#how am i supposed to explain the entirety of my being not being understood unless i sit down and write everyone a dissertation

[black-cigs]

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[k7l4d4]

A Steven Universe AU

Hello all! Today, I am going to document an AU I had for Steven Universe! I would like to personally thank my friend Flamestar50 for the help I received to build this AU. I am going to mark down the information for the AU I had discussed with Flame when discussing this AU, so here I go! To note, the information will be about the questions Flame asked me, and my responses.

Okay, I talked to Flame and they are okay with this. Enjoy fully.

ALRIGHT!! Basically, assuming you know who Doctor Priyanka is hopefully, before Canon starts, Greg accidentally says something to Rose while they are talking after she got back from a particularly stressful mission, and it causes all the repressed pain and guilt, along with a not so healthy dollop of self-loathing, to come surging to the forefront. 

To better process her feelings, Rose heads to the Beach and, well, ends up lamenting to herself, attracting the attention of a visiting Priyanka Maheswaran (Hope I spelled that right), who decided to approach the giant gem and get her to talk about her feelings.

Flame: huh, how does that go

Me: Well, because Rose has a LONG history of not thinking things all the way through and often not being able to see the full picture accurately, she ultimately decides to just spill it all. To vent every little thing about herself, all her actions, all her choices, all her mistakes, to a total stranger, because she genuinely cannot TAKE IT anymore! 

Surprisingly, or probably not, Priyanka is moved, and understandably worried, by Rose's pain, and makes a point of comforting her, with Rose herself having shapeshifted back into her Diamond Form for the first time in CENTURIES. 

Priyanka is genuinely in awe of all that Rose has done, and all that she has been through, and decides it is her duty as a medical professional, albeit not one licensed in psychology, to take on Rose as her patient, as the Gem is clearly not in a healthy or safe emotional state. Oh, and the other Gems and Greg all ended basically overhearing the whole thing while the two are none the wiser.

Flame: oh no, how did they react

Me: Well, shock for the most part. Amethyst and Garnet are, understandably, angry at being lied to, yet they can't bring themselves to be angry because, unless you've got a serious callousness to you, it is hard to be angry at someone who so clearly loathes themselves so completely and utterly. 

Pearl is mostly shocked, and a touch despondent, that Rose had withheld all this hurt and inner turmoil from her. Greg? He doesn't know how to process what is going on, but what he does understand is that Rose, the person he loves more than anything else in the world, the one who finally made him see his own value and worth and could never even try to judge him, is hurting, and in need of comfort. They basically decide to shift the discussion back to the Temple for the rest of the initial event.

Flame: How will this effect Steven in the future?

Me: Well, I haven't finished describing the set up just yet, but it will have its effects on his future (HA! Snuck in the reference!). After moving back to the Temple, Priyanka in tow, the Gems (and Greg) basically hash out everything they can. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl are all understandably distressed and hurt by the secrets Rose has been carrying, but the sheer pain and hurt she clearly feels about herself convince them to work through it together. 

For Amethyst, it partially convinces her to stop bottling up her insecurities, not after seeing what a wreck it made of Rose. Garnet knows she will have to fully confront her feelings on the subject later, but decides to be there for the others now. Pearl just wants to finally help Rose the way she feels Rose helped her. And Rose? She just feels such intense, unconditional joy and love at the fact that they don't see her as a monster, that they still love her, flaws and all, that she doesn't have to run away anymore. 

The revelation of her feelings acts as a catalyst that causes her to involuntarily shapeshift into a new default state that merges her Diamond and Quartz forms, a symbol of her finally accepting herself completely, taking the name Rose Diamond; she isn't going to pretend she is something she's not anymore, she's going to show the whole world the entirety of who she is, flaws and all, so she can finally start to grow. 

And then they realize that they never got Priyanka's name, and everyone starts cracking up at the sheer absurdity of it all, Rose included! I got more, but that is the initial intro to the AU.

Flame: what else ya got

Me: Well, because of her sense of obligation, and the fact that she honestly enjoys Rose's company, Priyanka more or less becomes the Gems' therapist, and often silently screams in her own head that she isn't trained for this. One of the things Rose does once she comes clean is to try and make amends for the things that came about due to her lies; for starters, she releases Bismuth, after she tracks down Lion that is (that crazy feline does whatever it wants, I swear). 

Much like in canon, Bismuth is snapped out of her hyper-blood-rage once she is exposed to the Corrupted Gems and figures out that the Corruption partially came about due to her giving the idea of faking her shattering to Rose. Bismuth is MASSIVELY uncomfortable around Rose, and often adopts a loose, battle-ready stance whenever around her, but, partially due to working with Priyanka to help treat her PTSD, is gradually coming around. 

Bismuth more or less does her own thing, but makes an effort to be there when needed, like when the Gems find an experimental Warp Pad. The Warp Pad, according to the notes Pearl finds, is supposed to be the ultimate escape system, allowing any being to enter the warp stream and proceed to a pre-determined Warp Pad across the Galaxy, and the next time that corresponding pad is used it will automatically bring them back. 

Upon discovering that information, and seeing that the Warp Pad hasn't been set yet and still can be, Rose, without actually explaining to the others, uses the warp to rescue Spinel. I'm gonna leave it here for you to process and ask questions before I proceed.

Flame: Oh god, how is spinel gonna react to this version

Me: Well, considering she is still near-totally innocent, she basically asks if she won the game. Yeah. Rose basically cries her eyes out, and tearfully says that, yes, Spinel, you're the winner, and gets an ecstatic hug that feels just a little too tight. 

Upon noticing that Spinel is subtly shying away from the plants, and that the roots of some have actually started growing over her, Rose carefully picks a weary Spinel up, and carries her over to the warp pad back to earth. When Spinel asks where they are going, Rose simply says they are going home, getting a content smile in return. Upon returning through the experimental warp, Rose is bombarded by a storm of panicked shouting from the other gems, only for them to calm down at the ragged Spinel in Rose's arms. 

Rose attempts to brush off the danger of using an untested piece of potentially lethal tech, only for the warp to blow up behind them; none of them were hurt, it was more like a collapse, but the implication that that could've happened while she and Spinel were in the warp stream causes all the gems to shoot Rose looks that scream "We told you so." I'll let you process this while I gather my thoughts.

Flame: oh dear

Me: Yeah, Rose doesn't like to think things through when there are people who need help she can give. After carefully explaining who Spinel was and the situation surrounding her, which involves Pearl face-palming, Garnet pinching the bridge of her nose, Amethyst a little shell-shocked, and Bismuth pummeling a concrete pillar into gravel in anger, they take the sweet gem back home. 

After making sure Spinel is situated comfortably, Rose breaks the news; she never planned on coming back. As Spinel freezes up, whether from shock or hurt is up to debate, Rose explains that she had never understood Spinel, always seeing her as a silly doll that the other Diamonds gave her to be a toy who couldn't take things seriously, with each word causing Spinel to slowly shake her head, shuddering more and more, before Rose apologizes for being a bad friend. 

Before Spinel can completely LOSE IT, Rose, tears of shame, regret, and heartbreak, pulls Spinel into an impromptu hug, begging, pleading, for the chance to let Spinel be happy. After calming down enough not to lash out in out of control pain, Spinel, shaken but not broken, asks as calmly as she can to be alone for a little while. They give her her space. And another pause point!

Flame: I thought she was gonna lose it, I sure would have.

Me: She came VERY CLOSE, but Rose's presence, which she still associates with good things and happier times, manages to keep her just stable enough to go off the deep end. Spinel quickly becomes a regular patient for Priyanka, who makes a point to try and help the child-like gem to grow and develop as an individual like it's her personal missions. 

Over time, Spinel gradually manages to come to terms with her situation. Spinel developed a phobia of plants due to her time in the garden, but also enjoys gardening, seeing it as a representation of her happiest memories, as well as a way to conquer her fear by leveraging control over the plants. 

With prompting from Priyanka for the both of them, Rose and Spinel make an effort to rebuild their old relationship into something healthy for the both of them; for Rose, it is a chance to finally befriend and learn about Spinel as a Gem, and not the toy she treated her as, and for Spinel, it is a way to come to terms with her past and start making new friends in the present and future. 

The two manage to reach a mostly amicable bond, but things occasionally get tense between them; Rose's past actions left deep scars on Spinel's heart, as while she still acts like her happy-go-nuts self, albeit tempered with proper emotional reading, she now holds a deep disdain for other gems and gemkind as a whole, making an exception only for those who've also been burned by Gem Culture and her friends, often acting similar to her initial debut self when communicating with gems who don't meet this small criteria. 

Spinel genuinely loathes the fact that she is a Gem now, and finds human company effortlessly more enjoyable than any time she spends with other gems, no matter how much she views said gems as friends and family (Spinel very much enjoys the concept of family, and sees it as one of the many ways organic beings are superior to Gems in her eyes).

Flame: awww,poor spinel

Me:Yeah, she's a sad bean, but she wouldn't change herself for anything in the universe! Did I ever give the name for this AU? If not, the name is Here For You. One of the biggest divergences from canon in this AU? Rose lives after giving birth!! 

How you may ask? When you are good friends with a doctor, and you suddenly spring on them that you, a non-human, non-organic alien plans to have a half-human child and you most likely won't survive the experience, you can expect them to put their foot down and help with the situation. 

Priyanka essentially grills Rose on everything she knows about her race's biology, such as it is, her understanding of human biology, and makes her research methods to create gemstones and such; Priyanka isn't willing to have Rose relapse into her suicidal impulses again, even if it is to bring a child into this world, and is dead set on finding a way for them both to survive. 

With Priyanka's help, and some scavenged Gem Tech from the Kindergartens, Rose manages to conceive (HA!) A method to have a fully half-gem-half-human child without killing herself. It largely involves artificially mixing her own gem essence with that harvested from old injectors and eating. SO much eating. Rose essentially is ingesting and absorbing the needed materials to build a human fetus and Diamond Proto-Gem together as one, without sacrificing her own gem in the process. And it works!! Mostly.

Flame: what do you mean mostly

Me: Well, the process was completely experimental, and they had no actual clue what they were doing, just making their best guess. The process worked, but it left Rose horrifically weakened. Her Gem's internal structure was dangerously demineralized, as in it lost a lot of minerals that compose its structure, and became insanely fragile and delicate as a result. 

Giving birth essentially permanently crippled Rose; she can no longer shapeshift at all, her bubbles have a high chance of popping after forming and she can no longer teleport them, and a lot, if not all, of her powers besides her healing tears have been hamstrung to near uselessness. 

She is now both weaker, and slower than any human, and constantly falls unconscious at random to conserve her compromised energy reserves. But it was worth it to bring her twins into the world!! ...Maybe that had something to do with it...

Flame: wait, twins!?!

Me: YES!! ULTIMATE SURPRISE REVEAL!! Yeah, in canon, before they settled on whether they were having a son or a daughter, Rose left two tapes behind for whichever gender her child ended up being, Steven Or Nora. So, in this one, she ended up giving birth to Twins!! Nora and Steven Diamond Universe!! 

To clarify, Rose would've been weakened no matter what happened, but giving birth to twins nearly shattered her and permanently affected her abilities, not that she'll ever regret it, though she grows frustrated with how frailly she is treated by the others. You wanna hear about the twins next? 

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it, the twins were only partially an accident, as Rose didn't intend to have two kids, but is fine with it, she just overdid it on the eating and stuff needed to create the children and had just enough left over to jumpstart the development of a second child. Yeah.

Flame: go on and tell me about the twins!

Me: YES!! Due to Priyanka's influence, both twins end up actually, you know, GOING TO SCHOOL. Steven is, well, basically exactly the same, and still heavily takes after both his dad and Rose's Quartz form, but being around other kids his age has improved his social skills and given him a larger group of peers and pals. 

Nora is a bit of the opposite, polite, a little standoffish, neurotic, snarky when stressed, with a vicious temper towards anyone that hurts or messes with Steven, she basically looks like a miniature, human Pink Diamond in terms of appearance. Nora has a natural knack for her gem powers, and more easily manifests those powers more closely associated with Pink Diamond as opposed to Rose, with her Gem Weapon being a MASSIVE Two-Handed (Zweihander) sword whose foremost section resembles the shield everyone thought it would originally be, whilst still possessing her family's flower motif. 

Nora is the younger of the two by about five minutes, but is much more mature as compared to Steven, not helped by him still having his aging problem while she ages more normally, and people are often shocked at both her age, as her height and attitude give her an older feel, but that she is also both Steven's TWIN and the technical younger of the two!! 

It kinda mindblows people. (I was considering shifting some of Steven's personality, but I couldn't bring myself to do it)

Flame: any last points

Me: Well, Spinel basically becomes Beach City's premiere part-time employee, as she works on and off at literally every place in town at some time or another, and she bluntly refers to Greg as "The Deadbeat." 

Spinel adores the twins, often serving as their babysitter, as well as a babysitter to most of the other kids in town, and basically acts as their bodyguard whenever she goes on missions. Oh! I also have special plans for Lapis, as well as some other Homeworld Gems, but I'll save those for tomorrow. 

Due to their parents being friends, Connie basically grew up with Steven and Nora, and is currently entering the phase of life when people start to develop more mature crushes, and has shown signs of crushing on both of them. Yikes.

[raendown]

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 2964 Soulmate au: The one where the first time your soulmate touches your skin it leaves a permanent mark

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Chapter 210

He understood the way Izuna watched him now, a little askance, a little curious. On a bad day Tobirama regretted telling his lifelong rival the secret he’d protected since he first realized it himself. Knowing someone like that carried such intimate knowledge about him was surely a recipe that could only end in violent disaster. On a good day he watched Izuna slowly integrating with a clan he’d once sworn to eradicate and felt hope for the future, hope that all of the people he cared about could live happy and peaceful lives. 

Today was a bad day. Hashirama sent him a pointed look from across the room but Tobirama looked away, not feeling up to pretending that he was surprised Izuna had discovered his soulmate among the Senju. He was the one who told his old rival that she was here, after all. When he was younger he’d assumed that all sensors could feel what he did, the shape of souls and the way two people fit together, but it was only through keeping his mouth shut and listening carefully to the right conversations that he learned he was wrong. No one else seemed to be able to feel which two souls would click together, ignorant until the pair touched each other and the soul marks appeared on both of them. And until the day Izuna demanded one good reason he should allow their clans to make peace no one else had known that Tobirama could. 

Knowing a soul pair before they discovered the bond for themselves was a delicate burden that sometimes required some interesting social gymnastics in order to bring the pair together without letting on that he was doing so. Not, of course, that he did so very often. Tobirama was many things but a rogue cupid matchmaking couples in his downtime was not one of them, not unless the couple’s happiness mattered in some way to him. 

He would never sully his brother’s ‘perfect love story’ by revealing that his meeting with Mito was only made possible by Tobirama’s machinations. 

Telling Izuna his secret had been a necessity he never expected but at least he didn’t regret it every day. He took a bit of comfort from knowing that he’d still made the idiot work for it a little, only telling him that his match was here among the clan he hated so badly but not revealing who exactly she was. Wasn’t the journey supposed to make the destination worth more or something like that? Still, as happy as today was for others Tobirama couldn’t help feeling little more than bitter. 

It was all well and good to feel the shape of souls, to know how they fit together, to reach out in to the world and know without years of searching exactly who would fit his own soul the best. It was another thing entirely to look them in the eye and know that he would likely never have the chance to complete his bond like so many others did. 

Feeling Izuna’s gaze move towards him with the same disapproving weight as Hashirama’s made him turn away and leave the room. He had no desire to know what was running through either of their minds. If he wanted to wallow in his loneliness while the rest of the world moved on with their little white picket fence perfect lives that was his own business. Better to remove himself to the engawa where he could sit in peace without Hashirama hissing in his ear to stop sulking or be happy for others or some other nonsense. At least when he was alone no one bothered him about whatever his face was doing. 

He had only just settled on the edge of the tatami mats outside when he felt a particular chakra signature break away from the rest to head in his direction. Tobirama sighed. Of course a moment’s reprieve was too much to ask. 

Madara rounded the corner with surprisingly quiet steps for a man whose natural gait was stomping, gliding down the engawa as if planning an assassination. Actually Tobirama would not have been very surprised if such an attempt were made. Neither of the Uchiha brothers had ever made secret their disdain for him and his insistence on considering the practical side of every issue that rose during council meetings. With his brother’s annoying voice in his head, however, he erred on the side of caution and held still without making any accusations. Let Madara be the one to announce whatever it was he wanted. There was no reason for Tobirama to make anything easier for the man who had made his own life so difficult. 

“Not even going to look at me?” 

Ah. Of course he had managed to do something wrong before the conversation even began. 

“I was hoping for a few moments alone,” Tobirama said. “Did you need something?” 

“Yeah. I’ve got...a question.” 

The uncharacteristic hesitance captured his attention, turning his head to where he could see the outline of Madara’s figure lingering several arm lengths away. “And you’re not screaming it in my face? Now that’s a novelty. Go on then.”

“Izuna told me what you told him.”

“Oh.” Facing forward again, Tobirama did what he could to swallow the terror riding up in his chest. “What precisely did he tell you?” 

“That you can tell who someone’s soulmate is, something to do with your sensing. He says you were the one who told him that his was in the Senju clan. I didn’t really believe him - he wasn’t even sure if he believed you - but now that we know it’s true…”

Choking on all the secrets inside his chest, Tobirama struggled to keep his face clear. 

“I think I can guess your question,” he said quietly. 

“What do you want in return?” Even without looking he could see Madara drawing himself up. “I won’t beg. But...I am willing to offer whatever price you ask…”

Tobirama shook his head. “You don’t want that.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, I do know who your soulmate is. Yes, they are here in the village. And to answer the question you’re trying to ask, no. I will not tell you who they are.” 

“Why the hell not!?” Madara’s presence took one menacing step closer, the fire of his chakra spiking. 

Tobirama tried not to be too obvious about basking in the warmth of something he knew was not truly being offered to him, the same hopeless wanting he’d been fighting back since childhood. Should it not have become easier by now? 

He supposed the difference was in the distance. For years their clans had been at war and it had been so easy to blame the impossibility of his situation on the endless rivers of blood between them. Now they were at peace. Now there was nothing for him to hide his pointless feelings behind but the ceaseless hatred the entirety of the Uchiha clan held for him as though his crimes of war had been any worse than their own. 

“You do not want to know,” he answered finally.

“Like hell I don’t!” Madara’s voice sounded affronted, something he really couldn’t blame the man for even if he was trying to protect them both. “You don’t get to make this decision for me!” 

Tobirama took a deep breath and focused his gaze out over the garden, splashed with gold in the setting sun. “I don’t mean to be difficult. This is an honest request; don’t ask this of me. When I say you don’t wish to know I mean it. Knowing will not bring you happiness.”

“It’s my soulmate! That’s- that’s the whole point!” 

As much as he wanted to argue that, he couldn’t. Not without explaining himself. By the rage he could feel building in Madara’s chakra, the deep-set yearning so many held for the ideal of a perfect soulmate, it was beginning to look like he might not have a choice in that. The man behind him was among the most stubborn Tobirama had ever met. He was not the type to simply let this go without a proper explanation no matter how someone tried to tell him it was in his best interest not to know. The look in Madara’s eyes said he was not leaving without an answer. 

Tobirama traced the shape of a lily with his eyes and did what he could to brace himself for the fallout about to come down on his own head. 

“Give me your word that you will take this knowledge and leave,” he said. “I have no desire to hear your inevitably negative reaction.” 

“Fine, whatever. I just...need to know. I don’t care if it’s someone I don’t like, it’s the not knowing that drives me mad.”

“Indeed.” That, at least, was something Tobirama could relate to. 

Still, despite having extracted such a promise it took a few minutes to work up the courage he needed. The truth did not scare him. It was something he had known for many years and made his peace with long ago. No, what gave him pause was the future ahead of them in which he would spend the rest of his life watching Madara pretending that they did not share this knowledge, pretending it wasn’t true. 

“I am your soulmate,” he whispered finally, closing his eyes against the spike of shocked chakra from behind him and speaking quickly to head off whatever outburst was about to wash over them both. “Spare me your rejections and denials. You gave me your word. I told you that you would not wish to know; if the answers don’t please you then you have only fate to blame.”

He waited, chest tight around a heavy heart, and yet the presence behind him refused to move so much as an inch. A breeze lifted the edges of his clothing but somehow the air around him felt still and stifling, the very thought of drawing another breath making his chest clench painfully. Tobirama squeezed his eyes tighter and waited even as the dread wriggled in that this moment of terror might stretch out in to forever with no answer. When finally Madara shifted behind him he winced, almost expecting the man to lash out somehow in denial. 

“You? All this time...you?” By some miracle, despite the shock clear in his voice, he did not turn to immediately storm off . “How long have you known that you’re- that you and I- you know?”

“I’ve known since I was a child,” Tobirama answered with as little inflection as possible. 

“Seriously? All these years you knew exactly who your soulmate was and you never even said anything!?” 

The deep breath he pulled in felt almost as though it tore his lungs on the way through. “We were on opposite sides of a war. Pointing out that the fates seem to have gotten their wires crossed was all but useless then.”

“We have been at peace for almost a year!”

“And what would you have done with this knowledge if I had told you at any other point before now? Nothing different.” Shaking his head, Tobirama finally opened his eyes to glare out at the flora around him. “You would have been just as disappointed, probably even more angry. What would have been the point in stripping away any hope you had left for a happy match?”

Madara’s hand on his shoulder startled him so badly he surged to his feet, fumbling a couple steps away from the engawa before turning around to see the other man blinking after him in surprise. The expression didn’t last long. It cleared quickly to make way for something like determination to take its place as Madara hopped down from the porch as well and stomped his way over until he could take a fistful of Tobirama’s clothing at the shoulder. 

“Quit putting all the responsibility for this on me!” he snarled. 

“What?”

“You’ve decided everything about this match without ever asking the other half of it! First you decide it’s somehow not worth even telling me and now when you finally do you’ve just decided on my behalf that there’s no point in doing anything about it. I’m noticing a distinct lack of any agency here! So far you’ve rather neatly avoided saying what you want.” Madara lifted one eyebrow challengingly, an expression that had led to more than one screaming match between them since neither was the type to back down from anything, but for once Tobirama couldn’t find it in himself to get riled up.

He was too busy listening to the silent wordless panic inside his head, the urge to flee before this could go any farther. When he gave in to the idea of revealing his biggest secret he hadn’t expected to be dragged in to conversation about what he wanted out of this. 

“I…” Despite the many thoughts chasing each other through his mind Tobirama found that none of them would settle enough to become actual words, leaving him staring at the other man helplessly.

“Oh. You...you want this...don’t you?” Madara stared back with wide eyes as Tobirama spluttered senselessly.

Unfortunately words were still avoiding him, any kind that would make sense or help him gracefully exit this conversation, anyway. He fumbled his way through a few garbled half sentences before snapping his jaw shut and closing his eyes again to take a deep breath. When he opened them again he was almost surprised that such a perfect opportunity to punch him in the face hadn’t been taken. 

“Let go of my shirt, please,” he said quietly. 

“No!” 

“Madara, would you just-”

“You don’t get to make decisions for me anymore! If I want to stand here and hold on to your shirt I will! And if maybe I want to rethink my opinions of you I’m gonna! And if I want to slap you in the face I might do that too!” 

Tobirama frowned. “What the hell would slapping me accomplish?” 

“It’d get my mark on you for starters!”

 With that Madara finally released his fistful of cloth only to shove it aside and press his hand against the front of Tobirama’s shoulder. Both of them froze. Pulling it away revealed a handprint in brilliant red, the same shade coloring the entirety of Madara’s palm when he turned it over to look. It wasn’t as though Tobirama had been expecting anything else, he’d known they were soulmates almost since they first met, but it was somehow different to stare down at the physical evidence of a connection he had lived with alone for so many years.

The last thing he expected was for Madara to calmly lower his hand and lift his chin with something like determination in his eyes. No anger, no disappointment. If not for the clench of his fist he might have been entirely calm. 

“Maybe it wouldn’t be entirely terrible to get to know you a little better,” he said. 

“A glowing offer if I’ve ever been given one.” Still tense and waiting for an explosion that wasn’t coming, Tobirama sighed at his own instinctual snark. “Sorry. I, ah, don’t have any objections to learning more about each other I suppose.”

His soulmate eyed him thoughtfully for a painful few moments. “I think you probably already know plenty about me. Looks like I’ll have to catch up. We should probably go back inside, though.”

“No one is looking for us, if that was your worry. Izuna’s chakra is entirely too wrapped around his partner’s for me to feel very comfortable being within visual range of them.” Tobirama shuddered. He’d watched Izuna’s soulmate grow up, a distant cousin of some relation several times removed, there was no need for him to see her be intimate with anyone let alone his lifetime rival. 

“Right. Uh. Maybe we just start talking now? I mean like having a conversation. Shut up, I know we’re already having one! I mean I could- oh forget it!” Throwing his hands up, Madara took a step back that seemed more an excuse to stomp his foot than anything else. 

“I would like that,” Tobirama agreed quietly.

Choosing not to let his own emotions overwhelm him turned out to be the right decision, immediately rewarded when Madara calmed down enough to nod with flushed cheeks, looking around for a place to sit. Tobirama let the other man get settled in before delicately lowering himself back in to the spot where he’d been moping before. To his credit, despite the incredibly awkward set of every line in his body Madara did not allow any chance for an awkward silence to fall over them. As soon as they were both seated he struck up a rambling narrative about how little they actually knew of each other and how perhaps he should learn more about someone before making judgments about them, all of which Tobirama listened to with the faintest shadow of a smile spreading across his lips.

It wasn’t exactly a confession, it wasn’t some grand love story about two idiots pining away for each other in secret, misunderstood and misinformed, but it was enough. It was a start. 

Watching his soulmate awkwardly trace shapes in the air as he spoke, Tobirama lifted one hand to discreetly press against the front of his shoulder where he had finally been granted the honor of carrying their bond mark. For now this was more than enough. For years he had kept his silence thinking that nothing would ever happen. If all it took was a little patience to encourage their bond to grow he was willing to give that - and so much more - to see where it would take them. 

[blueoatmeal]

Day 1: Sandbox Characters

Obviously I went with Clockwork. Mostly a jumble of thoughts, headcanons, and quotes here

Clockwork

Not truly omniscient. Learns info like any other person, by seeing it. Just has a lot more time to spend watching, and the unique ability to see the past and future by travelling there

To any mortal being, he appears to know just about everything, but in truth there’s such a volume of information that’s constantly increasing that CW only knows a small fraction of what could be known at any given time

He’s very good at acting like he knows all, of course

He is in no way telepathic. Just good at reading people and predicting what they’ll do based on prior/future actions. Like a Batman Gambit. Not a foolproof method though

(Core theory) Has a time core. Unlike average ghosts who consciously tap into their specialized powers to use them (besides when Danny was repressing his ice powers bc he didn’t know about them), CW is constantly generating temporal energy

Just as Danny might freeze a wall he phases through when tapping into his core, CW affects things when phased through them too. He just. Can’t turn the effect off. Notably, he tends to age (or otherwise warp) whatever material or being he phases through. Sometimes quite drastically

As a result, he generally refrains from using intangibility and often uses teleportation in its place when he can, even though it takes more energy. That being said, he has made offensive use of intangibility

This also makes overshadowing a lot riskier

He is, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. He may not have always been a ghost, but he is now

His scar is hypertrophic (raised) except in AUs where it isn’t

He has the only time core in existence. He’s been targeted for it before; by time travelers, errant physicists, and aspiring rulers of the universe

The clock in his chest is fully functional; the hands move, the pendulum swings, and it even makes a ticking sound

He can make around 12 or 13 duplicates

He is very much an unreliable narrator. Take everything he says with a grain of salt

Clockwork’s tower always looks a lot smaller from the outside. It’s a phenomenon that doesn’t seem too unusual in the Ghost Zone, but is taken to the extreme in the clocktower. Unless a bunch of the doors in the halls lead to nothing, there’s more going on than anyone could guess from a casual look.

Quotes: (mostly from my phic WIPs)

Clockwork stared into the distance with an annoyed look on his face. “It is possible. I’m not the only entity who can manipulate time. Sometimes others try to help fix time, including those ruined timelines, and wind up making my job more difficult. Other times they’re a bit too effective.”

“Time is fluid,” Clockwork explained, “and I am a part of it. I do not exist outside of time. My actions can make a difference in time on the most basic level, like yours or anyone else’s. I can change events without causing temporal rifts.”

“It’s interesting to hear directly what people think about their own time.

Clockwork shook his head. “As convenient as it would be, I can’t speed up time for localized parts of my own body. It would throw everything out of whack. I can certainly freeze time, wait until I heal, then unfreeze it, but it’s indescribably boring.

“You don’t have a preset destiny. Just variable possibilities based on the actions and decisions of yourself and those around you. And, of course, genuine chance. Natural disasters, for example.

“You reduce individuals to statistics because you can’t properly comprehend numbers above a few hundred. You lose your perspective because your minds can’t handle the concept of trillions of unique people with different lives and goals of their own, each with a web of connections to others. You can only envision a few people at a time with that much detail. I don’t have those limits. Not on comprehension. Not on memory. I see the entirety of a person’s life, from birth to death and sometimes beyond, in multiple continuities, and I can never forget any of it.”

“I can tug at someone’s secrets every day for their entire life, but they can still choose to ignore me or refuse what I ask of them. I can’t just puppet people into doing what I want. There’s overshadowing, but it’s not a good long-term strategy. And it’s terribly unreliable. Most of what I do is good old-fashioned manipulation, with force applied as needed.”

“I must not act without thinking. Ever. Anything could happen. Worse, if my actions benefit myself at the expense of others, I lose my objectivity and all my decisions become compromised. It’s a conflict of interest. I can’t enter personal matters into the equation.”

“I understand the confusion, but this is not a torture chamber. It’s more of a garage, really.”

“It’s actually the seventh world-scale war, but it’s called the Fourth War because Captain Fourth is the one who fired the first shot.”

“With nearly every decision that’s made, by anyone, the timeline splits. Often more than just twice. I may have started with one timeline, but that didn’t last long.”

“Sometimes the chronology itself begins to lead towards the destruction of the timeline. Perhaps a reality-warping weapon is developed, or a massive drought begins that will end all life if it isn’t stopped. I either let the timeline die, or course-correct so that the timeline may go on longer.”

Clockwork raised his eyebrows. “I’m an excellent actor, Daniel.”

Clockwork gave him an odd look. “That’s only in this form. This isn’t my standard or default form or anything. All of my forms, no matter the appearance of age, are equally me. Besides, even my eldest appearance is hardly representative of my true age.”

“My body ages in a cycle, and my mind ages linearly.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I suppose I can’t quite perceive it as you do.”

“You know, I never quite understood that. I see how people can be inaccurate with their sense of time, but to report either a far shorter or far longer span than actually took place—Why? How does that happen? I could come up with an evolutionary reason but ultimately it just seems ridiculous to have a sense of time at all if half the time it’s wildly inaccurate.” 

[orionsknightsky]

*incoherent word ramble cuz I both do and don’t feel like talking/ seeking out someone to talk to rn and so that means it gets to go on tumblr I guess*

It feels like absolutely nothing is happening in my brain right now but also that’s cuz I can just feel that everything has been sped up and so word thoughts are gone cuz I think they’re going to fast to hear, either that or they got dumped and it’s only other kinds of thoughts that I don’t know how to focus on happening now. Idk, like, I had whole lots of coffee (like six smallish cups of coffee but also it’s been literal months since last I drank even one cup so that is soo much) cuz it was free at work this morning and I got to sit around while people chatted for almost two hours today and just eat the free snacks and coffee, which was super cool cuz I’ve literally been looking forward to this all week, even though set aside time for morale-boosting office place gatherings are and interesting beast.  

So back to word thoughts coming from current state of being instead of explaining why current state of being is being (heh). It feels like everything is and exists so much rn and I don’t care, cuz like also there is just nothing that is me? There is no solid “me” that exists, and their is no solid me that cares about things I’m doing/knows where I should start in order to help in things that matter/isn’t scared to find where I’m supposed to be. *but also like, supossed to is such an interesting term, and I should maybe reexamine the frequency with which I tell myself I should do something or that I’m supposed to do it, cuz there is no inherent purpose to the universe and so nothing matters. But also like, a good reason why I’m alive is cuz I have frequently told myself that I’m supposed to stay alive in order to not make other people upset. And so maybe I should just tell my self that I feel like I should stay alive cuz I don’t feel happy when I make people upset? Or is that just a different version of what I have been already doing? (the actual thing is maybe that I’ve got to find a thing that I feel makes me want to continue to exist cuz it makes me feel the feels I want?, but idk what that means and also I don’t know why or how or where I’m gonna find it and I don’t think it’s gonna be until after I’m done with college {only one more quarter, woot fuckin woot!!!!!}, so I got to keep figuring out what things make my brain want to keep caring?, or just keep on telling my brain that even if it doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t care cuz future brain does and will care, but also nothing matters and there is no purpose to anything even if I find purpose so is everthing just a conundrum and why will I just keep existing to live within a purposeless conundrum) I’m curious about what else there is but also I know that there’s no thing that makes it so people know why we need to be alive, and everyone is so scared of dying? and like, it will supposedly almost definitely be a painful and awful experience?? but also a lot of things are? and I don’t know why that matters cuz I’ve suffered before and got through it, and I’ll continue to suffer and get through it, and then one day I’ll supposedly suffer and not get through it, and apparently that suffering is more important to postpone then other suffering? Nothing makes sense (including and definitely this word spew) and yet everyone/society pretends like it does and that it matters and that anyone has anything figured out. but we just don’t. We just really, don’t. And that doesn’t matter, but  my brain does thing /unless it doesn’t/ and I’m supposed to continue to do things even while my brain does things even though I don’t want to do things and so I don’t excpet when I do- which is both often and unoften cuz boy the world sure just keep on coming and it don’t stop coming- but I like just observing, participation is so much hard when I have to exist as me, (school participation is not hard cuz I don’t exist as me and I just learn the things and say the words that professors/teachers need to hear in order to continue to advance a subject/teach a class) (I’ve written much of this, I think I probably am going to post this cuz words are words and whoever reads can decide not to whenever cuz like, you can decide to not do most things just whenever, but at least stopping reading this won’t have negative consequences upon your life for whatever reason -unless it does, in which case, fuck I’m sorry, that’s a weird and somewhat unforeseen circumstance)

ahffshighrghori

Why do people act as if words are easy? Communication is so impossible and yet people think they do it? and to some degree people sometimes do? But also no one ever knows if they actually successfully communicated in entirety, but also there are ways to be more successful? (and I’m not currently using most of the ones I normally do!)

But maybe just saying all the words in all the stupid orderr and not reading or working with them or doing them in more than just the way I’m “thinking” will just make them have a meaning even if it’s not important beyond what it makes them not in my head cuz fuck proper coherence nothings ever made a goddamned sense

(have you ever just exist in a place? and not made sense, even when you hear what people say? not being able to understand is weird.

Hope this doens;t)

Some of this is purposeful incoherence, but I don’t know what it means that you can just, one can just choose to then make a words how they happen in your head and that they then don’t make sense. I don’t know what I’m saying! why do other?

Why do people understand eachother, why do people think things make sense? Why do they sometimes,

gosh when people tell you to just write and see what happens they really do mean that it won’t be good the first time, but also fuck having word s that make good, it doens’t mattetr

. It just djorenst ay doesn’t.

This entire mess both is and isn’t because of the addition of caffeine to my present. Wild It’s shared because of the caffeine, but it’s existent because my existing is incoherent and not wanted/understood/necessary/working out how I imagined cuz I’ve rarely if ever imagined what existing would be./

Idk, I assumed I’d be dead when I was 10 and hadimagined that life had no understood purpose at and before then, and I never really did stop with it and that think. ogsa gshi gi gi g igi we i

Fuck man, what is

I hope if you read this you at least realize a little bit that nothing makes sense/has any purpose/matters, but that, like, that’s both freeing and makes it hard to do things and is maybe a good idea to fairly regularly ignore? Cuz none of this 

(also if you read this I hope you’re doing okay and undrstand that even though nothing makes sense and there’s no proof of purpose there’s no proof of unpurpose and so maybe just caring about people will make something better, cuz maybe happiness in the present is as good as it will ever get and so it’s okay to find and seek that out when you can?

Words are hard and don’t make any sense even when they’re in my head and what I’m trying to think. Why am I even trying to think cuz I do that anyway (as evidenced my most if not all of this words cuz dan g if not any of it was I trying to think beyond the thinking involved in not letting my thougghts rowrds thingk.

Was gonna edit it cuz the typose werewakl twp gajow

cuz the typos were and weren’t purposeful and how can you know when your actions are simulated to achieve a specific purpose and when they aren’t and why do I feel as though purposeful word order to achieve specific thoughts is a tthing to not because not. ?.

Nothing needs to make sense and I hope you’re having fun.

I also hope you’re not making the world worse, but I’m not convince I’m not, and if you are and it’s not purposeful then it’s okay if you give yourself some slack and breathe and move past it to get to where you are and can be contributing not good and not bad and maybe just good or the morality that you want to achieve and make  be in what

Fuck senssfm, sorry if 

If I pause for too long does that mean done? I think i t means slowing down and that it might be done soon, if I’ve said something that you read and word was harmful, I don’t think I did but that’s cuz I didn’t stop to think and did not intend harm but am willing at time when can think more to try and thing positively but also I’m fairly certain this isn’t somethings that  is in any way too much offensive and is probably just overly personal in an not sense making kind of way that might seem like too much later or more likely I’ll just forget about cuz who thinks. sfljagwjogogohi

Gosh I don’t like when the overthinks so trying to make this end is making that happen which makes it feel like it need s to keep being word sthat come out of my brain and do the typing even thoeugh I was trying kind of to make it stop cuz it felt like maybe it was reaching an end but why would I let it reach an end if the entire point (if there was a point which apparently I’m trying to assert that there was even though I didn’t let my self assert that there was at the begiinnning cuz obviously theres is jsust htat wacky randomness of words that just happen and not every thing that is written serves any purpose or thoughts to convey cuz If when if I try and let my words b e with and wiithout no purpose then when nad if nothing word isa than to make sens b cause thaen word that I’m trying don’t matter and that good? Fuck yah I managed to lean into not want ting to say that sentance when I lost it. In conclusion there isn’t one?

Sorry, brains and words are weird and I’m glad I did this but I don’t know what it means I and I don’t know why I said it and I dont’ know why or if you read it but I hope you knew the words you understood and wanted. Hope you’re having good, hope you find coherence, hope we have good.

[harryimaginedstories]

Need for Breath and finding Each Other

Hi! Plot: Y/N and Harry have never before missed somebody as painfully as they miss each other. Warnings: None.  Hopefully all of you and especially who requested a part3 to  Teardrops and a Mug of Tea -  http://harryimaginedstories.tumblr.com/post/154820796748/teardrops-and-a-mug-of-tea and Regrets and a happy Smile - http://harryimaginedstories.tumblr.com/post/154867448013/regrets-and-a-happy-smile like this story. It can be read as a stand alone though. Picture isn’t mine. Sadly.

Y/N didn’t enjoy holding hands with him. Somehow his palm always felt sweaty against her skin and she’d noticed early on that his hold was a little too tight for her liking. But what was she supposed to do? Or say? Keith was everything she was supposed to want now that Harry had left her life.  He genuinely cared for her and showed interest when she spoke. His jokes, though simple and not very smart, were funny and made her laugh. He was nice and after what she’d endured with the person she’d thought to be her partner in every way, nice had to be good enough.  Also Y/N knew that after six weeks without Harry, it was okay to not be fully over him yet. It was normal that she could sometimes feel her heart ache a little whenever she thought of him and though it wasn’t completely fair to Keith, it wasn’t unusual to still think of your ex when kissing somebody new.  Y/N did feel guilty for it and it was because of Harry’s presence in the back of her head that she’d decided to end things with Keith for now. She couldn’t continue being unfair to him and leading him on the same way Harry had done to her. The pain of having allowed yourself to fall only to learn that the other person had been clinging on to somebody else the entire time hurt so much it could be crushing. And she wasn’t going to do that to anybody.  So she’d broken up whatever the thing between her and Keith had been. To be better than Harry. Well, that and because the guy had unimaginably sweaty hands. 

....

Harry didn’t like the term ‘miserable’. It sounded too melodramatic for his taste and was way overused. Still the only word that would have fit his physical appearance and emotional state was just that: miserable.  His hair was unruly and unwashed, his face pale and skin dry. His cloths were much darker than anything he always used to wear and his entire posture lacked the confidence and strength he used to have. The only thing that hadn’t changed about him were his eyes. Sure, they were underlined by dark rings, which gave away how little he slept these days, but aside from that they were as bright and green as before. And they were always looking, constantly searching every place he went for one face. Her. God how he missed her.  At first Harry hadn’t allowed himself to let go and give in to the pain, thinking that three months weren’t enough to form a deep connection to somebody. Their short time together wasn’t supposed to have such an impact on him, especially since, as he constantly and very painfully reminded himself, it had been him who’d ended it all. He had walked out. He hadn’t fought for her, hadn’t even wanted her then and it had been him who had been deluded enough to think he’d want Kira instead.  Perhaps having nobody to blame but himself was the hardest part about allowing the pain to hit with full force. Harry had never been good at facing the consequences to his actions. 

....

“I don’t miss him.” 

A lie obviously, but one Y/N had learned to tell herself every day and now she almost believed it. 

“I don’t miss him at all.”  Good. Y/N smiled at herself in the mirror one more time, then she turned to grab her bag and face the day. After Harry had left her apartment that night, that awful night she hated thinking about, Y/N hadn’t touched the door for three days. Three long days she’d stayed put in her tiny apartment, crying, trembling and above all waiting for Harry to come back to her. For him to tell her that he loved her and that she had been more to him than a rebound he no longer saw any use for.  On day four she’d gone to buy groceries and had by coincidence stumbled into Keith, about whom she didn’t have much to say now other than that he hadn’t aided her in getting over Harry but only reminded her how deeply she’d fallen. And after that was over too, Y/N had made a plan to heal. Every day she had to go out and leave her apartment at least once for something other than to go to school or work or grocery shopping.  Fresh air, nature and the strangers in the city around her were what she believed would help her return to her old self and mend her broken heart. She needed to get back into life somehow. And she needed to stop missing him so badly.  ....

Not everything about them had been awful and doomed to fail from the beginning.  Yes, when Kira had reached out for Harry it’d been easy for her to distract him and take his mind off of Y/N, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t let Y/N steal his heart. It was just that his mind hadn’t caught up in time. 

There had been nights when they would laugh until their eyes were crying and their tummies aching, most of the time because of something utterly silly or childish.  Nobody had ever understood the two of them the way they seemed to understand each other, with no words even. It was as if Y/N and Harry sang the same melody with no music playing and without having discussed the song first... they just fit. As simple as that. Back then and now still if only they’d somehow found each other again. 

....

Harry felt both ashamed and self pity. Shame, because he couldn’t find the courage in him to reach out for her, apologize to her and really just talk to her about everything going on in his head. There was so much she needed to know and though he could practically taste to words on his tongue, he found no voice to say them.  Pity, because his body ached. Every move was followed by a dull pain or stinging sensation in his chest. Breathing was hard. And frankly Harry didn’t know how much longer he could bear it. No matter how deserved it was.  He’d deserved Kira’s harshness towards him, her incapability of being kind and gentle. He’d chosen her after all. But that didn’t change that his entirety screamed for somebody to mend what her words had done to him, for Y/N to come back and relieve him from the burden Kira’s cold words had brought. 

....

At first she didn’t believe that it was really him. The Harry in her memory looked hardly anything like the tall guy staring at her from outside the window of the coffee shop she was sitting in. And anyway, you don’t just run into Harry, do you? Not here. Not at her favorite coffee shop on the city, a fact he was very well aware of. Unless he had been looking for her, perhaps even waiting, for her to finally show up.  He was so beautiful.  Y/N found herself smiling. And when his green orbs had found her form, sitting there reading before looking up to instantly find his gaze, his entire body was set at ease. Finally he could stop searching her face in every person he came across, could stop trying to remember every detail about her features so they would never leave his memory, because she was right there.  And oh was she beautiful. The images in his head could never have done her true beauty justice and he felt a smile tug on his lips.  Before he could prepare himself she was on her feet and hurrying towards the exit of the tiny shop. Harry didn’t know if it was so she could run from him, confront him with much deserved screaming or because she had been aching for him as much as he had for her. He prayed it was the later.  Y/N’s feet carried her without her mind’s consent, focused only on one goal: Reaching Harry.  And when she stood before him she could breathe, the air around him fresh and him and burning her hungry lungs in the best way possible.  It was uncertain which one of them wrapped their arms around the other first, but now that they were finally home again it didn’t matter. Harry’s head found its familiar place in her neck, Y/N’s face nuzzled into his chest and when she felt tears falling from her eyes she let out a small gasp of relief. Harry held her tighter. There was a lot they needed to say and tell each other, he, above all, had a lot of explaining to do. But for now ten words from him and five from her sufficed.  “I am not with Kira. You were not a rebound.”

“Keith is not my boyfriend.”

And with that being said they held onto each other tighter, cried and breathed together, certain that though difficult, the future wouldn’t be as dark now that they had the other to face it with.

Thank you for reading! I hope you like it. :) I wrote this in one go so please don’t judge any grammar mistakes.  Rest of what I wrote is here:  http://harryimaginedstories.tumblr.com/post/144920695218/masterlist

[gothtistic-stims]

I was feeling invalid

Quick warning: the is a *long* post, and the invalidity I felt was actually remedied by writing this, so do not feel obligated to read it all! Sure, when I was younger I chose to be alone a *lot*, but I had friends. I was socially awkward, sure, but what 5 year old is really that great at being social? Yeah, whenever I went somewhere new I would cling to my sister and be completely unable to make new friends, but by the same token, at a *very* young age I figured out an algorithm for making and maintaining friendships: compliments! I think it was when I was 8 that I figured this out, which was fortunate because at around 7 kids were no longer friends with the entire class, and making friends was no longer easy. At 7, I found myself alone at recess nearly every day, hyperfixated on finding 4-leaf clovers (I was finding at least 1 a day at one point), so when I discovered the compliment algorithm I was able to smoothly transition and continue making friends. Of course, I still chose to be alone for a vast majority of recesses. But being asocial doesn't mean I'm autistic. I was an extremely naiive child, kids easily lied to me and I believed them. But being naiive in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean I'm autistic. When I was in kindergarten I was friends with someone. Close friends. In first grade, however, she avoided me like I was the plague. I cried and cried, and even confronted her, and she basically just told me "idk, I guess I just don't really like you." But having a person dislike me doesn't mean I'm autistic. I was always moving as a child, I had attention problems, and I also was diagnosed with both adhd and ocd when I was only 8. I talked too fast and was known to mumble (I say "was" as if I don't still do those things now lol). I also many times forget the word I want to use, and I end up blabbering nonsense trying to figure out how to convey what I want to say. Sometimes I don't forget whole words, I can't translate my thoughts because my thoughts aren't organized like normal thoughts. A majority of the time I am thinking in either pictures or feelings rather than words, and I simply can't say anything related to the topic I want to talk about because in my mind there are literally no words to even begin explaining it. I'm 1000% better at writing than talking. But speech problems don't necessarily mean I'm autistic. I guess I had experience with going partially nonverbal, but I never had a word to describe being physically unable to speak or initiate conversations unless spoken to first. But again, going partially nonverbal sometimes doesn't mean I'm autistic. When I was little my sister was diagnosed with aspergers. She would throw huge tantrums/melt down easily, so a lot of the focus went to her. I never really had any melt downs. In fact, when I was 6, my sister paid me a nickle to not cry in front of her, and it took *years* to be able to cry in her vicinity again. However, I was certainly not immune to crying; I was an empath. If you were crying, chances were I was crying too. Whenever my sister had a meltdown I would feel her pain, and I would hide in my favorite place underneath the same chair. I *had* to cry there. But high empathy doesn't mean I'm autistic - in fact, there's even a stereotype that autistics don't feel empathy at all. When I was 11, I was half forced out of my friend group and half decided for myself to leave it. I had one friend at the time, and she (let's call her "M") was hella popular. I never fit into the friend group. I was invited to fewer and fewer parties as time went on, and no one in the group except for my one friend liked me. Eventually she stopped liking me too, and I was left to fend for myself. But being disliked doesn't mean I'm autistic. I was briefly friends with the girl I was assigned to share a seat with on the bus. We started a whole mini show routine that we would do every day on the bus. It was called the Stupid and Cupid Show. Despite my efforts to get her to change the name, I was stuck being known as "Stupid." I never realized at the time how horrible that name made me feel, but it didn't matter, because eventually she left me as well. As is said in the last paragraph, being disliked doesn't mean I'm autistic. In seventh grade I was looped into a whole strange "family" (which is a story for another time) and suddenly had a *ton* of people considering themselves to be friends with me. It was around then that I realized I was touch averse, because PEOPLE I DIDN'T KNOW KNEW MY NAME AND KEPT HUGGING ME WITHOUT ASKING. Fortunately this didn't last long either, because like all of my frienships, it dissolved pretty quickly. This time, however, everyone blamed me for something I didn't do, and I was left with that entire huge group hating me. I didn't even find out why everyone suddenly hated me until a year later. But useless teen (not even, we were like ~11-12 years old) drama doesn't mean I'm autistic. My entire time in middle school was honestly horrible. My typical algorithm for making friends stopped working, and while I found a temporary replacement (empathizing with people as conversation) it was not nearly as effective. I was never exactly bullied per se, I just got stuck in the same classroom with some really fuckin mean people. I called them all "Tapper Dude." They would bang out off beat tunes on their desks *constantly*. This banging was sensory HELL ( though i didn't know the term "sensory hell" yet). I was going home and often crying because of the stress of being trapped with these people who wouldn't stop (the teachers didn't even try to stop them despite my many, many complaints). I couldn't do anything, couldn't work,couldn't concentrate, and would literally beg my teachers to let me work in the hallway so I could finally have some peace. They literally never let me work in the hallway, despite it being silent (except for that damn banging) individual work. ( I'm honestly still fuckin pissed that my teachers did nothing to help me!) But being hypersensitive to some banging on a desk doesn't mean I'm autistic. Jumping back to never being able to sit still, I still stim today. Not nearly as much then as I do now though. The need to stand rather than sit in my desk at school coulde easily be attributed to my adhd. On top of needed to stand, I was always doodling on my worksheets. Teachers would make me redo the entire sheet if they found my doodles, or they would grab my drawing off of my desk and crumple it up and throw it in the trash. Even as I type this now, my legs are shaking and bouncing and hitting each other. But this could easily be blamed on my having adhd. Having ADHD doesn't mean I have autism. I had weird fixations when I was younger. At 5 it was finding 4-leaf clovers, at 9 it was arranging bookshelves, which after ~6 months evolved into an obsession with reading classics. At only 9 years old, I attempted to read the entirety of Mobey Dick (I didn't get a chance to finish, the school year ended and I had to return the book to the school library 😣). Up until I was 8 I was obsessed with all things medical ( which involved reading the same 3 books over and over and over again). At 17 I became obsessed with slugs /sea slugs ( as I'm sure many of you are aware) along with developing an obsession with autism in and of itself. And ever since I was 5, I've been obsessed with hypnosis, the topic is in my brain basically 24/7, though I try to ignore this obsession because it's nearly impossible to find good media representations of it. I was exposed to porn at a very young age because of my seeking out hypnosis related material, and ever since then I've been wary of seeking it out for fear of finding even more erotic content 😣😣😣. Basically, what I'm saying is, I have had special interests, but I've also seen that something similar (hyperfixations) can be found in, once again, adhd!! So special interests don't necessarily mean I'm autistic. Eye contact. Hello darkness my old friend :)). I honestly have always hated eye contact, but, just like with my social skills, I figured out a loophole at an extremely young age. Foreheads and noses are an autistics best friends, and using these tools, I believe I've effectively fooled everyone I've encountered into think I have good eye contact. Honestly, up until I learned more about autism, I kinda just assumed eye contact was a figure of speech or something that people said better never actually did. But poor eye contact doesn't mean I'm autistic. Figures of speech are weird. I often overthink them to the point of incomprehensibility. I use figures of speech all the time (in fact I believe I used one earlier in this very post), but I've begun to suspect that all of the figures of speech I "understand" are only understood because school spent so much time drilling the meaning into my head. My suspicions arised from the fact that whenever I hear a new figure of speech, I don't understand what it means, even sometimes after it's been explained to me. On top of that, with sarcasm, I can only understand it if it's used by someone I know well. Understanding or not understanding figures of speech don't necessarily mean I'm autistic though. I've always been accident prone. I crash into walls and tables and chairs. I've also fallen both up and down the stairs. My fine motor movements also took much longer to develop as compared to others. Messy scissor cuttings, messy shirt after eating, and messy handwriting. My mom calls my handwriting "chicken scratch", though I personally don't think it's that bad. But poor coordination doesn't mean I'm autistic. When I was little, I only ate like 3 things. Everything else was considered absolutely disgusting. My parents would literally pay me to try certain foods, but it usually ended up being gross or a bad texture. Smells could also be *incredibly* overwhelming. Ketchup especially. I was supposed to clear the table every day, but whenever my parents used ketchup, I would either cry until they let me off the hook or pay my sister to do it for me. Even now, I refuse to even touch a clean ketchup bottle, it's just g r o s. My mom also eats this really gross cranberry chicken salad thing that I can't even be on the same level of the house when she's eating it because it'll literally cause me to cry. I also can't touch the carpet barefoot, and certain textures are *horrid*. Though not formally diagnosed with either autism or sensory processing disorder, I am 100% sure I have sensory processing disorder. My sensory issues are worse than my sister's, and she's actually been diagnosed with autism! From others, I've never really mentioned that I think I'm on the autism spectrum; I don't think they'd believe me. I seem to hold a conversation just fine! ( that is,until we're in a group of more than two people. Then I lose the ability to tell when it's my turn to speak, so I end up remaining silent, half because I don't know when it's my turn and half because I can never get a word in anyway). Sure, the few friends I have (the empathy algorithm stopped working because my friends broke me and I actually lost all empathy, which I'm still trying to recover from. The latest algorithm is bombarding the person with questions when you can't get a conversation going. * something* has to spark a conversation, right!? W r o n g. This is why I'm down to 3 or 4 friends.) all agree I'm incredibly socially awkward. And sure, I fill any silence with stimming, usually involving grabbing things I'm not supposed to touch or poking the person I'm with (idk man, my brain goes into panic mode and it just keeps repeating "poke them" until I appease it). In fact, just yesterday I hung out with a friend, and we had a casual good time. It's times like these that *really* make me question whether or not I'm autistic. Though it may sound like it, I'm not saying it's impossible for an autistic to have friends - in fact, in the short year that I've had this blog, I've managed to befriend quite a few of you wonderful people! I guess I'm just saying that while autistics can have friends and still be valid, *I* can't. Of course, having no friends doesn't mean I'm autistic ( much in the same way having friends doesn't mean I'm *not* autistic ). Overall, I'm worried my social awkwardness / social deficits, though they do exist, aren't enough to actually consider myself autistic. I am confident that I have ADHD and SPD, but what if those two are just combining to closely mimic autism? My blog has gotten fairly popular, and I'm really feeling invalid tonight, so I figured I'd outline the main symptoms and let you guys determine if you're okay with me running an autism blog and using the tags. I still think I have autism, and I shouldn't need to get validation from strangers on the internet, but I felt like it was important to outline this.

[arabellaflynn]

My response to extended periods of stress is to distract myself by cramming new things into my head. I had a terrible semester at college once and front-loaded the entirety of the sci.electronics.repair FAQ into my brain. It wasn't useful at the time, but I can repair the shit out of a VCR now, so I assume I'll use it someday. I am so overloaded I am about to claw my own face off, so naturally I am teaching myself Hebrew. I've been using Duolingo to do it, which is frankly a very bad idea. (I should really be using Ha'Ulpan, which is where you'd typically go for a crash course in Hebrew before emigrating to Israel, but that costs money, so no.) Duolingo is billed as a way to teach yourself a language, which it is not. It is a way to memorize a bunch of interactive flashcards. This might be effective for people who don't care how language works -- which is most people -- but it's awful for people like me, who hang all of their memorization off of a framework of base patterns. Duolingo explains nothing. The "lessons":

Do not teach the alphabet. Hebrew is written in this sort of half-assed abjad, where most but not all vowels are not marked in non-teaching texts, and some but not most unmarked vowels are actually represented by a placeholder Alef. 'Aba' is father and 'ima' is mother, but they are both written Alef-something else-Alef. Look at that and imagine how the vowel change looks totally mental to someone who spells things in a full alphabet. Alef comes out looking like it says about six different things, one of which is nothing.

Do not explain the orthography. There are several pairs of letters in Hebrew that do, or at least can, say the same thing. Tet and Tav both say /t/; Kaf and Qof both say /k/; Yod and Ayin are both sort of /j/ and sort of not; Vav and Bet can both say /v/, although both also have other readings; Samekh is /s/ and Shin can be read that way as well. Some other apparent character pairs are actually the same letter that has a 'sofit' form when it comes at the end of the word, which on the Hebrew keyboard is a different key (as opposed to the Arabic IME, which auto-corrects to the final form when it kerns all the cursive joining). I still have no idea if there is a rule behind Tet vs Tav; Yod vs Ayin and Kaf vs Qof are almost certainly because they once represented different sounds (Yaa vs 'Ayin and Kaa vs Qaf are still separated in Arabic), but I don't have enough context to guess which is likely to be which in Modern Hebrew.

Do not consistently read new vocabulary words out loud. If you're not going to explain the letters to me, the least you can do is read me the word so I can figure it out myself. Of course, it also never explicitly mentions that you read all this right-to-left, which seems like an important note to give when you're using a left-to-right language for instruction. You would think it would be obvious when everything is right-justified, but this is the kind of stuff you shouldn't take for granted when building beginning lessons in anything.

Do not use any nekkudot. A nikkud ("point") is a diacritical mark, mainly underneath the consonant but occasionally beside, inside, or above it, that explicitly indicates ('dagesh') a pronunciation change or ('nikkud') an unwritten vowel. This is how you teach people to read Hebrew, in Hebrew. You use it for small children. Or, if you have any sense, novice adult learners.

Do not explain any grammar. There is no explanation of why "you" is sometimes 'at' and sometimes 'atah'. No explanation of why sometimes the present-tense verb has an '-et' on the end and sometimes doesn't, even when the subject is 'ani' in both cases. (Answer: Hebrew inflects according to gender of both subject and speaker, which seems like a thing that should be noted for anglophones.) You are left to guess at wtf to do with prepositions and particles like Ha, V', Be, Le, and others. 

Do not consistently account for the direction switch of Hebrew input. Firstly, there's no warning that the thing expects you to type in Hebrew; I installed a Hebrew keyboard before I started, but I also have six other keyboard layouts on the phone, because I'm me. If it wants you to type a full sentence, it can get the text running consistently right to left, but there are exercises that want you to fill in just one word, and that breaks it horribly. The words run right-to-left as intended, but they are arranged left-to-right in English order.

Do not listen to its own internal dictionary of synonyms. I have run into this in other languages and it drives me crazy. There are exercises where it asks you to translate a sentence in the target language into English. If you tap 'derech', Duolingo tells you it means a way, a path, or a road. Translating 'derech' as anything other than "way" in the English sentence gets you marked off. If there is some reason why 'Ha'yeled roah derech' could not mean "The boy sees a road" isolated from context, Duolingo does not give it.

I am already cheating by being a linguist who has some idea of how Semitic languages work. My one attempt at an Arabic class was a disaster for non-Arabic-related reasons, but I do know basic things like the idea behind an abjad, handling regular transformations of letter shapes at the end of a word, and how words are constructed by adding vowels/prefixes/suffixes to a triconsonantal root. These would be completely alien to most English speakers. There is a systemic way to accomplish transformations like the one from "(male) child" ('yeled') to "(female) child" ('yaldah') or "children" ('yeldim'), or from the noun "food" ('okel') to the verb for "to eat" ('le'kol'), but it is never actually pointed out.

I also have a living resource who grew up speaking Hebrew and enjoys teaching people things, usually at great length. I can ask the Eccentric all the weird stuff and he'll give me a long, detailed answer, fully 60% of which will have something to do with the original question. Technical grammar questions can be Googled to good effect, but the answers to cultural questions are, at best, unreliable. (Example: "Does Modern Hebrew have regional accents?" Google answer: "Modern Hebrew is very young and spoken in a contained geographic area. While there are some tiny variations in pronunciation and vocabulary, these are so slight it is unlikely a non-native speaker would ever notice them." Answer from actual Israeli person: "Absolutely, remind me next time I see you and I'll do imitations, some of them are hilarious.") [The question of accents is especially pertinent; I am never comfortable in a language until I sound like myself, and since I don't sound like a textbook all the time, this usually means picking a dialect to drop into. My informal Japanese tends to stay Tokyo-standard in grammar but in tone is rather bokukko, for instance. It's marked in speech (although often the actual pronoun boku is used in internet Japanese by female blog authors who don't want to be explicitly female in text), but I am clearly a non-native speaker, and I feel it conveys a proper warning that I am not going to do well by Japanese standards of femininity. There are a few potential accents I could wind up with in Hebrew. American is fairly far down on the list; I'm usually pretty good at not sounding like a Yank. The letter Resh is most universally difficult for non-native speakers. I could probably use the French or German R and be understood (both voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/, the French one higher and more nasalized), but the Resh as given in the only explicit explanation I've found is actually supposed to be a uvular trill /ʀ/, which occurs more towards the hard palate than either of those, and with a rounder sounding chamber behind it. It comes so far forward that it is the closest thing I have ever seen to the theoretically-impossible velar trill. Wikipedia says this is an Ashkenazim thing, which explains why you hear it so much in Yiddish. I would definitely be understood if I used the Arabic alveolar trill /r/, which is noted as a variation common among the Sephardim, but it's also associated with Arabic-speaking refugees, and I feel like that might not be the accent I want if I'm going to be practicing this on Israeli friends. I've no idea which one the Eccentric uses; I gather he has one parent from either tradition and they lived in Jerusalem, so who the fuck knows. It's impossible to pick up from his English. He's made no effort to zero out his accent, but he has had three decades to nail the English retroflex alveolar approximant /ɻ/, and more or less does. Chet is voiced /χ/, and undotted-Khaf is unvoiced /x/, both of which I have.]

An irksome aspect of learning Hebrew is the transliteration system. There isn't one. You notice that my Japanese is italicized and the attempts at Hebrew are in single quotes? This is because the Japanese is brought straight across using a standard Japanese-to-Latin alphabet system used in some textbooks and on the internet. (There are other, more precise systems, but they involve diacritical marks that can't be typed on a pure-ASCII keyboard.) The Hebrew is... uh, approximate. There is no way to unambiguously transcribe Hebrew text in Latin letters that is immediately readable to people whose languages use the Latin alphabet. Duolingo doesn't even try. I type things using the Hebrew IME whenever possible, because I'm trying to learn to spell, but when the Eccentric explains things to me he does it with the regular QWERTY keyboard. It has quirks. Words whose transliteration ends in '-ah', as in the new year's greeting 'shanah tovah', are words that end in He, a letter which normally says /h/ but when word-final represents /a:/ for grammatical reasons. He also consistently writes his Vav as "U'" when it's used as a conjunction, even though it's pronounced /v/. My guess is that this is how it is taught in Israeli schools. There seems to be a system behind it, but it does not make sense unless you also read the original Hebrew.

This is all somehow working anyway, probably because I'm me. I made it to Day 18 of my first ever stab at learning Hebrew before I started scaring up podcasts. It only took me that long because I had to figure out how to search for the word for "Hebrew (language)" in Hebrew, because searching in transliteration gets you nothing. Day 20 I picked up a series of linguistic interviews put out by Leshoniada (לשוניאדה, a word which gave Google Translate shitfits, but which the Eccentric informs me is a portmanteau that comes out something like "Grammar-lympics"). The details escape me completely, because I lack vocabulary, but because Hebrew has a very regular stress pattern (word-final, almost always) individual terms are easy to pick out. Between that and a lot of straight-up imports from Greek, the topic of the first episode was easy to get.

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[cascadedkiwi]

A Peek in on My Darker Moods

This is an excerpt from my 2017 NaNoWriMo novel draft in which I basically managed to put into words what I’d been feeling (semi-depressive) beyond my extended writer’s block I’d been dealing with over the past couple years. This character, Shoshan, is not a writer, but an artist, but all the sentiments are from me as a writer. Not being able to write makes me feel like a failure, especially when it is ingrained in my very being as my only natural affinity.

“I don’t show this to Saffie or anyone for that matter,” Shoshan murmured, fully aware Maggie could hear him but not in the strength of mind to keep it locked inside like he usually did. “When I get like this it’s like… these moments when everything around me seems dull, like I just give up. Nothing’s worth trying anymore. Any and every little sound of normal life is annoying and I go from feeling dull to being annoyed and angry and then frustrated that I’m stuck in this loop inside my head that I can’t explain or share with anyone.” He sighed lifelessly. “Just hearing them moving around, going on with life normally makes me feels horribly annoyed and think thoughts like ‘Why can’t everyone just shut up? Why is life so loud when all I want is silence?’ I don’t want to cause any more trouble for Mom so I keep it to myself in my room – not that she would understand if I tried to share it with her. The way she powers through everything she’d probably just try to get me to do the same.” He lifted his hand and circled his index finger around and around as he mumbled on. “Enter that miserable cycle again of wanting to do something, having the idea in my head but just lacking the strength and motivation to actually get up and move a single muscle towards actually doing that thing. It makes me feel like a failure. Like, how am I going through life, through school, and all the other stuff I do when I can’t even escape my own thoughts?” Another audible breath streamed out of one his nostrils and he rubbed at the defective one. 

“Most times I sleep these no good feelings off but honestly, there’s no telling what triggers a mood. Sometimes, if there’s something I’ve been wanting to do, like a certain picture I feel like drawing, I’ll start, right? And it’ll be good for a while. Work on it at a steady pace every day. Then I get really busy and have awful time management and end up skipping a day. The next day I draw less lines. I’m distracted. Staring off somewhere or reading aimlessly when I could be drawing. This continues for a few more days before I buck myself up and surprise myself with finishing a whole section of the sketch in its entirety. I’m ecstatic. I feel accomplished.” He laughed at himself. “I even show Mom my little achievement. I think, ‘this could work. I could try this again tomorrow.’ And I do try. I try to replicate the same thing I did before with another section.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. It was a one-hit wonder moment like they always are. I’m not consistent. With anything outside of required schoolwork, I’m less than sporadic in what I would consider successes. I mean, I can produce stuff that I’m happy with but it takes me forever and that makes me feel like I’m lying to myself, deceiving myself and those around me. Art is supposed to be my passion. I mean, no matter how long I end up not drawing or suffering from artist’s block – and not even true ‘I’ve got no ideas’ artist’s block. The artist’s block I have is just that I don’t sit down and draw even when I get an idea for something I think would be interesting. I don’t make the time. I know I have the time, mind you, but… somewhere inside of me is afraid of drawing becoming a chore to me, something I have to do every day because it’s a requirement. I don’t want drawing to just be about meeting deadlines and fulfilling requests in my future. I want to draw because it makes me happy, because I feel inspired and want to put that inspiration on paper, maybe even share it with people one day.”

Shoshan caught Maggie’s smile in the glance he threw her way and smiled in defeat. “You see it, too, right? How I get when I talk about drawing. I really enjoy it, I have a natural basic affinity for it. I’m no art genius or anything like that, but drawing is something that just comes out of me. I don’t do it on a schedule or even because I’m good at it. I draw because it’s something I can’t seem to get away from. The shapes are always up there, floating around in my mind, twirling and swirling together to form the next possible Cane Moss Sugar Sketch.” He blinked to tamper down the water he felt in his eyes. “It’s always like this,” he said, turning to her for the first time. “I just have to let time do its healing thing. The mood always passes. Even when it goes on for days, it doesn’t affect my obligations. I’m able to focus on classes and homework, but outside of that regimen I’m nearly lifeless. I basically become a hermit. I don’t go outside, I don’t talk to anyone unless they approach me first, I hardly come out of my room. What would start out as me recharging from being social would stretch into… “ He made a face, the muscles in his cheek pulling to one side. “…one week and then two of just not checking for anyone outside of my house. The only person I would really hear from is Sorrel because he knows how I get sometimes.” He huffed. “Says he’s just making sure I’m still alive outside of school.” A cracked smiled stretched his lips a bit. “I never really feel like answering his texts but for his sake I’d send something back. Otherwise he’d show up at the house which was a whole new demon to deal with.” While Sorrel accepted and understood that Shoshan experienced boughts of depression, Shoshan knew that Sorrel didn’t comprehend nearly how deeply those moods effected him, how those feelings of misery and loss stemmed from the deepest parts of his heart. Sorrel wasn’t the affectionate or sympathetic type, he usually just left Shoshan to himself when things weren’t 100% copacetic. He’d hang around in the vicinity, but never physically got close to Shoshan, instead milling about with Violet until he had to leave for a job. It wasn’t ideal, but Shoshan appreciated his effort. At least if one of these boughts did claim him one day he wouldn’t be alone long. That thought made him shiver. If anything did happen to him, he’d definitely want to Sorrel to be the one to find him, not his mother and definitely not Saffie. He could never dream to doing that to his little sister, his literal heartstring.