#hes also autistic. i know that's just how these stories were told back in the day but he's so very autistic

[chevaliermalfets]

remember when I started watching tmfu and said I was 1-2 transmasc headcanons from. realizing things about myself. I have yet another hc and this number is getting dangerously close to zero

[foldingfittedsheets]

A friend I had briefly in my teens years was this girl in Arizona. She was a junior when I was a freshman, and as I was socially awkward and very lonely she kind’ve pulled me under her wing for a while. I don’t remember how we met, but I remember riding in her car and meeting her cute miniature Doberman.

But the thing I remember most about this girl was that she loved lying to me. And I had a massive but I acknowledged crush on her so I adored being lied to. Her natural charisma and storytelling was hypnotic.

It’s not what it sounds like because it wasn’t malicious but she came up with this in depth lore to tell me about this fake job she had. I know autistic people are meant to be credulous but I truly never believed her stories, I just adored her storytelling and was very ready to listen to whatever tale she spun that day. Another of her friends chided her once for teasing me but I genuinely never minded.

In her lore she moonlighted as a Professional Liar. People would hire her to get close to a target they wanted rattled. She’d make friends, develop a strong relationship, foster a dependency on her, then disappear. Then when they were confused and missing her sometime when the employer needed their target rattled she’d show back up as a glimpse to knock them off balance. Often it was implied she’d faked her death in the interim.

That itself was fine, it was an okay story. But in order to support that lie she’d make up tons of supporting details that were way more fun. She had this fake boyfriend who got high as balls on a mission and ended up seeing a sheep in a field and carrying it to a farmhouse to try to buy it because he wanted a puppy. I liked that one but suspected she didn’t know how big sheep were.

She’d IM chat with me as this made up boyfriend sometimes; once she had him ask me if I noticed her limping and he told me she’d just lost a toe but was covering for it like a champ. That one was fun.

She told me about something she called “purple charge” which was a way to get instant night vision. I did try looking that one up on the off chance, but was sadly disappointed there.

She said that Professional Liars had such high stakes jobs that they needed a week of insane time where they just partied so hard it was like a Dionysus rave and her IM boyfriend persona implied she’d killed someone during one of those stints.

I had such a fun time with her elaborate fiction that I’d often ask follow up questions and she had to do a lot of world building to keep up with my fascination. We’d get to class and I’d have three or four new questions which I think is why her friend thought her teasing was too far. They genuinely thought I believed her but I was just loving the fiction.

If any of this sounds malicious I’ll also add that when I got harassed on a roleplaying board she went out guns blazing to go after the guy who’d been harassing me. She genuinely enjoyed my company.

I find myself looking back on our friendship very fondly. I can’t remember her last name or have any way of looking her up, but she really was a professional liar to me. The only downside is that I’m completely faceblind so if she ever wanted to pop unexpectedly into my life I’d have no idea it was her.

[inbabylontheywept]

your life stories are always so interesting so i shall poke a stick into the cage and ask for more. do you have any fun stories of near death experiences? personally i choked on a lifesaver as a child and could not breathe

personally? not really. ive got a pretty decent hospital story though.

see, my grandpa was in charge of the easter pageant in my state. its a big mormon thing, a lot of other churches come because its just good easter worship. anyway, in part of the pageant, theres a pony for jesus and mary to ride around on. technically supposed to be a donkey, but ponys are just so much more photogenic. anyway this happened when my little sister was going through her little-girl-pony phase, so this was so major-league shit to her. so much so that my grandpa, who i still miss so much, brought this pony to our house so she could ride it.

my little brother? he also wanted to ride it. and i didnt really want to ride it, but they were both so small someone kind of needed to hold those two onboard, and i was the lighest person capable of doing so, (didnt want to overload the pony) so i went on the back too.

and it was a stellar time until the donkey went under a tree, then my little sister hit her head on a branch and fell left, and her fall took my little brother out because he was holding onto her, and both of them took me out, so we all fell off the pony, but me with 2 kids on my left arm.

god blessed me with a third elbow that day.

here are the things that followed after the Miracle of the Third Elbow

my autistic dad came outside to check on me. id broken my arm the year before, so i knew what it was, and i knew what it felt like, so i was able to pretty clearly go "yeah, dad, i broke my arm." and he was able to go "whew. yeah. thats like, harry potter broken." and i was able to say "yeah. yeah it hurts pretty bad." and he said "oh, yeah, definitely. that looks horrible." and then i basically said something like "hopital" and he was like "right" and then we left. my memory after that gets weird.

i can remember driving up main street, and seeing this guy dancing. like, full on dancing down the street. and i asked my dad about why that guy was dancing, and he said that man was a schizophrenic, and he was medicated, but the medication had just made it so that his voices told him to dance instead of hurt himself. now he danced all the time. i should clarify that my dad worked in the ER so he knew a lot of the local homeless on a life-story kind of level. my dads a good guy.

i can remember sitting in the waiting room with a magician that had sliced his right hand open pretty bad while cooking. he was trying his best to keep us entertained with his cards, but because he was doing all his tricks left handed, he'd mess them up sometimes and it was actually kind of more fun to watch than just him in expert mode. another good guy. very friendly, but visibly repulsed by my arm.

i can remember being in a bed, and a nurse coming up to me and saying that they could give me some painkillers, which i was super stoked about, but the IV from the painkillers basically required being stabbed with a needle as thick around as a pencil. she recomended saying the alphabet backwards when she put the needle in, and i said i didn't know how, and then she stuck in the needle in. over 4 seconds i was able to go from z to c, a feat i have never since been able to replicate.

after the painkillers, i watched a tv show called Jackie Chan Adventures, which was an animated cartoon with an animated Jackie Chan, voiced by the real Jackie Chan, solving mysteries. i actually assumed that whole thing was a hallucination until i was an adult, and i was describing it to my wife, and she was like "no, that actually happened." which was funny to happen to me, because when me and her started dating, she just kind of dropped how awesome it was that obama was the first muslim president, and i was like what, no hes an episcopalian, and it turns out that her dad, who sucks for many reasons, had told her that obama was a muslim, and she was sweet enough to believe that, and also to just be like oh, neat, our president is black and a muslim, we are truly moving forward as a counry." i love her so much.

no memories of it after that. not even sure when i got home. just a straight up weird time.

[autumnnnsun]

Now that I’ve finished reading Hortus de Escapismo and Executor’s record, I really gotta ramble about Executor for a second and kinda talk abt how Arknights handles his lack of empathy trait that I really enjoy. This isn’t a proper analysis or anything just my thoughts I wanna vomit for a sec.

So it’s implied in Executor’s record that he just, wasn’t born having empathy despite being a sankta. Or at least he just naturally doesn’t have the same levels of understanding of emotion as other sankta. The part that I really like about it is how Executor’s Record and story in general doesn’t portray that as a necessarily bad thing.

His lack of empathy allows him to think in a way that is a lot more unique than other sankta. When his partner in his record story told him to sacrifice him, he still brought his body back to Laterano. One of the reason being because of a specific sentence in the will they were enacting (“I hope all Laterans return back to their home.” Smth that most people would assume is just smth the will writer wrote for some extra literary flare) but also because he disregarded his partner’s feelings. His lack of empathy is the reason why he did something good and that is very interesting to me especially when most people tend to demonise having low/no empathy.

I also just really like how in his record story, it’s emphasised that he knows what emotions ARE. He has developed a system with his parents to recognise and visualise emotions by drawing lines that represent them. He knows what it is, he can recognise it to a level where he can think of the next best course of action when confronted with it, he just doesn’t put much importance on it nor does he bother with understanding it for the most part. Especially if it’s something that will get in the way of his job. And I REALLY like that cus it reminds me of how people irl that have low empathy will develop systems to work around it and still be kind.

I know a lot of us joke about Executor being autistic and that’s funny and I like the jokes as much as everyone else, but low or no empathy is a trait of other mental disorders and disabilities and even as someone that hasn’t been diagnosed with anything yet it still feels kinda nice to see low empathy being portrayed in a way that isn’t villanious.

In fact, Executor having low empathy kinda makes him the best person in the room sometimes especially in Hortus de Escapismo. The part where he does a warning shot at Oren and Lemuen and essentially goes “Can ya’ll STOP I’m trying to do my JOB.” And essentially manages to stop a massacre because of it is so funny but also so fucking hype bruv. I like how in the end of the event when Executor was starting to ask more questions and have more doubts and was starting to let emotions affect his actions a bit more, it isn’t framed as like “Oh mah gerd, he’s learning empathy and being more hooman!”

Instead he’s asking questions and seeking to find solutions to them in his own unique way. Asking around and adding more variables to his thought process like a computer would (which has some implications that gets my lore brain churning but hrghrghrgh)

Top it all of with the fact that he is specifically a character that is born and raised in a society that values empathy. Being able to feel other people’s emotions is what makes you a sankta. And Executor, is one of the better sanktas because he doesn’t follow that rule.

God I love Executor, go son, thrive.

[2demondogs]

May i request a Kieran x Reader where they just go on a cute picnic date with Branwhen just grazing the grass in the distance. Maybe somewhere pretty like the fields of little creek river. (Let's ignore the humongous O'driscoll hide out in the middle of it for kierans sake🥲)

This is CUTE you guys serve when u serve me the fluff prompts! Also I want to eat this fucking game's graphics. Imagine a Walmart on this river <3.

Girls, theys, and he/hims heart Kieran's autism swag.

Words: 1.4k Tags: Gender-neutral reader, romantic fluff, established relationship, my usual autistic Kieran

The gray hairs spotting Kieran's face and temples look as white as Branwen's in the afternoon sun hanging over Big Valley. He'd taken his hat off, and the splotchy suntan lain over his pale skin is already turning bright with fresh burns, the freckles faded in the wake of soon to form ones.

Always cold, that man; though he had insisted that this rock was simply the perfect place for a picnic and, since half of it was burning up under the shine, he would let you have the shade. He is a gentleman, of course.

It's mostly sunburn on his cheeks. Kieran never does get both his feet beneath him until its almost time for you two to part ways, and any progress he made towards it today was lost when you moved to sit side-by-side with him, insisting the shade got you chilled. The sun has been hot on your back since, warming you to the bone.

He only let your horses loose to roam an hour ago, and he'd made two trips to his saddlebag for a smoke before bringing the entire carton with him. Pleased, are you, to notice that he always sits right back where he was, knee knocking yours and shoulders a polite inch apart.

The chestnut on Branwen's paint-spatter coat looks almost as warm orange as the carton's printing beneath the sun, now, laying opened and near empty in front of you on the rocky ground of a boulder overlooking Little Creek River. Glittering, the water runs clearer after the rain storms that came last week and washed it fresh. If you asked, Kieran would probably know where it leads out to; the knowledge escapes you, now.

Tobacco shreds have fallen out of half-smoked cigarettes tucked back inside, marring the foil wrapper with smudges of black ash that mark Kieran's fingers as he takes another. Down a short slope, the sound of running water nearly drowns the scratch of the match against the rough pad on the box when he lights it.

He offers it to you, first, with that searching expression as if you might slap his hand away entirely— but he's already offered you three others, so you shake your head. Smoking or eating, both seem to calm Kieran's nerves, and your meals were gone quickly. Only two small pound cakes lay wrapped in cloth atop your own satchel, which serves as makeshift table for whatever needn't touch the ground.

You don't think you've ever heard him talk this much, either. His voice is thick and crackly with smoke, louder as he goes on until he must be confident that you like the conversation and his volume breaks even over the rocks. You aren't sure how long you've been sitting and listening, nor when, exactly, it drifted into sitting and staring at the man beside you. Peppered beard, the lines on his face, how his nose bridge twists downwards and how sparse his brows are, the dark brown of his hair bleached away by the sun.

Maybe he has good reason to get timid when you're alone. If you look anywhere near as lovesick as you feel, you would shy away from it, too.

Kieran talks about nothing in particular, when he gets going like this: what he remembered from childhood, his first horse and that he can't remember his first dog though he knows there was one and it was one of them big ones; where he grew up, stories his mother and father had told him before the cholera took them; living on the streets before his time in the—

"Wait," you interrupt him, straightening up some. "You were in the army?"

Kieran pauses mid-sentence, seeming to forget his story in the treeline far ahead of you. The foggy, anxious look which had fallen over his eyes clears when they fix on you again.

"Yeah," he says, as if it is no big story. It's regular enough, sure, though most of the men in camp never served, but it wasn't something you'd expected from him. "Food and a place to live. Why not?"

Well, that's one way to put it, you think, and you find yourself endeared by how little water these things hold to him.

"How long?" You ask.

He opens his mouth to answer, before his brain catches up to his body and he sinks into himself. "Two weeks," Kieran sighs. "Didn't even fight," — scratching the back of his neck, nodding to where his legs are crossed in front of him as if to demonstrate — "They said I got... neurasthenia, or somethin', 'n' I's too scrawny. Weren't putting on weight good enough." His eye twitches some. "Couldn't read, neither. Hard time writin', too..."

If you let him go on, he'll find a million reasons for why he still can't serve in the military or perhaps even detail his thoughts on the fitness of everyone in camp, and so you interject: "Fuck the army."

Kieran barks a laugh. "Got a mouth on you, don't you?"

And then he's back to talking about nothing in particular, letting one thought trail into another. It's interesting, how fast his mind runs and the off-shooting roads it takes. If you remember correctly, he began divulging the more precise details of his life to you simply because you asked if he had a favorite brand of smokes and he said yes, Pa smoked these, they smell like home.

To you, they've always smelled bitter. Some of the chocolate-y underlayers of the tobacco flavoring grow stronger each pack he breaks open.

Even beyond how pleasing his voice is to you, the familiar pauses and breathy quality when he's talked too long, is the far away look in his eyes, as if he's reliving everything he speaks of. This quality has made him weary and vulnerable, sure; but he seems to like the memories he's sharing now, and you know that in this life it's these things which are more precious than pain.

Kieran will tell anyone how the O'Driscolls treated him, or what happened before he rode with them. When men don't have much love laying around, it takes trust to share it.

Another turn comes about.

"Pa was a mil't'ry man, too," Kieran says. Too, like he's fought as many battles, God, I love him, you think. "'Fore he died, he always said we'd move away, out to California. Find some gold or start a farm, he liked the idea of a farm more, he said," — a pause, a fond little smile as he turns to you and looks past your shoulder — "Said that way we'd have a herd o' horses, so I'd have somethin' to like about it." He rubs his chin, remembers the hair there, looks away again. "Jesus, I oughtta been eight or so."

You smooth your shirt, pull your knees to your chest in a loose hold. "Maybe we'll have a farm out west someday," you say, not really thinking. "Or some kinda horse ranch, where we make money boardin' 'em for folks. All kinds of rich folk who pay for that."

Kieran looks at you with a lopsided grin. "D'you mean that?"

And he looks so hopeful, so very glad that you'd ever suggest you wanted a life together. An ache starts in your chest, tight and hard to swallow. Being part of his stories that he runs off when the quiet is too loud— it's not a bad idea at all.

You nod. "Once we're too old 'n' frail for this life," you say, bite back a smile as you reach to move the back of your hand down his chest. "Or maybe just once I'm too frail, Mister Two Weeks."

Kieran flushes. "Hey, now," he says, but he catches your hand in his before you can pull it back, presses his lips to the knuckles. His beard and mustache are scratchy, lips chapped.

You grin. "S'rry. That was mean, wasn't it?"

"You aren't sorry," he accuses, mirrors your smile.

"Naw," you insist, twist to tuck his hair behind his ear with the hand not rested in his. The fingers never leaving his face, resting under his chin. "You're my big, strong, handsome man. Ain't that right?"

He huffs a laugh, half-humored and half-flustered. "Dunno 'bout two o' those," he says.

You scratch his jaw fondly. "And so smart," you continue, pretending to not hear his objections.

Kieran is caught between basking under the playful, but always meant, praise and shying away from it. "Stop," he drawls, laced with a laugh.

"And oh so sweet."

"Quit," he repeats, but there's a chuckle breaking through his voice and he's tugging at your hand, pulling you closer. Well, you've got to lean closer so you do, and he kisses you on the mouth, as awkward as always, as if he forgets how exactly it works until it's happening once again.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for catfishing/lying to my friends?

Ok, I know some people will say this is fake or bait or whatever but 🤷‍♂️ This isn't pressing or anything, either, I just wanna see what people think because the situation was wild.

I'm not sure if this fits into what people consider catfishing but I don't think there's a better word for it. When I (ftm) was young (11 or so) I faked having a boyfriend to all my friends. He was a cool, older emo boy that I talked to on kik.

My friends eventually asked more questions (I'm pretty sure they thought he was fake lmao) I made a fake kik for him so they could talk to him. I would pretend to be him to talk to them.

From there things just spiraled. They asked to talk to him other ways? I made an email and got a texting app on my ipod. They wanted to see him? I got pictures that were just random emo boys off of google images.

I kept up this lie for all of middle school (11-13) for about 3-6 girls I was close friends with. I never came clean.

Now, I'm sure they had to know? I'd use pictures of different emo boys, it was rarely consistent. He had a super fake name (think like, gothic literary references). In hindsight? I was just enjoying pretending to be a boy and being treated like one. But still, probably weird. They talked to him pretty regularly as if he was human. I'm autistic though, and if they didn't believe in him and were all laughing behind my back I had no idea. I think they really did believe though, because, I'll be honest, a few of them were a little gullible (I'm not above this! I believed another friend when she said she was a mermaid princess.)

I'm only submitting this because I told the story to some friends recently and they all reacted with shock and horror. I think it's weird tween girl behavior tbh, no big deal. He was just another member of our friend group in a distant way. I was weirdly addicted to lying for attention or something. No harm no foul. I'd ask these girls/come clean, but we don't talk anymore and it's been like over a decade. If I was an asshole I'll just know not to tell it as a funny anecdote anymore.

(Also if any of the girls involved happen across this, hiiii, sorry. And double sorry if this is how you realize he was fake 😬)

tl;dr: When I was 11 I pretended to be my own emo boyfriend to like, be friends with my own friends x2 and to get more attention ig? I have no idea if this is a funny story I can tell my friends a decade later now, or if I should bury it in shame and never tell anyone.

What are these acronyms?

[destinygoldenstar]

TRAILERRRRRR!!!!!

Okay, so Netflix DIDN'T lie. Confirmed.

I'm NOT as scared about the release date as others. I'm still worried. But I can also see it because from what I've heard, Episodes 2-4 were being made around the same time. So, by that logic, the quality should be similar.

"But why was there such a gap with 2 & 3 then?" MURDER DRONES WAS RELEASING ITS FINALE IN BETWEEN. THAT'S WHY. Some of the animators for Digital Circus work on Murder Drones too. So OF COURSE, to avoid overworking them, there'd be a gap for Digital Circus content.

And now that Murder Drones has ended, there's not that issue anymore.

That's the logic I'm going with, anyway. I would wait to raise the red flags till AFTER this episode comes out and we hear Episode 5 comes out in, like, a month or something.

I HOPE TO GOD THAT LINE AGES HORRIBLY.

Also, um... an episode about working minimum wage labor.

These episodes are built for me, I swear.

We also have the characters in different outfits, which is neat. Clearly just for this episode. Still.

I NOTICED THIS POSTER.

"Customer is always right! Serve with a smile!"

THE AMOUNT OF TIMES I HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS IS INSANE AND DRIVES ME ABSOLUTELY NUTS.

I WOULD GET SCOFFED AT AND SCREAMED AT BY PEOPLE, AND I'M THE ONE THAT GETS IN TROUBLE.

We also have Ragatha and Gangle interacting.

I wonder why they're playing with a baseball specifically.

Because in the last episode the leisure activity played into the adventure.

JAX'S NAMETAG SAYS "I DON'T CARE"

LMAO

Gangle looks like she's been possessed by Monokuma.

This is DEFINATELY a new mask.

Here's my prediction:

Gangle has a background actress-related. (Comedy & Tragedy Mask Duality) And she is bullied CONSTANTLY in the previous episodes.

So when she's given the role of manager, she creates a new mask for herself, A NEW CHARACTER. One that gives her confidence and a character so ruthless that she can't be pushed around.

It's her spotlight. It's her time to shine.

So is the comedy&tragedy duality bipolar disorder?

We'll see. I got Kinger's mental issue wrong.

It could also be that Gangle is autistic. I KNOW AS AN AUTISTIC PERSON MYSELF. It's pretty easy for autistic people to latch onto a character they can bring to life in order to interact with people. But when provoked as themselves, confidence can easily break.

So no, I don't think she's being psychotic. I think she's putting on an act for her self esteem.

And I think whatever damage she causes in the episode will not have malicious intent from her.

I say this because we ALSO see her looking at herself in the mirror.

THIS IS ZOOBLE'S ROOM BTW. THAT'S INTERESTING.

Did Zooble loan Gangle this?

Assuming they did because we have THIS hand reach out to Gangle.

So what I'm thinking the start of the episode is: Gangle and Ragatha are playing baseball, by accident, the ball breaks Gangle's masks.

She's crying, she's writing, and then Zooble eavesdrops and offers to help.

And we know this is Zooble's hand because they're participating in the adventure with that hand.

YAY!

This guy is so stiffly animated. Or maybe it's just me.

Maybe there's a story reason for it. Idk.

They advertised this guy awhile back, said "He's everyone's favorite character".

I'm calling Glitch's bluff. I'm gonna say this guy is going to be VERY INTENTIONALLY written to be UNLIKEABLE, ANNOYING, AND MISERABLE.

And it's gonna be COMEDY GOLD to have Caine and the Circus go around exclaiming how he's the best.

CAINE GETTING THIS SUGGESTION BOX IS SO INTERESTING.

I THINK this is from Zooble.

After their therapy session, and Zooble saw first hand what could happen if Caine cuts adventures altogether, I can see Zooble making adventure suggestions that would be comfortable for them to participate in. To please Caine and to protect the circus from collapsing.

We're also getting Caine lore. BECAUSE WHERE IS THIS ROOM SUPPOSED TO BE? THIS LOOKS FAR TOO NORMAL.

AND WHAT IS POMNI DOING HERE CRAWLING ON THE FLOOR?

First off, I'm okay with her taking a backseat. She's the main character so obviously she'd get the lionshare of screen time. BUT there are other characters in this show and the show knows that. So as a Pomni Stan, I'm completely okay with this.

BUT is she snooping on Caine???

Two possibilities: One, this is just the burger place. Which is likely.

OR this is where Caine is, and she dips from the adventure to eavesdrop and figures out some lore stuff.

Not seeing her doing much else this episode anyway.

CAUSE LOOK AT THIS. SHE'S TRYING TO THROW AWAY SOMETHING AND GETS CAUGHT BY GANGLE? SHE HIDING S&#T DOG.

THE GLOINK QUEEN IS BACK.

Probably as just a cameo. BUT THE GLOINK QUEEN IS BACK.

Hmmmm... if the Gloink Queen is coming back, I wonder if someone else could show up...

[mohnaka]

So, in regards to Hondo in Skeleton Crew since it's something I keep seeing people ask about: it was confirmed that he won't be appearing. Here's the specific bit from the article:

I’ve seen speculation that a live-action Hondo Ohnaka will appear in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. True or false? –Corey A freighter resembling Hondo’s was spotted in the distance at Port Borgo in Episode 2, but series creators Chris Ford and Jon Watts confirmed for me that we won’t be meeting the Clone Wars pirate. “We’ll rip off that Band-Aid and say no, we don’t have any Hondo,” Ford told TVLine. “Honestly, we love Hondo, but there wasn’t really a part in our story that offered a good enough role for him. Like, if we were trying to cast him in this, he would be like, ‘This part is not big enough for Hondo!'” Which is not to say Skeleton Crew, in success, won’t ever feature the interstellar buccaneer. “We would love to keep doing this,” Ford said, “and keep exploring the whole pirate side of the galaxy, and build up to that.”

There's always the chance they could be lying, but considering the wording, I don't think they are. But! He is coming in the next dlc for Star Wars Outlaws! No exact release date yet, sometime in spring. If you haven't played it yet, I highly recommend it.

Now on a side note, something else I've seen a lot of people ask/say in regards to Hondo showing up in media set after Rebels: isn't he already super old/dead/etc? Long story short, no. Short story long because I'm autistic and don't know when to shut up under the read more:

If you were somehow unaware (hoping that doesn't come off as judgmental, it's more of a surprised thing I swear!), he's actually a part of Galaxy's Edge aka "the Star Wars land" at Disneyland/Disney World, which is supposed to take place in between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker (so about 34 ABY). Or at least it was initially, they've been kind of loosening it up lately, but the two rides (Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, the latter of which Hondo is basically the star of) are still in that specific time range. So he's not dead nor is he going to die in anything set before the sequels (but then again, "Hondo Ohnaka survives every time", could be the Force keeps bringing him back to life to fuck with everyone).

In Legends, the approximate lifespan for his species (Weequay) was about 90 years of age. There's been no word on whether this is still canon or it's been made longer, but if it is still canon, it does give us an idea of how old he was in the various eras. If we're to assume he's somewhere between 80 to 85 years of age in 34 ABY (Lando, who he's shown to be on good terms with in issue 4 of the Halcyon Legacy comic, is 77/78 years in 34 ABY for reference), that would make him:

Between 25 to 30 years old when he's first introduced in The Clone Wars

Between 42 to 47 years old when he's first introduced in Rebels

And last but not least, between 55 to 60 years old in 9 ABY, which is (supposedly) when The Mandalorian/Skeleton Crew/etc takes place

Somewhere in the middle is most likely, since the younger estimate would put him at only 14 years old in 32 BBY (during The Phantom Menace), but 17 to 19 years old isn't that wild considering what we've seen older kids/teenagers deal with in this franchise. It's not completely unrealistic that someone with a background like his would be just starting off leading a group of pirates in his late teens.

Anyway, what's he been up to since Rebels? He actually founded his own Totally Legitimate Shipping Company, Ohnaka Transport Solutions, sometime in between 1 ABY and 4 ABY prior to the Battle of Endor. It's currently (as in, 34 ABY currently) based in Black Spire Outpost on Batuu, though whether it was always there is unknown. Also at some point he got himself a ship that he named the Katooni...yes, like that Katooni. In fact, it's the one mentioned in the above interview about Hondo appearing in Skeleton Crew, so in a sense, he might have already had a indirect cameo!

Sources for most of this/recommended reading: Pirate's Price, The Secrets of the Bounty Hunters, and Halcyon Legacy #4. If you're looking for Hondo content outside the shows, read these. Especially Pirate's Price if you've always wondered what it'd be like if Han and Hondo met. And as previously mentioned, Halcyon Legacy #4 has him with (the real) Lando.

[phoenixs-fandoms-and-writings]

Do You Think Anyone Will Love Me?

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: James Potter/Reader (no pronouns are used for reader, but James affectionately calls them Princess)

Plot: You have a bad day and go home to find comfort in your roommate and long time friend, James.

Reader is autistic and James is just supportive.

Notes: This account is anti-JKR and her beliefs.

Happy Valentine’s Day! 💖

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Read on AO3 here.

You hadn’t been having a good day and went to seek out the only person you felt could help you through this, and make you think about something other than how bad you thought you looked and how bad you felt. When you got home, you seeked him out; your roommate, your best friend and your secret crush, James Potter.

“James,” you breathed a sigh of relief at seeing him.

He turned to you with a big smile on his face, but when he caught sight of you and the tears rolling down your cheeks, his face fell. “What’s wrong?”

He held his arms open and you ran into his arms as he gave you a comforting hug in a way that only James could. You started crying, “Do you think anyone will love me?”

He held you closer, “of course someone will love you or maybe someone already loves you. How could they not love you? You’re amazing. You’re perfect.” He paused, before you heard him say, “Don’t let anyone tell you or make you feel otherwise.”

“Do you really think that of me? That I’m amazing and perfect?”

“Yes! You are to me. I love you.” He pulled back and looked down at your face. “I love you so much. I want you to be mine.”

“But Lily-”

“Means nothing to me. If it ever looked like I was flirting with her, it was only because you were near and I was flirting with you. It always seemed to make you smile and I like it when you smile.”

“James,” you looked up at him for a few seconds to tell him, “I’d love to be yours.” You looked away and down to his mouth.

He leaned down and kissed you, your eyes fluttering shut. It was slow and passionate, and better than you’d ever dreamed.

When he pulled back, you smiled, breathing a little heavier than before.

“I have something I want to show you,” he told you. “I always tried to hide my feelings from you because I didn’t know how you felt and I didn’t want to scare you off.” He moved away from you and you felt a little colder without his warmth, but he took your hand and led you to his room, sitting you on his bed. “I wrote these to you, though I wasn’t sure if I’d ever give them to you telling you it was me, or if I’d leave them in the letter box as a secret admirer.” He pulled out a little stack of letters and handed them to you. “Though, I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“I’m glad you didn’t do the secret admirer thing. I love knowing it’s from you.”

You opened the letters up and you read them, each one more beautiful than the last. One of them was written about the time you had a day like this, a day where you felt ugly, you couldn’t control your hair and you felt like you were fat. He wrote about how you might not see it yourself, but how beautiful you are and how your kindness, compassion and loyalty made you even more beautiful in his eyes.

When you gave them back to him, he put them on his bedside table. “How about we spend the rest of the day together? Just you and me.”

You smiled at him softly, before you lifted your hand to your hair, “I should probably wash my hair. It feels dirty.”

“You look amazing to me,” he said to you before moving forward to capture your lips in a kiss. “But if that’s how you feel, how about I help you by washing your hair?”

“You want to do that?”

“Of course, lovey,” he told you. “Would you like me to be in the bath with you? Or would you prefer I sit on the side? I don’t mind either way.”

You blushed and looked down, “Jamie, would you please join me?” You weren’t worried about him seeing you naked, you’d known him almost your whole life and he was the only man you felt fully safe around.

“Gladly, princess.” He smiled at you as he stood up holding his hand out to you. You took it, smiling at him. He smiled back before he guided you into the bathroom.

You loved how he let you be yourself; how he didn’t force you to do any of the societal norms, like keep eye contact, or not stim. You love how supportive he was after you found out you were autistic, you had been so worried that you would lose him completely.

You had heard horror stories from others who told others they were autistic and they didn’t want anything to do with them. When you told James, he just hugged you and told you, “I’m glad you were able to find out and that you trusted me enough to tell me. This is not a negative and you are not less than. You are an incredible and inspiring person.”

He was the first one you told and you were so happy that you did.

You were brought back to the present when you felt a warm hand on your face. You looked up at James’ beautiful face.

“What are you thinking about, my love?”

You blushed and told him, “I was just thinking about when I told you about finding out that I’m autistic. I was terrified of telling anyone but I needed to tell someone and I’m so glad that you have been so supportive of me.”

He leaned down and kissed you, leaving you breathless, “I will always support you. I always did, from the very beginning.”

After pulling away, he turned around and that's when you noticed the bath was full. He started taking off his shirt and you turned away. When he noticed this, he turned you back to him. “We’re together now. If you want to look, you can.” He kissed you before adding, “You should probably take off your clothes. I can turn away if it makes you more comfortable.”

You looked down and took a deep breath before taking off your clothes. You looked up at him nervously, and saw how James couldn’t take his eyes off you and it made you feel incredible.

“Lovey, you are so beautiful. More beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he told you and you blushed.

“Say that to me again,” you requested. “I haven’t had anyone say that to me before. Not anyone of significance anyway.”

“You are so beautiful, my love,” he smiled at you. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I will gladly tell you that as often as you want to hear it.”

You smiled at him again as he took your hand and guided you over to the bath. Once he was in, he kissed your hand before he helped you in and you sat between his legs.

He got your shampoo, squeezing a little into the palm of his hand before massaging it into your scalp. You hummed in contentment at the feel of his massage into your head. It felt so good.

He did the whole routine, using a clean cup that he’d brought in to get some of the water from the bath and rinsing it out after each time he used the shampoo and conditioner, making sure none of it got in your eyes.

After he finished, the two of you just sat together a little longer before you got out and you dried yourselves off.

He told you he would be with you in just a moment, but asked if he could brush your hair and you told him that he could and you’d be happy to let him. He’d just get some clothes to put in your room. You went to your room and put on the clothes you sleep in and waited until he walked into your room, wearing only sweatpants.

He picked up your hair brush and sat behind you. He brushed your hair gently as he whispered sweet nothings to you. After he finished, he put the brush down, before taking your hand and guiding you back so you were leaning against him.

He looked down at your intertwined hands and whispered, “I like the way your hand fits in mine.”

You looked down at your joined hands as well. “I like the way your hand feels in mine.”

He looked over at you. You looked up at him and he smiled softly at you as you looked down slightly, “Would it be alright if I borrowed one of your sweaters? They smell like you.”

He pulled you up so the two of you were still holding hands and took you to his room. “Is there one in particular you’d like to wear, love?”

“No, any of them. They all smell like you.”

He pulled one out and asked, “do you mind if I put it on you?”

You shook your head and sat on his bed as he pulled it over your head and you put your arms through the holes. You looked down, smiling, before whispering more to yourself than to him, “it’s my favourite colour.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t remember?” You could hear the smile in his voice before you saw it. “Lovey, would you like me to paint your nails?”

You looked up at him, “you want to do that?”

“Of course, I want today to be all about you and pampering you. So would you like me to?”

“Yes, please,” you responded as you started to get up.

“No,” he sat you down on the bed again. “I’ll get everything, just tell me what we need.”

“Nail polish organiser bag. It has everything needed for doing this. It’s the black bag in the cupboard under the vanity on the left in my room.”

“Alright, lovey,” he leaned down to give you a quick peck before adding, “make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back soon.”

He left and you lay back on his bed, smiling to yourself. He came back not long after with the bag. You opened it and pulled out all the essentials, fixing your cuticles, making it easier for him as he picked out the ones he wanted to use.

Once he’d chosen the colours he wanted, you pulled and showed him the polish to use first. He got the little tray table you had in your room. He told you where he wanted you (sitting against the headboard) and placed the table between the two of you so you had somewhere to put your hands.

As he was doing them, a thought came to mind, “James?”

He hummed in response to let you know he was listening.

“Can I please do your nails at some point?”

He stopped painting your nails for a moment, to smile at you and answer, “of course, angel. I would love that. We could take photos of them both.”

You smiled at him and watched as he finished your nails. He moved to sit beside you and you leaned against him as you waited for your nails to finish.

You lifted your hands to look at what he’d done. “James, these are beautiful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Beautiful colours for my beautiful angel.”

You smiled and blushed, “I like it when you use those pet names for me.”

“I’ll keep using them then,” he whispered in your ear, before leaning his head on top of yours. “When they dry, would you snuggle with me?”

You giggled and whispered, “I would love to.”

When your nails had dried, you moved the little table off the bed and the two of you lay together with him holding you in his arms and you cuddled into him.

As you both cuddled each other and you buried your face into him and his smell. You loved his smell. He made you feel safe and loved, and his smell enveloped you in warmth and safety.

He pulled you back a little before littering your face with kisses. You giggled, and when he stopped, you hesitated a little before you kissed him. He tasted like home and love, just like his smell.

You snuggled into him even more, and you knew without a doubt, with him, you were always home.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I’m planning my 2025 UK (and, this time, Ireland) trip, and I’m really really excited about it. But as 2024’s come to an end and we all do retrospectives, I thought it would be interesting for me to look back on my 2024 UK trip now, and see what, with a few months of hindsight, still stands out as the best and worst parts.

Reasons why I’m making this list: 1) it’ll be helpful, when planning for next year’s trip, to know what cool things I want to repeat, and what uncool things I want to try to avoid, and 2) I miss my trip and want to mentally re-live it by making a list and looking at the pictures again.

My 2024 trip was divided into three overall parts. Part 1 was five days in London. Part 2 was taking trains – London to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Glasgow, Glasgow to Fort William, stayed overnight in Fort William, then Fort William to Mallaig, Mallaig to Glasgow, Glasgow to Edinburgh. Then Part 3 was five days in Edinburgh for the festival.

Part 1: London

Best parts of London, listed in whatever order they occur to me

- Trains: There were so many trains. The stations were cool. The tracks were cool. The seats were cool. The vehicles were cool. The speed with which you could get around the city was cool. The “Mind the Gap” voice was cool.

I joked before I left on this trip that this is like the stereotype that says all autistic people are 8-year-old white boys obsessed with trains, and then there's a cute/inspiration porn story in the local paper about the little autistic boy who's all excited to meet a train conductor. I said I'll be like that when I go to Edinburgh and see all those comedy shows, because in this simile, I am an 8-year-old white boy and these are my trains.

Then, once I actually got there, I remembered that trains are also my trains. Some autistic stereotypes exist for a reason. For example, I am a 34-year-old autistic white woman, and I fucking love trains.

- Highgate Cemetery

So beautiful. I wandered around it for nearly an hour, just appreciating all the history. And it was really cool to see Douglas Adams' grave - I left two pens, from my dad and I, as we used to read his books together. I went there mainly because I was interested in Douglas Adams, but was amazed by how lovely the whole place was.

- Taskmaster house

Obviously that was cool as fuck. I also went on a walk by the river to where they have the bandstands where they did location tasks for the first few seasons. I took this picture by holding my phone up over a fence:

- Really good non-shawarma on park bench

A couple of years ago, I heard Nish Kumar recommend a specific Montreal shawarma place on The Bugle, because he performs in Montreal sometimes. I'd never been to that place, but I was a bit skeptical of his recommendation, because I've tried shawarma outside my own city, even in other big cities, and it's always terrible. My city has a lot of shawarma places, due to various factors that mean we have a high Arab immigrant population, so I've gotten used to quite a high standard of shawarma. I know several people who've grown up in Middle Eastern countries where shawarmas actually originated, and told me that our city has their favourite shawarmas in the world.

So, I wasn't sure about Nish Kumar's recommendation. Not because I thought there could be no good shawarma in Montreal (that's not where I live, but it's a big enough city so it'll have some good stuff, better than Toronto), but because I was not sure if I should trust someone from England to know how shawarma is meant to taste. I hear British people talk about kebabs a lot, but they never mentioned shawarmas, so I figured they don't really have shawarma there. Just kebabs, which are not the same thing.

Having said this, when I went to Montreal to see some Just For Laughs shows in 2023, I tried the shawarma place that Nish had recommended, and it tasted amazing. So I had to admit that maybe he does know what he's talking about. I told all this to my friend who lives in London, and when he went to a Nish Kumar gig long before my UK trip, he went up to Nish after the show, and asked what his favourite shawarma place in London is. Nish said some place called Kebab Kid, and I put that on my list of places to visit, to see if England does have good shawarma after all.

So I made a special trip out there. I traveled pretty far out of my way to get there. I took some trains, and then I walked about forty-five minutes, across quite a lovely neighbourhood, enjoying how pretty London is. I arrived at the restaurant, and became a touch concerned that the place I was using to prove to England does have shawarmas and not just kebabs, was called Kebab Kid. But when I went inside, they did have shawarmas on the menu. I ordered one.

The guy behind the counter asked me if I wanted chili sauce or barbeque sauce. I said no, because... obviously. Obviously you don't put those on a shawarma. He said, "So no sauce, then?", and I realized those weren't optional extras, they were the only sauce on offer. No garlic sauce, no hummus. I said... okay, barbeque then. He put misc. salad in there instead of pickles and turnips. It was so clearly not a shawarma. It came with fries, even though fries obviously do not go with shawarma.

Skeptically, I took it down the road and sat down on a park bench to eat. And God, was it ever delicious. It wasn't a shawarma. That's absolutely not what a shawarma is. But it was a very, very good chicken sandwich. A guy sat down next to me and chatted to me for a while. He asked what I was eating, I said a shawarma, and he said he's from Turkey and they don't have proper shawarmas here, not like at home. I said yes, I can see that. They absolutely don't.

But it was a really really good chicken sandwich and I ate it in a really pretty park, surrounded by pigeons, and had a genuinely nice chat with a random stranger, and it felt sweet and peaceful, and I liked it a lot.

I told myself I was going to keep each item on this list pretty short, just a couple of quick sentences to explain them. I did not expect the first list item to make me break that rule would be a shawarma place. I'm going back to the rule now.

- Sunday roast

I flew all Saturday night. I arrived at 8:30 AM. My wonderful hosts picked me up at the airport, I showered and changed and dropped my stuff off at their place, and then, while fuelled entirely by adrenaline and no sleep, I accompanied my friend from a British comedy message board, whom I'd just met in person for the first time, to a pub with a Sunday roast.

I've been informed that he chose this pub specifically because it has a great Sunday roast, they're not all as good as this one. But this one was very, very good. I had horseraddish for the first time. I had Yorkshire pudding for the first time. I was very surprised that this things called pudding was just bread, until I tasted it, and I decided that anything that delicious can call itself whatever it wants. It was the perfect way to start a trip.

- My wonderful hosts

It's weird to write this part because he'll probably read it. But I stayed in the spare room of a guy I'd met two years earlier on a comedy message board, as I've said many times, I cannot believe lucky I got in messaging a guy because I just wanted a few old comedy recordings, and ending up with a wonderful new friend (and more comedy recordings that I could have imagined, that's cool too). We spoke regularly for a couple of years before my trip to the UK, which is relevant because, as my dad pointed out, it's inadvisable to stay with a man from the internet you've not met in person, but if he's been talking to you most days for two years, that's a lot of work to put in just to lure someone to your house to murder them. There are easier ways to murder someone. So it's probably fine.

He did not murder me. He has a wife whom I'd not spoken to before but she was so incredibly nice; I'd been slightly concerned that she might be put out by having to play host to some woman from Canada whom she didn't know, but it wasn't like that at all, she was so friendly and welcoming, and so was her husband of course, it was super cool to meet him in person and spend time with both of them, it was great. And they had three cats who were the absolute best cats in the world. I won't post a picture of the cats here, because, you know, those are other people's private cats. But they were excellent cats.

- The Bill Murray, Nish Kumar

Many, many hours of my favourite comedy I've of my favourite comedy I've ever heard was recorded at The Bill Murray pub, for Angel Comedy. I was so excited to see the venue in person, and I was not disappointed. I saw a Nish Kumar WIP there just before he went to Edinburgh, and holy God, it was one of the best evenings of my life. I arrived at the pub an hour before the show, partly so I could awkwardly hang around the door to the comedy room and get the best seats (I achieved this, of course), and partly because I wanted to spend time in that building, to take in the history.

And it was full of history. The walls were covered in pictures of great comedians who've performed there. There were murals with drawings of comedy legends. And the actual comedy room was perfect - small and intimate, definitely good at those technical things that I don't have enough expertise to know how they work but I know good ones when I experience them (sight lines, acoustics, comedy-conducive lighting). And I watched Nish Kumar perform an absolutely fantastic version of one of my favourite stand-up hours ever. It was a perfect night.

- Crystal Palace

I spent one morning in Crystal Palace. I ate breakfast. It's a very very pretty neighbourhood with cool little buildings and a sense of history and everything that I romanticize, when I romanticize the UK. It had a big beautiful park with dinosaur statues. I went into a cool independent bookstore, which has hosted performances by some of my favourite comedians ever, and I bought a beautiful children's book to donate to the autism centre where I worked at the time. If I'm honest, those hours were the ones I most enjoyed in London, aside from the time at actual comedy shows/venues. I just wanted to have a look.

Pictured below: not a tourist attraction (according to Elis James, who is wrong), but some cool dinosaurs

- Cambridge

On one of my days in London, I got trains to Cambridge and back. At first I was pretty disappointed in the place, because it had so many tourists that I couldn't really appreciate anything. But then I paid about 10 pounds to get into the grounds of St. John's College, which had an entry fee because it was one of the extra beautiful colleges. It was also Douglas Adams' college, so I'd wanted to see it anyway for Britcom tourism reasons. But holy God, was it ever gorgeous. I felt like I was in some sort of unnamed British fantasy novel.

The gardens. The old buildings. The history. The picturesque rooftops, the river with boats punting by like a postcard. The stained glass in the chapel. The courtyards that seemed from another world. The pillars. This was exactly what I wanted when I said I wanted to go to the UK and see "Harry Potter buildings". Not filming locations from the movies, I don't care about that. Magestic buildings with fantasy novel vibes. Also, you know, all the genuine history there. Douglas Adams, and I hear the history of Cambridge University might even go back slightly further than the 1970s.

I also ate lunch at a pub called The Eagle, because it was called the oldest pub in Cambridge, and I think that's even true (as in, I didn't just wander into any pub that had a sign saying "oldest pub in Cambridge" outside, I looked this up beforehand). Because I like history. The pub was so cool on the inside, and yes I'm aware that that's probably not even because it's several hundred years old, it's because they made it look that way so they can trade off tourists like me. I know that - that any pub that's several hundred years old is a Theseus' Ship situation. I don't care, the pub was beautiful. And I had an amazingly delicious lunch there.

- Regent's Park

One of the first places I went when I got to London. So much amazing comedy history there. Pretty park, I enjoyed walking around the pretty park. But I mainly enjoyed looking at the theatre, even though we couldn't go in, and standing on the spot of some of my favourite nights in comedy history, it was fucking cool.

- ABC Comedy, Romesh Ranganathan

This is another very cool comedy club in London, where a lot of really really awesome comedy has happened over the years, I've gotten to experience a lot of it from Canada via the magic of technology but was so excited to be there in person. And I saw Romesh do an hour-long WIP there (I think it was less WIP, and more just messing around and saying whatever came up), which was really funny and a great time. Weird to see someone so famous in person. He was taller than I expected. His reputation is for the grumpy thing, but he's so funny when he says something silly and then gives the crowd a huge grin. It was loose and great fun.

And thought I'd been told before that it's a small room, I was amazed to see in person, and confirm how very small it is, giving how regular it is for big names to perform there (Romesh Ranganathan, for a start). Just like the Bill Murray.

- All the big pretty buildings in the Parliament area, and St. James' Park

I spent a few hours wandering around the big pretty buildings in the Parliament area and St. James' park. It was old and nice and impressive. I kept walking by Big Ben and saying "There's Big Ben!" like in that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

- Square Mile neighbourhood and Leadenhall Market

Another time, I spent an afternoon wandering around a neighbourhood that I believe is called Square Mile. It had a lot of little alleyways, and I'm a sucker for little alleyways. It had big and impressive buildings that I enjoyed looking at. I went into a pub that had chandeliers.

That neighbourhood had Leadenhall Market in it, which is an exception to me not caring about places where the Harry Potter movies were filmed, because it's not just where they happened to film Diagon Alley the movie, it looks like how I pictured Diagon Alley in my head from the books. There were a bunch of little market areas like this in London, which I liked. But this one was my favourite:

- Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub

I spent nearly three hours in this pub. I ordered several alcohol-free Guinesses, because I was trying to stay away from alcohol throughout the trip. I was there by myself. So why did I spent three hours in a pub, if not for the alcohol or the company? It was just one of the coolest buildings I'd been in and I wanted to be in there for longer. I was in a basement room where I couldn't even get internet, so I couldn't even browse on my phone. I just sat there, for hours, alone in the room, and it was fantastic.

The pub had several different rooms, as you move downstairs, and one of the rooms was totally empty so I sat down there. This definitely sated my desire to see the other type of Harry Potter building - rather than the big and majestic ones that could be a wizard castle, this was a dimly lit basement that looks like it hasn't been updated since the 1600s, which is apparently when this pub was built. Knockturn Alley. Okay I'm done with the Harry Potter references (to be clear I did not, and would not, do any official Harry Potter stuff that could generate profit for the author because fuck her - I didn't even do any unofficial Harry Potter stuff like the Edinburgh tours or pictures with that Kings Cross cart - I just wanted to sit around in old buildings and feel like I was in a fantasy novel).

This gave me the thing I wanted to find in tourist attractions, but didn't. I visited some large old cathedrals, and wanted to feel a sense of history and magic and the gravity of a place like that, but it was packed with other tourists taking pictures, so I couldn't get into it. I sat in St. Paul's Cathedral trying to feel magic, and finally said to myself, "Yeah, God's not here" and left (metaphorical God, I'm not religious, but I'm often impressed with the weight of human wonder that goes into religious architecture). I found the Cheshire Cheese just after that, sat down in that old building, and felt all the stuff that I'd wanted to feel in the church but failed.

I'm genuinely glad there was no internet signal down there, because I took out my phone, and did write a whole big Tumblr post in my notes app, figuring I'd post it when I got back upstairs (okay, I didn't just stare at the wall for three hours). That magic of the building overtook me. That post was so incredibly cheesy, even for me. It contained the line "I didn't find God in a church, but then I found God in a pub," because apparently I thought I was John Robins now. And that's one of the less cheesy lines, since I'm willing to share it now. I think there were a bunch of reflections in there about struggling with my drinking problem, but written in ways that only made sense while sitting in that room. The rest of the post will be thankfully lost because I got upstairs, returned to the real word, said "this is bullshit" and deleted it. But I hope that this year, I can go back to the magical pub where the real world doesn't exist.

- Other pubs

I didn't drink at all in the UK (okay, I had one beer in a pub by the ocean on my last day in Edinburgh, but literally only one pint), and it wasn't the first time in my adult life that I've gone two whole weeks without alcohol, but it was the first time I've done that and found it easy, because things were going so well that I didn't even miss it. I did, however, drink a lot of alcohol-free Guinesses. Because I sat in a lot of pubs and wanted something that at least made me feel like I was drinking.

The worst part of London was the heat and the crowds and the fact that everyone moves so fast that you're not allowed to stand still for half a second without people getting angry at you for blocking the sidewalk, and there weren't a lot of options for refuge from that. A lot of the restaurants seemed to be takeaway-only, or just a few tables, and were always packed. So a lot of times, I found myself ducking into pubs to get out of the heat and the crowds. The pubs were old and nice and quiet and comforting, and I enjoyed sitting in them a lot.

- Egg Sluts

Okay, I'm going to change the tone a bit from the darker, drinking problem-based stuff. I had a fucking excellent breakfast sandwich in a place called Egg Sluts. I did not take a picture, but it was so good that I have to go back there in 2025. I'm a big fan of the egg + meat-based breakfast sandwich, and that was probably the best one I'd ever had.

- Sausage rolls

The first time I ordered a sausage roll from Gregg's, I did it while giggling about how I feel like a character in a story that was told on a panel show. The WILTY people are always making up stuff about Gregg's and sausage rolls. What a cute British thing to do. I'm going to eat a sausage roll on a train. This is so British.

The second, through, by my best estimation, 504th time that I ordered a sausage roll in Britain, I thought, "Fucking hell, am I ever glad we don't have these in Canada. I don't think I'd have lived to this age if I had the option to order them all the time. Sausage... in bread... it's brilliant. Why didn't we think of this in Canada? We must never think of this in Canada. This needs to remain a treat abroad."

- Lamb being a common food there

Here, it's a delicacy, often not available in places that serve the more common meats like chicken, pork, and beef. Some places offer it, but for a higher price than the same dish with another meat. Britain just puts lamb in everything.

- On a similar note, one day I went up to the roof of a high building and ate a lamb kebab while looking out at the entire city, and that was very nice:

- The Soho Theatre

Same deal as the other comedy venues - cool place full of comedy history, I've heard so much stuff from there and loved getting to see it in person and physically be in that space. Also, the walls were full of posters from shows that had performed there over the years.

- The London Underground when it was not packed with people

Fun stuff. Sometimes it was all dark and felt like a sci-fi movie. The cars made fun noises and went fast.

- I saw Daniel Kitson live twice, a couple of nights apart. One of the times, I met him after the show. My brain shut down and I forgot all the words in the English language and he stood there looking at me and I couldn't speak to him. He performed what I think is one of the best shows he's ever done, and I got to see it live, and that was cool as fuck. So incredibly cool. But oh my God, I felt terrible later that night (and the next day, and the next few days) when I realized how badly I'd Got It Wrong when I met him.

It's okay though, because I did eventually manage to look at the pictures my friend took, and those pictures confirmed that he at least found the situation amusing (I could not confirm that at the time as I was physically unable to look at him):

Worst parts of London, listed in whatever order they occur to me

- The British Library

It might be unfair to call this one of the worst parts of my trip to London, because it was still pretty cool. But most of London was good, so by the standards of that, this was… weird. I went on the day I arrived, right after the Sunday roast, when I’d flown all night and not slept in well over 24 hours by then, so that definitely did not help. I took a guided tour of the place, and the tour was super weird. Our guide was obsessed with telling us that the government had secretly killed Alan Turing. Every part of the tour was basically a way for him to bring it back to that subject. Which almost sounds like a gimmick, but the guy seemed quite serious about it. He also told us several facts that other people on the tour pointed out were incorrect (not just the conspiracy theory thing, but factual stuff like confidently mis-labelling what language certain books were in). The whole thing was just weird, and the fact that I was reaching “asleep on my feet” territory made it feel like a weird drug trip.

- The heat

I realized a few months before the trip that this would be taking place in the middle of summer, and I need to factor in how much I cannot stand being outside in the middle of summer. I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it. My body cannot stand excessive heat. I am meant to live in Arctic temperatures. Where I live now, the weather has been mostly between -10 and -20 degrees Celcius for the last few weeks, and that's about where I feel comfortable. As soon as it starts going above 0, I don't like it.

London in the summer was well above 0. To be fair, it was slightly less hot there than it was at home. I was told that I was there during one of their heat waves, but even their heat wave temperatures were not quite as hot as what I get at home on a regular mid-summer week. So that would normally be nice. But at home, I'm not usually walking outside all day, for several days in a row, in the middle of summer. I'm usually hiding in my house with a fan blowing directly on me and cold wash clothes draped all over my body, telling myself that autumn will come soon.

So. Summer tourism might not be the best call for me. I got very miserable being in the heat for so long, and that made everything else harder to deal with. The crowds. The blisters on my feet. I could stand them all more easily if my body were not in horrible pain from the elevated temperatures, dealing with the sensory nightmare of sweat everywhere. Not to get too graphic or anything.

- The crowds

Oh my God, the crowds in London. I already covered most of this when I wrote about crowds before, but fucking hell, it was bad. The whole sidewalk. I'd often been surprised when I saw people on panel shows talk about how much they hate people who stop walking on a sidewalk ("pavement"). "Why don't you just go around them?" I wondered. Well now I know why - you can't! You can't go around them. There is no area of foot traffic that's not full of people. I think it was the lack of ability to stop moving that bothered me even more than just the proximity to so many people, but both were bad. And worse in the heat.

- I got awful blisters all over the bottoms of both feet on my first day there, and they didn't start to heal until after I'd left London

I still don't know why this happened. I mean, obviously it was because I was walking around all day as a tourist. But I had a job at the time where I was on my feet all day, so it's not like I wasn't used to some of that. I had good shoes. New enough to still be good, old enough to be broken in. I think I'm maybe just not used to walking on paved surfaces for so long. They were hard on my feet.

The blisters started to get better when I spent a couple of days on the trains to and around Scotland - got off my feet for nearly two straight days, just sitting in the train seats. Also, at the Edinburgh train station, I "bought some plasters from Boots", which I found to be an amusingly British thing to do. Those helped. So it wasn't such a problem when I was walking all around Edinburgh.

But for those five days in London, I couldn't put weight on either foot without it being in terrible pain, and obviously that's not ideal for an holiday where I walk around a city all day. The worst was in Cambridge, as I walked around that utterly beautiful St. John's College, and kept thinking... I wish I could be here without it causing excruciating pain to the bottoms of my feet. Then I could enjoy it more.

I need to look up good preventative blister stuff before I got back in 2025. At the very least, I'll bring some Band-Aids ("plasters") with me this time and put them on when it first starts.

On the best-of list, I put pictures of each bullet point. Be grateful that I'm not doing that here. Because I did take a picture of them one day, so I could have a record of how bad they got (seriously - the ran all the way across). But I'll spare the public that.

- Covent Gardens

Oh my God, I hated that place. I planned to spend a few hours there because there was so much touristy stuff that I figured I should see, but it was awful, for the reasons I've already outlined. Heat, and no escape from it. Giant crowds. Blisters on the bottoms of my feet. Walking around this busy square.

I went to get a something from my UK trip pictures folder to put here, but it turns out I didn't take any pictures in Covent Gardens. I was so miserable that at no point did I think "I want to save this for posterity". I'm not doing that place again.

- Buckingham Palace guard changing

The palace itself was cool to look at, but if I went back there again, it wouldn't be when they change the guard. It turns out the Buckingham Palace guard are just Mounties. We have Mounties at home. It was a bunch of guys dressed as Mounties doing the guard-changing routine that the Mounties in Canada do, but with fucking thousands of people gathered all over the square and the streets so you couldn't get anywhere near it to actually see. It might have been cool if I'd been able to get near it - I enjoy watching the Mounties do their thing sometimes. But I'd rather just go look at the pretty Palace sometime when it's not so full of people.

- St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral

I was looking forward to this stuff because as I've said, I like that kind of architecture. But the number of tourists meant that vibe-wise, it felt more like a very fancy shopping mall than the site of centuries worth of humans trying to connect to the Divine.

- The London Underground when it was packed with people

Extremely uncomfortable, do not recommend.

- The show I saw at the Soho Theatre

It wasn't very good.

I was going to add parts 2 and 3 of my trip on the end here, but this post has got too long, and I know Tumblr has a limit to the number of pictures you're allowed to add in one post. So I'll just post this one now, and then I'll add the other parts in a reblog later. This has been a fun exercise in remembering stuff.

[rhiandoesfandom]

Tried to go to sleep and was once again woken up by comparisons of my life and the lives of Blitzø Buckzo and Stolas Goetia.

So let me tell you the story about my suicide attempt. Of course this is going to be very different, as I am a nonbinary trans queer person and these are two male gay demons in hell lol.

But I was able to draw a lot of parallels that even I was like, "oh. Oh no" Lmao.

So, it was 2018. My partner and I were still unengaged. We didn't really know what to call one another since I was nonbinary, besides partner.

I had a Lot of chest dysphoria. It was crippling. The dysphoria around my body is probably the biggest part that differs between me and our boys here.

Anyway, I was always one to take care of other people, and other people never took care of me. Thus my connection to Blitz. As well as, I was a very lonely kid and teen. And when I became an adult it didn't change much. I found solace in reading, and was always very autistic and had trouble with communication in large groups, and taking criticism. Thus my connection to Stolas.

There are many things that they both do in the show that I recognize from my own mental health journey that I related to (and is hard to see someone else to through), but also is important to show in a show like that.

The insecure hugging of the self, the anxiety spiraling, the deflection to different topics, the just "not thinking about it" and focusing on something else. I did all of these. They're coping mechanisms. Not great ones. But they are.

I would say I don't necessarily have their brand of abandonment issues, but I do have something they both have which is rejection sensitivity. If I am rejected by someone for something, I am devastated. It has taken me a long time to not take certain things personally and realize that other people are speaking from their own perspective and not trying to diminish mine. And is partly why a psychologist thought I had BPD once, (I did not, just anxiety and CPTSD).

Both of these boys, they have gone through none of that growth. They still hear the tiny minute rejection and they shut off from other people. Or they react, albeit in Blitz's case, 'Blows up' on others based on the way he himself was treated as a kid.

Now, I'll talk about the suicide attempt so if you wanna skip the rest you can. I understand.

I was walking home from work. I worked at a cafe and lived about a 30 min walk home in an apartment complex. It had been a particularly busy Sunday rush day, and I was feeling vulnerable from constant misgendering, constant berating about how to do my job, and no support whatsoever for eight hours straight.

I was already crying during the walk and I was hugging myself. I wasn't wearing a binder and felt the urge to have the breasts off my chest NOW but obviously I couldn't. I grabbed at my chest and sobbed, and once I was outside my apartment complex, I stood on the edge of the curb of the sidewalk and considered walking into traffic.

I heavily considered it. But as I stood there, my other hand took out my phone and dialed my partner who was already at home. I told him what was going on and I stood on the curb until he got there and held my hand as I stepped back, and cried into his chest.

I haven't tried since but I did end up in outpatient therapy. And I want to explore this comparison to Blitz and Stolas because one of them is about to mentally break. And it can take the littlest things stacking up to do so.

[n1ghtcrwler]

When I first got my autism diagnosis a few months ago, a handful of people in my family asked if I was okay or how I was taking the news, and that confused me. "This is just data," I told them, "I learned something that is true and can give me information on aspects of myself, there's nothing to feel about that. It simply is." And I meant that, I really did. But it was also very, very new, and I don't tend to respond with snap emotional reactions.

See, this hadn't been a real consideration before. When my brother took his first college psychology course back in, would have been somewhere around 2005-2007, he went to my girlfriend (who was at the same college as him) and told her he'd learned about a thing called Asperger's and that aspects of it reminded him of me. So she told me, and we looked it up, and based on what little info we could find we determined it didn't really fit, and I dropped it there. I later learned that autism existed, and its relationship to the Asperger's I had read about back then, by meeting and befriending a number of autistic people. But because I had ruled it out already, no amount of connection to those people, or visible similarity between us, made me wonder. So I didn't have years of wondering and considering and researching under my belt. I didn't start wondering and then slowly learn it was true of me, as seems to be a commonality in other stories I hear. I only got a neuropsych test because Carol noticed during her ADHD assessment that I sounded neurodivergent, and asked me to get an assessment as well. Then the pre-assessment showed that I should get a more broad-spectrum test instead of an ADHD assessment. Then the pre-assessment for the neuropsych showed that they wanted to focus on a couple things, one of which was autism.

And that was the first time I was aware, in nearly two decades, that this was a possibility, though it was one among many. And I didn't put too much thought, or any research, into it at that point because I didn't want to get a notion in my head and then act that notion out and get misdiagnosed with anything. So the results were a bombshell that just didn't fully explode right away.

Because now that I've had a few months to think about it, and learn a little bit, I find myself sad and angry. I went 41 years of my life with no knowledge of this, and no support, and no real answers. And maybe I could have put more effort into it in 2007, maybe I should have tried to get assessed then, but I didn't have money for that! I could barely hold down a job unless it was pizza delivery (I wouldn't realize until THIS WEEK how much my love of that job hinged on my systematic understanding of plotting courses on the fly and the literal hours of my day I spent alone in my car interrupted by brief, largely scripted, social interactions), I didn't have insurance, I was in my early-to-mid 20s and heavily self-medicating. But then my parents are telling me they wish they knew, that if they had known they would have maybe understood what was going on with me better and things could have been different. And I get them not understanding! What, really, could I expect two teenagers in the 80s to have known about autism? I don't think they need to beat themselves up for not recognizing it for what it was. But Carol, talking about her ADHD diagnosis, said something shattering. She was talking about the mockery and the lack of support for her needs, and said that, while it is nice to know she had a reason to be the way she was, it didn't really change the fact that other people had no reason to be cruel. And it really highlighted the question for me, "if things could have been different, why weren't they?" Did you need a diagnosis to see I was struggling? Did you need a diagnosis to know it was cruel to mock your child? Did you need a diagnosis to want to accommodate needs that made me stand out as weird?

Why did it take FORTY ONE YEARS for you to think things could, maybe should, have been different?

We sat down with the younger two kids this afternoon. Our youngest has been formally diagnosed with ADHD, and we wanted to help him understand a little of what that means for him and how much he shares that with his mom. Our daughter, it's obvious to us, has some form of neurodivergence, but since it isn't affecting her grades or her ability to keep out of trouble in school, they haven't noticed it; and without the school noticing it, it is prohibitively expensive to get her tested. So we wanted her to know what to look for, and that she doesn't need a diagnosis to come to us. We don't need a diagnosis to try our best to accommodate her needs. And this will involve breaking some habits, because we learned how to be parents from our parents, and our oldest already lost so many years of possible support to our lack of understanding, and we can't get those back. And I understand, to some degree, why it took a diagnosis for my parents to reconsider the ways they were taught to parent; because, while I tried to break the habits I inherited, it took a diagnosis for me to find a path toward success in that.

Everyone in my household is still learning what all these things mean for us, and how to handle them. And I guess there's a degree to which I'm mourning what my life could have been if I had known, or at least had some kind of help. It isn't just data, it turns out. It's also a history, and a set of needs, and to an extent, permission to meet those needs. I started wearing sunglasses indoors more. I've always wanted to, because the light hurts, but when it was just a stupid thing that's weird, I couldn't justlfy dealing with the fallout and assumptions from others about it. But now that it's an accommodation to a sensitivity, I can maybe get comfortable with it. I feel like there's a long road ahead, and a lot of baggage to unpack, but at least that's possible now. And who knows? Maybe, among my family, things will finally be different.

[pretentious-art-love]

Comic Reviews #7 - Tokyo Ghoul:re

Tokyo Ghoul: re exceeded all of my expectations about it. I started reading the previous manga, Tokyo Ghoul, and I came to the conclusion it was not about the duality of being a ghoul or not, but the pain we inflict to others as humans, Tokyo Ghoul: re goes deeper into what the previous manga did and explores what it means to be an outcast, what it means to have no choice. This manga is important.

I will say, if you are an outcast, you will identify with Ghouls, and with this story, a lot. You might say “yeah but ghouls eat people.” Well, here is the thing: ghouls eat humans so they can survive, the author made this so everyone can feel it how it feels to have to hide your true self, regardless of who they are. By writing a story where murder is part of your reality, every reader will have to put themselves on the shoes of someone who can't give in to others’ beliefs, because if anyone gives out, that means death in the story, but you can extrapolate that to put you in the shoes when nobody can give up their points of view, their beliefs. If the story used anything less intense for its metaphor, people would say "why don't ghouls just stop doing that so they can be normal”, no friend, there is no normal here, that's why it works so well. Tokyo Ghoul:re is the apotheosis of living as an outcast, and I mean it.

My two personal examples, as an autistic person I make people uncomfortable in a lot lesser ways, when I am in a group and I keep messing up the mood of the convo and say something weird, it makes you think, huh this girl is odd, I wish she was more normal” But I can't!! Trying to be normal takes an effort, it is a toll in the soul. That's what you have to accept have to accept, the first manga made me think that if you come into the realization that your goals don’t align with others or that you are selfish, you have to suck that up, because they are your dreams, but the sequel showed what it means to have no other path for you to choose. I can't stop being autistic, I can't stop being trans or lesbian, and I mean it, by writing characters that kill not by choice but by necessity the story makes you confront what it means to have no choice, to know you will never be in the status quo.

Spoilers will follow now.

First, we get that disorienting new beginning that some anime and shows do, we get a new normal that is confusing and distracting, in the first manga we got in the shoes of an outcast and were told that the people in the system were wrong, but then in this manga we are brought back to being part of the system, we have the connection to the outcasts but now we also have people to root for on the inside and the outside. The story stops being about who should win, but about who is going to die.

There are a lot of bits and pieces that seem like part of a power fantasy at times, but the manga never follows them through. Remember in the first manga when Kaneki got super strong after being tortured? We never saw all the destruction he did first hand, just the consequences of it, like Touka getting disappointed in Kaneki for him trying to act as a hero. Here the same happens a lot, we get the amnesia trope, Kaneki loses his memories, and a duality between him and his new self, Sasaki, appears. You think, alright, I have seen this, shouldn’t Kaneki be the evil one and then go on a rampage and destroy all CCG investigators so Sasaki could say, “please don’t destroy them!!! they are my friends!” and then Kaneki would be like "my friends… are ghouls!” but the manga doesn’t take that cliched route, and it’s so good!

When Kaneki fights Eto you are all like “man, I ship them, they are both smiling, and they are like… you know, insulting each other, which in a way it means they are amused by each other, isn’t this the epitome of romantic tension between enemies?!” But at the end of the day not because they are both mentally ill means they are suited for each other, so the manga doesn’t follow through that idea either. It’s so good, it sometimes feels like the writer was all like “hell yeah I will make a story about me being strong and destroying everyone and mwhaha” but then they realized, every single time, that the worth is not in the suffering, the worth is in what we fight for. Every single time the manga could have taken a cliched power fantasy route, it always did something more humane, more realistic, and that’s another reason as to why I love it.

There is also a big, important part about the truths of systematic discrimination. The more the CCG created more ghoul-like soldiers the lines started to blur, and the revelation that it was handled by ghouls themselves also gives you a huge piece of the puzzle. You realize that it never was about stopping ghouls because in real life is neither about who is right or who is wrong, it never was about any of that.

It is all just a game of power dynamics, and it will always be.

The ending of the manga hints that the only thing that would make you join forces with the enemy is an even bigger threat, the apocalypse, probably, and even then, more power systems would eventually appear, because that’s… how does the saying go? Ah right… because we live in a society. Damn right, I said the thing.

There are so many characters I loved, but to keep it short I will just mention two, one that I liked for personal reasons, and other for aesthetic ones. Tokyo Ghoul: re also has a trans character, Toru, a trans guy. He's cool because being trans is a part of his backstory but not the whole character. When I read Tokyo Ghoul first, I liked the duality of being ghoul/being human because it mirrors me being transgender and not, so I like having a trans character acknowledged here, it feels neat. Yonebayashi is the other character I want to mention. She has an awesome vibe, like she has this tiredness all the time but she isn't like cynical or negative she's just aimless. She has these dead eyes all the time but it's not because she is mean or anything, she just lacks will but has a warm heart and that is so refreshing to see, like she is practically useless and you relate to her lack of will and she has this cute but tired cute and defeated smile like she's done with everything and everyone but she tries to smile it’s so awesome I love her. She turns motherly and cute down the line; she is amazing.

Tokyo Ghoul: re does not have the answer to give you a happy ending, even the final chapters show that not everything is perfect, and what you can do at most, is hope, but it will touch you deeply and make you see what it means to be outside of the herd. Of course, a lot of outcasts are terrible people, a lot of people will never fight with their nature and how they hurt others, others straight up enjoy it, the story is not about accepting this or about “well, folks will be folks” but about understanding about how pain shapes our lives and how it shouldn’t be rejected. There might be times when the manga might make you feel it romanticizes pain, but it doesn’t, at least, not just pain, but the entirety of existence itself (characters can, in fact, get stronger when they suffer, but this never makes them happier or more mature, it just makes them feel more miserable), it romanticizes the whole true of struggling as the symbol of being a sentient being, and I'm okay with that. In the review of the first manga I said that ghouls could probably be metaphors for selfish people, but here, I can see the whole picture, its not that ghouls are selfish people, but that there will be points in your life where you will have to think in yourself and accept the consequences that come from that.

This is everything Evangelion should have been too, it is incredibly better to have the message of struggle in the story itself, and not just in some obscure symbols and then the lyrics of a song. Everything Evangelion aimed for and failed at, Tokyo Ghoul:re achieved it, like seriously, it is not even funny. The whole “Hedgehog's dilemma” that was in one of the episode titles of that show? It is all here in the story, fully, no need for symbols, no need for silly stuff, no need for rebuilds, the story being so depressive as it is, succeeds at tell you why it might be worth to fight it, something Evangelion does NOT do.

Tokyo Ghoul:re is not a perfect manga. The world of Tokyo Ghoul is small, it is called Tokyo Ghoul, sure, but it never tells you what is of the ghouls of the rest of the world, I think only once, in the final chapter, there is a reference to ghouls outside Japan, which makes everything feel small. Sometimes I felt things went always too fast, like... I felt I found a new kind of normal, but then it was taken away from me, every time, although I guess the same can be said about life. A few of the monologues were a bit too on the nose, the tone was too on the nose sometimes (for example, the clowns keep playing the fool to stay sane sounds a bit silly). Tsukiyama was always to me a lame character I never found the worth on, he is just dumb, unlike Nimura Furuta, who also had certain comedic appeal on his persona but that felt like an actual person with true goals that affected the metaphor of the story in meaningful ways. I also felt there were too many characters at times, I confused a lot of the secondary ones, but I also have issues with my attention span that also affected that too. Can you believe I didn’t think Eto was the writer until the final volume when I asked someone about it? I still think some characters made me lose of the plot more. I could have liked more gore, like sure we saw the kagunes and quinques a lot but everything that could have been a human organ was basically depicted as a black goo in the ink of the manga, I mean I guess some people would prefer less gore and the story is not about the gore even when tone of the manga is fairly "edgy" always but still... everything else is so good though!

The message, the core, everything I felt it so vividly, so vividly, how many stories have touched the core of my being in so many levels? Not just transness, or just homosexuality, or just autism, or just depression, or ADHD, or simple places where I felt my needs affected other people’s needs, or simple fricking matters of taste in groups I am trying to fit in? As silly as it sounds, the sentence "the clowns keep playing the fool to stay sane" is incredibly on point, and down right awesome. Tokyo Ghoul:re depicts all of these issues at their core. To be an outcast, to be a reject, an outsider, an outlaw. How many stories have made me feel heard or seen in a world where everything about my existence is often a political point? How many stories have encompassed the entirety of my experience and told me “Yes, you are an outcast, but that doesn’t mean your search for meaning and your search for a place to be is invalid! Because… we are all looking for a meaning and we are going to end up hurting others! That is what it means to live! Don’t let the fact that you are not part of the system or the status quo stop you! Don’t let have people telling you are wrong and that we should all try to coexist with each other stop you! Because one day we will all be forgotten and what matters is the fact we choose how now!” I want to fight, I want to fight for something real, and I will hurt you if I have to, because I want to fight for what I believe in, for what I am and for my own existence. I won’t say that it’s not personal, because it is. I will fight even if I am still broken, if the people I love are broken, because I am here, and I am alive. You know what? Fuck it, it’s a 10.

10/10

[green-alien-turdz]

started autistically vibrating the second i read your answer lmfao. i was thinking cartman or tweek myself tbh, those bitches are both just PRIMED for it imo. i tend to lean towards a lot of abduction experiences being some kind of extreme reaction to other earthly trauma, but that really doesnt seem to fit every account so idk what the fuck is going on. god though dude *puts on homemade MUFON lanyard* i am SO SO SO CURIOUS to hear about your/your fam's weird experiences if you ever wanna share, i saw some questionable shit when i briefly lived out in Ohio myself. gone back and forth on the legitimacy of it all over the years, one of those things that's like, the more you research the less you Know.

Okay bro, I gotchu. I NEVER get to talk about this shit so imma fuckin go wild

Ight, so legit everybody in my mfin family got some shit to say- I tried to pry my brother's experiences outta him, but he is dogshit about answerin questions. Just know that he got some stories from when he would go campin n shit (even though he has funny ass stories from when he was outta his mind fucked up, there's still a lotta sober experiences he's got too)

1st, my dad: his stories are kinda vague too bcuz we don't talk, but from what he has told me in the past, he has 2 moments in his life he was certain was alien activity. Both of these take place in Texas (but when he was still livin in Ohio, he did say he'd seen some weird shit). The first is when he was movin to Oregon, n he was drivin late at night through Texas. Not a soul on the mfin road n he's in buttfuck nowhere. He said that there was this huge fuckin flash of light from above n his truck completely shut off. Like, the mf was still rollin at the same speed, but nothin it was like the car itself just kinda switched off (no engine, no lights, no music, nothin). He's tryin to start it up over n over, not really sure what the hell was goin on- so he's tryna pop the clutch seein as he was still movin. But this shit would NOT turn the fuck over. Until after he was gonna give up, slowly brake n just pull off to the side, but before he even attempted, the truck starts up again n continues on like nothin even happened.

His second experience I don't remember as well, so sorry about that. If I fuckin recall my dad n his band were just finishin up a show n were just chillin behind the bar smokin. One mf points out that there's this weird fuckin plane over some buildings on the horizon. Like, it just wasn't movin right? He said it seemed to be movin in a really slow zig zag pattern (but it wasn't like a drone, this this was way too big n it was the mid-90s). They kinda brush it off bcuz it's late as hell n they're all pretty shitfaced. But he said that it lasted in that area for about 10 more minutes, just movin back n forth until he looked away for a minute n it was just gone.

He's also told me about how on his late night drives in dead places, he's seen a shit load of random light infront of him shootin into the ground, n this is especially fuckin freaky to me bcuz I got a very similar thing that happened not that long ago. It's explained in my individual experience.

My mom n grandma: My gma might have some more, I feel like she had told me somethin. This one is backed by both my mom n my gma (although my uncle was here too, he just doesn't associate w/ the family so maybe he'd have some input). My gma used to drive from across the whole U.S. ALL the fuckin time when my mom was growin up, like they always had these roadtrips bcuz my gpa was an abusive pos n they'd escape back to my greatgrandparents place. So they're in the more of the desert states (like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, I just can't remember which). My mom is probably about 10 or so. It's full on daylight, unlike every other story I got, this is the only one where it is broad fuckin daylight out. There's nothin but desert for miles, it's just a long beige stretch. So when my mom saw somethin just hoverin in the sky, it stuck out like a sore thumb. My mom calls it out, which causes everyone in the car to just watch it. My gma doesn't stop drivin, but she slowed down quite a bit, n she says that thing just fuckin sat there. Like, no movement whatsoever. It didn't look all that much like a plane, but they couldn't make out defined details. All they knew is that there is this plane adjacent aircraft just hoverin in the middle of the desert. They'd never seen anythin like it, despite all of them bein raised on military bases n seein a lot of kinds of military aircrafts (which is why this was ruled out). They kept drivin off but my mom said she just watched it through the window as it became smaller n smaller until it got too far away to see- but that shit never moved. It just remained hoverin in that same place.

Ight, Imma get into my experiences now, I got two with people n one that's on my own (that one is long as SHIT).

The first one is with me n my sisters (home in Oregon): This is around 2015-2016. It's the middle of the night in late April. We were chillin bcuz it was one of my sisters bdays n we were just talkin n watchin the stars. Now we live right next to an airport, so there are a shit ton of planes that go over, even late at night- but you can always tell those bcuz of the red lights n they're usually not that high up yet. We were just talkin tryin to find constellations bcuz it was a clear ass night. At some point we see these two lights. They're contained in these circular shadows WELL into the sky, but we could still make out a vessel that the light were on. 4 light on each circle. They're goin up n down the night sky back n forth completely parallel, so it seems like they're together. At first we were losin our shit, not able to explain what we were watchin. After some rational thought, we were like 'mfer we see satellites in the sky all the time, that's probably what these are' bcuz they were fuckin zoomin through the sky. We even see satellites pass over, but we kinda notice that they move n look a LOT different than the lights we were watchin. But every satellite's different yknow? That is until these mfs, the completely parallel movin in tandem lights all of a sudden both separate n go fuckin zoomin away from one another in the opposite direction. No longer up n down, but left n right. And then they're just fuckin GONE. Like, they sped off n never returned to the place they'd been for like 20 or so minutes. (Now I am willin to admit, that very well could be satellites, but it's still weird as fuck).

Here's one with me n my dad: This is around 2019. We were out in Utah, middle of the desert. This time it's probably closer to like 10-11pm. We were kinda just doin our own thing, sittin, thinkin about shit. When outta the fuckin blue, we notice this weird ass aircraft. Like, it low flying, large enough to be a fuckin cargo plane (doesn't look like one though), n movin super slow with a BRIGHT fuckin light slowly phasin in n out, illuminatin the craft. We're both losin our shit watchin this bcuz neither of us know what the fuck we're lookin at. Now this this was low enough that, if it were a plane, we would've heard it. But it was movin at the same speed which planes always appear to be when they're thousands of feet into the sky. But this was maybe 200 or less feet up. It was a really thick, aircraft that was slightly triangular in shape, but still pretty bulky. We couldn't see any engine or shit like that. We are legit fuckin shoutin like mad men, chasin this thing. At some point we try to call over the rest of the family, but we're slowly losin our visual on this thing. Everyone else is tryna look in the sky as my dad n I make a mad dash tryna keep an eye on it as it went behind some structure. But the second we got to a place where it should've been seen on the other side, based on its flight path, this thing was fuckin gone. Like, nowhere in the sky. It was like it was never there. To this day not sure what the fuck we were watchin bcuz we followed it for a good while, just for it to vanish.

Okay, now onto my final encounter (warning, this is a LONG mf bcuz it just happened in January, so it's fresh on my mind): I had decided to drive out to Sauvi island at like 1 am because I really wanted to go out and watch the water. But it was like the foggiest night in existence. It was during that period in January where every night was covered in this thick, heavy fog. I wasn't gonna let that stop me though. Even if I could barely see the road and almost crashed like 5 different times, I was determined. The drive itself was kinda ominous, but shit didn't start gettin weird until I actually reached Sauvi's. The second I reach the island, something just feels off instantly. I mean, no one's on the road of course, it's late, it's foggy. But I mean, it was DEAD. There was an alarming amount of roadkill everywhere (like fresh roadkill), and the entire island reeked of fuckin death, skunk, and mold. So I keep fuckin driving and just get the sense that someone was following me, like on my ass tailing me, but there wasn't any other cars or nothing. But I had the window down and swear I could hear some shit close to me. I'm driving and manage to miss my turn off to the beach. Here's where shit genuinely starts getting weird. Lights. Unexplainable lights ALL over. Now if this was a more populated area, I would assume some of this was street lamps, but the island doesn't really have that many (they have them in front of some buildings, but the roads are lightless). I kept seein "headlights" coming around turns that didn't exist. And when I should've been passing them, there was nothing there and the lights were gone. Okay, weird, but maybe it was my headlights reflection on the fog. Then I see fuckin taillights. I get confused because it looks like a car going up a hill, and I brushed it off before realizing that it was a wide open, flat road, and there was no hill or car in sight. I watched the lights turn into nothing and they were gone. At this point, I'm freaked out, but I'm still finding my way back to the beach. I manage to loop back around to the entrance of Sauvi's so I can take the right turn this time. When I tell you that the smell is worse and I even notice more roadkill. I would've seen any other cars on the road, but there was fuckin no one. And I know damn well that I wasn't the one who hit them. But I brush that off because I'm every white person in a horror movie. Not too long after, I saw the final unexplainable light I'd see that night. There was this small-ish, but abnormally bright light just kinda bobbing up and down infront of this post. I assumed it was some weird reflective thing, but as I approached it, it went up and then shot into the ground- the light completely disappearin into the ground. After I saw this, the feelin of bein chased was at a 100%, like I was stressin. I finally took the right turn, and there's this one fuckin shadow in the fog that I'm TELLING you looked like this tall fucking figure walking about. I legit stopped dead in my tracks to watch it, but this feeling of dread came over me, and I sped off. I finally make it to the beach, but I think I stayed for maybe 5 minutes or less? There was an extremely menacing feeling. Like it was THICK. I couldn't see the water it was so fogged out. I mean, it was beautiful. But it truly felt like I was being watched. There was little to no sound until I heard coyotes fucking EVERYWHERE. Like an insane amount. I head back to the car and they seem to shut up. I absolutely dipped the fuck outta there.

Now it is important to note with Sauvi's that there is maybe a supernatural element into that. Seein as Sauvi's, like most of Oregon n the U.S. was home to Native Americans (Chinook Indians specifically) n as we know, mfs just weren't allowed catch a break (to put things lightly). So there is more than likely some unrest in the energies n life of the island.

But yeah, there's a small collection of experiences in my family. I'd LOVE to hear your shit from Ohio. That place has some strange shit goin on there, like genuinely. Everytime I went to vist my dad's mom, that place just feels like somethins goin on there

[lej222]

ASLFUA 150 spoilers

I've been waiting for a chapter like this for a long time, and it was even more fun than I imagined. Miae was always told by other people that Jisu has a unique personality. Her friends, her schoolmates, Jisu's mom, even the academy students all knew it and tried to warn her that Jisu was different than other kids. Miae, though, had no idea what they were talking about and always dismissed it with how she knew how weird he was better than anyone. Until this episode, lol.

So, short story time if anyone cares, but my friend from university has an autistic little brother, the same age as Jisu. And he reminds me of Jisu in so many ways it's fascinating, that's why I said Jisu is a very-well written and realistic character. Just a few examples: my friend's brother has difficulty understanding personal space and boundaries, he is a genius in linguistics and never uses his own native language at home, he only has friends in his online games, he's super blunt and doesn't know how to explain things that he can easily do.

In the last few chapters we see Jisu doing the exact same things. He enters Miae's personal space without realizing what he is doing, touches her, leans into her, he even puts his face close to hers when she doesn't recognize him. He doesn't know how to explain using the toy cars, playing the guitar and solving the problems so he tells Miae to look at what he's doing and imitate it. He tries to prove he can be an equal friend to Miae, so when he helps her and she understands, he says he's better than Cheol. He points out Miae's flaws like he's stating facts. It's super funny because Miae truly had no idea that Jisu's personality was unique in this way, so in these chapters we get Jisu weirded out by Miae and Miae weirded out by Jisu. It's no surprise that Miae called him a bald eagle, KR readers had so much fun with that. Because a magpie is a small bird, as if it needs protection, like how Miae kicked Jisu's bullies who never asked for it. A bald eagle, however, is a predatory animal, and Jisu is definitely a force to be reckoned with. She was pushing his buttons and tried to rile him up, but what she didn't expect was that Jisu was a petty person. The moment she challenged him, he was ready to strike back, hence the hilarious moment at the end where he enrolled at the academy. Lol. (Fun fact, but bald eagles mate for life, it's just so fitting with how Jisu still wants to be around Miae, I wonder what animal would best symbolize Cheol)

So, last week someone asked me my predictions about this episode and I said Miae would say "see you again" to Jisu for the first time because it's in line with my supernatural higher power/important and ominous details theory and looks like I was right. While Miae leaves angrily, she says she had fun and they will see each other sometime. Jisu is flabbergasted and takes the challenge, that's why we will see him in the upcoming episodes as well. This is probably an important turning point, because so far Jisu was the one who said "see you again" to Miae to which she always replied she hoped they would not. Even as she's leaving, the car ads are flying in the air around her. I believe the next chapter will be Cheol and Miae-centered, but I'm really curious how the story will unfold from here on. I will also continue to update the meta about the supernatural power.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for pretending my original fictional characters are my "friends" for the purpose of asking questions online?

Alright, so hear me out: I'm a writing hobbyist, I run a long-term D&D campaign, I like writing characters a lot and sometimes do it even outside of any stories, you could even say that it's my passion. Whenever I create a character that would have experience with something that I don't, I try to experience that thing myself, or if I can't, I ask others online about their experiences to make sure I can write my character accurately.

Here's the problem: back when I used to ask questions online from a writing/creative perspective, I felt like a lot of them concerning more controversial topics were getting dismissed and I got a lot of unsolicited writing advice unrelated to the original question. The most infuriating were always "You shouldn't write a character like that." or "You should change this integral part of the character to remove the issue that you're having."

Now, you can have whatever opinions you want about writing certain aspects of characters, but I would kindly ask you to shove them up your ass. I firmly believe that you can't judge a character accurately merely by their character traits written down in a vacuum, the execution is what really matters. One trait that could be seen as problematic when written badly can really enhance the character, story and it's themes if incorporated correctly. I'm not going to remove integral story-relevant characteristics of my OCs, and I sure as hell am not gonna delete them entirely just because an internet rando didn't believe that I could do them justice. Literally the entire reason why I'm asking these questions in the first place is because I'm trying to be as respectful/accurate to your culture/ethnicity/sexuality/gender/religion/disability/anything else. I GENUINELY want to learn and understand, so why don't you at least try to give me the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming it'll be done terribly?

Anyway, to give some examples of the questions that I've asked that were met with this kind of response:

"How would you write an autistic character who uses ASL but doesn't like to emote with their face?" (Was told to simply "make" the character like using their face even though it would go against how their other symptoms interact with each other, plus it would change how other characters view them and thus the story itself)

"What kind of slang would a black character raised in Brooklyn use?" (Was told to not write a black character using slang as a white person.)

"How would a Muslim character go about leaving their religion after losing their faith?" (Was told that the mere idea of an ex-muslim person was offensive)

I don't know if other writers also struggle with this, or if I'm just the unluckiest and always attract those kinds of people somehow, but after having to deal with it way too much I simply started lying and pretending that my characters are real so people would stop questioning my writing choices and just focus on answering my actual questions. For example, instead of the three questions above nowadays I would ask:

"Me and my Autistic friend are learning ASL together, but she doesn't like making expressions for sensory reasons. Is there anything else she can do?"

"What are some examples of actual slang used by black people in Brooklyn? My friend is from there but he likes to mess with me by coming up with fake words and pretending like they're slang, at this point idk what to believe."

"My friend lost their faith and is planning on leaving Islam. They don't have access to internet due to their parents so they wanted me to ask about what could be the possible consequences and how go about the process, or even where to start."

Also, obviously, I do way more research than just these questions, but I also really want to know the opinion of people in these communities about these topics and the discussion that develops from it. That's not something that simply reading a book or an article on a topic can give you and I believe that interacting with the community itself is an important part of properly portraying characters that belong to them as well. Still, a few of my friends told me that it's kinda shitty of me to lie in this way, especially when the end goal is to be respectful about certain traits yet me lying to these people is a sign of disrespect in their opinion. Personally I don't see it that way, I simply want people answering my questions to treat them seriously and if presenting them as real scenarios is what gets them to do it I feel like I have no choice, it has nothing to do with the respect I have for the communities in question.

Also, if this matters at all: 90% of my writing is entirely personal and will never be published in any way at all, the other 10% being the writing that I do for my D&D campaign which only my players get to witness.

So, with all of that out of the way, AITA?

What are these acronyms?