#fermented feelings

[lady-laureline]

Another ramblepost.

After mulling it over for a few months, I am ~97% sure I'm autistic. As this is the second neurodevelopmental label I've acquired after adhd, I'm somewhat more familiar with the whole revelatory process - i.e. the "so that's why I do that" and "no wonder this keeps happening" moments that are a significant part of why said labels feel justified (others have been explored & rejected).

I have all these little anecdotes about weird misconceptions that have kept me from spending time on the things I find worthwhile, such as feeling like I was too late to the party to be considered a legitimate part of a subculture, or taking my crappy memory as evidence that I don't care about this thing as much as I think I do. One notable moment was realising that I hadn't gotten myself a poster I wanted because of some subconscious narrative that personalised décor is for "real people".

All of this is to say that I've always been aware of several degrees of separation between myself and the general public, and not just because I wanted to be special.1 Growing up neurodivergent means you can never quite close that gap, and that shapes the way you interact with the world: studies on the social perception of autistic individuals basically say that being "a little off" is enough to ruin a first impression, which is, in turn, enough for most people to write you off as undesirable.2

×

And I'll be honest, I wasn't nearly as excited about figuring out my autism as I was about my adhd before I even thought to look at the evidence. The stereotypes are notably less palatable: at least adhd gets the manic pixie dream girl, but ask someone to describe an autistic person and there's still a good chance they'll default to a stubborn six-year-old boy with encyclopedic knowledge of the Cretaceous and zero interest in making friends.3

Even representation that is halfway decent tends to portray autistic characters without any inclination towards concealing their atypical traits, often lacking the self-awareness to even consider it, so people get confused by the thought of us operating somewhere between social grace and social oblivion. Then again, people also short-circuit when they see a wheelchair user stand up for 0.2 seconds.

Some things you don't understand until you're forced to. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't listened to someone's lived experience with unfamiliar symptoms while trying to conceal my doubt. There was a time when I wouldn't have believed my own claims, what with my warped sense of time and my hyperacusis, is thAt even a tHing lol

There's something I really want to pin down about trying to exist while everyone around you keeps sending you signals that your very perception of reality is just wrong. It messes with your head, undermines your identity. I've been working so hard at unraveling trauma bundle after trauma bundle, and I'm only just starting to believe I'm even allowed on this planet, you know? Some people aren't so lucky. I'd love to be at ease with myself without needing to justify it to some imaginary audience.

×

This brings me to my next point: cringe.

I am one of many who treat self-censorship like a necessary evil for the sake of appearing adjusted enough. Whether it's self-soothing with the hand-flappy thing, going off on a tangent about a topic of interest, or feeling the overwhelm creep into my nervous system, there are plenty of impulses and reactions that I've learned to stifle so that people will be more inclined to talk to me.

What's the problem with that, you might ask. Isn't learning to adapt a good thing?

I hear you, but this isn't adaptation, this is assimilation. We don't get to choose how our bodies process information, no amount of discipline that will rewire our brains to be "normal". We have a natural way of operating, but most of us have been moderating ourselves for so long that we don't even know what that is. We only know that bad things happen when the mask falls, when composure is outpaced by stress. Looking at it this way, it makes a lot more sense that the world only recognises autism at its worst.

Setting boundaries would ease the pressure, but when it comes to voicing smaller issues the assumption is that we're playing them up for attention. For those unprepared to imagine having to live with chronic discomfort, calling it a lie feels rational - which leaves us not calling for help, but embarrassing ourselves for some reason.

×

As a cherry on top, we still don't know what autism is, despite decades of research. Autistic brains are characterised by both hyper- and hypo-connectivity in different areas. There is consistency in certain functional deficits, however studies keep getting conflicting results while trying to map these out.5

While elusive in origin, our differences put us at measurable odds with the scattered demands of a modern environment. Sensory sensitivities are a giant handicap when we live in a flood of sensory information, and without the ability to develop the standard tolerance it becomes a constant battle to just feel okay on a day to day basis. But if we can outmanoeuvre the bad stuff, we can focus; and if we can focus, we can excel.6

I mentioned beforehand that a lot of the behaviours commonly recognised as autistic are linked to distress. My hope is that, with the growing awareness we're experiencing, we'll be able to normalise happier traits as well.

× × ×

1 Which I won't deny, but my secret teenage wishes had a lot more to do with being whisked away to the fairy realm than being bullied at school.

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286449/

5 https://embrace-autism.com/autistic-brain-differences-connectivity/

3 It's the "lack of empathy" in particular that gets under my skin. There are a whole bunch of steps between feeling an emotion and expressing it in a way that translates well. We're not always good at those steps - doesn't mean we don't care.

6 The other option is putting the bad stuff on hold - intoxication & other dissociative methods can offer temporary sensory reprieve. Without other accommodations available (as is all too often the case), this can easily turn into a destructive habit.

[trekscribbles]

It started after the boxing job.

Hardison had wanted Eliot to go in and get his injuries checked, but Eliot declined—he’d already been cleared by the gym’s doctor, and he knew his body well enough to refuse further treatment. He needed rest, not needle pokes. Ice and a few pain killers and 8 hours of sleep, and he’d be fine.

“We’ll give you a few days before we head home,” Nate had said, with an air of compromise that warned against argument. “Get some sleep back at the hotel. Let us know if you need anything.”

Eliot went, mostly because he didn’t want them fussing over him. He gritted his teeth through a shower so he wouldn’t have to lie down covered in sweat, changed into the baggy clothes that had appeared on his bed while he was in the bathroom, and picked up the bottle of water on his nightstand.

“Thanks for this,” he said, his back to the door. “But I don’t need a nurse.”

Sophie’s voice was smooth and unsurprised. “That’s just as well. I’m not sure I have the best bedside manner.”

He took a long drink, giving her time to leave, but he didn’t hear any movement. When he finished half the bottle, he put the cap back and on turned toward her. “I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”

“Oh, I know.” Sophie was leaning against the door frame, her hands tucked in the pockets of her jacket, her hair hanging loose around her face. If she looked down, it would hide her expression—he did the same thing when he needed to look hesitant and vulnerable. She gave him a small smile, as if she knew what he’d noticed, and he opened the bottle again to take another drink.

“Hardison still wants you to go to the hospital,” she said.

“Don’t need one.”

Sophie held his gaze. “Because this is what you do?”

“Because I don’t need one,” Eliot repeated. “I know my limits. If anything changes, I’ll go in. Promise.”

Something in her posture relaxed, though her expression never changed. “Well,” she said. “That just means you won’t get flowers by your bedside.”

Eliot let out a careful laugh. “Think I can live with that.”

“You don’t like flowers?”

“They’re fine,” he said. “I like ‘em better wild. But the arrangements can be nice, if you know what to look for. The combinations and colors. The meanings behind them. I kind of thought—”

He broke off when Sophie’s eyes started sparkling. “I dated a florist,” he growled.

Her smile widened. “Go on.”

He waited, but she waited back, and after a few moments he decided he that the quickest way to get her to leave was to give her an explanation. “It’s nothing,” he hedged. “Just… I think about coltsfoot a lot, lately.”

“Coltsfoot,” she echoed. “That’s a bit uncommon.”

He studied her, searching for any hints of mockery in her stance or tone. “It represents justice. Justice shall be done.”

She smiled. It was soft and knowing and fond, and it made him want to squirm away while doing everything he could to keep it there.

“Get some rest,” she said. “I’ll make sure the others leave you alone.”

For the first time in a long time, Eliot slept through the night, and when he woke the next morning, there was a fresh bottle of water and a vase of coltsfoot on the bedside table.

---

The next time, it was a pot of hydrangeas.

Sophie hadn’t told them why she was leaving. Something about taking time off—time to herself—time to heal. Eliot respected that. He understood the need for space, and he wanted her to find whatever it was she was looking for. They could manage without her for a while. Besides, she left her number for emergencies, though he resolved not to use it so she wouldn’t feel pressured to return before she was ready.

He found the flower pot outside his apartment the day after she left. He hadn’t been home before that, and he hadn't planned on staying long, just long enough to grab a few things before heading back to Nate’s. The flowers made him pause. A mistake, he assumed, until he found his name on a card poking up between tiny blossoms. He recognized Sophie’s handwriting, glanced over his shoulder, and brought them inside.

He had to search to find what hydrangeas represented, and then again to add the meaning of the light blue color Sophie had chosen.

Understanding, deep bonds, gratitude.

He watered them, set them on the kitchen windowsill where they would get plenty of light, and tucked the card into his pocket before returning to the others.

---

A year later, he told them about Moreau.

He’d avoided it as long as possible, but there really wasn’t any way around it after what had happened in the pool. He hadn’t wanted to drag any of them into it, had tried to manage without them finding out, but he’d always known it was only a matter of time. The kinds of things he’d done didn’t stay buried forever. Eventually, he would have to pay the price for his sins.

He fully expected that price to be his new family—that they would cut ties with him once they found out about his past—but they didn’t. Parker didn’t ask. Hardison forgave him. Nate found a way to use him without sending him spiraling back to rock bottom.

Sophie sent him a tree.

It was a small evergreen, trimmed into a thin point that reached up to his hip. He signed for the delivery, brought it inside, and set it on his table, the table where they’d all gathered to eat his cooking, to fill his space with noise and bickering and laughter. He tried not to imagine all the things the tree might represent as he opened the laptop Hardison had insisted on him having and began his search.

Arbor vitae, a fast-growing member of the cypress family.

Often planted by homeowners as a privacy hedge.

Hardy in cold climates. Durable. Adaptable.

He looked up their meaning on the website he had saved from his last search, swallowed, and closed the computer. The words tumbled through his mind as he picked up the pot, took a moment to breathe in the earthy scent wafting up from the branches, and made his way out to his garden to plant it.

Unchanging friendship.

---

The next flowers were from Eliot.

White roses, delivered to the bar with Parker’s Venus flytrap. “I take it all back,” Sophie said, wrapping one arm around Nate and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Every word. You are romantic!”

She opened the box while Hardison and Nate exchanged confused looks, oohing over the flowers and holding them out for Nate to smell. Hardison gave him a questioning nod. Eliot winked.

He stood up and walked away, smiling to himself as Parker and Sophie continued to exclaim about the gifts. He wondered if Sophie would pick up on the symbolism of security that white roses represented in a committed relationship. He knew she would never know the rest: the meanings in the context of their friendship, the loyalty and trust, the gratitude and love. Those messages would go undelivered as long as she thought the flowers were from Nate, but that was all right with him.

She was happy. That was all he wanted.

---

There were daffodils in the vases on each table of the brewpub.

Eliot hadn’t fully embraced the idea of running a restaurant, especially not with Hardison’s first attempts at brewing still fresh on his palate, and he knew he wasn’t the only one who had reservations about their new setup. Sophie had been all sighs and longing looks cast toward the eastern horizon since she’d arrived. Eliot did his best to focus on the job, letting the problem of the move and Sophie’s uncertainty and the brewpub menu work themselves out in the back of his mind while he worked. He did enjoy creating new dishes. Pairing them with drinks would be challenging, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before. Actually, he’d been doing it for the team for years now. Maybe he could start with the flavor profiles he’d already developed for them and work up from there.

Besides, it was good to be together again. Parker and Hardison had finally figured out whatever was going on between them, and Nate and Sophie seemed to have settled into themselves. If she could find something else to anchor her to Portland, she might even enjoy it.

At first, the daffodils hadn’t registered as anything special. But then Sophie told them all about her new acting students, and Eliot found his way to the nearest bookstore and bought a book on floriography.

Daffodils, one of the first flowers to bloom in spring, represented new beginnings and fresh starts. They were symbols of comfort and security, of cheerful acceptance.

Of home.

---

The call came 7 years later.

They knew it was coming. Nate’s health had been declining, and Eliot, Parker, and Hardison had found excuses to stay close for the last few months. It wasn’t a surprise when the phone rang and there was no sound on the other end.

Eliot didn’t cry. He’d been preparing for this, and he was no stranger to compartmentalizing his emotions, setting them aside for the benefit of others. He was solid for Parker and Hardison, for Leverage International.

For Sophie.

She didn’t want them around, afterwards. She made excuses for why they shouldn’t come over, things she needed to do, errands she had to run. She was fine, she said. There was no need to worry. She stopped answering their calls.

So Eliot called the nearest garden center and scheduled a delivery.

He did his research. Something to represent life and hope, resilience and strength, faith in the promise of future blessings and trust in life after death. He decided on the tamarisk tree, which could live for over a century, the perfect embodiment of an enduring legacy.

But the real reason he chose the small tree with its feathery, trailing leaves, with branches that drooped like a weeping willow tipped with tiny white flowers, was the meaning he couldn’t verify. He’d found it on a single website about the “secret Victorian language of flowers”, and nowhere else, despite weeks of searching. In the end, he decided it didn’t matter. One reference was enough for him, and he trusted that Sophie would find it, too. She would read it for what it was: a testament to everything connecting their past, and a promise for everything in their future.

Tamarisk. Salt-resistant with long, deep roots. 

Its long history makes several symbolic understandings possible. The most common representations are:

Endurance.

Hope.

Crime.

[ask-everything]

Dunk, does Hero-Hime stop by the Personal Gym to train with you?

She does!! And she doesn't mess around, bro. She's like- crazy good at tennis. I heard she goes to some really big tennis school. She beats me everytime.

But I still have every other sport under my belt!

[citrine-elephant]

angst/fluff chreon for you:

leon having people to be vulnerable with. he feels safe, comfortable.

and he gets so so so excited, that's he's talking chris' fuckin ear off. until he has a moment when he realizes he's been talking for awhile. and he slows down. visibly embarrassed.

he's happy, he's smiling, and he feels so fucking guilty about it. what about all the people who were dead? who lost their loved ones? living in terror every day? does chris really give a shit about something so mundane and pointless? he's annoying, isn't he? it's best to just shut up and go back to what he's made to do. just be a good little lap dog and keep killing the bad guys.

anyways when he goes quiet and apologizes, ready to slip out of chris' place and just fuckin bury himself alive, chris squeezes the shit out of him.

"hey, if you think you're annoying me, you're not. you can talk until my ears bleed, but at least i'll know you're alive."

cue leon ugly crying and telling chris he'll smother him in his sleep if he tells anyone. (it's the ugly crying he's mainly worried about (he's afraid that he'll come across as too needy) - and anything that can compromise a future mission by exploiting his darkest parts.)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

the way you draw mcavoy charles actually drives me insane he looksbSO CUTE. SO INCREDIBLY CUTE. you capture his cuteness so well that’s literally charles xavier

I thank you my friend im very much a fan of drawing professional disney prince charles xavier from time to time ….

[necrotic-nephilim]

Give me your most controversial dc opinions!!!

HA YES GLADLY I WOULD LOVE TO (added a read more because i had a lot of words oopsie)

The Titans Tower Incident was in character for Jason Todd. at worst, it's a *bit* over-dramatic and a little cringey, but if you consider his actions, his motivations, and what he *actually* does, i honestly don't think it's OOC for him. he's just kind of a dramatic asshole in that era and i stand by that comic. the issue isn't the comic itself, it's how people interpret it.

i think the DC fandom, specifically the Batfamily fandom, really likes to claim to be progressive for brownie points, but then will have the one token woman that everyone decides is acceptable to hate. like, it's one thing if you dislike Carrie Kelley, i get it. Frank Miller isn't a great writer of women and she can be a lack of a character in the original Dark Knight Returns. but if you go out of your way making constant edits and posts shitting on her, it's *weird*. especially when most of the people shitting on her haven't even consumed her source, and their reasons for disliking her can apply to any other Robin, especially Tim. but as long as you put say, Steph or Cass on a pedestal, you can talk on and on about how you want to kill Carrie for the crime of existing. it feels like acceptable misogyny. i also think this extends to writers. if you put say, Gail Simone on a pedestal, you're free to blame everything under the sun on Devin Grayson. (to be clear i think you can and should hate Devin Grayson for a lot of things, but most rumors about her are untrue and if you look at every badly written comic and go "sounds like something Devin Grayson would write" that's really weird bc everything she's done, men like Chuck Dixon, Tom King, Tom Taylor, Marv Wolfman, etc have done in tenfold.) like, misogyny = bad unless it's That One Woman We've All Agreed To Hate. it's weird and i keep noticing it. and no one seems to unpack it. (i mostly see this on TikTok, not Tumblr tbf)

i don't care if you ship BruDick or not, but it's not weird for canon content to imply or state Dick had a crush on Bruce when he was first taken in. even in canon where Dick sees Bruce as a "father figure" in the most generous sense, that bond took years to build and when Dick was freshly orphaned, he *had* the memory of loving parents and didn't want Bruce to fill that role. you don't have to ship BruDick, you don't even have to like batcest, but if you're vitriolic toward just the idea that "hey maybe a young kid on the cusp of puberty might have some weird feelings to work out about the canonically very attractive mysterious playboy who took him in before seeing him as family because that bond took years to build" is nasty and terrible and wrong to you, you don't like the Batfamily, you just like the nuclear "neat" version of it in your head

the Batfamily characters are *all* too hypercompetent. like all of them are just *too* good at what they do that in order to write them in interesting arcs together, you have to willingly make some of them OOC in order to not immediately have the Problem wrapped up. i get it, Bruce is the greatest detective, Tim is wicked smart, Jason's a heavy hitting brawler, but we've reached a point where all of these characters have so many buffs they're not *fun* anymore. especially not in a group setting where you need to justify them needing each other's help. and even worse-so when they interact outside of the Gotham, you end up making every non-Batfam character seem useless just to make the Batfamily look cool. it's exhausting. i want to see these characters lose fights, look stupid, and not be the best for once. they're all getting so good they're just kind of. boring. which is the worst sin for a character, IMO.

i think we should go like. a good year of all Justice League-related teams not having a single Bat on the roster. just as a cleanse so *someone else* can shine. i get why non-Batfam DC fans are sick of the Batfamily bc jesus. it's oversaturation of the market.

power scaling "who would win" fights are fucking boring and i don't care. that's the least interesting thing about the fandom. you're missing the point of all of these characters if you only care about who could win a brawl. also it's just a stupid debate because the answer will *always* be: whoever the author of the comic wants to win.

the Batfamily is too damn big. i love every single one of them do not get me wrong. i'd die for the little niche characters who are likely never going to be relevant again like Julia Pennyworth or Kate Spencer. but it's too fucking big at this point. it's insisted to us that these characters are family but like. half of them have barely existed on the same page together more than once. it's ridiculous and it cannot sustain itself. none of these characters are allowed proper shine because they'll just get dropped for the next new shiny character. i think Maps Mizoguchi is a cool lil lady, but i know in my soul in like. three years she will fade into comics limbo and we'll have a new shiny character to fawn over. it's a brutal cycle bc DC doesn't know how to give any of these characters follow through, just wants to wave around cool new concepts.

both Under The Red Hood and Death In The Family are mediocre adaptations and strip the most important emotional elements of Jason's story from the plot. you can't properly adapt Jason's death if you leave his mother out of it. like they're phenomenal movies as their own pieces of media, but they lack the necessary emotional weight for Jason.

on the note of adaptations: the Young Justice cartoon is i think the best case study of "how do you react to a piece of media that's amazing on it's own, but is a fucking horrible adaptation?" because like, i can't discredit it. it's a good show. but it's a bad adaptation and i think people using it as an entry point for DC can make their views of certain characters and teams *very* warped. the Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey movie falls into a similar vein for me. if that movie was it's own thing with original characters, it'd likely be a top five movie for me. but because it's *such a fucking bad adaptation* i can't help but hate it for brutalizing the characters and the general concept of the BoP. it should've been a Gotham Sirens movie, and Young Justice should've been a Teen Titans show. and sure, adaptations don't owe us accuracy, but they have negative effects on the comics when they gain popularity. so i struggle to like Young Justice bc of how badly it's affected certain characters.

also on the note of adaptations: the best adaptation of how comic media operates is the Sandman tv show. adapting comics to tv shows or movies is difficult bc comic arcs don't operate the way show/movie arcs do, but the Sandman show proves it's absolutely doable to adapt the storytelling style while still making the typical adjustments you need for an adaptation.

DC needs more Deaf representation. in most areas, DC either matches Marvel or outperforms Marvel with representation of marginalized identities, but it's fucking tragic we have no deal Deaf rep in DC whereas Marvel has quite a few to pick from. this one is personal bc i'm Deaf but it does fuck me up the only option we have is a side character from Tim Drake: Robin who doesn't appear anywhere else and isn't a great character overall. DC i'm in your walls.

on the note of representation, if i see one more person say Titans had "perfect casting" while in the same breath admitting Dick was whitewashed, you are weird and i dislike you. it's really fucking weird that whitewashing is permissable to this fandom if the actor cast/fancast is hot. Dick should've been a Roma actor. Damian should not be fancast as a white actor. it's the bare minimum.

i have so many more but i will end with this especially controversial one: Dan Mora's art is overhyped. that man has the worst same face syndrome i've ever seen and i will not lie half the time i can't tell which Robin he's drawing. his art is technically gorgeous and it's so pretty to look at, but begging for every comic series to be drawn by him is boring and terrible. the art style of a comic reflects it's genre. wanting all comic art to look like Dan Mora's art is sucking the style out of comics. i miss art styles like Todd Nauck's that clearly reflected the genre of the comic.

i lied i have one more i'm REALLY passionate about: Tim's vigilante name after Red Robin should not be bird-themed. naming him Sparrow or Cardinal is *just* as bad as naming him Red Robin longterm. they're *just* as derivative and they *sound* cool but don't hold any real unique identity for Tim outside of Robin. like it baffles me we all agree he needs to move on from Robin and then decided "let's name him Robin Lite". if he has a bird name, it should be Jackdaw so at the very least, he's not red anymore. and Jackdaw could be a fun callback to Drake, in that it uses part of Tim's real name (his middle name, Jackson) while standing out a bit. but if i really had creative control i'd give him a completely unique name. if it has to be Batfamily related, Gray Ghost. but in my head, his name should be Conspiracy. i could write a lengthy meta on why and tbh it is based in my love for the Question and wanting Tim to have a similar detective noir-esque gritty solo, but i genuinely don't think he should be Cardinal or Sparrow. those names only continue his identity issues of being trapped as either Robin or a Robin knockoff.

[kwillow]

I alluded to this fact in a previous question about Theo's preferences for companions: it really depends.

Read more because this got long... tl;dr: IT WOULD REQUIRE A LOT OF SQUEEZIN' AND THE JUICE WOULDN'T BE WORTH IT TO ANYONE IN-UNIVERSE WHO WOULD HAVE TO DEAL WITH HIM EVERY DAY.

Someone could exist who could, in theory, get along with him perfectly and be his ideal man/woman (which again, he doesn't even really know what that would be, so he wouldn't know it when he saw it), and they could start off on the wrong foot with him, set off a tantrum spiral and never recover his esteem for the rest of his life.

Even if someone who could be compatible with him was able to pick their way through the bear traps of his mind and get close to him, that doesn't necessarily mean anything would come of it. He can get infatuated easily, experience flickers of attraction - but he would much rather ignore those feelings than act on them in any way beyond just trying to be a good and loyal friend and benefactor.

And then, even if someone got close to him, and he was infatuated with them AND recognized those emotions for what they are (a big ask in and of itself), he STILL would not want to enter a romance because that would change the nature of the relationship, he doesn't know what to do in a relationship, and he wouldn't want to entrap someone in a relationship with him (Gods, the horror) or suffer the travails and indignities of romance because all his experiences tell him that eros is a corrupting force and always ends really, really badly.

So one could ask him to start a relationship, and the absolute best result would probably be a polite and firm decline with some blathering about the nobility of "unrequited courtly devotion," with the more typical result being a meltdown.

Effectively, one would have to stay close to him for actual years in close proximity without leaving for greener pastures than him (which one should) and maybe, maaaaaybe if the right mental dominos fall he could conceivably think of entering a relationship. Except in Amaranthine, he'd only want to do that with a childbearing woman because he feels he needs to have children to continue his withered, hollow excuse of a family tree. AND THAT WOULD START A WHOLE OTHER SAGA. ALL THAT ABOVE WAS JUST GETTING TO FIRST BASE, LET'S NOT EVEN GET INTO WHAT IT'D TAKE TO GET ALL THE WAY TO FOURTH. Anyone not able to produce more Norths would have a whole 'nother endurance test to slog through to work through his issues about debt to his family and legacy and all that nonsense. And would either path be worth it to someone? Performing years worth of informal therapy (not real therapy, he hates doctors!) on a messed-up guy just to get him to maybe agree to go out with you? Probably not!

To bring it back to the beginning, despite all I've written here, it all depends. I don't think I can write a rulebook or point-by-point guide for "how to get Theo to agree to date another imaginary person" because in the end, he is a fictional character and he is more beholden to what would be interesting for my partner and I to write and draw versus anything else. And it would depend on the setting, the characters involved, the circumstances that befall them, myriad little factors that could influence what feels natural for him to do. Maybe there could be an interesting story we come up with where he falls irrationally head-over-heels for someone and proposes the same day. He could also spurn all companionship and focus his attention on other pursuits.

So... if anyone is expecting any sweet blossoming love stories to come to fruition within Theo’s story in Amaranthine… the odds aren't good. I don’t have much interest in writing “romance” as a genre, only incredibly dysfunctional relationships as a vehicle to cause strife and comedy in fucked-up weirdos' lives.

[vaguebitsofnonsense]

.

[extraordinarilyextreme]

MLCB Concert: XSY's Farewell

In truth, I really don’t like this part, because it also represents that we are bidding our characters farewell for good.

In the morning, when I was getting my makeup done - in an instant, I returned to that summer. I felt that, to be together with good friends, and then having experienced as sweltering a summer as that…

Such an ardently hot-blooded jianghu was presented to everyone; to stand here today-- Because… Because, during the time of Mysterious Lotus Casebook’s initial broadcast, everyone and all the lianluorens must also be thanked. I know there must have been a lot of difficulties when it was first broadcasted, right? To have reached this step today, I think is already very good. I think it is a result of every person’s hard work.

Just now, when we were off-stage, Yan-laoshi said something I really like; in an instant, I lost my composure. I don’t think fate is something that will come with enough waiting, or something that can be insisted on having. It’s when there comes a day where we stand together and work hard to strive toward a common goal. The sentiments of that moment, I feel, last forever.

I hope, however many years later, everyone is still together - that lianluorens can still be together. Thank you, everyone. This summer, thank you to every person. Thank you to all my good companions; thank you, every single person.

Di Feisheng! Until we meet again!

【莲花楼演唱会】 Mysterious Lotus Casebook Concert - 20230916

江湖路远   山高水长  祝 「繁华」 似锦！ The roads of the jianghu stretch far; the mountains are lofty, and the rivers are long. I wish your future to be as splendid as an embroidered tapestry! 「追光」 而行  不负初心  愿 永生难忘！ Chase the light as you journey; live up to the original intentions of your heart. I hope this will be unforgettable for your lifetime!

Any mistakes are my own.

[jammerskrik]

book haul, practical-ish edition

@chuzhezemnyi thank u for the rec🙏🏻

[insanity-laughs-under-pressure]

Hear me out, David Tennant as the 14th Doctor gives off more Crowley vibes than Ten vibes.

[b-blushes]

migraine has been bestowed upon me

[rubiatinctorum]

I want to get more writing done, but my arms hurt, and my legs hurt, and i'm exhausted, and that is so distracting. i want to lock in and figure out what the characters are doing but that's hard when every half minute i'm thinking about "ow"

[scaredandlaughing]

i guess i just drank the Forever Drunk Wine

[hmmbo]

go grandpa

[pizzopaps]

bro what does it mean when shit that's supposed to make ur tummy feel good makes me feel bad