#i mostly included the medical stuff for writing

[thewizardpoliceareafterme]

Time to answer a question everyone needs answered: how do sparkthrowers/guns work exactly?

I lied no one really needs this answered but I do so here you go!

-----

In the tutorial, Boochbeard warns us of spark throwers, saying: "Careful of those sparkthrowers! They'll stun you into submission-- that's how guns work in the spiral."

(nice forthwall break)

Now this is probably to make the game more kid friendly but obviously I need l o r e so here are my thoughts: ->

The guns shoot sparks of electricity, but how? I personally believe it is through the use of 'lumina crystals.' These are crystals that are charged with storm magic in a mill in Triton Avenue(w101). Lumina crystals cut small, so essentially you can 'socket' them into the gun and take them out once they need to be recharged.

Now if you want a gun that doesn't need a recharge, I assume there are expensive options-- for example, a gun that is enchanted with storm magic.

Okay so everything described here doesn't need bullets, in fact bullets aren't shown due ya know kidz but then

COOL RANCH

there are silver bullets?? How spark come out of bullet??

Anyways since metal is a conductor I'm assuming maybe it's just charged?? Make bullet and spark MAKE SENSE KINGSISLE PLEASE I SWEAR-

-----

Last but not least injuries. Since it is electricity wounds will mostly be burns, but enough electricity can kill a person.

To break it down here are symptoms and what happens during electrical shock:

• Outside Body

Can have visible burns but in some cases you look normal. For a sparkthrower, since it shoots out, I'd assume it'd be mostly burns.

• Inside Body

Moving electrical currents can cause damage to organs/stuff around them and cardiac arrest.

- Symptoms

Headache, loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, numbness/tingling, trouble breathing, vision/hearing issues, seizures, and irregular heartbeat.

<- The shock also has a chance to cause Compartment Syndrome.

-----

Last but not least, handling. Handling a lumina crystal is probably safe as it is in a solid form, but I'd be wary if it's cracked or so.

The most important thing is to not touch the barrel while the sparkthrower is being shot or for some time after. You don't want to accidentally electrocute yourself!

[bogleech]

Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:

BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles. Links to some of the most popular content:

POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.

DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.

CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!

The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.

AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.

Some of my other internet stuff:

PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.

ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!

COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.

UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)

My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.

TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.

INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles

BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here. SEE ALSO:

HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone FINALLY, HERE'S MY GUIDE AND RESOURCE TO MAKING YOUR OWN INTERNET WEBSITE IN A FEW MINUTES WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF CODING

[hoppityhopster23]

when I originally came across that, I thought that was quite an odd, and definitely incorrect. It’s one of the few things that I could never understand where he got it from.  I remember writing additions and notes about it in the notebook I kept my comments and notes in regarding his memoirs (^1), but unfortunately I had to leave it behind in the big move. :( Although, after rereading the section you mentioned and doing a little research, this was a situation kind of right treatment (^2), wrong reasons. Below are my reasonings, which are mostly scientific and from some major medical groups. my sources are are the very last part of this post if people are curious:  ------ (the list is all that Larrey writes for the treatment he used for sea sickness)

laying in a hammock: it is recommended to reduce motion in the modern day. hammocks are great for reducing a decent amount of motion depending the type of hammock and how its set up. if the set up on that ship was anything like the HMS Victory’s, the motion that caused the biggest problem is minimized.

not staying below decks and fresh air: all the works I read on reducing both motion sickness and sea sickness (^3) say to stay on deck and/or get fresh air.

exercise: exercise, like taking a walk is also recommended on NHS’s website.

Diet: Larrey recommended Light, non rich foods, and no alcohol or tobacco. the NHS, recommends to not drink alcohol and non heavy foods, but makes no mention of smoking. The CDC says something similar to Larrey, but add to keep hydrated. 

over the top bit that I couldn’t find a benefit to: Bandage of the head or bath with vinegar, although neither could harm the patient.  -----

(^1)  I should mention just how difficult it is to read (at least for me) because of just how many old medical words and how its the start of a “phone tree” of assorted medical documents. he wrote assuming that the reader would have read the other articles/journals. (I have been tempted to write a series of posts (or maybe even a small book?) to try  to help understand everything. at least if anyone is interested, but I digress.) 

(^2) technically over the top, but this is a young Larrey we’re talking about.

(^3)  which are the same, one is just on land and the other sea    Sources: NHS on motion sickness

On Seasickness

CDC on motion Sickness

Larrey on seasickness

So I decided to at least briefly browse Larrey's memoirs before reading a book on him - I had forgotten how entertaining 19th century medical ideas could be.

Sea sickness, according to Larrey, is caused by heavy storms (which we know today is not necessarily so) and results in part simply from the patient’s imagination when seeing these huge waves and undergoing brisk sideways and up-and-down movements; he fears to see the ship be destroyed. But there also is a physical cause:

These unnatural movements cause jolts whose effects are concentrated in the brain, the part of the body most susceptible to shocks because of its mass, softness and lack of elasticity. The molecules of this organ, after experiencing a kind of shaking, collapse in on themselves, and hence all the symptoms that characterise seasickness. The larger and softer the mass of the brain, the more susceptible it is to these causes; this is why young people and those with very large brains are most prone to seasickness. People of advanced age, whose brains are smaller and more consistent than those of young people, are less prone to this disease. Inhabitants of maritime coasts and cold climates, in whom the cerebral mass is generally less developed than in those who live in warm countries and inland, are much better accustomed to the vicissitudes of navigation; in other words, they are less prone to seasickness.

If small brains help against motion sickness, I know a few people who should be totally immune....

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thoughts on Echo as amputee/disability representation

First and foremost, I am not disabled or an amputee and I don’t claim to speak for those communities (and if I was I couldn't speak for everyone). What little I do know mostly comes from this youtube channel (@oakwyrm), this post, and other research I’ve done for my writing (and like one amputee I kinda knew in passing). By all means correct me and add to the conversation, I just have some thoughts I want to share because I haven’t really seen this discussed anywhere

Overview

So Echo is interesting. He is a triple amputee which is pretty rare in media. His disabilities come from extremely traumatic circumstances: injured in a near-death experience, imprisoned and dehumanized as an experiment with no autonomy over what happened to his body.

There are a few moments in the shows where Echo is treated… questionably. Like this bit where Rex uses him as an example of the Separatists' evils to convince the locals to fight back:

To be fair, yeah Echo’s treatment does prove that the Techno Union is not neutral like they claim. The modifications that everyone is gasping in horror at here obviously weren’t made with comfort and accessibility in mind, nor with Echo’s consent. But you still just want to be sure that “They took away his freedom, his humanity, they tried to turn him into a machine” is about using him as a living computer, not the fact that he is missing limbs. 

The Batch is also pretty insensitive toward him and his trauma imo, which is weird considering they've supposedly also faced discrimination for their mutations

Disabled people do have to deal with stuff like this in this day and age so I guess it can speak to those experiences. I think especially him being mistaken as a droid (and Hunter going along with it (bruh)) might resonate with some people. 

Aside from that stuff, Echo isn't really treated any differently as a character/person which is really good (as low of a bar as that is).

We get this moment in CW where Echo contemplates that yeah things are gonna be different now

While also (imo at least) showing that he is still the same person regardless, evidenced by the fact that he just echoed Rex :,) I also think it's significant that he joins the Bad Batch on his own terms and we're given a really emotional scene to specifically show that he's not just like 'lumped in with the other misfits' but that it is his choice to go where he feels his place is.

A lot of people, myself included, are disappointed that TBB didn't have more time to explore Echo's PTSD, but I think the one panic attack scene we did get is really good. Even thought it's minor it at least is an appropriate reaction from a guy who was medically tortured (which is more than I've come to expect from Star Wars shows lol)

And it's really sweet to see Omega showing Echo some empathy and consideration.

It would have been nice to see more of his adjustment period, and other side effects like chronic pain and maintenance, but there’s a lot of daily life stuff the show never had time for (i.e. we don’t know if he removed his prosthetics to sleep, but we also never saw him sleep anyway). His disabilities might take on a background role (much like the character himself sadly) but for the most part they aren’t invisible or erased, nor do they define his character and arc.

Physical Appearance

Okay this one is bit dicey, bc on the one hand, yes complaints that Echo’s paleness (most likely caused by burns from the explosion or chemical burns from the cryo-chamber) is whitewashing are totally valid. But I also think you can draw comparisons to real life conditions that affect pigmentation/complexion (like you know burns). So while I understand why a lot of fanart will depict him with his original skin tone and with hair, consider that there are real people who have to live with temporary or permanent changes to their appearance, and the idea of “fixing" him by making him look more like his old self can be problematic.

It's also interesting to note that Echo could act as a reversal of the 'disabled/disfigured = evil' trope. He's pale and bald and wears black and red, which is so often visually associated with villains, but we all know Echo is the bestest boy™

The Headpiece

Echo’s headpiece is interesting because within the show we don’t actually ever learn much about it (idk if there is more info in books or whatever bc i don’t have them so?). He didn’t have it in CW so we know it didn’t come from the Techno Union and therefore Echo probably had more choice with it. We don’t know its exact purpose but it’s most likely related to his scomping abilities. When he is hacking with his scomp in CW, before he has his headpiece, it’s clearly very mentally straining:

We don’t see him struggling like this in TBB once he does have it (though that could be bc he got more used to it over time). There doesn't seem to be much of an impact when he removes his headpiece in s3 ep14-15, except that he gets stuck in the ports every time he uses his scomp which is not something we’ve seen before: 

There might not be an exact real-world equivalent, but the headpiece is some kind of accessibility aid. It means that someone specifically designed a device to help him adapt to the changes the Techno Union made, as well as a helmet that integrates it. It’s removable and visually very present, much like a cochlear implant would be. (A lot of people actually headcanon it to act partially as a hearing aid, since it makes sense that Echo’s hearing would have been damaged in the explosion, but there isn't really any indication of this in canon.) The headpiece is never really acknowledged in the show, but I think that's a good thing. It's something he needs/wants and it just exists, completely normalized, and that's pretty cool 👍

Legs

Sigh... So from the very first episode of TBB I was really disappointed that the animation team or whoever completely visually erased Echo’s prosthetic legs (I think we all were, honestly, if fanart is anything to go by). It’s one thing when he’s in armor because he would probably want to protect his prosthetics, but we literally see him in his blacks and there is no indication whatsoever that he lost his legs even though it was not left up for debate at all in CW:

Like ??????!?

This is just really strange to me! Idk what went on behind the scenes with this decision but I don’t really see why it would be that much harder to animate or anything since it’s 3D and they've done it before. We do see some pretty sophisticated cybernetic technology in Star Wars canon that mimics real limbs:

But Luke’s fancy hand is technically 20ish years from now, so Anakin and Maul are more of a representation of what level we could expect here

So yeah, for no apparent reason, his leg amputation is effectively, visually and narratively nonexistent. Which is not great 👎

Arm!

The scomp on the other hand (uh lol!) is the complete opposite and I kinda love it!

At first I, like many others, thought it was a bit odd that they didn’t give Echo a prosthetic arm. Losing hands is basically a Star Wars tradition at this point, so robotic arms/hands are well established within the worldbuilding: 

We aren’t necessarily given a canon reason for why Echo doesn't get a cybernetic arm (again unless it's in some lore book I haven’t read, sorry). General fanon explanations I’ve seen are that he either couldn’t because the Techno Union wired the scomp too far into his nervous system, and/or the resources to give him one were deemed too expensive for a clone (what about his legs tho?), or that he chose not to, usually because he thought the scomping was useful. 

Regardless, I actually really love this choice (and it's the whole reason I made this post), because here's the thing: There’s a lot of problematic tropes out there that either erase/cure disabilities or compensate them with perks (like how pretty much any blind character is actually not blind by some sort of magic power). With amputees that is done with robotic arms. The character is still an amputee or course, and there is still value in that representation, if this story from Mark Hamill that makes me tear up is anything to go by:

but for the most part these characters function like anyone else, just with a limb that looks a little different. It’s no more than a video game skin, an able-bodied actor with a green screen glove. It “cures” the disability, or it actually makes the character even stronger than usual: 

It usually makes sense within the world of the story, but the reason it’s not so great in my opinion is that in the real world we just do not have technology anywhere close to that yet. Prosthetics can more or less replace any mobility from lost legs, but not for all the complexities of a hand (and even if they could the average person wouldn’t be able to afford it).

So

I think it's actually really super cool that Echo’s scomp bypasses the canonically-established amputee erasure and functions much like a stump would irl. He integrates it into his movements and everyday life and it’s (as far as I know) a lot closer to an everyday amputee’s experience. 

It doesn’t define his character, it doesn’t hold him back, he lives a full life, the other’s don’t treat him any differently, and he’s still a total karking badass 

The only additional thing is that he sometimes uses it as a weapon (which given his story, I think it’s cool to see him taking back autonomy in a way, and we only see that like twice)

And also the scomping, which could be seen as the 'added/compensating superpower' trope. But narratively it's no different than if he was plugging in with a hacking gadget of some kind (he didn't necessarily "need" to lose his arm for it) and it’s not like Echo is completely defined by this skill. Personally, I think it's well worth the positives of him actually having a visible and realistically impactful amputation. 

I see a lot of posts or comments out there that say stuff like “how come Echo doesn’t get a hand?” or fanworks that do give him one and I just think it’s a bit of a shame. If he did get a robotic hand, it just would have disappeared the same way his legs and Anakin’s arm did (aside from that one time he got yoinked by a magnet). When Echo did “get a hand” in the last two episodes there were comments like “yay he finally got a hand! but it doesn’t even work” but I was actually so relieved that it didn’t! Bc for one thing that wouldn’t make any sense, he grabbed it off a droid, it wasn’t designed to implement with his scomp, that would be really complicated. But more importantly because it again refused to erase/cure his disability! It functioned like a real-world cosmetic prosthetic (useless beyond appearance) which is exactly what he needed it for, so that he could blend in better with his disguise.

And he continually took it off throughout the episode and ditched it at the end. He only used it for the necessity of a stealth mission, he doesn’t feel the need to visually “fit in” in his daily life. 

And, last but very much not least, he made a dad joke and from my intel that is very accurate representation!

TLDR: Echo’s scomp is actually really cool from an amputee representation perspective, especially within Star Wars, and I think that deserves some appreciation 

[catboybiologist]

Hiya! I'm CatboyBiologist.

The unhinged, unfiltered side of @hi-sierra.

I'm a degenerate trans woman that posts thirst traps like this:

I'm also a graduate student in molecular biology and outdoor enthusiast. The kinds of stuff I post here include:

Perspectives on biology and gender

Thirst traps, including tgirl tummyposting

Other science and technology rambles/essays

Fiction writing attempts

HRT explanations and perspectives, from the perspective of a transfemme scientist-in-training (NOT a medical professional)

Violently bisexual meltdowns

Attempts at comedy

Making my ADHD everyone else's problem

Hiking/backpacking stuff

Any other shitposts I think are appropriate for this trash heap

This blog is largely completely unfiltered bullshit-welcome to the dumpster heap! If there's any intention behind this blog, its to show the science-loving, outdoorsy, "clean cut" aspects of my personality, alongside the openly queer, degenerate tranny aspects to show that they can coexist. Welcome!

I've also been casually streaming some pokemon nuzlockes on twitch recently. Generally I hop on on Saturdays. It's a nice little social club for the community, feel free to stop on by:

As a grad student, money is always on the tight side for me, so anything thrown at my kofi is appreciated. If you like what I do, consider donating a little bit:

Anyone is free to tag me or interact with me, in any way! This includes tagging me in tgirl tummy tuesday! I will never object to that outright, however, I may not interact back with everything. It's a combination of ADHD, and a few personal warnings/boundaries, like:

I will not reblog full NSFW/sexual nudity here, at my discretion. Feel free to still tag me in NSFW things, though! I just may not RB.

I often push the limits of SFW without crossing them. I tag racier stuff as #sierra nsfw, or common tags like #tgirl tummy. However, I slip up a LOT, so if you're a minor or uncomfortable with that, you have been warned.

I sometimes interact with transphobia, mostly to smack it down. I tag it as best I can as #cw transphobia.

For personal comfort, I will likely never interact with drugplay related CNC, sexualizing my bulge, or sexualizing teacher/student dynamics.

Assorted links, including where else to find me and previous pinned posts, are under the cut.

Other places to find me:

Reddit profile: main alternate place to find me, I show up on 196 and trans subs a lot.

Instagram page: less frequently, but consistently active.

Bluesky page: mostly inactive, may change in the future.

Fediverse page on tech.lgbt: mostly inactive, may change in the future.

Previous pin #1

Previous pin #2

Previous pin #3 (contains more links to guides and notable posts I've made)

Bonus tortoise! At the time of writing, he's in a pseudo-hibernation state and staying with relatives. But stay tuned for fall- his hibernation clock is backwards.

[boimann]

A while ago you made a post abt neurodivergent headcanons for the TF2 characters, and included Medic having chronic mania/hallucinations. As someone who experiences those very things I’ve been wanting to hear further on your thoughts surrounding this headcanon (that I share myself :D). If you’re up for/comfortable with writing abt it, I can understand if you’re not :) Still! I wanted to say I enjoyed seeing a headcanon abt medic dealing with psychosis that wasn’t an angst fest or “grr scary and evil!!!” Type deal

I feel the same way I'm exhausted of seeing psychosis always get demonized (that headcanon was basically just me projecting on my favorite little guy) also i have been dying for an excuse to expand on this headcanon so thank you anon!!!!

as said in my previous post medic has hallucinations on the daily, mostly minor auditory stuff

I don't think he would be freaked out by his hallucinations, he'd be fascinated by them and he would want to study them (he follows cartoon logic: he hallucinates a big scary monster and he sticks his head in its maws and marvels at its teeth)

sometimes tho he gets too wrapped up in his hallucinations and has a hard time separating what's real from what isn't and that's where Archimedes comes in

medic trained him to pick up on certain cues to which he responds by perching on his shoulder and applying pressure therapy by pressing on the side of his neck

other times he tries to get medic to pet him to distract him and make him focus on something soothing instead

occasionally tho it's better to ask the other mercs for help and he just goes up to them and straight up asks them if what he's seeing is real

he's told them of his situation and they are all pretty used to it at this point (also this is probably one of the more normal things about the guy who sews animal organs into people)

although sometimes when he's alone with scout he gets to have a little fun with it: he gets really close to him, stares into his soul with his cold blue eyes, points at the nearest corner and goes "do you see zhe grinning man?"

medic has put the fear of god in scout for the funnies and scout has shit himself on numerous occasions

he just likes to be silly in true medic fashion

here are some silly sketches about this headcanon

Scout pov:

How scout sleeps since medic started pulling these pranks

[cripplecharacters]

Hello! I'm planning to draw/write a character who, due to an accident, got quite a bit of scarring on her face and lost an eye. Would they need a prosthetic eye? While searching, everything I found included a step of "And then you'll get fitted for your prosthetic eye", making it sound as if everyone who loses an eye needs to have one, but what would happen if someone didn't? Additionally, would there be a difference between never wearing one and wearing one at first, then stopping?

Hi, thank you for your ask!

Generally it's considered beneficial to have something replace the eye because without it the eyelids will droop and the socket will shrink. It also (more importantly) protects the tissue that's left from things that could potentially get inside, which could cause infection. As far as I was able to research, the former is mostly aesthetic (in adults/people who finished growing, which I'm assuming your character is) but the latter is very important.

However; it doesn't necessarily need to be a prosthetic ("glass") eye - they're the most common option, but eye patches and conformers all protect the socket from debris and stuff just fine (in fact any kind of sealed eyewear probably would). Prosthetics and conformers are medically roughly the same while eye patches do nothing to help the socket or eyelids keep their original shape. (I made a very long post about eye patches but TLDR, I think they're too often associated with frustrating stereotypes and tropes.)

Prosthetic eyes are unfortunately extremely expensive and need professional regular care that a lot of people can't afford, so not everyone can use them. Conformers (basically big, transparent contacts) are an alternative that some people might choose. You can't really see them when they're inside the socket. Here is a very interesting video about conformers and prosthetics by Clay Butler. I wrote a video description and transcript here because the original doesn't have them. It explains a lot of things in a very comprehensible way from a first-person perspective. If you want something that makes sense other than a prosthetic this could be a great thing to consider :) (smile)

If someone doesn't have anything to protect their socket, they risk infection and all the problems associated with it. So you technically could go fully bare, but it's less than ideal. I've also heard that the sensation of eyelid going over the eye socket is uncomfortable (because it's so bumpy) but I assume it depends on the person.

I believe that the difference between never wearing any protection and wearing-then-stopping would just be how fast the things I mentioned in the second paragraph would set in. So if your character recently stopped wearing a prosthetic or conformer, their general eye area would probably look more "normal" than if they never wore it at all.

Here's also the facial difference post that I always link for people making characters with facial scars, which might be helpful to you.

I hope this helps 🙂 (smile emoji)

mod Sasza

[lexirosewrites]

I had a horrifying omegaverse idea. Dont mind if you wait for Sunday. I know you normally have Steve as an omega, but just this once:

Omegas in heat are in genuine danger around alphas. A few, mostly ignored, people claim that alphas can control themselves if they really want to, but there are many cases of Alphas injuring themselves, to the tune of breaking their own bones, to get to an omega in heat. There are suppressants that can help, but they’re not a sure thing and alpha centric society means that it’s seen as demeaning for alphas to have to limit themselves.

What society has managed is really really good suppressants for omegas. Every society has had some kind of suppressant all the way back to prehistory, but modern medicine is a wonder. It almost completely wipes out the pheromones that make alphas lose it. And sure, omegas have to pay for the suppressants, and take them for the entire month leading up to their heat, and the list of side effects is hella long, but no omega risks doing otherwise. An omega in heat who gets caught can comply, and hope they don’t get forcibly mated, or they can resist, and hope the alpha doesn’t go into a frenzy and kill them.

During puberty, when kids are heading into presentations, there are weekly blood prick tests, and any indication of a spike in hormones sees the kid off to a special secure medical units, staffed by betas, to keep them safe. Alphas get mild sedatives and a space without anything to hurt themselves or others with. Omegas get personal guards, similar rooms, and pain meds. After, alphas go about their lives, a little smug. Omegas go on suppressants, but, they just need to stay home for the three or so days of their heat.

By seventeen, anyone that hasn’t presented is determined to be a beta. 99.9% of presentations happen by age sixteen. The next year is for security. By seventeen, that last .1% has gone down by another 90%.

But late presentations still happen. It’s alphas presenting late usually. 4 out of 5 times. The other is an omega. Those are the stuff of nightmares.

Eddie is a beta. He’s not shocked, almost his entire family is. There’s a cousin or two on one of the branches that were recessive omegas. There’s a guess that a great great great grandpa was an alpha. But Eddie? Definitely a beta.

There’s not a magic formula that causes late presentations, and it happens too rarely and too suddenly for studies to be anything but anecdotal. Almost every late presentation goes… badly… for the omega.

Eddie drops into a presentation heat in the summer of 86, in the middle of the soup aisle. There’s half a dozen alphas in the building, including Steve, who was trying to get the rest of the cream of mushroom from the back of the shelf. Steve, who takes the alpha suppressants daily because he never wants to be like his dad. Steve, who lost some of his secondary sense of smell thanks to the last few years. Steve, who has a hell of a crush, but was never going to say anything about it. Steve, who never wins a fight.

So you have Eddie, terrified, in pain, vicious in his vulnerability, convinced this is how he’s gonna die, because no way in hell is he going to submit to whoever gets to him first. And you have Steve, clinging to control so he can hold off the other alphas long enough for emergency personnel to get there.

ohhh🥺🥺 poor eddie not expecting that and poor steve who just wants to help and is literally the worst fighter known to man!

(side note: i read omega eddie/alpha steve with no issue, even if it’s not what i tend to write. i love seeing different combinations of designations so please throw them all my way!)

[operator-report]

In middle school, I read a short story for English class called Flowers for Algernon. Maybe you’ve read it, too. In the story, a disabled man named Charlie is given a medicine that cures his disability. Over the course of the story, he comes to realize that his “cure” is temporary and that he will “regress” into being disabled again. The story makes it clear that this is a tragedy. As a disabled teenager when I first read it, the story affected me deeply.

I’d like to talk about David and Noelle. 

Content warnings for discussion of suicide, self-harm, ableism and eating disorders below the cut. Spoilers for Worm through arc 27. 

When I was first reading arc 18, one of the things that stuck out to me is how much time the story spends on Eidolon. For me, it was the first time I paid much attention to him - prior to that, Eidolon was just an extremely powerful background character to me. But in arc 18, we learn that (1) Eidolon is losing his powers and (2) he believes that fighting Echidna will allow him to tap into some sort of reservoir to bring them back.

We find this out, of course, through Tattletale exposing him, which is always an extremely embarrassing event for Tattletale’s target. It makes it extremely clear that what Eidolon is doing is pathetic. He is going to kill a teenage girl so he can feel something. 

Which would be messed up enough, right? We don’t need to make this even worse, right? Wrong. Because Wildblow has spent the last several thousand words building up the Case 53s as X-Men style metaphors for oppressed groups, and one of the forms of oppression that Wildblow generally writes well is ableism. I think you can consider most, if not all of the Case 53s as disabled in some way. I think the link is extremely clear with Noelle.

Noelle doesn’t get her powers from traditional Cauldron human experimentation - at least, not directly. Instead, she and Krouse are facing what is, to them, a no-win scenario. They’re quarantined with limited access to medical care. Breaching this quarantine would permanently render them criminals. If Noelle survives her surgery, which is a pretty big if, she’ll become disabled, in a way that both Krouse and Noelle agree is ugly and undesirable. She won’t be able to do “boyfriend-girlfriend stuff” because she won’t be “any good to look at, after.” 

Krouse and Noelle are terrified of death, yes, but they’re also terrified of disability. They are desperate for control over Noelle’s body, control that, as of that moment, only the state has. (Remember the quarantine?) Krouse pressures Noelle into drinking the vial. Noelle is cured. 

Noelle’s cure does not last. In attempting to assert control, her body becomes uncontrollable. Her body is her trauma and her eating disorder made literal. She still needs care.

Worm would be bad if this is why her life sucks. But Worm does something better, instead. Noelle goes through hell, not just due to the sheer difficulty of having her power, but because of the way her teammates and Coil treat her. They talk about Noelle like she’s already dead. They’re ashamed of bringing her the food she needs. When Krouse “includes” Noelle in a discussion in arc 12, it’s mostly perfunctory. They do not believe Noelle is human any longer. They lock her away.

Noelle doesn’t want to be put in a cage. Noelle doesn’t want to be dehumanized. In interlude 18, when we get insight into Noelle’s thoughts, we learn that what Noelle is angry about is the fact that Krouse locked her in a concrete bunker and placated her. When she tells people not to look at her, there’s a coda to that sentence that she doesn’t get to verbalize: don’t look at me like that. 

This is the person who Eidolon is going to kill. 

Via the Simurgh, this is a person Eidolon has unknowingly created.

A few thousand words of Worm go by. It’s Gold Morning. Eidolon is fighting Scion. Now, at the end of the book, we finally get substantial insight into David, the man behind the mask. 

David takes a Cauldron vial to cure his disability. David sees this as the only way out, after an unsuccessful application to join the military, and then, an unsuccessful suicide attempt. David is bearing an immense amount of shame and internalized ableism. David is worried that father’s friends are watching him. (Don’t look at me.) David cleaves the world into two kinds of people: those who can have jobs, who are liked and respected because they are useful; and people like him, who are useless.

It’s a terrible way to think. Without that worldview, how could a person not take the vial? David wants to be used, because David wants to be useful. He never gets the independence he craves – not when he’s in that level of debt to Cauldron – but he gets to be useful, and that’s one of the best things you can be.

Like Noelle’s, like Charlie’s in Flowers, David’s cure doesn’t work. His abilities are wearing off. He is essentially told, when Doctor Mother administers his booster shots, that his medicine is too expensive. 

Cauldron creates Noelle. David, as Cauldron’s soldier, has a role to play in her creation. David knows exactly what he is doing to Noelle. It happened to him. Worm fandom talks a lot about David being a father. He’s a father in more ways than one. (David’s father is always watching him.) (Don’t look at me.)

Cauldron never cures David’s ableism. In his world, you can be useful, or you can die. David asks Noelle if she wants to win. Noelle tells him no. You can have a job, or you can kill yourself. When David tries to kill Noelle to help himself, isn’t that a mercy?

Of course it isn’t. It goes without saying that all of this is extremely fucked up. When it comes to disability, “cure” is a complicated concept. I’m not going to get into all the ways it can be treated; this post is already a thousand words long. But I do think that Worm, through Noelle and David and the concept of the Cauldron vial, provides an extremely vivid picture of the problems with cure. 

Under ableist logic, when you have a disability, a cure is something you’re expected to want. Without it, the story goes, you can’t be useful. You can’t do boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. The expectation is social, like the act of staring. Your desire for it should drive how you organize your life – it is control, like a quarantine. David is crushed by that expectation. He throws his lot in with Cauldron, the cure-makers. The expectation is passed along to Noelle, and even though David can recognize that inheritance, he cannot imagine any other way to respond to it other than attempted murder.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that Flowers for Algernon is a tragedy. The reason that story has stuck with me so long is that I keep going back and forth as to why. Is it a tragedy because Charlie goes back to being disabled? There’s a good chance that’s what the author intended. I don’t know. It would be a pretty shitty story if that were the case. Is it a tragedy because people only treat Charlie well when he’s “cured,” and when that stops, he’ll go back to abuse? Seems plausible. I don’t think there’s one right answer. Regardless, when you’re disabled, there’s an immense pressure to seek out a cure, and a cognizable loss when it is withheld. The fact that Worm captures that social pressure and social loss so well is extremely compelling for me, and I’m going to be thinking about these characters for a long time.

[ckret2]

I'd been meaning to do this since I found your account but today I read through the entirety of your Goldielocks fic (or at least, what's available) and all I can say is WOW !!!!!

You're really fucking good at writing these characters, capturing the lighthearted-yet-somehow-serious tone of the show, and the stuff you make up for worldbuilding fits right in with canon stuff. As a lover of making things canon-compliant and in-spirit-of-canon, this fic is like a dream come true. You're an amazing author !

I really look forward to your post-TBOB edits of the eclipse arc and the flatworld arc, I can already kind of guess where you're gonna go with it, but it's still exciting to think about what direction you might take things.

I'm also wondering, are you planning on changing anything about the Death Valley girls, what with the info we got about ciphertology and the like ? Or keeping them relatively the same ?

(I stayed up till almost midnight reading this - I'm so glad I don't have to be anywhere early tomorrow)

Thank you!! I've discussed my TBOB edits of the eclipse arc already, you can see some of them here if you want.

For the flatworld arc, I actually think basically nothing's going to change. Spoilers, but: Bill's world was never gonna be like Flatworld. It was gonna be a big reveal late in the fic ("big" for the characters, not the readers lmao) that Bill's world was actually pretty okay—like yeah, a few flaws, but not "barely-exaggerated satire of Victorian-era ableism/sexism/classism" flaws—and everything the kids read in Flatworld that made them pity Bill was 100% bullshit. It was going to turn out that Bill's world is actually...

... pretty much fucking exactly like Euclydia ended up being in canon—up to and including baby Bill getting medical trauma over having a super-rare cool-ass eye mutation that lets him see the stars of the third dimension.

I was gonna have Bill go "oh yeah, that's why I drove the author insane, I was that pissed at him for making my home world look that bad. I didn't correct you guys because I thought it'd be useful if you pitied me."

I did this because, before TBOB came out, I knew that no matter what I wrote about Bill's home dimension, probably a good 20% of readers would just push it to the side and automatically assume that his dimension was exactly the same as Flatland—like, occasionally readers were making comments about my fic talking about how triangles ***ARE*** oppressed in his home dimension like it was a canonical fact and taking it as a given that I was writing that. For that 20%, it seemed to me like the best way to ensure it got through to them that whoa, this isn't Flatland would be to have the characters assume his dimension is exactly the same as Flatland so that I could say, in story, "no that's totally wrong."

Post-TBOB, a lot fewer readers are gonna make that assumption. But having the characters assume his dimension is a lot worse than it really is is still a part of the story—it ties into the narrative of them slowly growing to expect him to be something more sympathetic/heroic than he actually is, a la Dipper's assumption that the Axolotl poem is a prophecy about how Bill will help save them—so there's no reason for me to take it out.

So yeah, tl;dr: Flatworld doesn't need to change because it was always going to be wrong.

I'm only gonna change the Death Valley girls a little bit. Everything I've currently written about them stays the same; except I'm also gonna mention that, yes, they are a Ciphertology sect, and yes, all the girls in the cult are Cipherwives.

So now I also get to crack jokes about Bill being both flattered and a little creeped out that even after he mostly ditched the cult they just kept inducting new recruits as "cipherwives" whether he showed up or not, like wow, you're just gonna marry him off in absentia to some lady he's never met??? What if he doesn't wanna marry her? What if he doesn't like her haircut?? Every time he shows up he finds out he's got a new wife! He loves the attention, but jeez, girls! At least send him a letter with his new bride's picture and wait for him to mail back an "OK" or something!

[turbulentscrawl]

Identity(V) Headcanons: Frederick Kreiburg

Frederick's headcanons got a little more...medical than some of the others I've done so far. I'm no expert in this stuff, but I do my best to be comprehensible and respectful where certain disorders have to be mentioned. As always, hope you guys like it!

-Ashes of Memory states that Frederick was diagnosed with ‘psychasthenia’ at some point in his childhood, but this isn’t used as a diagnosis in modern medicine. Instead, it’s a term used to describe a collection of symptoms commonly associated with disorders like OCD. It includes anxiety, obsession, compulsions, depersonalization, nervous ticks, and can even affect one’s memory.

-Personally, I also think he has synesthesia. Frederick mentions colors in relation to music a lot (especially gold), and while this could just be something relating to his other condition, I prefer to take it as literal. It’s part of the reason he was enamored after hearing his father play, why he obsessed with music. Frederick grew up in an onslaught of overwhelming chaos, colors bursting and fading wildly across his senses incomprehensible in his day to day, enhancing his anxiety…but when the recital started there was only the song. One symphony of sound and color, appearing before him in a long, unbroken stream. It was peaceful. And he became obsessed with that peace.

-This also explains his “un-Kreiburg-like skills.” His music is not like what the rest of his family composes because he’s writing it to suit both sound and color. He can perfectly identify pitch and can play most songs entirely “by ear” after hearing them only once or twice, but he’s obsessed with the stream of colors keeping a certain rhythm to them, which doesn’t always lend itself to “traditional” Kreiburg music.

-Frederick’s personality is very affected by the above struggles/disorders. He’s a very kind person at his core, as well as very earnest, but he is plagued by fear, anxiety, and extreme self-criticism. He becomes overwhelmed easily. He is entirely aware of all his struggles, his failures, and wrestles every day with the knowledge that he’s a disappointment to his family. Sometimes his situation brings him to tears, sometimes to destructive wrath.

-Frederick has come to accept his need for appearances, that people mostly like him because of his looks and his familial relations. But on his worst days he can’t even rely on that much because his communication begins to break down. His speech becomes disjointed and frantic, he’s tense and twitchy, a look of horror sinks deep into his face. To protect what remains of his reputation, he hides away during these times.

-When he is with people, he behaves as a gentleman should, albeit a reclusive one. He’s terrified of being judged further, but craves understanding and praise, so he maintains personal distance while remaining remarkably enthusiastic about musical discussion. He’s never told anyone but his family about his diagnosis or his synesthesia. They are both sources of shame for him.

-When at his most anxious, he has a tendency to pull at his hair. Whole clumps of his long hair have been lost to the worst of his fits. He’s not particularly sensitive about any resulting bald spots on his scalp, but he does try to cover them with his normal ponytail style because he knows they would affect people’s attraction to him.

-He despises the sound of dogs barking. Which is a shame, because he does like dogs. Their barking is just burry, red fireworks right in the middle of his vision. It always startles him and makes it impossible to do or focus on anything.

-His love language is Gift Giving, and the “gifts” he gives are, predictably, usually songs. It’s his primary skill, of course, so as far as Frederick is concerned, he has nothing else worth offering besides music made in the name of his loved one. He’d be devastated if these musical gifts weren’t appreciated; Frederick can’t take much more rejection. His favorites Love Languages to receive are Word of Affirmation and Acts of Service. He’s secretly a bit desperate for praise, and any actions you take to support his work or help improve his reputation as a musician are better than gold.

-He likes to match his clothes to the primary colors he sees in the songs he’s performing. During his recitals, he changes coats often.

-He’s a picky eater with a powerful sweet tooth. If he could have it his way, he’d subsist mostly on desserts.

[candiid-caniine]

Hey! Long time no see, i know i said id send you a fantasy i thought you'd like but now ive forgotten almost all of it, oop!

Life happened, and uh, i saw that you mentioned your libido being a bit low, which definitely is my case too (im recovering from depression, now that im okay id love to get my FULL libido back, or at least a good percentage of it) do you have any tips on that?

Also any recs of blogs writing in the same vibe as you? (same-ish kinks would be nice but im specifically looking for queer inclusive stuff!) it makes me 10x hornier than the regular video/photo porn!

Hope you're well, you pathetic little thing!

💫

hi friend!! ugh i feel you. sorry i haven't got any advice on regaining ur libido...we just let mine wax and wane as it will, though denial has been a big help in keeping it steady!

i've heard good things abt ginseng and some other herbs. obvs use at your own risk, mind that some herbal treatments can cross-interact with certain medications, remember that pre-packaged supplement pills are often unregulated and may contain toxins, and be aware that some herbal remedies work better on pw certain anatomy than others, and finally that many herbal remedies considered to increase libido are largely untested on trans folx!

finally, sorry it's taken so long to answer this ask...i'm autistic and have been cataloguing lol. i present to you a list of other blog recs under the cut, organized by general vibe! i've tried to primarily include blogs that do their own posts rather than those who primarily reblog :)

note that my headings may provide some context as to what to expect, but you read at your own risk and each blog will typically have its own trigger warnings addressed in the header/pinned. additionally, i've not tagged some of the ppl below because they prefer that "Men DNI" blogs not interact, and idk if "no cis men" qualifies ahah!

all blogs below are queer- and/or trans-inclusive, if not exclusive! there is no detrans/misgendering, at least I don't think - i don't tend to follow those blogs.

hard kinks (blood, knives, etc; includes primarily-cnc blogs):

@puppy-mommy , who also does general t4t kink content, but does state untagged hard kinks!

@visciousest is someone whose blog i scroll when i'm in a Certain Mood ahah,, i won't elaborate

@hell-hound-bites: just. fuck. would drool on his knife blade.

@snuff-fag: its username should give you fair warning as to how wild its content tends to get, so please browse responsibly.

@condor-bait is taking a break right now, and all my love is with him as he takes care of himself. he made me feel so valid and so fuckable as a young trans person learning to love myself in a new way, and i've always been too shy to tell him how much his content meant to me one-on-one (yes, despite its often-extreme themes!), and he deserves as much time as he needs to heal!

@unwillingfvckpuppy for mostly cnc and medical kinks! if you like his style, but not so much their harder content, he also has a more-tame main blog--i just mainly follow/scroll this one!

@vampvictim: top-tier cnc/intox stuff, plus some great knife/bloodplay :)

@cryptidtid is wonderful and holy shit i follow a lot of hard kink blogs lol. incredible

@cnc-pet: i have been following her for a long ass fucking time lol. they post a lot of really good cnc and stories, but you'll also find a lot of aftercare tips and advice on her blog! i really admire blogs who try to balance horny content with best practices

@dollobotomy

general kinky content:

@excessively-queer . just plain old good shit :) there's a good amt of edging and degradation.

@clouded-king was honestly one of my earlier introductions to the queer/t4t kink community on here and how fucking euphoric it can be :) he posts some hard kinks, but generally it's a balance of a lot of different kinks so read his pinned at your leisure!

@ / cottontailx : just good kinky nsft posts :)

@ / digitalpenetration: often specifically t4t which i love!!

@femmelovefemme can step on me :)

@bigothteddies: could not build this section w/o mentioning him :) they had a big influence on my fantasies for a long time!

@hazelj-xoxo: bigtime want her to cuck me. have followed her across multiple blog deletions lol

@transpidered is forever an icon!

@subspaceemo

@writefinch for great stories and text posts

edging and denial, specifically:

@6irlpet is 1 of my go-to hands-down-pants scroll sessions :)

@droolkink is my inspiration!

@flustersluts does exactly what the name implies lol. a good helping of other kink content too :)

@puppycvnt is a 10/10!

@barkwoofbarkwoofbark: we r denial friends imo!!

@strawbrrysub

@blyssful-abyss

@urhighnessbitch is a big fav <3

non-detrans genderplay:

@butchviolence does amazing butch supremacy stuff and i,,, fucking hell. even just seeing their username puts me in a Particular state of mind ahah. they also post hard kinks so be aware as you proceed!

@mtfdomme: i literally just reblogged from her today lol. tbh i want to be their little stupid pupthing. it's not all transfem supremacy undertones/overtones, but that's what i mainly follow her for, plus just general t4t goodness! also, their general personality? and the way she shuts down people who disrespect their boundaries? huge inspiration for me!

@cuntboydestroyer: take me to the animal shelter and neuter me. good lord.

@the-kind-of-dame is the main inspiration for my recent genderplay post lol

@terfbreaking-tgirl (be warned of dykebreaking if that's an issue for you)

@barbarian-lesbian is my other inspiration for the recent genderplay post

@superiorineveryway

weird asf (/complimentary; my favorite type of shit. robots, ND-focused posts, etc):

@specksizedgoddess has introduced me to things i didn't know, like...existed, and that's saying a lot as one of my special interests is kink! never knew how down bad i was to be a tiny buggirl, nor how much i wanted to be someone's stupid little robot... BIG tw tho: there is snuff and gore content here, so proceed with caution if you don't wanna see that!

@sapphling fucked me up real good with some bird!sub bondage posts awhile back lol

@nobelisha: found them through their ghost cnc post so that's why they're in this category ahah! they don't have a pinned so proceed w awareness :)

@devout-cleric: hierophilia/religion kink, and i'm something of an acolyte of hers :) if you've read this far down you may as well know i'm her Little Lamb anon lol

piss/omo:

@latenightomo

@pissheartmybeloved - their URL makes me crack up every time, plus good content!

@hold-it-a-little-longer - good scenarios/imagines!

@ohmyrashi - (i think) my original intro to omo!

monsterfucking/terato:

@septimus-moonlight was my first real introduction to trans-positive terato and i've never settled for half-fun cis-oriented terato ever since :) mind tags!

@eggedbellies as well!

@bredpun doesn't appear to be active lately but still good for a scroll!

@steamandcream

@of-mutts-and-men

[1redhearttalks]

This is something small I’ve wanted to discuss for a while now. There’s a lot of cardiophiles on here who write stories and stuff but I’ll say, there are a lot of fantasy elements that I think would work so well with cardiophilia.

Vampires are probably the first thing coming to mind. I don’t know a lot about vampires in popular media but I know with all the different adaptions people make for them, they’ve included a few details regarding hearts. Some note that vampires have no heartbeat since the body is dead, or they have a very faint/weak one. There’s a lot that can be done with that idea. Since vampires are popular in romance specifically, just imagine a relationship between a human and a vampire, but the person does not know their partner is a vampire until they put their head to their chest and hear nothing at all. Another popular detail people include for vampires is that they can detect heartbeats from long distances. That would make one hell of a chase scene.

Ghosts are something else that sounds appealing. Since they can phase through objects and people, they could slip their hand inside someone’s chest with ease, cradling someone’s heart in their hand. My favorite part of this would be how people claim they can detect a ghost’s presence by feeling an unusual change in temperature somewhere. Someone could feel a strange chill in their chest they can’t explain, oblivious to the apparition beside them.

But I have a personal favorite honestly: sea monsters, like a fish-human hybrid or something? I don’t know. In my imagination, this creature would have some features that a shark has. Sharks have sensory organs that can detect electrical impulses of other creatures from a distance. So, sharks can hear your heartbeat when you’re in the water. Terrifying. Like the idea with vampires, this would be something good for a chase scene.

I’ve just been thinking about this stuff for a while. With all the stories I see here, it’s mostly dark cardiophilia involving scientists, medical experiments, that sort of stuff. A lot of those seem fairly grounded in reality for the most part, but I wish there was more fantasy like this. I think these ideas are kind of under appreciated

[awkward-writes-shit]

Hello!! Welcome to my blog! I am new to writing but loved @hypernova-writes fics so much I wanted to try it for myself.

Requests: Open!!

Fandoms I write for:

-TF2 (Pls I beg of you.)

-Splatoon Coroika

Mostly just those 2 for now but will add more if I feel like it. Plus just to make it easier for moi all my writing will be as Character x Reader.

Stuff I will do:

-Fluff

-Smut

-Angst. (Not very good at it…)

-Yandere

-Headcannons

-Oneshots/Stories

I will NOT do:

-Rape/Non con

-Pedophilia/ way too large age gap

-Suicide (This does not include death)

-OC x Canon

-Canon x Canon

-Smut with Pyro. (I just can’t see him as anything but a kid.)

-And more to be added if necessary

About the author.

I go by Awkward or Firefly

I go by any and all pronouns

I love art

I have a TF2 OC and very much love medic

And I like poems

NICE TO MEET YOU!!

(Banners used were made by @shitpostdevil & @drhimejoshi)

[chronicbeans]

I LOBE U SM LITERALLY YOU INCREASE MY MOOD HORMONES ( seratonin n oxytonin if ur wondering ) WHAT ABT WALLY N THE GANG WITH A COLLEGE OR HIGHSCHOOL READER (platonic fr fr) AND THEY'RE CURIOUS ABT THEIR HW ??

" what's the Pascal's triangle? SOCAHTAH? what's that? "

" literally satan's children idk what to tell you "

and the reader becomes their lil teacher idk abt human things 🥰🥰🥰

thx lizard 🦎🦎

Omg this is so cool! Thank you so much I am so glad I could make you happy by doing something as small as writing fanfiction!

Just a quick heads up, I feel like my high school experience was probably a bit different than most people's, because I took a health/medical career center. Basically, I only had three core classes at the end of the day with the morning ones all being taken up by my health/medical class. So, because I am basing this off of my experience (due to it being all I know), it might be a bit strange to most who didn't take a career center!

Wally and the Gang with a High School Student Reader (Platonic fr fr)

📖 So, you somehow ended up getting the Welcome Home gang involved with your school work. Now they keep you up all night asking you what a "Bermuda Triangle", "War", and even what a "Demand Curve" is.

📖 You better hope that they don't find any of your anatomy or biology homework or textbooks. The thought of them asking absolutely ANYTHING involving those topics is humiliating on its own! You don't want to end up explaining the human body to a small little puppet. Or big dog puppet. Or ANY puppet!

📖 Once, Wally had asked you what "these" were while pointing to a picture in your medical book that showed the organ systems. When you explained, halfheartedly, about how they kept you alive and were inside of your body, his pupils just dilated. Right as you turned around to go back to your homework, you were horrified when his first question was "I wanna see them! How can I see them?"

📖 Frank will be interested in your science books, especially if they include stuff about ecosystems. He knows butterflies are in there, somewhere, because some of the pictures include them. Mostly very low on some big chain. When you explain about how that is a food chain, you are shocked to see him cry for the first time about how his butterflies are being eaten. Apparently the books in Welcome Home never told him that. Then again, the show never included any animals besides insects and the animal neighbors as far as you remember.

📖 Sally wants to know more about this "Shakespeare" guy your English class keeps talking about. He made plays, right? He must be a pretty swell guy! Can she meet him? Oh! And can you teach her more about the planets and solar system?

📖 Basically, every neighbor will have a specific subject they show interest in. Sally, Barnaby, and Eddie will love English. Howdy would like math, simply because he has no idea how this "money stuff" works or why it is so important. Poppy and Julie will like home economics, Poppy for the food science and Julie for the clothing. Home would also like home economics because they are literally a Home. Frank likes science, specifically for the animals and butterflies. Wally would love anatomy and any medical classes because he wants to learn more about YOU.

[virtie333]

Hey, everyone. I never thought I would have to write this, but here we are.

Those of you who have been reading my stuff for a while know that I’ve been through the ringer these last several years. Three personal losses combined with simple bad luck created clinical depression (on top of a lifetime of anxiety) and suicidal ideology. I discovered that I am mostly likely high-functioning autistic and now I’m dealing with age-related health issues. Writing, especially Damerey, has been my escape, but it hasn’t been easy. Dealing with chronic pain and chronic fatigue takes its toll.

Recently, my boss decided that everyone must be independently wealthy like she is and reduced my hours significantly. I have a horse and a cat that need their teeth worked on, another cat and a dog that need vaccinations, a car that needs repair, a house mortgage, car payments, debt from a previous vehicle, and now medical bills. So, for the first time in my life, I had to get a second job just to make ends meet. With my health issues, this is going to make life rough, and I don’t foresee having the time or energy to write anytime soon. I have the outline for a new long-fic, but the odds of me actually getting it written are slim to none right now, which is why The New Recruit may be my last one. I gotta admit, I’m so damn tired of keeping this ship afloat.

Last week on my birthday, I was reading through several old Damerey fics, stories written during the height of the ship. As someone who came into it late, I often wonder how my stories would have fared if I had written and posted them back then. Would they have gotten 500+ kudos? Would they have 20+ comments per chapter? I’ll never know. I struggled to complete The New Recruit. I love it and I’m proud of it, but it kills me seeing it struggle. The kudo count is respectable, but the feedback is… well, I rarely get a lot of comments. Those that do so regularly have become friends, and I am grateful for that, at least. But feedback literally feeds a writer, and not having much leaves me feeling starved and unable to write, especially when I’m already physically and emotionally exhausted. (If anyone is really, super shy, you can send an anonymous Ask!)

I love this ship and I am not leaving it, so anyone else who posts Damerey stories or artwork, I WILL BE THERE!!! I will support it with everything in me. I still have stories galore in my head, including that one that I’ve never had the guts to write, but they are going to have to stay there for a while.

Maybe something wonderful will happen in the next year and things will get better. In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy this story, and if you’ve just started reading this one, I’ve got over four years of stories for you to read! And if I do come back, I hope that my regulars will still be around, ready to join me on a new adventure with Rey and Poe.

Thank you all so much for reading!

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