basically everything else (especially when they're less tangible and unable to be practiced.) the fact that he seems to find himself unworthy of being loved if he isnt useful or helpful in some way is incredibly familiar to me, so it bothers me to see people miss that side of his character and brush him off as arrogant when a lot of it is overcompensating on things he knows he's good at so he can prove he's valuable. i find his sadness, anger and resentment that he masks and tries to downplay incredibly human and its been really nice seeing him grow out from his inital withdrawn confines.

also ngl i've wanted to shoot my older brother's head off as well but i know id probably react like him after. probably. maybe.

also i like his fluffy hair and pretty eyes

i also like how arjuna alter functions both initially as a mirror reflecting arjuna's own toxic perfectionism back onto the world around him, showing how the continuation of that ideal harms not only yourself but the people around you, and how he functions later as a glimpse into what arjuna was like prior to some of the most defining events of his life. what little glimmers we've seen of him are both incredibly compelling and incredibly tragic as someone who's lost their identity and reason for being the way they are. we know nothing of how he ended up the way he is, and hes a shell of the person he was. and yet even so, he was able to retain some small sense of self, and although he'll never be the same as his old self he can still have a life and form a new purpose

also i like how hes a cute kitty :3

least favorite thing about them

*passes the fate writers $5* write him interacting or thinking about literally anyone other than karna for the love of god

ditto for arjuna alter and also i want him to have more backstory bc i KNOW he could be really good its just. they wont do it.

favorite line

all of them. all of them

but also

t. thanks. im gonna go. go cry for a little bit thank you

i also liked arjuna alter's voiced lb4 scene where he was dying bc he sounded totally fucked up then and it was awesome (painful) but i cant be bothered to look up a link atm

brOTP

calling whatever he and parvati have going on a 'brotp' is probably not accurate but i do quite like their interactions. its very sweet.

other than that i also like his (canon) friendships/interactions with jason, circe, georgios, and orion. oh and martha and gorgon!

also i think he and karna would be funny as obnoxious siblings :p

arjuna alter is even less social, somehow, but its kind of funny to imagine him still hanging around limbo. 0 stranger danger radar. im choosing to decide hes more friends with cu alter as well to contrast with me making arjuna and medb hang out more. i mean they do show up in the same cbc so legally i can do that.

OTP

gudajuna canon fite me. i do have a bias for gay stuff but i still think its very sweet w gudako. i can and will ship basically anyone with arjuna which is why im holding back from just listing 70 people and i can come up w several more on the spot but tbh outside of the mc maybe like...his irl wivesandkrishna

also him and taking a fucking nap and chilling out. Tbh this over anything else I’m not primarily gunning for romance in fgo which may sound strange but c’est la vie

nOTP

im going to fucking solo a hgw on my own just so i can purge the world of karjuna/junakar permanently thats how much i hate it

random headcanon

arjuna was totally invited to the 'religion group' by someone (georgios or martha probably) who was trying to make it less christian (sanzang attends its only fair) and remembered the bhaghvad gita exists.

arjuna spends like 75% of his day in spiritual meditation the game just doesnt mention it

arjuna alter has chronic fatigue

arjuna alter's horns have blood vessels in them. why not

unpopular opinion

he should kill karna again. fuck everything

stupid comment aside i wouldnt actually hate them revisiting arjuna vs karna again IF (this is a very big big if) they actually delved into their actual history with each other. like explicitly stated in text why they started beefing, mentioned the things BOTH sides did to each other, looked at the opinions of BOTH sides about their relationship just yknow actually give it some fucking depth other than them yelling at each other for what (to someone unfamiliar w the og epic) seems like basically nothing? except some vague jealous feelings on one side? which is hardly enough to keep beefing for over 2000 years but what do i know

for arjuna alter my unpopular opinion is they looked at him and were like 'we could do this better' and wrote morgan and i want them to go back to him and give him a backstory as well.

and also he should have a summer alt. he deserves it

song i associate with them

*activates my emo gland*

for arjuna

for arjuna alter

favorite picture of them

theres so many of them tbh but atm ive been thinking of this one. whats even going on here. are they having a rap battle. are they assigning each other fursonas

[heyheydidjaknow]

Do I feel terrible about continuously bothering you with L asks? Absolutely. Am I asking anonymously so you don't have someone to target your annoyance at? For sure. But are you the only person who I've found who writes him so perfectly in character and takes the time to think about what he would actually do? Indeed you are.

Therefore, I ask of you (in relation to that last ask you got), how do you think L would feel if his s/o was involved in the Kira case and discovered who he was and what his job was? Would he break it off despite them being okay and willing to be quiet about it? Would he do everything in his power to remove them from the situation? How devastated would he be that these were the circumstances?

On another note - how are you? how did you get into deathnote? do you write for anything else? I don't mean to ask personal questions in case they aren't allowed and make you uncomfortable, but I do find the range of things you write for really funny. The teenage mutant ninja turtles to deathnote works is interesting lol. Lots of love babe <3

Dude you never have to apologize about this. Sorry for taking so long.

Frankly, it would never get that far. As soon as your name shows up on the list of investigators you either agree to drop the case or the two of you are over. He can’t drop it— thousands are dying— but that didn’t mean he’s going to let you throw yourself in harm’s way like an idiot. If you decided that the relationship wasn’t worth it and decided to go through with it anyways, not much outside of that would change; if you stuck around long enough to be a part of the KTF then he’s already fairly sure you’re not Kira so logically it shouldn’t matter. He’s not going to forcefully take you out of harm’s way or anything— he has no right to do that— but he will absolutely make quiet jabs about it as if he wasn’t being completely hypocrite by doing so.

During the investigation? You aren’t going to be able to tell either way; he’s gotten very good at just ignoring his emotions for the sake of the investigation. If he thinks about it? Absolutely devastated, but that’s not important right now. If you died? He would never be able to forgive himself and might even retire, but that’s fine. It’s a breakup over a career and it’s totally alright because that’s your decision and your life. Never mind you were the closest thing to a loving relationship he’s had in a decade and a half; at the end of the day that’s not your issue. He will be slightly more aggressive in his tactics but other than that it’s fine. Definitely. Totally. Never better.

I’m fine, thank you. I actually got into death note forever ago but I only started writing fanfiction after I finally decided to watch it all the way through (I stopped watching the first time after L died like everyone else). I’ve been really into DOL recently and I’ve writing for Genshin and Mystic Messenger but I’ll write for whatever I’m interested in or people ask for, really. I got into TMNT because when I was real little I remember seeing it on TV and then it was on Hulu and I thought it might be fun to revisit and holy hell that was a lot of plot and then I wrote 70k words of stuff for it minimum and then I stopped because Hulu got rid of TMNT so now it’s a bit of a struggle to want to do things for it though, if there’s anyone who has stuck around long enough for the TMNT stuff that one thing I wrote might actually get an update this year. So, yeah. If people ask me to write stuff outside of what I’ve already written for I usually at least check whatever it is out to see if it has bones and other than that it’s whatever I feel like. If anyone has any recommendations for fandoms to write for I’d be down to try them. If you have any other questions, let me know!

[theoldaeroplane]

can't figure out if my dreams, which usually feature at least one of my parents and more recently, my toxic former boss who made me feel like I was living with my parents again, are purely stress related or if there's something else happening there

general life rambling below the cut

been reading How To Do the Work as part of my ongoing attempt to heal from my childhood. Doing the journaling exercises and everything. My therapist also asked me to spend the next two weeks observing the language I use in my internal narratives about myself so we can talk about them at our next session. So far I'm noticing that I tend to frame myself as downtrodden and often without power.

I've been reading a lot about somatic therapy. I didn't finish The Body Keeps the Score due to life getting in the way, but it's a very powerful book and I think it probably started this line of inquiry. I'm a little skeptical about how scientific a number of the related things I've read are, such as trauma release exercises and the idea that the psoas muscle holds trauma, but I think there's something to the idea. I've been making a conscious effort to keep my shoulders loose and back, instead of tight and hunched forward. I'm very worried about falling into another hole of people who claim to have all the answers. I have great difficulty trusting my own intuition and seek out approval or reinforcement for almost everything I do. (Even writing this journal on a public forum feels like a result of that.)

I actually tried the trauma release exercises on Monday, and on Wednesday I had a very exaggerated anxiety attack for no reason I could pinpoint. It lasted over three hours and persisted through a nap, which hasn't happened before. I have no idea if the two are related, but---I did notice myself trembling slightly during the attack. That's not happened before either. Not sure if it's some kind of subconscious attempt at following the idea behind TRE or not, but I guess it probably doesn't really matter.

I also went ahead and signed up for a yoga session next week, with an instructor listed as being aware of how to work with trauma survivors. It's another Thing I have to do, in terms of not being able to catch my breath, but I want to at least try it and see how I feel afterwards.

For as much of a less than perfect fit my new job is, I really like my new boss. He's got a good sense of humor and he's very patient, and doesn't make me feel like I'm stupid when I make a mistake. I think I'm only now realizing how much damage my last boss did in terms of opening old wounds.

Tomorrow I have my volunteer work and a friend's dance recital, plus a ttrpg/hangout session, but tonight I'm just going to come home right at 5 and peace out with Zelda and an edible. (I do this almost every night, to be fair, but I didn't really get home until at least 7pm this week).

I've been very worried about money, probably too much. I'm not quite making a livable wage, but cost of living here is very low, and I know for a fact I can make reasonably consistent extra money with the yiff side hustle. (I shouldn't have to rely on that to get by when I'm also working full time, but you know how it goes.) My main expenses outside of the usual are therapy and animals. Therapy sessions are going to start costing me $75 a pop. Jojo needs a checkup, and she's going to need dental surgery soon, so a good chunk of my money is going towards saving for that. I also need to get shirts for work as there's a dress code I've technically been violating for two months. (This is another area where my boss has been very cool.)

The house is a nightmare. The carpet is a dog piss swamp, due to my first month at work resulting in me sleeping 90% of the time, but I have other things I need to buy before a carpet cleaner rental can happen. I think I'm waiting, too, for next week before I do any cleaning---I'm surrendering my pigeon Chanticleer back to the shelter then and I'll be able to really move things around and clean them up. I'm fond of the little dude, but we're just not a match for each other.

I have so much more I could write, but I need to get ready for work. Wish me luck.

[melchinafan]

WAIT A SECOND I'm going through the Nursery in Secret World Legends again, and (spoilers for end-of-Transylvania story):

~~~

Reading this part of a lore entry (and remembering/rereading the related research) got my brain spiraling off on Yu-Gi-Oh thoughts:

CLICK-CLACK. A doctor types: "Similarly, we've found that inhabiting the child subject with an incorporeal entity allows the hemispheres of their brains to become separate processing units."

One of the experiments they were doing was deliberately possessing the kids with spirits/ghosts, and observing that—due to the plasticity of a child's developing brain—it allowed for the hemispheres to work individually: "...[able] to concentrate on separate subjects, and to solve multiple problems, simultaneously..." (with severe side effects, though the specifics are not listed)

Now, because I've been working on stitching YGO into the setting, this led to the thought...WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR YUGI AND RYOU

Granted, both of their spirits also reside within their respective Items, so that probably takes a HUGE load off the relative necessary "processing power" from their brains. So their side effects would've been mild to moderate, instead of severe. Plus, Yugi was older than the eldest in the Nursery when he solved the Puzzle. (He was ~16, the eldest mentioned was 13, and there's a note that it works for kids "to a much higher degree than inhabited adults.")

But Ryou was younger when he got the Ring (~10, at my estimation), thus within the range they were testing. So, between the two of them, it's more likely that he might have suffered some long-term side effects. Further evidenced by how Ryou was able to physically control his hand and click-clack at his own computer without Bakura noticing, during the Monster World TTRPG. (Granted, this was due to a weakening of Bakura based on his avatar in the game, but still.) With Yugi and Yami (as I recall), they either take turns, or work in tandem on the same thing. They can keep secrets from each other, but they don't go as far as controlling separate parts of their shared body simultaneously.

But then, maybe Yugi was also affected by the unlisted side effects, despite being a bit older. We know for sure he had (has?) two soul rooms—at least symbolically, if not a literal hemisphere split. A shame we never got to see Ryou's room. I imagine it looks much like his rad tabletop setups. Possibly even with a castle (or other foreboding structure) where Bakura nestled, when he wasn't fully in the Ring. Though, he's generally more subtle/sneaky when he's not going full Zorc...OH, MAYBE HE'S THE UNDERSIDE OF THE TABLE, WITH A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT! AND FLIPS IT WHEN HE TAKES OVER (LIKE WE SAW WITH THE FOREST AREA), SINCE HE CAN FULLY SUPPRESS RYOU, OOOOOOH I LOVE THAT IDEA

(Also swinging back around to the Nursery itself, some crossover AU idea shenanigans...Yugi and Ryou as (two of) the kids they did the ghosty experiments on. Bakura is definitely responsible for the doll room. The rest of the carnage likely involved Penalty Games. And...yanno, the facility itself is nearly a mirror of Yugi's soul rooms, with the play area very similar to Yugi's room, and the horrifying [everything else] sort of being like Yami's, if a bit less labyrinthine. Just a WHOLE BUNCH of horrifying experimentation rooms, instead. But also OH NO THERE ARE ACTUALLY TWO INHABITED CHILDREN IN THAT ROOM IN-GAME, I THOUGHT THERE WAS ONLY ONE? INSTEAD I GOT "HERE'S BOTH THE KIDS, HAVE FUN WITH VALIDATION OF THIS NIGHTMARE SCENARIO")

[revenant-coining]

ooo what would you say is the farthest youve went ?? and how much energy would you say you have . but ooo thats so cool its like you have an infinite source because you can cause chaos wherever you go !!

fate sounds like a lovely being ^__^ do you ever wonder if youll be able to see her again ?? and it kinda sucks how most beings in that dimension only dislike you just because of who you are you cant control that :P im glad you at least had some friends though !! 

ooo i dont know anything about politics but was the system corrupt  ?? did things works out the way they were ?? how many jobs could one person have ?? what would happen if you didnt have a job how would you live in the world ??

ooo tendrils sound very useful !! were there any other uses for it ?? i wanna draw a character with tendrils now eee /pos

wait so there were mortals in your dimension ?? is there anything else about your dimension that you havent mentioned yet or isnt related to heaven or hell ?? but ooo minecraft is so much fun im glad they have it both here and over there !! i love looking at the builds personally , im planning on making a side blog just for my interests !!

hehe being a menace is fun though !! my headmates tell me im not one though im too sweet and... theyre right FKDJLSJ TwT what kinds of problems would you cause ?? any specific tricks or tomfoolery that stand out to you ?? thats good you didnt care what others thought of you i bet you are very swag then and even now i think youre swag wee :D 

DETROIT DJFLSKFJKSDL thats so random /pos

oh my god wait i actually really love learning about your dimension ?? like i love learning about it either way but JFKDJFLFJ that. the sin and virtue system is one of my FAVORITES idk if thats offensive or not lemme know though /gen but that is soo interesting !!

ooo thats good to hear !! im glad and i hope things are still doing well !! do you think youll ever be able to go back ?? if youre the god of chaos and they banished you i wonder how its like there now , do you think the balance has been thrown off because of the lack of chaos managing ?? but YES YES YES if and when you can please do draw it id love to see your interpretation of everything !! /nf

chewies check out list : mlp and hilda (when goop has the time ofc)

dude nesting is one of the autismal things ive learnt being human its just ... yes nest for me and my little creechure brain /pos did you teddy have a name ?? and do you nest right now in this realm ?? 

ooo why was magic and potion making big ?? what were the plants like ?? what do you think brought the beginning of how your economy works out ?? economy ive never thought id be so interested in before !!

ooo that dimensions sounds interesting its like theyre trying to prepare to not have any mystical beings but it is very interesting how they were able to push you out i wonder how :O do you give dimensions names ?? do the other gods have the power to open portals ??

we experience dpdr as a symptom of being a system so we know what thats like though we never really put a name to it i like how you have a zombie ai and ghost coping link though !!

ramble anon

the only way to measure how far I've gone is how long it takes me to get my energy back (assuming I'm getting a constant stream of chaos energy). but time works differently in different dimensions. the longest i was in a different dimension is 2 years i think? but when i got back to my dimension only a month had past in hell and heaven (a week had past in my dimension's mortal plane, hell/heaven and the mortal plane had different time flow, a month in hell was a week in the mortal plane)

Fate was very lovely :]

I kinda understand why they didn't like me, cause i didn't need to cause problems on purpose, but i did anyway. and i might not have memories of most of my friends but i have positive emotions associated with them :]

despite running in politics i don't think i knew anything about them, I'm pretty sure my friend was doing most of the thinking and i was just along for the ride. i don't recall any big corrupt controversy so i don't if anything happened /gen. most people if they had a job dedicated their lives to it, but nothing was stopping them from having multiple or changing careers. money wasn't nearly as important as it is in the mortal realm (or this universe for that matter). you could trade for goods or do random chores/quests to get stuff.

i mainly used my tendrils to grab stuff i couldn't reach and carry heavy things, since no weight seemed too much for them. also they were nice for like, grounding exercises. i could wrap one around my leg or torso and be chilling

yeah there were mortals. in my universe earth was real and i'd visit sometimes (mainly to learn about music) humans were a thing along with a bunch of humanoid species (like siren/mermaids, hybrids, etc.) there were portals to and from earth, heaven, and hell so it was common for heaven and hell beings to be on earth.

another thing i haven't mentioned is the Red Dimension (a sub-dimension with my "parent" dimension, which is quite literally a dimension where everything inside wants to kill you. the entire dimension and everything in is was some shade of red. it looks kinda cool but is not a fun place to be.

and Fate lived in her own dimension, basically, an infinite space for archiving what has and what will happen, lots and lots of filling cabinets filled with records of everything. inside said dimension is the. waiting line i guess for getting souls into an afterlife if they believed in one.

minecraft builds are very cool, my (this dimension) older brother is real big on building things. and i highly recommend a side blog for your interest :]

when it comes to being a menace and getting chaos energy, chaos, destruction, and absurdity work well on getting said energy. i avoid causing destruction, but sometimes Fate would tell me that something (like a natural disaster) is going to happen so i could be ready for the influx of energy (excess energy makes me hyper). my favorite way to be chaotic was biting people, it works very well on getting energy and is just very fun to do. throwing myself around with my tendrils worked as well. if i could find something to do that would shock people in a absurdity kinda way i'd end up doing it.

the sin and virtue system IS really cool, and don't worry it's not offensive to say that /gen. I'm glad you like learning about my dimension! I really enjoy talking about it :]

I have no clue if I'll be able to go home while in this body since I don't have access to any of my magic, so I guess I'm waiting to see if some powerful being from this dimension or my own gets me home? I don't know how I ended up in this body in the first place /gen. I haven't even thought about how the balance is back home, I hope the other powerful beings have figured out at least a temporary solution.

I'm on my way home right now so when I answer you're next ask I'll have the drawings done and show you :]

I love nesting SO much. comfy objects is what it's all about. I don't recall the name of my teddy bear, and I nest in this dimension as well (not being able to purr lowkey sucks)

magic is very big in my dimension, even mortals use it. so it was used for a lot of stuff, and he'll had lots of resources for magic and potions. magic and potions are important cause of the fact that lots of creatures that are deadlier then the one's in this dimension exist, so mortals have to be able to protect themselves. The plants looked pretty funky /pos and I remember how a few of them look. (I'll show you art of the plants in my answer to your next ask!)

I think the economy started before I was made, which means it's REALLY old, I've been around for a while but it's been around longer.

I've named a couple dimensions (like afterlife but it's Detroit) but they're more like nicknames. Even the Red Dimension has a official name (which I think is just a bunch of numbers and letters?) but we call the Red Dimension cause it's. very red in there.

most powerful beings can open portals or teleport, it's the main way of transportation (especially between earth, heaven, and hell so people don't have to walk to the natural portals.)

my copinglinks are very close to my heart <3 they help a lot with making dpdr less distressing /gen

[imagineitdearies-old]

Hello! I’m sorry for sending this but I was wondering if you could explain how to be able to post anything really and for it to appear. I have tried to post stuff and it never appears but especially because I have my own little story in the works and don’t know how to post it in hops of someone reading it.

Thank you!

Hi! I assume you're asking about ao3? I have zerooo knowledge on anything tumblr-related, so without further ado here is

Imogen's Very Unofficial Guide to Posting on Ao3:

First and foremost, use tags thoroughly. Not an essay-length of them, of course, but covering things past the relationship, fandom, and warnings can go a long way toward you attracting the right readers. Like setting (modern/canon-divergence/omegaverse/post-episode #/etc), relationship dynamics (like top/bottom, which really matters in lucemond lol), any E rating descriptors worthy of note (if any), and of course general themes of the story (hurt/comfort/crack/dead dove: do not eat/etc.). This makes it a lot easier for people who would enjoy your story content to find you amidst everything else posted.

If you're new to tagging, I'd recommend finding a few popular fics that match the content/story of your fic to some extent and seeing how they tag. I also recommend this post if you're very new to tags and looking for a very detailed explanation of them.

Second, especially at the beginning, post regularly. If that means you have to write a couple of chapters up before you post the first, then do so. Readers like consistency. Building that trust at the start will help them stay faithful when Life stuff inevitably comes up. (Obviously this is only relevant if you are posting a multi-chapter fic.)

Third, and this one others may disagree with me on, but have an estimated chapter count as soon as you can. In my opinion, a reader is much more likely to try you out, even if you don't have many kudos/hits/comments yet, if you seem to have a plan. On the other hand, seeing a new story posted with 1/? chapters is not very tempting for most who have been burned before (unless they REALLY like your tags and summary).

Fourth, speaking of summaries, on ao3 a big reason people scroll past your fic 9even if you have tags they like/searched for) is if your summary is bad. Take time and make sure you write a good summary. I would again recommend you look at popular stories most similar to the one you're writing and their summaries. Scrolling through lucemond fics, for instance, there is a very popular format used: throw in a couple of lines from the first chapter as a hook, then on a new line add "Or" and a short sentence or two of explanation. (This is my preferred method, but there are plenty of others too!)

Fourth and last, and probably the hardest---your writing needs to be clean and easy to read. If you think you're already doing everything listed before this pretty well, the main issue may be bad grammar and sentence structure. That's more effort to fix, and often the only cure is writing more and reading more (particularly reading more published fiction). But if you're in a hurry, I know a lot of writers enlist the help of beta readers to catch the big stuff before posting. I don't have any personal experience with using a beta, though, so I have no advice on how to find one unfortunately.

ALTERNATIVELY: Just wait until it's 3 in the morning or you're entirely smashed (or both!) to post it, sleep in until 2pm, and if you wake up and there's no engagement, just delete it and pretend it never happened/try again later 😂 I've done this at least twice over the years.

[privacyredux]

62oz water

6:53pm - los angeles

i talked to valeria a lot today and she kind of inspired me to try to use this a bit more and maybe a little more productively? i'm not sure about all that, but it's worth a bit of a try.

i'm not sure i'm that concerned with tracking what i'm eating for meals or anything like that and unfortunately i'm a bit too late to be tracking my dreams. i know i had one last night though and one of my friends did something kind of weird in it. i remember waking up thinking i would text them about the thing they did, but i ended up going back to sleep and completely forgot about it. anyway, i don't even know that i'll be able to keep up with a daily thing, but at least the amount of water i drank so far in the day can be a tribute to the inspiration.

i watch uglies and it was bafflingly bad? strange? i don't know, but i did kind of find it amusing enough that i'm annoyed that it barely had an ending and i'm not so sure there's going to be a sequel to make up for that.

as i mentioned, i talked to valeria a fair amount of the day, she and i talked about tattoos and religion a bit. she really seems like a very centered and balanced person to the point it's pretty admirable. i honestly find her kind of fascinating. i'm not sure if i'm annoying to her or not, but i think ive at least been entertaining enough to warrant a small bit of attention.

i spoke with brina a bit too. she seemed upset and said as much, but didn't really get too into detail. i wanted to talk it out with her if she wanted, but i guess maybe she just didn't and that's why it ended up the way it did. i think she can be a bit hard on herself sometimes and i'm not sure why. i think once she's on tour and sees how all her work paid off, it'll be a bit better. i hope that's the case anyway.

and as is usual, i've spoken with charlie a lot. she's been a very good friend and always really entertaining to talk to. it was actually kind of crazy how chatgpt just knew shit about me. i'm sure that sounds stupid but i'm not a completely private figure, but it still kinda freaked me out.

like yeah, it's a stupid little which new girl character am i most like thing and i can even see where there's some overlap with schmidt even though i'm not completely certain it's in the things listed necessarily. i don't know it was just really weird to come to terms with the fact that i could be analyzed in this way by ai.

i really need to rewatch the first season of rings of power though. i think blair is going to start it soon and as soon as she starts talking to me about it i'm going to miss it immediately. plus i do wanna watch the second season and i barely even remember what happened in the first. well, i do, but i really like rewatching something right before watching the new stuff. it was kinda nice talking about it with someone who has a similar relationship to it. a lot of people are very critical of lotr related stuff wanting a perfect interpretation and perfect to them and what they think is right and i really have that childlike excitement that i can't believe there's more content i can watch and enjoy. i just really want to take it all in. i don't feel like that about everything. mostly lotr and community. it just unlocks a certain part of me that is happy it's happening regardless of its imperfections.

i tried to help a bit with rosalie's gender reveal/babyshower. i want it to be nice for her and i hope it's gonna be all that she wants. i still gotta work on trying to invite some more women because right now it's very man heavy. i don't know that she'd mind that. her friends are her friends that's just how it goes, but i'm sure they could offer support in more ways than i could at least. i can't really speak for anyone else.

i was kinda bummed i didn't do much friday the 13th stuff yesterday and was planning on fitting some in today, but all i did was listen to a kinda creepy podcast. it didn't scratch the itch really. maybe i'll try harder as the night goes on. if i don't make other plans.

de-luxe - lush

safe in your skin - title fight

goodbye - the sundays

[musingsoflys]

2nd post for the morning. It was just going to be a deconstructing post, but I went off on a health tangent.

I have multiple journaling locations. I have one where I try to collect everything, but it's getting ... octopus. It's in OneNote, and I have multiple tabs and subpages for different topics: my kids coming out, my husband coming out, my religion shattering, a letter for my Mom about it that I've been procrastinating finishing for over a year -- it's so close--, my own thoughts and feelings about 'all the things.' Due to life's business and my previously mentioned (the other post from this morning) low energy and mental function, I haven't been able to give my religious/spiritual aspect enough attention, and lately I've been feeling the need to do that. The last few days I've been wanting to start rereading Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I think I'm ready to move into the next phase, ?, whatever that is. I feel stalled right now.

I had been working my way through Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. That was also supposed to be part of my Sunday morning time. Now I'm not sure how applicable it will be given my Christian deconversion. I guess I should look and see. I am capable of recognizing metaphor and framing separately from my experience and so still be able to take the lessons. ... ... haha, just had to bring my brain back from another tangent related to framing/context. OK. back to the topic at hand. See, I didn't leave Mormonism only to remain a Christian; my deconstruction of God precludes that. My understanding of God was the first thing that shattered. So, while I often appreciate others' deconstruction experiences, I'm still looking for more non-Christian deconstructing community. Jesus as radical historical figure, fine, but no more Jesus as Savior, no more Heavenly Father (or Mother) -- I feel like they're less parental and more transcended siblings. I want to find my own divinity, not the "seeds of Divinity" as spoken of by Mormon leaders but the stardust inside.

Since at least November, my husband has been in the early goo phase of metamorphosis or the early germination phase of a seed: breaking apart, melting, he's beyond the point of no return from what he used to be. But in his case it's kind of weird b/c what he used to be was constantly masking, constantly trying to be what everyone else thought he should be, so he's trying to be himself, to go back to the beginning, but I just realized that even that being is socially defined, I think, by the imprinting he got as a child. But there's also a lot of trauma there. Anyway, I feel like I'm finally ready to explore nonmonogamy but now he's in a very personally, mentally, and emotionally delicate stage. He's worried that I'll find someone "better" or replace him. (Actually one of the 1st fears listed on a remodeledlove post in IG.) He also expresses interest in swinging, but I can't see myself doing that, at least partly b/c I've never had sex with anyone else. So sometimes, he's like, hurry up and have sex w/someone else, so that we can move on to threesomes and swapping and swinging. But I can't have sex with a stranger; I wouldn't mind having a FWB relationship but I at least need the friend part. I'm on an app, but I'm afraid to 'like' anybody. I've only liked 2 people but have not had any conversations with them. I'm not "talking to" anyone. I just fantasize, lol. And he's not ready for any new relationships, friend or otherwise, right now. So...where does that leave me? Where am I, and where do I go from here?

[natsubeatsrock]

Top 7 Things I Enjoyed in 2023: Number 3

This was a year I caught up with so much of the comics backlog. I've been meaning to talk about something from Iconic Comics because everything I read from them this year has been amazing. Alas, that might have to wait a year. This spot belonged to Infinity Gauntlet for most of the year. I was excited to talk about how much this was like the Marvel movies it inspired. It genuinely felt like the best experience I had reading any book in the medium. 

Was anything I was going to ever read going to top it?

Well, it turns out that only one man could give a better experience. And who else but the man behind the best stories involving my favorite comic series?

Number #3 - Uncanny X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills

For the uninitiated, Chris Claremont's run on X-Men is the stuff of legends. He didn't create the X-Men. However, nearly everything iconic about the group is in some way related to his run. Almost every major story that inspired the movies came from this run of over two decades.

I have been slowly making my way through the Uncanny X-Men omnibus series over the past few years. If I were any faster, I probably could have put the whole series on a past list. At the very least, there wouldn't have been as much of a break between Marvel products being on this list as has been true recently.

This book exists as a primer for the series. If you want a simple explanation of what the X-Men, especially written by Claremont, are without reading dozens of comics for context, this is the place to go. It's the core group of X-Men trying to work through a tough situation which tests their resolve and identity. 

In particular, they face a threat from an anti-mutant televangelist named William Stryker who grew to hate the mutant race because of events from his military days. In other words, business as usual.

This time, though, they team up with long-time enemy, Magneto. Magneto has often represented the opposite extreme to Stryker and the absent Senator Kelly. He wishes for mutants to replace humans as the dominant species and subjugate them the way many wish to see his people taken care of. (Ironic considering his time as a Nazi concentration camp captive.)

However, this is one of the few times he feels sympathetic. We see him mourn over the murder of young mutants. His pleas to Professor X feel placed in a desire for urgency for change can't be achieved through his old friend's ways as quickly as necessary, if ever.

Admittedly, my bias in this pick shows in my connection to my copy of the comic. There are two editions: an original version and an extended cut with a couple of edits to the original and a new framing of the events. My copy is the latter, but I was able to have Claremont sign my edition during the last NYCC.

That said, I wouldn't get it signed if I didn't love the story. I can't wait to read through the rest of Uncanny X-Men in the years to come.

[dxfiedfxte]

Thread Move/Relocation from here: X || @mirrorsoftheotherself

It was really nice to see Minato again after everything. They developed a close bond within the False Yasogami; something she cherished even if it developed through her amnesiac self. Through the shared enjoyment of food, his willingness to help her with some of the more smaller things, and his actions as leader, Rei couldn't be any more grateful.

Which reminds her... She has to introduce him to her brother at some point. After the whole incident regarding the Grand Prix thing and how poor Yamato got caught up in that without warning, Minato is the only one left for him to meet. She feels the two would get along!

(Plus, having two awesome brothers (both found and familial) feels amazing.)

Upon hearing the other's hunger related woes, she immediately offered him the water bottle she saved for him. "Sounds like a plan! Also, just in case you also need a drink!"

Once the two would start walking ahead, she would be right next to him.

"How have you been since last time? Hopefully things haven't been too crazy?"

It still felt a little surreal seeing Rei walking around outside in the here and now and not the fake school where he had met everyone else, including the investigation team. With that in mind, he couldn't help but wonder, if his memories of his experience in that dream came back to him with Rei's reappearance, did that also mean Yu and his friends also had their memories of her returned? Or at the very least he assumed so.

Since she was currently enrolled in the same school as they were, he had a feeling they were aware of it all just like Minato and his own friends were, it felt like those memories were sitting there dormant in everyone's mind. The fool could still recall the flood of texts from all his friends upon having their memories returned.

That day, was probably the one day in a very long time when every friend in his group had texted him all at once, asking if he remembered a blond-haired girl named Rei just like they did, a question which he was left to explain it all to them with each confused text, he was pleased that he wasn't working that day. Because it was a day off, he was able to go into great detail for each, allowing him to ease their concern and confirm with them that all those memories were in fact, very real.

Upon learning that Minato was with her at the time, his friends gave him permission to give their numbers to her once they all found out that she was real, and the time spent with her wasn't anything close to fake, just foggy memory due to them being heavily suppressed by an unknown force that seemed to release these memories at the appropriate time and moment -- this being the minute the two reunited.

[{ 🦋 }] - "Hm? Oh, thanks. I'm pretty actually pretty thirsty." With his thanks, he accepts the bottle of water, gulping it all down in one big sip. Once it's empty, he crushes the bottle in his palm and chucks it into the recycling bin nearby, it hits the side and falls inside. His thirst now quenched and now feeling a little more refreshed, he leads their trek towards the aforementioned restaurant.

[{ 🦋 }] - "I'd like to agree, but unfortunately, this season has been the busiest we've had in quite a while, so I've been hard at work for weeks. Lots of haunted locations on our list this year. We have like, seven left to visit before we can complete the season, so my workload has been a bit heavy as of late."

He explains, answering her question in detail. It really had been pretty busy for him recently, and there was still lots left planned as well. It was safe to say, that after these two weeks off, he'd be right back to work, so he was going to enjoy the time off while he still had it.

[{ 🦋 }] - "How's school been? Have you been keeping up with your studies?" Minato asks, putting his hand on the door to the restaurant and pushing it open so they can enter.

[irltechnoblade]

How does anything you do help; a breakdown on why kin help blogs aren't necessarily helpful, changes to the formula I think would make them more helpful maybe?

My assessment is based on the fact that these are *kin* help blogs, and thus discuss how useful the things help blogs offer are in helping people who are fictionkin (and otherkin) with those parts of themselves. It's also very much personal opinion and I don't know how well any of my suggested alternatives would work, they're just my own thoughts on things I'd like to see in blogs like these instead.

Divination:

There's a reason some big fictionkin blogs refuse to boost blogs that do divination requests. Introspection is important in understanding being 'kin and people will instead go off of which direction a crystal swings when dropped. Divination can be incredibly useful in introspection, used correctly, it can also be very very wrong and lead you down the wrong path entirely if you choose to believe blindly. I would always suggest a more detailed method of divination carried out and interpreted yourself.

Alternatively you could design tarot and/or cartomancy spreads to answer questions that the requester can then carry out themselves. Write out advice for interpreting different methods of divination. Make it easy for those who want to use divination to explore this stuff. Interpreting divination results is very different when it comes to analysing this stuff than predicting the future.

Headcanon requests:

Personally, I thought at first glance "hey this sounds like a great idea" and when I was struggling with some stuff, I did actually request some from a blog once. They didn't help at all, quite the opposite actually. Most headcanons I already had contradicting memories for, the one that was actually possible in my timeline, I'm fairly certain now isn't something I remember. It's very easy to create fake memories though.

Alternatively you could create a list of questions for the requester to ponder and possibly meditate on in order to figure out their own memories? Questions sorta, focus your brain in and guide you towards answers.

Kin assignment:

Similar to an alternative for headcanon requests, a list of questions to focus on based what the asker has disclosed.

False positives with no introspection required. My friends who have known me years at this point all say that if they'd had to guess one of my kintypes they would have suggested my brother.

Doodles:

Actually these are pretty neat I approve they're very good and make a lot of sense to offer to those who aren't artistically inclined.

Playlists:

Theoretically good, actually. Useful for controlling shifts and using during the introspection thing. But to do well the request blog has to have a vast amount of music they're familiar with in order to be able to come up with a reasonable list of songs, and then not all of the songs they find will be useful to or even liked by the person who requested the playlist in the first place.

Stimboards:

Love stim boards. They're very pretty and stimmy, as you would hope. Not a bad thing to say about boards themselves. My only criticism is. Why are they on kin help blogs. How do they help you specifically with the whole being 'kin thing?

Recipies:

Another very good one actually! Put it in the pile with playlists and doodles as actually having a pretty good use!

Care and Fashion kits:

Make some sort of sense, but are often expensive, contain consumables (bath bombs and sweets can only be enjoyed once), and don't necessarily include the comfort you want. Blankets seem to be chosen for colour rather than material when they show up. Now, the correct colour certainly can help with homesickness, but matching textures and materials where possible is infinitely more valuable.

There's also issues with trying to recommend these products internationally. Generally better for someone to pick up things themselves as they go through life? Maybe suggesting the types of things that might help, with possible products afterwards. Having to give a justification for why each thing is included should increase the quality of these kits too.

Moodboards and aesthetics:

Once again, for those not artistically inclined, these can be very nice, and being able to shove a bunch of information into a request can net you can get one very relevant to your timeline which can be useful for introspection purposes, though never as good as one you put together yourself, using as many pictures and themes as you want. It's usefulness is actually very limited in the end and these are very common for some reason. They are pretty and nice to have I guess? Big problem with unsourced images used for these. Mostly just made to be pretty and not actually used, but that isn't the moodboards' fault.

Miscellaneous:

As someone who is fictionkin, do you know what would help me? Advice. Advice would help me. Also little things like *blank* helped me with this thing, maybe it would help you.

In conclusion. Kin help blogs are weird and do a lot of things I wouldn't describe as helping the asker with otherkin related issues, but they do offer a few very nice and helpful things.

[savventeen]

hello! i was wondering if i could request: things you said before you kissed me with dino :)

got my heart in my feet ('cause they lead me to you)

Chan looks at you, and you look at him, both of you searching. "Y/n, I..." he starts. Something determined settles in his eyes, and then, both bold and hesitant, "You're the most beautiful person I've ever met."

pairing: dino x reader rating: T wc: 2.4k warnings: intrusive anxious/depressive thoughts (reader's), some cussing, crying, vague mention of family issues tags: college au (barely), friends to lovers, emotional hurt/comfort, first kiss summary: gn!reader has a bad day, and they unintentionally find themselves falling apart at their best friend Chan's door in desperate need of a hug a/n: this is not at all what i thought it was going to be when i started on this prompt lmao. i was also expecting it to be around 500 words at most :') anyway, i have no idea if this is what you were looking for, but i hope you enjoy! theme song || the painting y/n talks about at the end is castanets by silvia vassileva || prompt from this list

Most of the time, you don’t consider yourself an impulsive person. In fact, you usually find yourself in the position of being other people’s impulse control — *cough*Soonyoung*cough* — and were more often than not the designated mom-friend in whatever social circle you found yourself in.

It's not that you aren't spontaneous on occasion (usually at someone else's behest), but you always think it through first. Even your backup plans have backup plans, Seokmin had joked once, and you'd agreed.

So it’s strange to say the least that you find yourself standing outside of Chan’s door at nearly midnight on a Tuesday night, arm frozen where it’s raised to knock, and no memory of making a conscious decision to be here.

You remember getting off of the most stressful 8-hour turned 12-hour shift you’ve ever experienced in your life to see three missed calls and a voicemail from your mother berating you for never having time for your family, and then to top it all off, you’d realized that you had an essay due the next morning that you’d barely started and hadn’t had the time to finish.

It’d been too much, the final straw after weeks of building pressure, and it had taken everything in you not to burst into tears right there in the middle of the sidewalk outside of your work. You’d held them in and started walking home, trying to plan out what you could eat while scrambling to finish your essay. But all you’d really been able to think about was how much you just really, really wanted a hug.

Which must be why you find yourself standing here, now — you’d wanted comfort, and without thinking, your feet had taken you to Chan’s door.

Somehow, at some undesignated point, Chan had become your safe space.

And that’s… that’s a big realization for you. Huge. Potentially earth-shattering, if you were to really think about it. Which, no. Now is not the time for you to have any kind of Big Feelings epiphanies about your best friend — you feel like you’re barely hanging on by a thread as it is. So you quickly shove any and all related thoughts into your “for later” folder and blink back into the present.

You're still standing in front of Chan's apartment door, and you quickly bring your arm down when you realize you still have it raised to knock. A beat passes, and you raise your hand again, only to bring it immediately back to your side.

Fuck.

You know you need to go home and finish your essay, to eat and snag an hour or so of sleep if you can, you know this. But apparently, your heart has taken over control of your feet, because try as you might, you can't seem to get them to move.

And you hate this, because it feels like any semblance of control you might have had has slipped from between your fingers and scattered like dropped marbles on the faux-tile floor.

It's too much. Like a marionette with its strings cut, you let your body tilt forward, your head thumping into the solid wood of the door.

Thirty seconds, you decide. That's how long you're going to let yourself fall apart. And then you're going to pull yourself together, pull all the aching, exhausted pieces back into place, and you're going to go home and do your stupid essay and convince yourself that your existence is not a burden to everyone around you.

It's a solid plan, you think. Except, when you only have seven seconds left of your personal pity party, the door you're still leaning against swings open and you stumble forward. A pair of sturdy hands catch your shoulders, and suddenly you find yourself face-to-face with a very confused Chan.

"Whoah, y/n? You okay? What’s going on?”

The only thought that manages to break through the sudden panic parkouring around every crevice of your brain is how your best friend looks like a dream-shaped miracle, while you must look like an absolute train wreck.

The threadbare hoodie you have on over your food-stained uniform is dingy at best, and its deep navy color matches the dark bags you know are drooping under your eyes. You didn't bother with makeup since you always sweat it off at work anyway, the pimples along your jaw on display, and your hair is a tangled mess atop your head. Basically, you feel gross and exhausted and like you're the epitome of Stressed the Fuck Out™️.

And then there's Lee Chan, barefaced and beautiful and looking like the epitome of soft and comfortable. He’s wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants beneath an oversized dark grey t-shirt that looks so soft the thought of touching it almost makes you want to cry. His hair is adorably tousled and curling a bit at the ends, like he’d just finished rubbing a towel over his head after a shower, and the light from his apartment casts a warm, golden halo around his head — an angel of domesticity.

“Y/n?” His hands slide from your shoulders down to your biceps and give a soft squeeze, dark brows furrowed in concern.

Guilt slams into you with the force of a freight train. You're bothering him, he's obviously getting ready for bed; you're such an inconvenience, why would you drag him into your bullshit; you still have so much to do, why are you wasting his time like this; why can you never do anything right?

You step back, out of his grasp — practically a flinch. “Sorry. I— sorry."

Immediately, you miss his touch. The places on your arms where he held you feel like they've been magnetically charged, and you stare at the way his hands hover in the air like he’s still trying to hold you — the positive to your negative.

"I shouldn't—" you start, watching his hands slowly lower to his sides. Something cracks inside your chest, and you take another step back. Your voice turns thick. "Sorry. I'm— I'm gonna go."

You start to turn, to walk down the hallway and out of the building and into the crushing night, but Chan's voice stops you. "Wait!"

And when have you ever been able to ignore him?

Unbidden, your eyes are drawn back to him — to the way he's half-stepped out of the doorway, bare feet peeking out from the fabric of his pants, one hand stretched out towards you.

He looks at you, really looks at you, and takes another careful step forward. "I—" He bites his lip. "I'm here for you, y/n. What do you need?"

What do you need?

Your heart is the one that answers, tears finally spilling over your cheeks and dripping down to your chin. "Channie..." You swallow the lump in your throat and croak, "I just really need a hug."

Between one breath and the next, you find yourself completely wrapped up in his arms. His hold is somehow both crushing and gentle, and you think that maybe, just maybe, it's the exact kind of embrace you could let yourself fall apart in.

"Aish, why didn't you say so," Chan murmurs into the crown of your head, voice tinged with worry but warm and heavy like a weighted blanket. "I've always got hugs locked and loaded for you."

You feel him flex the tiniest bit and it startles a choked laugh out of you. That laugh quickly morphs into a sob, though, and the next thing you know, you're crying into his chest and he's murmuring gentle nothings to you as he waddles the both of you into the apartment. Not once do his arms move from where they're wrapped around you, even as he closes the door and brings the two of you to the couch, pulling you down so you're leaning against his chest.

Time passes. You're not sure how much, exactly, but you do know that Chan holds you the entire time, rubbing soothing arcs across your back and rocking you in a gentle sway. His quiet reassurances and little anecdotes have turned into soft humming — tender melodies pressed to the top of your head that drip down into your chest cavity and slowly fill up the aching empty.

When your cries have died down to the occasional sniffle, Chan pulls you impossibly closer and lets out a deep breath. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah." It comes out stuffy, your nose completely clogged from all the crying you just did. "Ugh."

Chan snorts, and you think that it's finally come time for you to leave the haven of his arms. That it's time for you to laugh it all off and convince him you're fine and make your way back to your apartment. But he doesn't move, doesn't give any kind of indication that he wants you to leave. He just keeps holding you, and you keep letting him, and you let yourself rest in the gentle rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek.

"You really scared me, you know?" He swallows. "I've never seen you cry like that before."

No one's ever seen me cry like that, you think. And then the guilt starts creeping back in. It's different than the overwhelming guilt from earlier, more muted but somehow more precise in the way it pierces your heart — a needle compared to a battering ram.

"Sorry," you murmur. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"No, that's not—" He sighs harshly through his nose. "I'm glad you came to me, okay? I want to be here for you, for everything." His arms flex around you. "What's the point of having these guns if I can't use them to hold you when you need it?"

You know he's just saying it to cheer you up, to make you smile, but... That "for later" folder is suddenly at the forefront of your mind, the repressed feelings within it bursting at the seams, and all you can think is — oh.

Chan loosens his grip when he feels you start to move, but he doesn't let go. He lets you adjust within the circle of his arms until you're both facing each other as you lean against the back of the couch and you're able to look him in the eyes for the first time since you started crying.

There's half of a smile pulling up one corner of his mouth leftover from the quip he made, but a furrow rests between his brows, and there's... something shining in his eyes, an emotion that you can't quite place.

It makes you feel tingly with some kind of anticipation — dread or hope or some weird combination of both.

You ask, "Even when I'm gross and snotty and just cried all over you?"

"Especially then."

And maybe it's the way the warm lamplight drapes itself across his face, creating soft shadows and gauzy highlights, but you're reminded of a painting you came across in one of your art classes. You can't remember the name of it or even the artist, but you remember the colors, warm and soft with a glowing center. And you remember the way the large brushstrokes were somehow both bold and hesitant, full of a feeling so big and scary it took every ounce of will to try and scrape them out for the world to see.

He looks at you, and you look at him, both of you searching. "Y/n, I..." he starts. Something determined settles in his eyes, and then, both bold and hesitant, "You're the most beautiful person I've ever met."

You're not sure if you remember how to breathe.

The disbelief must show on your face because he scowls at you. "I'm serious."

A thousand questions pound against your ribs in time with your heart — how? why? when? me? me? me? — but what comes out, nearly a whisper, is, "You really mean it?"

His laugh is incredulous, like the question is somehow ludicrous. "Yeah, y/n. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of in love with you?"

You don't think he meant to say that, based on the way his eyes go wide and he bites his lip. But he doesn't take it back.

He doesn't take it back, and you feel hope bloom bright and ferocious inside your chest.

"Yeah?" you ask, breathless.

He smiles, small and lopsided. "Yeah."

A smile stretches across your face, so wide that your cheeks are already aching, and you have the distinct privilege of watching that same hope blossom across Chan's face.

"I think I'm kind of in love with you, too."

His grin is a shot to your fluttering heart, so bright and wide you wonder if it's morning already, the sun rising with the force of his smile. "Yeah?" he echoes, and he leans forward until your foreheads are touching.

If this is a dream, you never want it to end. "Yeah."

He leans impossibly closer, your noses brushing. "I think I'm gonna kiss you now if that's okay with you."

And this is how you know it's not a dream, because Lee Chan, your best friend whom you're in love with and who's also apparently in love with you, just said he was going to kiss you and your brain promptly implemented a complete factory reset.

Head empty, no thoughts, just Chan's lips hovering inches away from yours. And when they don't get any closer, you remember that you need to give some kind of verbal response.

"Yeah. That's— yeah. Yes. I would— yes." You think your face might be on fire. "Yeah? Yes. I think you broke my brain a little bit, so if— yeah. If you could please just kiss me alr—"

He mercifully cuts you off, laughing into the kiss, and you wish you could bottle this moment — the sound, the feeling, all of it. His hands come up to cup your face, turning the chaste press of lips into something long and lingering, gentle and yearning, and it feels like the both of you are saying finally, finally, finally.

With a satisfied sigh that makes your toes curl, he pulls just far enough away to murmur, "Promise you'll keep coming to me, okay? For everything. Forever."

"Okay, Channie," you promise, just as quiet.

You have a feeling your feet will always take you exactly where you need to go.