#except the experience i just had and that ive always been confused at their confusion by this

[griffonsgrove]

General Dating Headcanons | Black Hat

Black Hat X Reader fandom: Villainous/Villainos words: 1132 cw: none!! enjoy! a/n: Hi hi!! ive really been wanting to do headcanons for Black Hat for a while, I'm open to asks and requests so dont be afraid to drop a suggestion in!!

(Platonic):

Black hat is by no means an easy boss. He’s ruthless, unmerciful and bitter, and you are no exception in the Eldrich’s case.

At first.

When you were first hired to be an employee at Black Hat Organization, Black Hat treats you as he would any of his other employees.

With zero respect.

He has very little tolerance for inefficiency

But you were absolutely determined to live up to his impossible expectations.

Maybe you spent a little extra time organizing his paperwork, or added a smidge more arsenic to his tea than usual (he had a sweet tooth for poison occasionally) and maybe you even bothered to dust some of his prized artifacts and tomes from his glory days as villain, making them look as new as the day he got them, and so many other things you did that seemed to make his life a little bit more stress-free.

At first, he thought nothing of it, it wasn't uncommon that his henchmen would grovel at his feet and suck up to him, it amused him really. 

But overtime the eldritch realizes that you wanted to do these little tasks. 

But why?? He was the most feared being in existence, and you went out of your way to do the smallest task to appease him. You seemed to worm your way into his thoughts, even as he sat perched at his desk in the wee hours of the night. Why were you just so…sweet! You should be cowering in fear!!

Speaking of fear, he loooooooves to scare the shit out of you, popping up when you least expect, out of the shadows, morphing into some unspeakable abomination of eyes and mouths (possibly) scarring you, always got a kick out of him.

After working for him for some time you were the only one, he seemed to tolerate, you managed to do your job with little to no flaw or mistake, unlike his scientist.

Dr. Flug admittedly was slightly envious.

He’d never admit it but, Black Hat enjoys holding conversation with you from time to time. He allows you to ask questions, most of them being about all the things he had witnessed and accomplished in the eons he’s been alive. He almost admired the way your eyes lit up in wonder as he explained. Almost.

You enjoyed these little private conversations too, occasionally the demon would ask a question or two about yourself, which you would happily answer. He may show no interest on the outside, but on the inside he's curious. Something he rarely feels.

He does have a reputation to uphold however, and still threatens, yells and demeans you just as he would any of his other employees.

Gotta keep you on your toes, ya know? 

But deep down you know. You know that he secretly enjoys your company and is too stubborn to actually admit it.

You even dare to go as far and say that he was a friend. Don't let him hear you say that though.

(Romantic):

hooo boy

When I say this man is conflicted

The mere thought of love made Black Hat’s face morph into an ugly scowl, something he thought was near impossible for him to ever experience. The man had no heart for goodness's sake!

Oh, but then you had to weasel yourself into his life, his home, with your sweetness, didn't you?

Let me be clear when I say that this old man has never experienced these kinds of feelings before in his lifetime, and when he does, he thinks he’s possibly dying.

Did I also mention dramatic??

When realization dawns on him, he is absolutely floored, and the first thing he does is avoid you like the plague, which confuses you and raises a bit of concern. He rarely calls you to his office, and when he does, he avoids eye contact or just faces away from you entirely, barely acknowledging your presence.

Definitely becomes moodier, and more irritable as his feelings fester.

It’s not until you confront him one evening, when the manor is still and quiet, everyone having retreated to their respective rooms hours ago. That he finally confesses.

And being the extremely old fashioned eldritch he is, he formally asks to court you, how could you deny such a tempting proposition from the lord himself??

Of course, you say yes, why wouldn't you?? It’s an honor to be courted by Lord Black Hat!

Surprisingly, nothing changes much at first, he’s still very new to these feelings.

You both come to the agreement to keep your courtship strictly private and away from prying eyes, as I’ve said the man has a reputation to uphold.

God forbid Demencia finds out either. 

With all that being said, you both take things very slowly, which thankfully you were patient and understanding about, he's experiencing all these things for the first time.

It’s a good thing you're there to help guide him, right?

He may not have ever been in a relationship, but he isn't stupid. This demon is a straight up gentleman, and extremely chivalrous. Call it old-fashioned if you must, But the man is a charmer.

Despite his villainous persona, Black Hat shows rare moments of unexpected softness when he's alone with you.

He might not admit it, but he secretly enjoys quiet evenings, perhaps reading or just spending time together in one of his private studies. He personally enjoys reading the Necronomicon to you.

Black hat also has an uncanny ability to find and present unique, often mysterious gifts. They might be rare artifacts, darkly enchanted trinkets, or even personalized items that reflect his understanding of your tastes. You keep every single one of them.

He’s surprisingly a good listener and remembers just about anything you tell him.

Which by the way, this man spoils you.

When it comes to dates, Black Hat goes all out. He arranges extravagant, exclusive events, whether it's a candlelit dinner on a rooftop or a private screening at the manor. 

He once brought you to another dimension to view the downfall of an alien civilization, how romantic!

Black Hat, in his own twisted way, is fiercely protective over you. He might not show it overtly, but anyone who dares to even look at you with disdain will face the Eldrich’s fiery wrath.

Overall, Black Hat is surprisingly a good lover and partner. Your life never seems to be dull with him around, and you're incredulously grateful and honored to be able to see this side of him, even if it's behind closed doors. He has a hard time conveying his feelings and being vulnerable, but you're patient and understanding and eager to help guide him.

He never would have thought love was possible for him until you came along.

[briefinquiries]

Luke Alvez x Reader: Amnesia

Prompt: You experience some retrograde amnesia after you and Luke are in a car accident. 

Word count: 5.2k

Warnings: car accident, trauma, blood mention

A/N: continuing to repost these :)

The first thing that you notice when you wake up is that your head is throbbing. The pain is worse than that time you and Penelope decided to go bar hopping all night when you were visiting Emily in London. It had taken two whole days for the three of you to recover.  Judging by the way you feel right now, you think it might take a whole lot longer than that to get over whatever you had been up to the night before. 

It takes a moment, but soon, you start to realize that this pain felt like much more than just a bad hangover. Your entire body aches, and when you try to touch the spot on your head that really stung, a sharp pain shoots up your entire right arm, making your eyes open slowly in response. 

Slowly, you take in the room around you, including the IV attached to your arm and the sterile, white walls. Your mouth feels dry, and your body is still in a bed that feels so much different than yours at home. 

When you feel someone touching your arm, you turn your head.

“Rossi..?” You see your coworker looking at you with worry in his eyes and tears that are threatening to spill down his cheeks. 

“It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe now.”

You don’t know what he’s talking about. Disoriented and confused, your heart starts racing. The beeping from the heart monitor suddenly increases and Rossi quickly scoots forward on the edge of his seat, squeezing your hand and telling you to calm down.   

“What happened?” you ask, your voice shaky and scared. “Why am I here?”

You’re almost afraid to know the answer. 

“You guys were in an accident, in the SUV. It’s okay, you’re okay, and he’s going to be fine…everyone’s alright now.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, and try to take some time to process things…an accident… in the SUV. Derek was always the one who insisted on driving. 

“Oh my god…how’s Derek?”

There’s a strange look that flashes across Rossi’s face that you can’t quite read before he gives you an uneasy and forced smile, “He’s fine, everyone’s fine. He’s at home.”

“Oh,” you sigh a breath of relief. “So he wasn’t in the accident with me?”

“No…” Rossi’s voice trails off and his tone indicates that there’s something he’s not telling you.

But you don’t dwell on it. Instead, you think to yourself, Morgan’s okay. He’s fine. And I’m… you look down to your own body and see no visible casts or slings. I’m okay. We’re okay. 

What you didn’t see was the worried look in Rossi’s face, or the way he gently excuses himself to go call the doctor as quickly as he can. 

…

A nurse comes into the room after an hour and gives you some more painkillers.   

“How are you feeling?” she asks as she injects them into your IV line. 

“Tired,” you say. “And my head really hurts.”

She nods. “That’s to be expected from the trauma you endured.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She looks at you, “You were in a car accident.”

“I know, but like- how’d it happen?”

“I’m not entirely sure- your coworkers can probably tell you more.  But I know there was a car chase, and you ended up getting t-boned on the side of your vehicle. You suffered some head trauma, that’s why it’s taken so long for you to wake up. Probably why you’re a little groggy too. But Mr. Alvez received a few minor injuries. I think they’re starting to stitch him up now.” Just as she finishes administering the drugs, her pager goes off. 

“I’m sorry, I have to run. The doctor should be here soon though to check on you.”

Mr. Alvez. The name sounded vaguely familiar to you, but you couldn’t quite place it. Instead, you just assume he was the one who ran into your car. The nurse hadn’t mentioned anyone else, either, so you can only assume that you were alone in the SUV.. But why would you be chasing an Unsub alone?

Your thoughts are interrupted when Rossi re-enters the room.  Except, he’s not alone. JJ, along with a middle aged female in a white lab coat and dark scrubs trail behind him.  

JJ offers you a small smile before crossing her arms across her chest and standing in the corner of the room with Rossi. They gaze at you cautiously.  

“Glad to see you’re awake,” the doctor says. “I’m Dr. Hall. You’re very lucky that you weren’t seriously injured considering the severity of the accident.” 

She takes a moment to shine a light in your eye, and then again in your ear. She checks the movement in your arms and legs, which only causes a little discomfort at this point. “I need to ask you a few things, just some standard simple questions.”

You nod slowly in agreement. 

“Can you tell me your full name?”

You nod and tell the doctor. 

“Okay, now your date of birth?”  

Again, you answer. 

“What do you remember before the accident?”

“I'm not sure, but..” you stop, feeling a little confused. “The nurse said it happened during work. That I was chasing someone, I can’t quite remember who.”

“Okay, and what do you do for work?”

“Uh,” you squeeze your eyes shut, trying to concentrate despite your fuzzy mind. “I work for the FBI, I’m an agent for the BAU.”

“Good, and who do you work for?” 

“Aaron Hotchner,” you say. 

But something feels wrong when you look up to see the look on JJ and Rossi’s faces. JJ’s got her hand covering her mouth and she won't quite meet your gaze. An uneasy feeling settled in your stomach as you watch Rossi inhale and place a comforting hand on JJ’s back. 

Dr. Hall nods slowly at you. “Okay, we’re gonna do some more tests, if you’re up for it now.”

“What’s wrong?” you looked over to Rossi, hoping that he’ll tell you what’s happening. 

Instead, he avoids your gaze. Dr. Hall is the one to speak. “It looks like there might be some retrograde memory issues going on, but we’ll need to do a quick CT just to be sure.”

“Oh my god,” you say, surprised, but also relieved to have an explanation as to why everything feels so foggy. “How much am I forgetting?”

Finally, Rossi speaks. “Morgan left the BAU three years ago,” he explains somberly. “And Hotch left a little over two years ago.”

Your eyes widen in shock. You feel like your heart might have stopped. 

Three years? You’re forgetting the last three years of your life?

You hear the heart monitor start to beep faster again as you fight to remain calm.  

The doctor puts a comforting hand on your shoulder. 

“No need to panic,” she assures you. “This kind of thing happens, and there’s no way to know for sure what we’re looking at here until we get a CT scan, okay? So let’s not fret yet.”

You nod slowly, but can’t quite manage to look over at JJ and Rossi again. 

“My nurse here is going to take you up to get a scan. We’ll review the results when I get them, okay?”

You just nod, because what else are you going to do?

The nurse from earlier comes in with a chair.  After helping you slip into it, you don’t look back to JJ or Rossi before she wheels you out of the room. 

Turns out, the walk to the scanning room was a long one, and you hated awkward silence. So, you bring up your conversation with the nurse from earlier.

“How’s the guy who hit me doing? You said his injuries were less than mine, right?”

She pauses slightly before speaking. “The guy who hit you was arrested by your team, I think,” she says. 

“Mr. Alvez?” you ask, maybe that’s why his name was familiar.  He was the Unsub you were after.

“Mr. Alvez is getting a cut stitched up, yes. But he’s okay.”

 You frown. “I don’t understand, wasn’t Mr. Alvez the guy who hit me?”

The nurse hesitates even longer this time. “Mr. Alvez was driving your vehicle,” she explains.

“What?” You were dumbfounded and tired of everything being so confusing. 

 “Mr. Alvez was driving your vehicle, the black SUV.”

You fall silent. He must be a member of the team. With Hotch and Morgan gone, like Rossi had mentioned, it was obvious you had acquired some new team members. You can't understand why else this Alvez guy would be in the FBI car. Your head starts to hurt from the chaos.  Rather than ask more questions, you let the awkward silence take you the rest of the way to the scanning room. 

…

When you wake up later that day, you smile to see Penelope and Spencer sitting in chairs across the room. Reid has his nose in a book. Finally a familiar sight. 

“Guys,” you exhale a breath of relief. The heaviness in your chest and the throbbing in your head isn’t so bad anymore. Instead you feel safe…because that’s how Garica and Reid always made you feel. 

Spencer looks up from his book, his face breaking out into a huge grin. “Hey, you’re awake!”

“Oh my gosh,” Garcia stands up and hurries closer towards your bed. 

“You have no idea how happy I am to see those beautiful eyes,” she says.  She gives your shoulder a reassuring squeeze before sitting down in the chair by your bedside.  

Spencer remains standing and asks, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” your eyes wander towards the profiler and you pause. “Your hair is different,” you observe. “It’s so long.”

Reid and Garcia exchange a quick glance before turning back towards you.  Oh yeah, you thought, the missing three years. 

“Apparently I’ve lost my memory,” you laugh dryly, attempting to joke at the awkward situation. 

“So I heard,” Spencer says uneasily, his lips pressed tightly together. 

“It’s a shame I still remember your face though.” 

That remark seems to bring Spencer’s electrifying smile back. It was even enough to get a small laugh out of him. 

“So, does anyone have the highlights from the past three years?”

The smile that’s been lingering on your lips slightly fades as you realize how much you didn’t know, so much you were missing out on. 

“Who took Hotch’s place?” you ask. 

Garcia jumps in.  “Oh, that’s good news. Emily!”

Your jaw almost drops to the floor. “Emily? Our Emily?”

Garcia nods frantically, her red lips smiling excitedly. “She came back from London to help out when she found out we were down a man, and when Hotch left, they made her Unit Chief.” 

“Wow. That’s incredible, that’s such good news.” 

It’s making your head feel heavy, trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of your own life. You continue to play 20 questions with them until there’s a faint knocking sound at your door.  

You turn to see some familiar and some unfamiliar faces entering the room. 

The first you see is Emily. She looks almost exactly the same, which is comforting. Then there’s JJ and Rossi and Tara, who you’re relieved to recognize. But two unfamiliar men walk into the room.  They file towards the back. You try not to focus on them, because it made you uneasy. How could there be two members of your team- that you may have known for as long as three years- that you just don’t recognize? 

You try focusing on the members of your team that you did know instead. It brings you an infinite amount of more comfort.   

“How’re you doing?” Emily asks sympathetically. “We all couldn’t wait to check up on you.”

“I’m okay,” you tell her nodding, even though everyone in that room knew it was far from the truth.

“Have you gotten your CT scan results back yet?” JJ wonders.

You shake your head. “Not yet, the nurse said the doctor would be in soon, though. I guess he was finishing up a surgery.”

You can’t help but glance towards the back of the room towards the unfamiliar members of your team after a few moments. One is standing with his arms crossed, but a similarly sympathetic smile on his face as the rest of your team was wearing. But the other, with dark, curly hair and tanned skin, is staring down at the ground. He won’t meet your gaze. He has a bandage on the left side of his forehead that he keeps itching at. 

Why can't you place him?

It’s awkward and uncomfortable with the team. Something that makes you feel very uneasy, because that’s not how you remember things being at the BAU. This is your family, so why can't you wait for them to leave?

After exchanging pleasantries and promises to visit soon, the majority of the team finally started to file out of your room. 

You wave goodbye to them as they left, realizing that no one introduced you to the two unfamiliar men. You assume that they didn’t want to overwhelm you. But as soon as it was just you, Spencer, and Garcia again, you let your curiosity peak.

“Okay, who were those two guys, in the back there?” you point to where they were standing. 

“That was Matt Simmons and Luke Alvez,” Spencer explains nervously. “They’re part of the team. 

“Alvez!” you remember the name from earlier. “The nurse told me he was driving- Was he the one with the bandage?”

Spencer and Garcia exchange another nervous glance, as if they’ve been waiting for this question all along. But you can read their faces like a book, and you see the way their faces fall.

They both nod slowly. 

“Yeah.” Spencer nods. “Yeah, that was Luke. And you’re right, he was driving the SUV.” 

“Who is he?” There’s a sinking feeling in your stomach that you can’t quite place.

“He took over for Morgan when he left. So he joined the team a little under three years ago.” Reid explains cautiously. 

But Garcia gives a strange look, like there was something they knew that you didn’t.  

“What is it?” you ask them. You can't stand the fact that you don't know half of what was going on. 

Penelope sighs and when she speaks her voice is shaky.

“He- he is a member of the team,” she explains. “But you've also been dating him for the past two years.”

…

Luke’s gripping at his hair harshly as he paces through the halls of the hospital.  

“She has no clue-” he exclaims frustratedly. "No clue who I am.”

The truth is that he had been overly anxious to get to your room ever since arriving at the hospital. He pleaded with the doctor who was stitching up his forehead to hurry up. He needed to make sure you were okay.  

Even when a somber-looking Rossi had entered his room earlier in the day and told him you were experiencing some memory loss, he still felt like he needed to see you.  

“She didn’t remember that Emily took over for Hotch,” JJ explained to the team, all huddled in Luke’s room. “Or anything after Morgan left.” Her gaze wanders towards Luke. 

“Meaning she doesn’t remember me?” Luke had asked, wincing as the nurse continued to stitch up his wound from the accident. 

JJ bit her lip before looking to Rossi to answer his question. 

“We don’t think so,” Rossi declared. 

Luke had nodded slowly. “But we don’t know for sure? I mean they haven’t done any tests or anything?”

“They’re doing a CT scan now, I guess to see what’s really going on,” JJ had folded her arms across her chest tightly. 

Luke nodded, his hopes not faltering. He’d be what made her remember everything. One look- and all the memories would come back. Because their love wasn’t something you could just forget.  

“Just give her space, okay?” Rossi urged, he was the only thing blocking Luke from bursting through your door. “Try not to overwhelm her.”

“Yeah, okay,” Luke said without realizing what he was even promising. Because he knew that as soon as you saw him, this whole nightmare would be behind them.  

But when he did finally walk through the door to your room and your eyes didn’t immediately light up, Luke’s hopes started to quickly fall. 

In fact, you didn’t look at him at all. He bit his lip, trying not to give way to the fact that his entire world was coming crashing down around him while you told Emily that you were feeling okay. He found a spot on the floor to focus on, a single piece of dirt, or something, from somebody’s shoes remained the focal point of his gaze throughout the entire visit.  

What he wanted to do was charge your bed- wrap his arms around you and tell you how much he loved you. He wanted to say he was sorry for not avoiding the Unsub’s car- wanted to apologize over and over again until he was blue in the face. But he couldn’t do that.  Because you had no idea who he was. 

It isn't until he's out of your room and back in the hallway that he realizes he’s been holding his breath. Luke exhales sharply, panic setting in. 

Emily tries to calm him down by saying, “She might get all those memories back, Luke.”

“But she might not,” he admits, pulling even harder at the strands of his hair. 

“We don’t know that yet,” Tara reassures him.  “Oftentimes, amnesia after an accident is only temporary.”

“Okay,” he says, “Okay, but what if she doesn’t? What if I’m a stranger to her?”

Rossi steps forward this time, and grabs Luke by the shoulders. He has a stern look on his face while he lectures Luke. “Then we deal with it then,” he says. “But until then, you have to be strong for her, okay? Because she’s scared and she’s confused and she needs you to be strong.”

Luke nods as he slowly starts to come down from his panicked state.  He takes a couple of deep breaths. “Okay,” he agrees.  

…

The sun is shining outside and the little rays that escape through the blinds on the window illuminate your room when you hear the door rattle.

The door opens a second later and Garcia peeks her head in. “Hi, you’re awake!” She doesn’t open the door all the way, which makes you look questioningly at her. 

“What’s up?” you ask. 

She looks at you hesitantly. “You have some people to introduce you to. If you’re up for it.” She says it like a question, and you want to say no, but there’s something about the way Garcia looks, her normally bright, vibrant self looking dull and tired, that makes you agree. 

You wonder if talking to Luke and Matt will help trigger your memory. So you give Garcia a little nod, who looks at you smiling before opening the door all the way to reveal the two men who are waiting in the hall.

Matt walks in first. He’s got a sharp jaw that’s clean shaven and a tattoo poking out from the sleeve of his T-shirt. His hands are tucked into a pair of jeans that look slightly worn. There’s warmth in his dark eyes, and a comforting smile on his face as he looks at you.

The guy that comes in behind him is Luke. He has a head of thick, curly hair, and a pair of brown eyes that pop. He’s wearing a dark maroon shirt that clings to his biceps and makes his tanned skin look even darker. There’s something sad about the way his face is mixed with both exhaustion and sorrow. He looks like he needs a good night of sleep. 

“Hey,” Matt speaks first, and you can’t help but mirror the smile that’s greeting him. “I’m Matt.”

You look at both of them intently, trying to feel something, anything…but it only makes your head feel foggier.  

“I guess this is probably pretty weird for you guys, huh?” you ask, trying to lighten the mood. “Introducing yourself to someone you already know.”

Luke offers you the slightest smile, but it’s laced with dejection. 

“I’m sorry…” your face drops and Luke’s body goes tense. “I can’t remember you guys.” You look down at your hands because you can’t stand to look at them. You hate the disappointment you’ve caused on their faces.

“It’s okay, you’ve been through a lot, I’m sure it’ll come back to you eventually.” You look up to see it's Luke speaking for the first time. He’s got a warm, reassuring smile replacing the old disgruntled look and it instantly lifts your spirits. For a moment, you find yourself thinking, yeah, I can see why I had you in my life.

There’s a bit of an awkward silence for a moment, and you realize that you’re not entirely sure what to say. 

You want to be polite, and you want to give them both a chance, because at one point you obviously knew them well.

But when you look at them, you don’t see your team members. You don’t see your boyfriend. You just see strangers. 

… 

Dr. Hall comes in that evening to discuss your CT scan. You’re relieved that it’s only you and Emily in the room at the time that she arrives. 

“See that area there?” she asks, pointing to a mark on the screen she was showing you. “That indicates damage to the hippocampus.  That’s the primary memory storage site of your brain, so it’s no wonder why you’re experiencing what we call retrograde amnesia.”

The words she speak sound foreign, and while you did everything you could to understand, all you cared about was one thing.

“Will I get my memories back?” you ask. 

Dr. Hall scooted back in her chair and took off her black rimmed glasses. “Some people do,” she nods. “But some don’t. The good news is that the damage to your hippocampus is relatively minor. So much so that we missed it in our original MRI scan.”

You nod slowly. “So there’s a chance then?”

“There’s a chance. But even if it doesn't, the chunk that you’re missing is relatively small in the grand scheme of things. So even if you don’t get your old memories back, you do have the ability to create new ones.”

…

“Do me and Luke live together?” you ask Penelope in the car. You had been released from the hospital that day and the question popped into your head suddenly while you were on your way home. 

She nods, her grip tight on the steering wheel. “Yes, but he’s going to stay with Rossi for now. He didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

You sigh a breath of relief. 

Garcia gently pushes the door open to your house that you don’t recognize. You take a deep breath to prepare yourself for what you’re about to see. You’re uneasy, but there’s an odd sense of familiarity that settles in your stomach despite not knowing what to expect.

The entrance opens up to an open living room where the gray curtains are drawn open, the light coming in from the windows shined bright against the furniture. 

There are shoes lined up neatly next to the door. A few pairs of sneakers lie next to a pair of giant boots that you know must be Luke’s. 

You recognize some of the furniture. Like the rocking chair your mother gave you, and the homemade blanket. The more you recognize, the more at ease you felt.   

The warmth only spread when you walked over to the coffee table to find a copy of your favorite book left out. 

That’s when you notice that there are so many photos. Some hang on the walls and some are in frames placed around the shelves and tables.

One in particular captures your attention, and as you draw nearer, you feel like the wind has been knocked out of your lungs. It’s a picture of you and Luke, he has his arm around you and is wearing a huge, ear-to-ear grin as he stares into the camera lens. You, on the other hand, are looking up at him, a similar smile on your face. 

You steady yourself against the wall, but suddenly feel like you’re having an out of body experience, your surroundings blurring out and Luke’s voice ringing in your head.

“I’m not gonna drop your phone, don’t worry-”

“Just do a selfie, that isn’t going to hold my phone, it’s going to fall!”

“This will look so much better than a selfie, trust me! Look, steady as ever, this branch is coming through for us-”

“Looks more like a twig to me-” 

You’re squeezing your eyes shut but all you can see is Luke rushing towards you to beat the self timer on your phone, his smile wide.

Your eyes snapped open as Garcia entered the living room to announce, “I put your suitcase upstairs- what’s wrong?” she asks when she sees your frazzled state. 

“Nothing,” you lie. You don't want to get her hopes up by telling her you think you just remembered something, so instead you say, “Just tired.”

“Oh, okay. Well let me get out of your hair then, so that you can rest.”

You nod, but all you can think of is getting your hands on some more photos. 

After wandering upstairs, you seem to know just where to look to find a photo album stashed away. You open the binder to find countless pictures. You flip through them eagerly, until one a few pages deep catches your eye. 

It’s another photo of you and Luke- this time you’re both looking into the camera. He has his arm around your shoulder and you’re pulling yourself into his side, your arm stretched across his stomach. Your head is resting comfortably on his chest and the closer you look, you realize that there’s tears in your eyes. 

Suddenly, Luke’s voice pops back into your head. 

“I wouldn’t have asked you out if I knew it was going to make you this upset-”

“I’m not upset, I’m- so.. so happy.”

“Happy. As in, yes, you’ll go out with me?”

“Of course I will.”

It’s like the floodgates open and suddenly, an influx of memories and information come pouring into your mind. You feel dizzy as you sort through them, wondering if any of this could be real.  

When you look back down at the photos beneath you, your eyes narrow in on Luke.   

You can’t help the sudden rush of tears that come streaming down your face when you realize that Luke’s no longer a stranger.  

…

You take a deep breath, trying to gather courage before pressing the call button on your phone. It seems strange to you that just a few hours prior, you didn’t even feel comfortable having small talk with Luke, but now, with your memories coming back, he was the first person you wanted to tell.  

The phone rings once before his warm, now familiar, voice answers on the other line. 

“Hey,” he greets. 

You exhale sharply before whispering a soft, “Hi.”

“Is everything okay?” he asks, concern evident in his tone. 

You nod, before realizing he can’t see you. “Yeah,” you say through the tears streaming down your face. “Yeah, can you- can you come home?”

After a brief moment of silence you add, “Please.”

You hear stirring on the other line, like Luke was moving around. 

“Y-yeah,” he stammers. “Yeah, I’ll be there in 10.”

After you hang up the phone, you continue flipping through photos as you wait for Luke. The memories come back to you faster and faster. It’s a relief, but it’s also exhausting.  

Only when you hear the front door of your house open and close do you tear yourself away from the photos. You shut the book and hastily run downstairs, eager to see Luke.  

The Luke you see in your memories and pictures around the house is different than the one standing in front of you now. The Luke you now remember has skin the color of caramel and eyes so warm the sun would be jealous. But this Luke looks flushed and exhausted, with dark circles encasing his eyes.

“Luke..” you say softly, your voice coming out in a whisper, as if saying his name would take all your memories away again.

He looks frazzled and worried, but you make your way to him slowly. 

“What’s wrong?” he frets, looking at you wildly.

You feel bad to have worried him into such a state. “Nothing-” you manage to get out. “I-I-” You’re so taken aback by just knowing who he is, that it’s hard to speak. 

But Luke’s face softens, and when he comes to the conclusion that you must have called him over here for another reason, his eyes widen. “Do you- are you remembering things?” 

Your face breaks out into a large, relieved smile, despite the tears still falling down your cheeks. You’re afraid that if you speak, you might just sob forever, so instead you nod frantically. 

“Oh my god,” Luke gasps before crossing the room in just two, large strides. He wastes no time before wrapping his arms around your body tightly. He lifts your feet off the ground, his face getting buried in the nape of your neck while he spins you around. “Oh my god,” he repeats, followed by a little chuckle. 

You breath in his comforting scent, wondering how you went so long without craving his touch. 

“I remember-” you choke out. “I remember now.”

Luke lifts both of his hands and cups your face, and you can see tears in Luke’s eyes. “God, I’m so sorry,” he tells you. “I’m so sorry I let you get hurt.”

But you’re shaking your head. “It’s not your fault, Luke.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his lips pressed tightly together like he’s trying to find his own words. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” he finally says. “First when you were unconscious at the scene, but again when you didn’t know who I was.” He takes a slow, unsteady breath. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever remember.”

He leans his forehead to rest against yours, his thumb gently rubbing against your cheek, it grazes the corner of your mouth before he leans down, wanting nothing more than to press his lips against yours, to remind you about what the two of you had together. 

When he finally pulls away, you’re breathless and wide-eyed. 

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” he whispers. 

You nod and ignore all the thoughts and fears that are racing through your mind, and instead close the gap between you and Luke once again.

Luke tastes like mint and coffee, he smells like citrus, and he’s warm like a hot, summer day.

Luke feels like home. 

[valyrou]

Kinda weird idea but fuck it:

How would Reaper react if he found out Moira experimented on his kid? Kid is like, late teens probably said experiments altered their appearance too(just to drive the pain of it home bc angst).

Sorry if this is confusing, hope you have a wonderful day/night!

A/N: Helloo! This is such a great request :000 I loooove it!!! I hope it’s what you asked for. Also I need to get up in 5 hours and I have not slept yet soooo…

Warnings: mention of needles (if there is anything else let me know

Other info: reader is around 16/17

Overwatch

Father!Reaper x Teen!Reader (Platonic)

He would find out about moiras experiments because he happens to walk past her lab and hear your pained screams

When entering the room he would see you unconscious with various of IVs and needles inside your skin

He would be too freaked out to be very angry, but he would be angry with Moira

Lots of blaming on himself… poor you, you didn’t deserve this… not you

Gabriel ears perked up. What was that? The halls would be quiet at this hour of night. There! There it was again! Reyes followed his ears and almost walked past the excruciating screams that came from one door. One very familiar door. Right as he stops Infront of the door of his colleague the screams pick up again, yet the voice cracks right after and then silence. Reyes was so tired he nearly didn’t realize who had been screaming.

As soon as it dawned on him he swung the doors open „What are you doing Moira!“ the Reaper himself spoke up, voice loud and demanding an answer from the scientist „Experimenting“ was all he got back. Reaper hurried close, looking at his poor child. That mad women had somehow turned your whole right arm a Transparent white, almost ghost like „You Dare to put your hands on them!?“ his voice was venomous and dripping with anger

His angered Look would have killed at least 10 of his men, yet Moira looked emotionless „you offered me your body, theirs should be no exception. Don’t you see what I created, a little more testing and they might bring us just what we need!“ Moira sounded excited and Reyes stomach turned in disgust. He looked away, turning his back to the female ginger while getting his only child, the only human he was capable of loving of the needles.

As gentle as he could, did he remove what caused the altering of your right arm, only then did he realize that your left arm, that has previously been covered by a cloth, looked alike to your right, Transparent and lucid. When every last needle was removed, he carefully picked you up and cradled you in his arms. It didn’t matter to him, how big or how old you were, you would always be his baby and he couldn’t hate himself more, for letting that happen to you.

„This is not over.“ his harsh voice echoed through the lab and hung in the air like a threat. Moira simply sat back in her chair and looked at her files. If Reyes wouldn’t care for you first, he would snap that women’s neck like a twig.. yet he decided otherwise and carried you to his room where he placed you on his bed, tucking you in while pulling a chair to your side and sitting on it. He didn’t sleep that whole night. No he blamed himself for not being there for you enough.. and just how much of a failure of a father he is to you…

He now has to hope that you will forgive him for his mistakes…

[izuom]

favorite kpop group(s) tag game!

tagged by : @writingmochi thank you for the tag lissie!! (and ofc for always having me included in these!)

sorry i cuss a lot

who is your favourite kpop group?

oh boy.. i hope i’m able to answer this without having to list down more than 10+ groups all at once (i’m being serious) but if having favs that you’re constantly updated to then : bts, txt, le sserafim, enhypen, nct dream, riize & aespa!

which member sparked your interest first?

i’m having the toughest time now but here we go

bts : JUNGKOOK! who else other than our used one of the main rappers (WE LOST TO RAPPER JUNGKOOK BEFORE 2015 AND IM STILL BITTER but out of honesty that sadnesses washed away the moment when he decided to birth outro : love is not over and let’s just say i’ve never been fine since then) bro has been an all-rounder since day one and to that he was the one that made me to discover bts (touché)

txt : yeonjun (duh) i was once a bts popper so the moment we were getting a new boy group under bh i just knew i had to check them out. i mean yeonjun is literally every moa’s first love so it’s almost understandable for him to be the first member for you to be interested to LOL

le sserafim : huh to the yunjin (are we serious? that woman slayed on her first day job) it’s mesmerising to see that source music *blood coughing* decided to give us a closure…………… but miss it girl yunjin, duh she’s a starstruck i know it’s getting out of the phrase but i’ll always be grateful that she becomes an idol. the world (read kpop) wouldn’t be the same without her existence. 

enhypen : SUNGHOON!!!!! ON AN ICE RINK!!!! SKATING!!!!! LIKE ???? IVE NEVER SEEN AN IDOL WHO WERE AN ICE SKATER BEFORE LIKE ??? THATS THE MOST PUREST BEAUTIFUL FORM SOMEONE COULDVE BE???

nct dream : mark! bc he was one of the members that were introduced first as part of the nct u sub-unit. i first watched him performing the 7th sense debut performance on music bank and was surprised to see him in the other remaining sub-unit under sm (but then i figured it out that nct IS a group that consists few sub-unit) (i was confused, still am)

riize : wonbin. any attractive man with long hair never not makes me HOOKED on a first sight. he’s majestic. AS HELL. he plays the guitar very well too?? 

aespa : karina!! also i think this was everyone’s normal occurrences of having karina as the first member that sparked your interest in aespa bc same. i only know her first in aespa like she’s mentioned in every fic or edit or on stan twt like… she’s everywhere it’s crazy. (the power she holds)

who was your first bias?

INTERESTING

bts : hoseok. man do we need to replay my first love? HE WAS THE MAN OF MY LIFE.

txt : soobin,, ARE WE SURPRISE AGAIN 

le sserafim : chaewon! i think the answer is there.

enhypen : sunghoon (forever will) 

nct dream : jisung. bro when i say that i used to have a serious crush on him? 2018 zu was a jisung’s whipped era.

riize : sungchan! 90s love was a life experience. (man decided to just make a cameo and slay as fuck) i know we are suppose to talk about sungchan in riize but he’s my first bias in riize ONLY because i knew him first alongside with shotaro (sungtaro slay) 

aespa : KIM MINJEONG. YOU CANNOT TALK TO ME ON HER. SHE WAS MY FIRST LOVE??? 

who is your current bias?

basically just the same except for bts & nct dream :D

bts : yoongi (i am a joke)

txt : soobin (salute for being this loyal)

le sserafim : chaewon

enhypen : sunghoon

nct dream : renjun (....... surprise surprise)

riize : sungchan (eventho i highly think this won’t last long….fuck)

aespa : ningning

what makes them your current bias?

bts : I KNOW CRAZY. i’ve been there for hobi since 2014 esp around those times when no one was there to appreciate him truly as one of the members (DARK TIMES FOR ME, we do not talk about that) but then 2017 yoongi came in. it’s just something about yoongi himself that soothes my soul in peace. the way he thought of things in his own perspective without disrespecting anybody and the way he’s just a full walking comfort a person could be for anyone, for me particularly. his godly, incredible amount of times he’d shown off his talent in rap, producing and things he’d done. i can talk about yoongi that people wouldn't be able to understand bc he’s so ?? what a person is supposed to be. is there anything to prove why i decided to change a bias? 

txt : when soobin was introduced as the second member of txt (gurl) when i told you that soobin introduction film was… a first love at sight moment, it was true. soobin has been the love of my fucking life since then. actually no there’s so many things that i love about soobin. so many things, it’s unexplainable. i can confidently say that his voice caught me off-guard on a first listen. i know it’s dramatic as hell (ANYTHING I SAY ABOUT MY BIASES ARE SO QUESTIONABLE BUT I AM BEING SERIOUS) he has the rarest vocal on his falsetto? he’s doing it effortlessly too? if that’s not enough to actually prove my point of him being my bias then idk what is. man is majestic as hell too. (BONUS POINT!)

le sserafim : AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH god chaewon… honestly, i wasn’t a wiz*one bc produce 48 was shitty as hell. (I WATCHED EVERY MNET SURVIVAL SHOW EXCEPT FOR THIS) neither do i like the final debut lineup for iz*one. i just couldn’t pinpoint what was missing but that’s not the point of that rn. well. for me, i think the majority of people would have agreed with me about this but chaewon is better off with le sserafim. (AUDIENCE GASP) i COULD NEVER say that she caught my attention even the tiniest bit when she was in iz*one, but she did ON A FIRST SIGHT OF HER DEBUT IN LE SSERAFIM. the way that she kept on improving and i didn’t even know that she can dance so well???? (this woman is literally everyone’s type and it’s FUCKING understandable) i watched their documentary too and i love her even much more than i should’ve? i think having chaewon as my bias, it’s emotional. i am emotionally attached to her and i don’t want to seek therapy. 

enhypen : *internally crying, hysterically screaming* are we ready to hear the part of me losing almost entirely of my sanity? i was away from home for the first time for my college, and never really bothered to get updated with my kpop life. those days were.. hectic (as everyone did) but long short story i was on tiktok, at my room, at home since for so long, AFTER my hectic first sem and i just so happened to stumble upon a sunghoon edit on an ice rink, skating WITH THE TIMOTHEE TREND SONG (2020 WAS 4 YEARS AGO TOO?? GOD) AND IM LIKE ??? WHO IS THIS? I NEED TO KNOW WHO IS HE. yk i haven’t watched iland yet at that time (and probably shouldn’t so that i wouldn’t have to endure the trauma that show gave me), and only decided to watch it bc of him. I JUST LOVE LOVE skater park sunghoon a lot more than myself (that should be considered as normal btw) and i never regretted checking out on iland bc if i don’t i wouldn’t have known just how unique his talent is? you can ACTUALLY tell he has the most unique way of dancing, as if he’s dancing with every bit of his skating method and combining it to his dancing style and it’s just ?? beautiful… god park sunghoon i love him a lot.

nct dream : crying as i type this, i love renjun a lot. man is so demonically pure. i haven’t been on nct shit for SO LONG until last year (only applicable for nct dream) and i am attached as shit as they wanted me to be. i think re-stanning nct dream (i will say this forever if i’ve to prove how much they mean to me) was the peak of the third quarter of my life last year. but as for renjun, he’s just so easy to love? for me, his own persona to things as a person always never makes me so deeply attached. (like the fucking loser i am) renjun have a lot of things you can say a lot of things to, like his vocals? (ik you can confidently say that sm has the most vocals out of that shitty company) but i LOVE to listen to his voice. he’s singing with his emotions and my soul thaws in silence every time. HES ALSO SO ROMANTIC LIKE??? MAN CASUALLY JUST ASKED HIS TEAMMATES TO HAVE A MATCHING FRIENDSHIP RINGS LIKE? 

riize : as for sungchan, i think i'm still learning about him. I know i’ve seen him a few times (more than 10 times on screen as for the appearance of the inkigayo and being part of nct) but i still have a lot of things to learn before i can list things down. (gurl you’re in love with another member)

aespa : i love everything about ning yizhuo. i honestly have no idea how i changed my bias but i could never say no to people who can sing well. her vocals?? i can listen to her singing on a daily basis. shes a stunner, a mother=my type. well, her whole existence stands out the most when i first discovered aespa. i just love ningning, she’s so loveable, i love her except for she idolized that one problematic rat. 

who is your bias wrecker

bts : i love them all equally. (jungkook)

txt : taehyun. stfu 

le sserafim : kazuha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love my woman a ballerina 

enhypen : jungwon. 

nct dream : zhong chenle (hes so attractive???????????)

riize : eunseok 

aespa : minjeong……………………

which member are you currently obsessing that aren’t your bias/bias wrecker

bts : i’ll skip them (they be on military, i’ve no one to be obsessed to recently)

txt : beomgyu. (DAEGU MEN STAY AWAY FROM ME)

le sserafim : YUNJIN. she needs to stop 

enhypen : heeseung. i think i’ve problems with the 01 liner. 

nct dream : none i guess. (i'm still obsess with renjun)

riize : ….. sohee. i think out of the groups, sohee has the most valid reasons and i'm fully to blame for this. i watched the lee hyori’s red carpet to their sampled track of love 119 (THEIR BEST SONG YET WHAT THE FUCK) which is none other than the infamous emergency room ost AND WHEN I TELL YOU IVE BEEN OBSESSED SINCE. and that obsession didn’t stop there, i decided to check more to his vocals compilation and i stumbled upon his predebut covers… WORSE: his sofa cover has been playing on my mind all day since i first heard of it, it’s unhealthy. i’m gonna k word myself 

aespa : none too. 

when did you first discover the group?

bts : 2014. boy in luv was a superior era. 

txt : 2019…. that guessing the morse code at the end of introduction films of every member's era? good old days

le sserafim : on their debut

enhypen : end month of september 2020! (funfact : enhypen was formed on my birthday) 

nct dream : on their debut (them hoverboard era)

riize : on their debut days

aespa : early year 2022 (embarassing as fuck)

have you ever been to one of their concerts?

bts : gurl, no. they did a tour for the red bullet on june 2015? THAT ONE TIME ONLY. what did you expect from me? to go? i was 13. 

txt : they don’t even know my country exists? so no. 

le sserafim : no. (hybe better put malaysia when they do tour one day or else im burning down the whole building as it should’ve)

enhypen : no. (they skipped us.) 

nct dream : they did a tour last year in may…… but miss girl decided to only stan them back in june and was obsessed and mentally ill for not attending. (ONLY BC I AM NOT A FAN) i was late to the party, im sorry and now they be skipping us. 

riize : no. 

aespa : ???????? NO

what are some of your favourite songs by this group? 

i’ll list 10 songs!

bts : butterfly / dimple / coffee / love is not over (full length version) / epilogue : young forever / pied piper / outro : do you think it makes sense? / the truth untold ft steve aoki / spring day / hold me tight 

txt : 20cm / dear sputnik / 0X1=lovesong (i know i love you) ft seori / maze in the mirror / ghosting / skipping stones / fairy of shampoo / blue orangeade / farewell, neverland / eternally 

le sserafim : impurities / easy / perfect night / no celestial / antifragile / smart / blue flame / swan song / good parts (when the quality is bad but i am) / sour grapes

enhypen : just a little bit / criminal love / mixed up / chaconne / not for sale / blockbuster ft yeonjun of tomorrow x together / shout out / blind / given-taken / bills

nct dream : dive into you / teddy bear / 7 days / boom / my youth / better than gold / dunk shot / arcade / poison / love again

riize : …. i’ll list from most to least fav (I LOVE ALL OF THEIR SONGS) love 119 / talk saxy / get a guitar / memories  

aespa : lucid dream / dreams come true / drama / thirsty / next level / life’s too short / don’t blink / i’m unhappy / illusion / better things 

tagging : @my313 (no pressure bestie!) / anyone who want

[nerves-nebula]

I’ve never really recognized it as “religious trauma”, but I’m nodding along to ur list. It’s just kinda stuff that happened. Except for the few things that grown me was kinda at like ‘that seems a little bad actually-‘

I remember being 7 and first thinking what if God isn’t real as I was trying to sleep. So it’s like midnight and I’ve just had this world breaking thought that immediately had me spiraling down two trains of thought: Im going to hell for thinking that, and, what if he isn’t what the fuck. So of course I’m freaked out and I’m pretty sure child me needed a fucking hug or some assurance or something, so I went to my parents room, which woke up my mom. At which point I realize, I can’t tell them my actual problem because it was a thought I was ashamed of having, and I didn’t want to run the risk of getting in trouble for some nebulous comfort that was frankly unfathomable cus my parents suck. So I just said felt sick, and took “sorry” my mam gave me as comfort enough (which in hindsight is not a great response to that), and just had to go back to bed with all that. That shit stuck with me. I remember at Sunday school, maybe months or a year later, when one of the teachers said doubt was put in our minds by the devil, I was so fucking relieved.

And there’s the fact that I didn’t know other religions were a thing. I didn’t know there were other blends of Christianity. I lived in a small town and I just had never been touched by that concept until I moved at 11, and one of our religious education modules was on Judaism. Everyone else was just learning customs and calendar stuff, and I was having a whole epiphany. I was so confused until halfway into the lesson, and I realized they were talking about not being catholic. I literally searched the library for a book that would explain this arcane concept. And it was just such a mind blowing experience. I was couldn’t comprehend why no one had ever mentioned other religions if there were so many. And how did it make any sense that there were so many. The differences aren’t subtle. Point is, it was a whole thing.

If I hadn’t moved I would have been made to do my confirmation that school year. And that’s not okay! The whole point of that sacrament is that you’re choosing Christianity, like your old enough and conscious enough to make that choice. Adult in the eyes of the church and all that. Baptism but leveled up. But they make children do it. Unrelated, but when I first learnt about it I was 8, and there was a girl in my class that never had to religion with us. Which was the weirdest thing to me at the time, because sure there were people that didn’t have to do Irish or English, because they had different first languages. But religion? I always found that so weird. But she literally just. Wasn’t catholic. And I just couldn’t conceptualize that. It didn’t occur to me that could be an option.

Jesus, raising kids with a religion is brainwashing of the highest order and no one can change my mind on that. Sorry for rambling at u, that post just made me think.

If I hadn’t moved I would have been made to do my confirmation that school year. And that’s not okay! The whole point of that sacrament is that you’re choosing Christianity, like your old enough and conscious enough to make that choice. Adult in the eyes of the church and all that.

my girlfriend said this exact same thing when i was forced to be confirmed. said it didnt count but tbh that feels like a cop out. like its something ive been forced to do, like a spiritual violation or something, it still happened. but, eh, whatever

Jesus, raising kids with a religion is brainwashing of the highest order and no one can change my mind on that.

not sure i agree with you here, but i can agree that a lot of the ways kids are raised within Christianity is cult-ish and brainwash-y and bad.

[rigelmejo]

In unrelated language stuff. Japanese really is... a mountain. Its a language I try a lot of studying experiments with, for one because its going to be many more years of study so I'm having fun, but also 2 because it has so many hurdles i personally have difficulty with so I am always hopeful some experiment will help things I study click better.

Like. Conjugation was hard to me in french, and there were english cognates to lean on, it is a fairly regular language conjugation wise (japanese has more exceptions i tend to forget how to conjugate). Then in japanese, everything being a very different word order combined with the information dense conjugation makes me even more confused.

A few things worked quite well for me in japanese study. One was nukemarines LLJ memrise decks, which after 2 years of studying other things, i crammed in 6 months and went from 300 words known from Genki and maybe 100 hanzi from Heisig RTK (yes i really didnt learn much in 2 years) to 1000-2000 words recognized and basic grammar and able to read Yatsubo and play Kingdom Hearts 2 in japanese (granted i know the game very well in english). Ever since then, ive been able to read manga and look words up to learn, or follow roughly a lets play of a game i know. I can never focus on anki long, but i recognize its use, especially when i was using the LLJ deck which had hanzi, common words in sentenced, and grammar. Since then, i havent used as organized of a resource. So i squander a lot more time, trying to figure out what to study.

Then I did Clozemaster sincerely for a couple months once in japanese. I think i only got through like 1000 cards. But it FINALLY helped me understand stuff like される られる word endings. Tragically, i forgot what they mean. But forca solid 6 months after my rime with Clozemaster cramming, i finally understood a lot of the grammar that had been confusing me. I desperately need to refresh that knowledge (if anyone has any good quock grammar explanation notes theyve seen). I only remember teimasu is like "ing" doing verb ending in english.

And I did japaneseaudiolessons, and the old glossika cd lessons, on and off. And each time i use audio for a while, i do make good progress. I seem to learn very well from audio. In particular, hearing so much japanese FINALLY got me used to the word order. So i struggle much less to follow sentences. Whereas before the massive listening practice, i would often lose the object or subject by the time i heard the verb. So i could not figure sentences out before, unless they were written, since id forget so much while trying to keep track of which word was which function. Lots of listening to audio lessons really helps me get into this rythm of intuitively knowing the order of the words and remembering the grammar through the whole sentence. Thats partly why i keep trying to study with more audio: its rhe biggest leap in terms of being able to understand japanese more instantly, to comprehend AS i hear or AS i read later (after audio study). I just cannot find another way to get my brain to internalize the word order, except LOTS of listening. The audio lessons have helped my reading skills SO much, all of my japanese listening skills so much, because now when i see eords i know i can comprehend what theyre doing in the sentence without thinking about it. And if i hear unknown words i can tell immediately if theyre subject object adjective verb time or a helper word like very/suddenly. I do plan to switch to reading study next, once I feel my vocabulary is solidly more than 2000 words (ideally 3000-5000 but lol im not sure ill find audio lessons that truly teach that much).

So yeah. Im studying japanese and chinese, on and off, as usual. And its always funny and frustrating when it hits just how much more I understand chinese. I took a 6 month ish break from studying ANY language. So ive been listening to audio lessons to review things i knew before, in Chinese and Japanese right now.

In chinese, i listened to maybe 4 hours of audio lessons review, and 2 hours of SCI mystery audiobook (i did not follow too much but hearing so many words helped jog my memory). Its been a week since starting review. Now? Well first of all, if i look at a chinese webnovel the READING skill comes back within 1 chapter and comes back before i eben did any purposeful reviews this past week. My reading skills in all languages seem to break down/be forgotten/get rusty the least. Second: now that I've reviewed for a week, I can understand almost all words in The Untamed (and the eordw i dont know i have been quickly google translatkng just to realize ITS WORDS I KNEW I JUST FORGOT THEM. Like 鬼 i cant believe i forgot gui its one of the first words i learned! Its in a lot of stuff i read and watch lol! Or 放手 i really forgot fangshou existed, i swear my brain just held onto hanzi as images fine but when i just HEAR a word i dont recognize it until i review it again... hence why SO much listening stuff im doing right now). I listened to 默读 audio drama last night and for the first 20 minutes i followed everything. I would guess i know at least 90% of the words (if i havent forgotten some - as with 镇魂 i knew over 95% of the words 8n most chapters right before i took my 6 month study break, and i also could read modu extensively at that point and get the main idea... since i knew thw english translation to guess bits). To be fair? With the audio drama, i did have the aid of knowing the plot already. But ive known modus plot a LONG time, and in the past i struggled to follow the audiodrama anyway, because compared to the audiobook it had less details forcme to use as a crutch to figure out what scene i was hearing. So me listening to rhe audio Drama yesterday, and following so much? Great. Ive also been listening to the mdzs audiobook, which has been brain frying as i started a week ago before realizing i needed to review the sounds of words lol. But also brain frying because the opening monologue words confuse me In Text form, so in audio form it took me 4 listens to realize they were saying the jiang jin nie lan clans fought wei wuxian etc etc. I heard meng and just completely forgot it meant clan, so my brain kept doing things like "is Xmeng a word i know?" It took me 2 listens to realize the next part was Wei Wuxian in mo manor, and 4 listens to realize mojia was MO FAMILY because id been going "mojia sounds familiar, do i know that word?" The last few listens lol. I also forgot fuchou! How! Anyway. Its an accomplishment. I have never had as much success listening to a BRAND NEW audiobook in chinese of something i havent read before, and been able to understand this much. Its not a lot, im just grasping a lot of phrases and the main scene ideas. And i do have my knowledge of The Untamed plot to help me guess. But its going better than listening to audiobooks used to go. And i see a Huge improvement in dialogue. When people talk now (except the guy who tells exposition stories), i find those words are easiest to recognize and quickly remember again. I think part of it is just: dialogue tends to be more direct communication of ideas, whereas descriptive narration can get creatively phrased and meander and discuss details in phrases i havent heard as much as ive heard conversational phrases. Like when i listened to SCI audiobook last weekend, i could follow some of the dialogue portions great, like at crime scenes, arguing, with their boss, it was the descriptions in between where id get lost for a while.

Its just sort of frustrating and sad how much stusying japanese is like hitting a brick wall and learning tiny chip by tiny chip as it wears gradually, and also grateful my mind clicked with chinese because im so over the moon i did NOT have to struggle as much with chinese. For chinese i thankfully could pretty much do exactly what i did when learning to read french, and i improved on that old study plan, and as a result chinese improvement went by faster than when i initially studied french and floundered for a while. I was reading priest novels by the end of year 1 of study (with a click translator like Pleco). The study plan was simple, worked fine. The confusing parts of grammar clicked with enough reading (after maybe 100 chapters of things), and now (likecwith french) my main grammar issues with chinese are learning to produce them right in speaking and writing. But in reading it just clicks and i know what it means immediately. I dream of the day ill finally get whats going on with japanese verbs and grammar ;-;

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Working on Better Endings

Welcome to our last blog post of the year.  Before I get to it, let me say thank you for supporting us.  We appreciate it every time you read something we write and every time you listen to our podcast.  You are literally the only reason we are doing these things! 

At the same time, though, likes are very much appreciated, especially on our YouTube channel, which we’d also love for you to subscribe to (and which we’ll be putting major effort into in the new year).  We also greatly appreciate reviews of the podcast, as they help spread the word, and support via Patreon that covers some of the costs of putting the podcast together.

 Now for the post itself.

Except that I’m not quite sure where to begin. 

I wanted to write about assisted dying.  It’s not a cheerful way to end the year but it’s important to be able to have a gentle end to your own story.  But it’s mostly unavailable.  The legal right to medical assistance with dying would make the world a more humane place.  Yet it’s complicated.

If assisted dying had been available here in Germany, the horror of the last week that Spouse, MIL, and I lived through—but not my father–in–law—could have been avoided.  Except that maybe it couldn’t have been.  Because, argh... It’s not always clear what is the right or even the best thing to do. The deeper you get into a situation where assisted dying would be useful, the more you see how convoluted the maze of shades of grey the possibility of helping someone end their life can be.

FIL had Alzheimer’s.  If you’ve ever had a close relative with this disease, you know what devastation it wreaks.  Over the course of a dozen years, Alzheimer’s had withered FIL into a shadow of himself (although not without the occasional increasingly dimmer flash of his old self).  Then, in the middle of December, FIL got sick and had to be hospitalized.  This had been increasingly happening, but this time it was an infection. They tried but couldn’t deliver the antibiotics he desperately needed via an IV. He kept ripping it out of his arm.  And orally the antibiotics just weren’t effective enough.  FIL’s condition quickly degraded. 

But there were ups and downs.  Things looked grim—and Spouse and I rushed down from where we live several hours away—and then they looked better and then they looked grim again.  Meanwhile, the doctor kept threatening to discharge FIL in a day or two, even there was no way MIL, tough but small, could properly care for him at home on her own.  In the state he was in, it took two people to get him up and out of bed to get him to the bathroom or anything like that and there was no end in sight to the wait for a space in a nursing home.  

The last day that FIL was at least briefly lucid—which turned out to be two days before he died—he swerved back and forth between saying he wished it was all over and saying that he was so glad that he had more time.  In retrospect, clearly, he was dying, so swift and severe was his deterioration.  But even the doctor and nurses didn’t recognize it up until half an hour before the end. That was when the off–duty physical therapist who had come to visit (because she was a friend) was like CALL HIS WIFE AND SON NOW!  And even then, it didn’t occur to the doctor or nurses on the ward that he needed sedation posthaste so that he didn’t have to experience the horrible death his was about to have to...well, not live through, but you know what I mean.  It only occurred to them to offer sedation a minute or two after he’d died, to stop the twitching the body does as all of its biological electricity discharges (so to speak).

Given all that confusion, maybe the possibility for assisted dying wouldn’t have spared my FIL from drowning in his own lung fluid because of the lung infection that is the typical way for people with Alzheimer’s to go because eventually their coordination degrades to the point where they can no longer successfully swallow or properly cough.  And maybe it wouldn’t have spared the three of us—MIL, Spouse, and I—from having to watch him die that way.  (The off–duty PT fled in tears the moment we arrived, thereby missing FIL’s death by about 120 seconds.  Which is to say, I think FIL fought hard to stay alive until his wife and son were able to get there and then let go.)

Oh, the number of times this last week that MIL muttered, we would have put an animal out of this misery a while ago already.  And the number of times that Spouse agreed!  Still, the deeper you get into a situation like Alzheimer’s, the more you see that maze of shades of grey.  You can say, well, the person they were before they developed Alzheimer’s would have never wanted to see themselves live this way.  And they would have wanted not to suffer the horrible death that is about to befall them.  You know you are horrified by seeing them live this way.  And you’ll never get the sight of that horrible death out of your head, especially nights, when you are trying to sleep. But what do you do when the person there in front of you now, thick in the midst of their advanced case of Alzheimer’s, has different feelings about it?  Can you just say they don’t know what they’re talking about? Plus, they aren’t just miserable.  Even when they’re in the hospital dying, they appear to experience moments of joy.  Sure, you are certain they don’t grasp the future they’re facing or the horrible death that awaits them.  But even if they don’t understand what is happening, how could you ever have the moral right to say fetch the poison for someone who has moments of consciousness but can’t decide that they’re ready to go?

All of this is not to say that assisted dying is wrong.  As muddled as this week was, after experiencing it, I am now all the more certain that assisted dying is important. We have that moral right to decide the where and the when of dying for ourselves when the time comes, for whatever reason, to die. We ought to fight for the legal right to it, too.  But the fight for people to have the legal right for medical assistance with dying with dignity and without undo suffering will take facing the fact that assisted dying can be a thorny issue. There are times when it’s wrong and should be withheld. And there are times when it isn’t clear if it’s right or if it’s wrong and that can be true even when the person in question is suffering and has no hope for recovery from whatever is destroying them. We need to be brave enough and clear headed enough as communities or societies to address these issues.

I guess, in the end, then, assisted dying is what I’ve ended up writing about.  I guess I’ll also say hug your loved ones!  And go do something out of the ordinary with them.  It doesn’t have to be anything major, just something different enough for you to always remember.  Because as long as life is, the years do go by and eventually come to an end that sneaks up on you, leaving you to think about all the time you didn’t spend with someone before it was too late.

[doriananonsblog]

Also. Not to make a billion posts in one night, but I might be bisexual? Which is, um. Yeah. I don't know. I'm in my mid-twenties, and I could definitely be sorting things out LATER than this, but this is still...unexpected and confusing, and I've been confused about it for like over a year now and have literally only talked to one single person about it.

The thing that's hard to figure out is like ...I'm pretty fucking sure I was gay? I'm pretty fucking sure I WAS gay. For a long time. I don't know what happened. But I was looking back trying to figure out if this was something that had always been there, and, like, I don't know, when I was young I experimented with girls, because, you know. But I don't think I was attracted to them, and I wasn't under the impression I was attracted to them at the time. I don't know where that leaves me. There was one celebrity I discovered when I was 17 that made me think okay yeah there is ONE woman I would definitely probably actually go for, and I stand by my choice haha, but I don't know. I don't think I was attracted to women in general. As an adult there were a couple (like 2 that I distinctly remember) trans women I was really attracted to — one masculine (rejected the idea of transition for herself), one feminine, so I was a little like ...hmm IDK there, but I'd also accepted the possibility that I was on rare occasion somewhat flexible after the one cis woman, so I didn't really think too much of it.

But the past year or so has been really unignorable, I just fell headlong into a rabbithole and...I don't know. Maybe it was more of a long slope with a sudden drop off than a change out of nowhere. Maybe sexuality is just complicated in the first place. I don't know how many times I can say I don't know, but I truly don't. So lost.

Not really comfortable calling myself bisexual though. I think ill stick to queer/mlm. Maybe gay as an umbrella term. Literally all the rest of my friends are bi/pan though, except my token cishet; I think I cling on to gay because it's what ive known for so long and i dont like change, and i dont want my identity to change, and quite frankly, i like being gay. I dunno about this whole new thing. I dont really plan to put myself on the market anyway, so it shouldnt matter, but it does. I also dont like the idea of it changing people's perception of me.

[jenniferdiazisatransgirl]

So I’ve recently been replaying New Vegas and I’ve admittedly got a bit bored of it for the time being. Don’t get me wrong, it is a game I love but I have been playing it a lot lately.

Interesting random fact though, before starting HRT I used to game like constantly. Like it was really hard to get me to be bored of a game. I could play the same game for days or weeks on end and not get bored. When I started HRT though, I stopped being able to do that. Like I still love video games but my interest shifted more towards reading books and watching TV. Not sure if anyone else who is trans has a similar experience to this when they started HRT?

But yeah, that was a bit of a tangent. I was basically writing this post with the intent of saying, I always play Fallout and The Elder Scrolls on the normal difficulty setting. Survival which was first introduced in New Vegas just always scared me. Which brings me onto something, I should tell you how I got into Fallout.

So basically, back in 2008 I wanted a PS3 with GTA IV for Christmas. GTA is one of my favourite video game franchises and as a kid it was pretty much the only thing I’d play. I never really strayed away from the games I knew and loved. And that was GTA. I did get The Sims eventually but that was kinda one of those rare exceptions. My Mum couldn’t find a game bundle that contained GTA IV though, so she got me a PS3 that came with Little Big Planet, Fallout 3 and Resistance. Her plan was, I trade the 3 games in to get GTA IV. I’d been brought up not to trade in presents though, so gave each game its fair shot. I hated Resistance so that went in the trade pile, Little Big Planet was fun so I kept it and well Fallout 3. Here’s the story.

Basically, I set up my character and quite enjoyed the character customisation. Beyond The Sims, i hadn’t really experienced something like that and loved that aspect. I loved the dialogue options and feeling like I had a say in the conversations and then I left the vault and things went downhill.

The compass confused me so I got instantly lost and had no idea where I was going, I got attacked by a giant ant and well I just ran. I stumbled on those train tunnels the vampire people who’s name escapes me lived in. I hung there for a bit but then ventured back out and bumped into Lucky Harry. I spent like several in real life days following this dude round the map. I then ended up at Big Town and hung there a bit too scared to leave the place.

I did in time get the hang of playing Fallout and honestly, playing a game where I was terrified due to my lack of skill was actually pretty immersive to the point it was kinda fun.

The point I am laying out here is I wasn’t that good and it took me a while to find my feet in Fallout, so the survival modes scared me cos it would mean finding my feet all over again. I also found Fallout New Vegas way more challenging than I did Fallout 3.

I got Fallout 76 back in 2018 though and with it being a multiplayer game, you don’t get to select your difficulty level and you are playing in what is effectively Survival Mode. It took me some time, but I did begin to get rather good at playing Fallout 76 and it changed my play style. On my replay of New Vegas, even though I’m doing normal mode, I noticed I am using some of what I picked up in 76 in that and I have found this play through far easier. Like I can pretty much 2 shot deathclaws in New Vegas now. Last time I played I was a lot of shotting deathclaws 😂 It took me so long to kill them 😭

It’s taken 14 years but I think I am finally ready to make the games more difficult for me. So tomorrow, I’m gonna boot up Skyrim starting a new game where I play in Survival Mode and I’ll likely do the same with Fallout 4 and New Vegas at some point 😊

I don’t know if anyone will be interested in any of this but hey, enjoy 😊

[neighbourhoodwaifu]

For me I've always had the problem of mirroring people I see on TV, subtly adopting some of their mentality or traits if I'm exposed to them too long and relate to them on some level. It usually goes away after I stop watching the show. Typically protagonists I watch are men, and if they're cool or relatable I mirror them a little. I don't think I've mirrored many women on shows or movies. But I definitely easily connect with them. The one that comes to mind is Ripely from Alien. She's just a person, she's not a "girlboss" or something it has nothing to do with that. But she's so cool.

I also have always been fascinated by shows like Sailor Moon. I remember being a kid and wishing I could transform the way Sailor Moon does. I saw myself in her because she was pale and had blue eyes blonde hair like me. I didn't understand that this was weird for a while. I grew up to reject my more girly habits, and honestly became homophobic and a bit transphobic during my teenage years. Despite having weird fantasies. Lots of self loathing there.

The point is its been so hard to reconcile everything in my head and my life experiences because there's so much conflicting information. When I look in the mirror, and have a light beard and stern look, I think I look pretty good. Sometimes. But I look at my body and I want to be skinnier. I want to be curvier. I want to be sexy like a woman. Not like a man. But I've never been fit in a masculine way. Maybe I'd love myself how I am if I worked out more. But then I've always hated shopping, and never really liked clothes. Never really clicked. I ended up buying things I felt would make me look good for other people rather than for myself. Oftentimes I would lean toward things that broke the mould of what men typically wear. Like lots of pinks and pastels instead of blues and blacks. But it never felt like me. It felt like a costume. Like i was trying to fit in. When all I really wanted to do was throw on a shirt or sweater and some jeans or something. And women were so lucky because they have such amazing clothing and look so pretty or sexy or beautiful... and I think I resented help my wife pick out clothes because I was jealous. But it also would be fun to dress her up the way I want? Like... holy shit.

I am self diagnosed autistic. Shoot me. If you spent 10 years with me like my wife has you'd agree I'm autistic. I think people have always known, especially when I was younger and hadn't learned to cope or mask or fit in. None of it comes naturally to me and I'm not always "in" on what's going on. I've had to brute force my way to understanding by listening and shutting up for the first half of my life. Now I'm pretty good at navigating. But I think ive been holding back and pretending for so long that I never really found out who I am. And I think I've been depressed because I'm not really being what I want to be, just checking off the boxes everyday. And whenever I've had a wrongthink moment I've been scared of people judging me and thinking less of me. There so many threads and veins that interconnect and create this confusing concoction of emotions and holdbacks.

I think another problem I have is that I don't really FEEL my emotions right away BUT I will act on them in the moment. It's like the emotional side of my brain is living separately and just does whatever it wants with my body without me knowing until it shows itself. I don't cry much anymore except when really tragic things happen. But I have always had anger issues. Probably because of the autism, mostly. But also probably from not feeling comfortable expressing my emotions. Holding back tears. Holding back honest reactions and beliefs. It makes sense. It's not like I've had a terrible upbringing or friend group either. My family has been open to us being queer for a long time, and my friends are often queer. But the shame and fear of fantasizing about being a woman still remained my whole life. I've always seen it as a perverse fantasy rather than maybe a sense of desire to express my true self. Probably because of puberty. And my sexual attraction to women. I guess I couldn't tell the difference between gender envy and sexual attraction. Especially since I've never been sexually attracted to a man ever. So being a straight man was just obvious and simple. No extra steps needed. And I got a wife who loves me for me. And she's fine with whatever I want to do because she's probably asexual but she's worried because it seems sudden to her since I never really showed any of this. I never really considered it a realistic option. I assumed I never could be... but... I could... and it's the only life I have. I've though "I hope my next life is a woman, that'd be fun" but... there is no next life... so... if I want to be one I have to do it now. And I can. There are ways to do it. It doesn't have to he a fantasy. And worst case scenario I have to spend some money to undo some of the effects if I want to go back to being a man. But I don't think I would... because I don't like my face. I don't like my body. And I don't think getting toned and fit will remove all the apathy I have. Being healthy is good, but I think it's deeper than that.

I'm tired of living how I'm supposed to and want to live more hedonistically. I'm not a hedonist, but I want to embrace my natural desires more. If I want to buy a cute article of clothing I should just do it. If I want some cutesy item I should get it. But I don't want to gaslight myself and give into stereotypes. I want it to be my genuine desires. It's so hard to avoid falling into traps of "pretend" when my whole life has been some level of pretending. Putting on a show. I'm performing an act and the character is me. I just want to be me. I just want to be.

[soda-boots]

A Triggered Sunday

I've been binging a tv show lately, I haven't done that in a while (in a long time actually). It's so good, really funny and dramatic, but not in a cringey way. The dynamics are realistic, so many parts of the show feel like these characters have actually lived and are living. I just don't like how much the eating disorder plot line triggers me.

This isn't the first time, something like this has happened. I definitely remember it happening before, though I can't throw a pin to the board at exactly when. I don't specifically know when it started, but for a long time now ED plots in film & tv has always left me unsettled. Frazzled and feeling like a shell of myself after. Ive watched 4 episodes I think now and with episode 2 and 3, I was left is exhausted after. Watching the scenes, I felt warmer and uneasy, my breaths harshened and I got a little dizzy. Restless, I just needed to squirm around a bit and try to shake the whole feeling off. Switching off the show didn't help much. I was still left stained with these emotions. A while had passed, so it was time to go for dinner, I dreaded the thought of eating. Oddly, I didn't feel like the food felt or tasted or even looked strange. It seemed as do nothing had changed, I picked my dishes and sat down. I was a bit scared as I went in for the first bite of my roast Turkey and rice (and parsnips). I was scared this spell would leave bitter taste in my mouth... it didn't. The parsnips tasted great.

I've never really had a problem with food (unless I think about it and the whole concept of eating way too much). The whole idea of chewing and digesting food is a bit unsettling and sometimes I imagine swallowing and I'm left jaded by the idea of food, however not for too long. Maybe the discomfort comes from the hyperawareness that ED content places on me towards my own body. Walking around after dinner (before going to my social), my body just felt really strange: I was more aware of my clavicles and my teeth, and my own skin. I thought "oh what defined clavicles I have? and I can feel the jabby bones of my shoulder, this is surely normal right?". I talk to my parents for a bit and relay how uneasy I feel but don't tell them why cause I really don't want to talk to them about these things. I do feel a little bad about this nevertheless I am allowed to keep some things from them (I think). I don't want to feel too aware of myself, it makes me feel nervous. Seeing my reflection when I don't to, except when I look really good 'cause even I can't deny I have my moments (this is a sad post let me have a tinge of narcissism okay?!). My clothes being too tight that I can feel them clinging until my skin; sometimes it's fine, most times it is not. I don't like the whole skin-tight thing, luckily I've only had to experience that with wetsuits but I'm too occupied with other thoughts to worry in those situations (not that it causes me to panic I'm just like ohh the contours of my body). I don't think I look bad, I look great for someone who is right now really hungry (and also doesn't go to the gym or really does much sport ). Side tangent, I should probably eat more, I only seem to eat enough to tide me over to the next meal now lately (that mustn't be great), despite that I don't really want to.

It's confusing that I feel this way in clothes, I love being naked (in the confines of my solitude). It's the hippie in me. Just laying bare after a shower waiting for the water to slowly be whisked off my body (either being absorbed by my skin or evaporated). Back to the topic, I just feel sometimes too aware of my own physical humanity to the point that if feels physically detrimental to me. When I get stares when I'm out like yesterday or someone beeps their horn at me and makes gestures at me also yesterday or a bout 2 years ago now when someone was trying to flirt me from their cab, at times I like not being acknowledged. It's an entirely selfish thought to want to decide when I'm perceived or not. I'm starting to get a bit tired so I'll call it a night.

I really should start doing work over the weekends too. I'm aware my hard reset approach I take now is good for my mental health and allows me the time to unabashedly rest. However, I need to get unto-me of my work and never never fall behind. I want to be an academic weapon this year and that will actually require me studying in my room (oh the horror!!! *scream*) when it's not an exam/test period.

I don't like feeling triggered. I don't enjoy the power something as trivial as a tv show can have on whether the rest of my day feels fulfilling or like I'm trudging through. I feel a bit weak for being affected, nonetheless I should never speak about to my self in such negative ways.

It's time for bed, I have an early class

[soupdeewoop]

ok so i was going through my tags and through old posts but i genuinely think of this post so much.

its just, this style, this "rebelliousness", was always there, like i said.

just remember that ok?

bc i realized i was bi in the beginning of seventh grade, and it was quite easy for me to come to terms with that bc i had been a huge ally sixth grade. i just had opinions and was curious.

seventh grade me and my friends fell out (we were young, its just what happens), and they were all straight, but one of my friends at the time kinda gravitated towards the like queer group in school and she was my friend even through that fall out so i also started hanging out with queer people more and more and so like at the end of seventh grade i was basically the token straight lmfao. pretty funny.

somehwere arounf the start of eight grade i realized i liked one of my friends. and she was a girl. but i came to terms with it pretty quickly cause it made sense after being friends with them cause a lot of things they said resonated a lot yk.

and i think since then my parents started liking me less and less.

you see, queer ppl dress very badass. and i had been friends with them at the end of 7th grade, so ever since the start of 8th, i started experimenting and taking my moms clothes. and more and more i came to realize more abt my sexuality and my place in this world, i wasn't the perfect innocent child my parents had anymore. i could have been, except heavy eye makeup looks makes me a witch and crop tops make me a slut.

but my parent think that this isnt me and that it isn't my fault but rather it was the fault of the people i became friends with. so now they get so much shit, i fight them so much bc they cant talk about my friends like that and i just don't know anymore honestly. i don't even speak to them that much anymore cause we moved after middle school, and my parents still bring it up as to how I'm still corrupted cause i still love my makeup and clothing style.

they think ive been corrupted, and theyve told me so many times too. and there's many times where there would be a gay book and they find out its gay or a show or movie. and its my friends fault. bc he knows they're gay. so maybe yeah. maybe i did technically get corrupted, but its not bad this time.

and what sucks most is that i cant even tell them. bc i cant even start to explain cause its just me. it feels rights. whether it be my sexuality or fashion. its just the way i am. just like how some people like red more than blue and how some people like chocolate ice cream over vanilla i just like my bold sense of style.

ive always been like this, and if i had been more open to lgbtq+ people, i would've probably know i liked girl sooner.

cause yk what funny? 6th grade i was perfect child.

6th grade i had been doing my research on lgbtq+ people.

6th grade we had a project, a time capsule project, so at the end of 8th grade we would open it.

there was question.

what do you want to know in the future? or something like that.

i drew a pride flag. and i had written, "maybe ill figure out my sexuality, but not rn cause its too confusing".

and i had forgot about it, i was so shocked.

full circle moment, this "rebelliousness" was always there.

Barty had a mullet. Like shaggy layered and long in the back. But he didn't do it to piss off his father. He did it because he genuinely wanted it. He dyed a bit of his hair green, not just because it'd piss his father off but because he genuinely wanted to.

Let's talk about Barty doing crazy/rebellious things, not just because his father would hate it but because it was something he actually wanted. His father being annoyed was just a bonus

[tradedsymmetry]

I think what The Wonder Years get wrong about playing Hoodie Weather live is that it's The ULTIMATE twy song to hear live, for a TWY fan.

This. Song. Has. Everything!

Weather update

Diner reference

Wanderlust

Highway reference

Pointing out family similarities

"South Philly"

Personification of This Town

Past-song reference (Washington Square Park, no less)

Non-band-member name-drop

"growing up means watching my heros turn human in front of me"

The whole bridge, really. Weather, hoodie, complicated hometown feelings, reflection on songs written at 18 (we do love an age update)

"So when the weather breaks, I'll pull my hoodie up over my face, I won't run away, run away. 'Cause as fucked as this place got, IT MADE ME, ME!!!!!!!"

And "woah"s too????

It's a pop-punk kid's paradise!!! And TWY's complaint (or maybe just confusion) is that it's a really commonly requested song, but they'd stopped playing it because no one would go nuts during it? So to them it's mixed messages, I think. But to me, that's just too many things to be handling all at once while ALSO moshing. I want to lose my mind as much as the next person but you lose your mind to Hoodie Weather in a different way than you do Don't Let Me Cave In, or Came Out Swinging, or anything else that gives you circle pit vibes even when you're in the shower and haven't been to a show in a year and ten months.... And that's a good thing. That song is EXHAUSTING for me (in the best way) and I usually stay in one place when they play it.

[anime-grimmy]

My thoughts on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

The game’s been out for almost a week now and Ive blasted through it in like 3 days because my sick ass couldn’t really do much but lay around and suffer anyways. Rn I’m trying to fill my Pokedex and I’ve started a second, way slower playthrough to really enjoy everything the game’s got to offer.

Criticism

So, Pokemon’s first open world game. We’ve all seen the memes, the game has a lot of bugs and especially performance issues. While I have not run into a high amount of glitches, except for some visual stuttering and one shut down, the performance of this game is sometimes atrocious. And this coming from someone who plays Monster Hunter World on an old laptop at 30fps where more than half the textures don’t even load. Sometimes the game dances on the line of death when it loads in too many Pokemon, or god forbid you’re on water because your switch will sound like a chainsaw trying to cut through a stubborn trunk.

And it really IS a shame, because the concepts and ideas of this game are a lot of fun! Like, this game IS fun but it does get bogged down by its issues a lot. Also bcs it does not have dynamic level scaling. Don’t tell me I can go everywhere and do anything, but then throw me in a zone I can’t go through. Don’t get me wrong, the whole “I SHOULD NOT BE HERE YET” experience is very funny and makes you look forward to going back to places, but the layout is just confusing. At the start, Nemona tells you the West Gate is for the first Gym Challenge, Arven tells you the East Gate is for the first Titan. You’d assume either way you go, the challenges in that zone are at least around the same levels but NOPE. You can beat the Gym Leader on the side of the first Titan relatively easily, but try to take on the Team Star base in the same area and be sure to suffer. This weird layout design goes through most of the game. Like, why is the Gym Leader that’s FARTHER North than Grucia weaker than him??? Like, you kinda HAVE to go through his town to get to the other one. It just does NOT make any sense!

 I wanna say that Game Freak just needed more time but we know that even a year more wouldn’t have helped much, because Game Freak just isn’t a studio that’s equipped to do everything they set out to do. They’re short development time makes them build the games on an already wonky base, so even if they did suddenly extend the development by a year, I don’t think much would have changed since they had a faulty game design from the start. It pisses me off so much how Game Freak won’t or can’t reach out for help, they always try to keep everything in their small little team and not let outside hands touch their product (which ofc also is because of all the branding around it), but with their short 3 year development cycle, these guys just aren’t fit for the job to make the games they want to and the people demand. For fuck’s sake, they’re the biggest media franchise on earth, I do not understand what makes them think that one more year of development from the start or an extension of their team would do to fuck that over. So far the people stick with their games because they give us glimmers of hope and lure us in with great Pokemon and characters, but if this continues, they are slowly but surely going to lose their status as top franchise.

Because not making a game with this low res run well on the switch when the Xenoblade’s Chronicles games can be played on the system is unacceptable.

The Good stuff

Now that Ive got the negative stuff out of the way, I can go to stuff I really enjoyed. Because while I do have my fair share of criticism, this game also did a lot I liked.

For one, I am deeply saddened they removed the chugging balls mechanic from Arceus, this just makes catching Pokemon a hassle again. However, I do like the autobattle mechanic. It’s a bit rough because your Pokemon are so slow and once you run for 3 steps they’re back in their Pokeballs. But it’s a nice mechanic to get some off hands exp when traveling from place to place.

Speaking of traversal, I really love Kuraidon. The sound design of this Pokemon is immaculate, I love the scaly boy, he has so much personality and I love how you’re unlocking HMs for him through the Herba Mystica. It’s such a stupid pun but I love it.

As for the other new Pokemon, I’m hit and miss on them. A lot feel weirdly Fakemon. Like, the Flamingo and the Stork don’t feel like real Pokemon to me. Others, however, I really really liked. The Smoliv line is one of my new fav Gras types, Fuecoco has no braincells and I love him for that, and this game did give us some awesome new bug and fairy types. DUDE, A BREAD DOG?! HE’S SO CUTE!!(Spoiler for endgame)

And then the ancient Pokemon. I do prefer the ancient Mons to the futuristic ones tbh, and I like the concept also way more of trying to bring back old, extinct Pokemon to live alongside the present ones than bringing some from the future. Dude, like, the ancient Volcarona is so fucking cool, it’s my fav of the old mons.

(spoiler territory)

But on to the one thing I truly loved about Scarlet and Violet, the characters. Specifically the main three, Nemona, Arven and Penny (and Mr. Clavell/Clive). I never thought I’d like Penny and Arven at the start but holy shit they grew on me. Even Nemona, who I figured I’d like, took a turn in character I hadn’t expected.

Let’s start off with Penny since I have the least to say about her. It was pretty obvious she’s the leader of Team Star from the start, right? The predictability aside, while the Team Star story was nothing to write home about, by the end I did feel attached to this group of misfits, and Penny’s relationship with them is so sweet. Like, when after the game you can join her looking after the team Star bosses to see if they’re doing well in school, it’s so adorable. What I like about Penny though is how surprisingly sassy she is. Freaking hacker Otaku with no chill, I love it.

Then, Nemona. She’s like the epitome of a “nice” rival. I like that from the start it’s established that she is a great trainer, since she already has the Champion title, but the fact she chooses to start from scratch to grow alongside you just screams how much she loves battling and respects a good journey. She wants you to be the best because she sees your potential and she just knows she’ll have the best battle in her life if she helps you out. She’s a mix of a rival/mentor character, who at the same time kind of has a screw loose since battling is all she thinks about. But it all comes from an honest place and the fact she doesn’t act as a cheerleader and actually challenges you in battle when you’re not ready for it, makes her a great rival.

Lastly, Arven. (BIG spoilers) My sweet baby boy, I cannot believe Game Freak dumped so much trauma on you. It was obvious from the start that he had some parental issues, I did not expect it to be year long neglect. I mean, he hasn’t seen the prof in YEARS and has NO memories of playing together with his parent? And apparently his other parent walked out on them the MOMENT he was born??? Then he gets a dying dog, which thankfully got better (it did make me teary eyed by the end ngl) but then the one who’s actually dead is the PROFESSOR???? I hate how quickly he got over the fact, the dude just found out his parent who he hasn’t seen in years is fucking DEAD and has been for YEARS. I mean, I’m happy this makes him find new ambition and a new path in life but fuck me, let the boy process this for a bit.

But yeah, Arven’s story was my fav (im very weak for dogs ok.) Though, all coming together in the end and you running alongside your friends down the Great Crater was so damn cute istg. And the dialogue between them, getting to know each other, is so damn good. You see some different sides of them, showing interest in someone else but you, and it gives them some more dimension, I love it.

Now if Game Freak just FINALLY added voice acting, at least for the damn CUTSCENES, I’d be the happiest. Like dude, that last emotional cutscene really needed some raw emotional voice deliveries.

But yeah, all in all, Scarlet and Violet has a ton of fucking problems, but it also has a lot of good sides to it. Now if Game Freak just took it’s fucking time and accepted some help, they truly could make a great game from the get go.

[whisperportedly]

more gender plural stuff this goes under a split tho

so im Tangle and im in a system of about four right? (we share this acct) “assigned gender at birth” is kind of a ridiculous concept to apply to each of us as headmates because, you know, there wasn’t a doctor there!! no one checked between my legs when i minecraft spawned in!!

but i also didnt even feel like i got to have a body, at all, until a couple months ago. (ive been here like a year lol) we had “headcanons” about the “character” tangle, who we wrote stories about (including smut and non-explicit gendery stories)… but even tho those were obvioisly About My Feelings, or at least feelings i wanted to play with in stories, they werent me, you know? uhhhh until mid-june. soooo im still very new to this lol

anyway in the way we usually envision my body, im… well, not afab, see “that’s not how plural gender works for us!!” above, but… mostly fem-aligned? i mean this drawing is just me. not thr only me thats ever been or ever will be, but definitely a me. if you want to figure out whats between my legs then go read my smut

however we do each and together inhabit a body which was, literally, assigned male at birth… unsurprisingly this is a bit weird for me. not MORE weird than the body being human or not having a very long tail, but yeah its weird

mostly though its to do with our way back experiences

you know how “passing” ostensibly means everyone unflinchingly sees and indeed guesses that you are a cisgender [gender of choice]? totally nuts standard and rather evil concept obviously, but lets take that sorta extreme version for discussions sake

we never passed as an ordinary cis male

a memory i feel really really connected to: when i was seven or eight years old at the very most, an elderly neighbor (a couple…) seemed to be confused whether i was a boy or a girl. it turns out they weren’t really confused at all - they knew, or at least guessed, that i was a boy… but they were making fun of my long hair and my not so boyish face. thats probably about how our mom explained it to me, anyway

eventually we started coming out as trans to not-so-immediate family, and a visiting aunt - in response almost immediately - commented on how we never really looked that masculine anyway, i mean, look at those totally natural curves! starting hrt is really just the cherry on top, huh!

so basically those aspects of our body that we didn’t exercise any control over, at least not in an intentionally gendered way, just kinda… got taken, you know? used to objectify us? in ways that were good-willed or at the least playful, and for the most part they felt good, but… something was still kind of dying

nowadays it’s not really clear if we “pass” as “female”, but we most certainly do pass as some flavor of feminine-aligned, and those both obviously queerly In The Know and um, less so, batch us into “she” and “ladies” and “girls”… and yeah a lot of that is purposeful expressio!!… but, you know, the 5+ years of hrt boobs don’t hurt

the long hair and “not so boyish face”, neither

SOOOO it turns out ummmmm

i most certainly am here figuring these feelings out, feelings that have sorta become my own (or maybe always were…) - while still occupying basically that body, that flavor of body, that got us those experiences in the first place l o l

anyway theres been a coming and going, but not really FLEETING, feeling of like, “Uhh is there such a thing as being transmasc even if your body is amab???” that i guess has also connected with me this entire time lol. “I know I know! What would that even mean, right!?! Except um, I think I maybe know what it means, um, um, even though I can’t explain it…”

i think a big moment for me was hearing about afab femme lesbians who have a very… sort of indescribably, essentially different experience of feminity than what straight women (for lack of a better comparison) are basically given… like, femmes end up owning their femininity in a really special and important way

it didnt exactly click at once but thats basically how i feel with masculinity. EVEN THOUGH im… you know… “feminine-aligned” most of the time and in a lot of different ways. (in some of those ways… just, constantly). i guess i should probably learn from butches’ experiences but that description of femmes by a femme, really spoke to me

i really like certain parts of feminine expression and, you know, the way people receive that expression…!! but - its just - im kind of sick of calling it that. calling it “feminine”. it isnt feminine any more than my dubiously flat ass is androgynous bro… its just… hear me out… ME

and guess what? way deep down on the spooky, scary, kind of cuddly inside… i mostly feel masculine

top 10 things confused transfemmes say amirite (/completely dry sarcasm. this delivery of a sharp point is the only “joke”.)

so, you know

maybe the ways i express myself. maybe the ways i occasionally really actually like my body - the inside one and the outside one, together. maybe those… are masculine

lemur food for lemur thought

im just

THINKING ABOUT LONG HAIR TANGLE OK

[kiefbowl]

hello ms kief i would like some advice but i also respect if u dont want to. basically, i am having a mild sexuality crisis bc i think i might be a lesbian but i have identified as bisexual for a decade now (i thought i was a lesbian prior to this) bc i dated a boy (whom i didnt even want to date but he was my friend and i felt guilty after i said no and my friends said i should give him a chance) except now i dont know how to tell if im faking or not either way??? i think dick is gross but ive heard some osa women think that?? but i like pussy so i feel like then i should feel the same abt dick if im bi? but what if i like men just less? because i think i like men emotionally? but is that just friendship??? i dont know how to tell when im attracted to anyone at all tbh and i thought i was asexual for a while and i am simply very confused so any advice would help please and thank you xoxo

As long as I've been on tumblr "outed" as a "terf" (or whatever), I've had women come to me for advice, and I've learned through trial and error and growing up a couple things about giving advice which is this: 1. don't assume anything - only speak to what they've written 2. only answer the question they ask 3. assume you can't make anyone do anything 4. try to be socratic and lead them to answer their own questions. I am always very, very specific with the words I choose when answering advice-like questions.

Through this time, I've had a lot a lot a lot of women come to me to help them "figure out" their sexuality. I generally try to keep my advice along the same lines: I literally can't tell you that, you have to figure it out yourself, you can only do that by living, you don't need to have an "identity" to go live, your sexuality is more than what you are but what you do and what you do should be enjoyable for you...generally, along those lines. Additionally, if someone is asking if they are specifically a lesbian, I give them my advice and then say they should also ask lesbians about their experiences, since I'm not one. What strikes me about this particularly ask, anon, is you seem to be focusing on the identity rather than the experience. You have said yourself you have 1. identified as bi for 10 years (so you're confident you like women) 2. you like pussy and women (good - so do lesbians) 3. you're not sure if you actually like men (very normal if you're a lesbian). You seem scared to identify as a lesbian for fear you're wrong - okay so don't identify as a lesbian. What's stopping you from just dating women? You like women, you don't know if you like men. Stop dating men. Just date women. Maybe you're bi, maybe you're lesbian - if you don't know just be honest about that with yourself and the women you date. In the meantime - go enjoy being a woman loving woman. You know that's true about yourself, so why worry about the word you need to attach to it right this second? Some women you meet will not really be interested in your uncertainty - and that's normal and you shouldn't be mad at them about it, they have every right to be like "no thanks, good luck" and bounce. That's why you're being honest in the first place, so that people can take you as you are.

Through dating and living - you can become more comfortable with the other part of the truth: is it exclusive same sex attraction? But why do you need to be sure of that part now to live your life truthfully (the uncertainty of your identity) and date women exclusively (the fact you know you like women and want to date them)?

Also, talk to lesbians. There might be lesbians that share your experiences, and there might be some lesbians that don't get what you're saying at all. I don't know what it's like to realize I'm a lesbian, because I'm not a lesbian, but I've had a lot of lesbian mutuals over the years that talk about their experiences growing up, and they run the gamut (which should come as no surprise since, you know, lesbians are people...). I can tell you my experience with realizing I was bi: I thought I was straight for a very long time bc I was subconsciously suppressing my same-sex feelings due to internalized homophobia, and it wasn't until college the light bulb went off that I realized that my attraction to women was attraction to women, not just random thoughts I had to say "no" to. I feel equally capable of attraction to men and women. I see an attractive man I think he's attractive; I see an attractive woman I think she's attractive: I don't have a lot of hang ups on why because my bisexuality is the why. But I don't feel repulsed by any part of the human body, not even to the penis or vulva. Probably also due to the bisexuality :) I don't know a lot of bisexuals that came to it the other way around, having to figure out the opposite attraction part second, since every facet of our society supports it. But, I can only talk about my experiences.

Anyway - live large, be honest to the people around you, don't wait to "know" things before pursuing the life you want. And good luck!