#it was a great day off beyond that

[thatsouthernstate]

February 10, 2023

I been gone so long, I don't know where I'm going

You be on my phone, talkin' 'bout what's my problem?

Had to go alone to get it how I wanted

Had to be alone to figure out how I should be loved

And if it's just us, is that enough?

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

We both dangerous

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

We both scared of love

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

See, bust it like a toolie in your waistband

Bust it like that booty too big and you need two hands

Bust it like you catchin' a body and you in G stance

Bust it like it's casual Friday and you herе to dance

Call bluff, I know what's up

Can't get enough

Is it bad that I want morе?

Is it too late for us?

We both dangerous

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

We both scared of love

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

Mmm, pressure, I won't learn my lesson

I want you to stretch it

Limit, want you to test it

I know I was born to roll

I gotta know

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

We both dangerous

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

We both scared of love

Movin' so close, we combust

Is it bad that I want more?

So done with you

Nobody hurt me like you do

Every time you break my heart, it feel new

Every time I fall apart, I call you

I just wanna be loved

And loving you sucks

I can't get enough

Is it bad that I want more?

Is it too late for us?

[jamiesfootball]

Always lowkey simmering a Leverage AU in the back of my head hear me out:

Ted is an ex-insurance investigator who was able to get his son life-saving medical treatment because his first, original Crime Pal Beard was like ‘Ted if your company doesn’t come through with the coverage, we’re doing things my way.’

The company did not come through. The company did let him go due to suspicion of Ted’s involvement in the incident, but Ted will happily remind folks that no charges were formally pressed. Henry is alive and healthy and living with Michelle, who divorced Ted shortly thereafter (not just because of pre-existing marital problems, but because Ted wouldn’t tell her anything about why the doctors “””suddenly decided to do the procedure for free”””). Shortly thereafter, Ted fled the country.

What Ted learned from the whole experience is that there’s a lot of people out there, good people just trying to live by the rules, but sometimes things happen that are just out of their control. And well- if we’ve got the means to help the good people out when no one else will, then shouldn’t we try?

“We’ve got means,” Beard agrees. “And motives.”

They do things Beard’s way now.

[fictionadventurer]

Many men had offered her many things in the past, love and friendship, luxury and jewels, entertainment, dogs, amusements, homage--some she had accepted, some refused, but no man before had offered her work. Peter had offered her that, he had offered her a share of his--not noble or inspiring or fascinating work, just his work, what he had. He had offered it her, called her great energies into play, and set her to work beside himself in a furrow. And she was glad; for some reason she found it very good.

--Desire by Una Lucy Silberrad

[good--merits-accumulated]

i fear i am endlessly predictable (writing new dps au which is once again fantasy with Arthurian elements)

[hirazuki]

Hira's year in medical review:

Me, August 2023: *experiencing extreme fatigue, fainting spells, mood swings, sudden and drastic increase of suicidal thoughts, and intense hair loss*

P.A: let's do blood work

Me: ok!

Bloodwork: *normal except for prolactin*

Doctor: sometimes that's a fluke so let's retest

Me: ok

Bloodwork: *exactly the same*

Doctor: your values are higher than normal range, but not high enough to be in range for a pituitary gland tumor.

(P.A: go see an endocrinologist and get an MRI, that might be indicative of a pituitary gland tumor.) <- bless this person and only this person in particular

Endocrinologist, seen earliest available which was January 2024: *wants to retest blood work instead of ordering an MRI*

Me: ... ok

Bloodwork: *the same*

Me: can we please do an MRI now?

Endocrinologist: Well. Your values are above the normal limit, but it's highly unlikely that's it's a pituitary gland tumor because they are not high enough for that. Let's retest blood work in four months.

Me: ...................... ok

Bloodwork, May 2024: *THE SAME*

Endocrinologist: hmm, I recommend an MRI

Me: *gesturing angrily*

MRI, June 2024: 🎉 pituitary gland tumor 🎉

Doctor, when I went in for something else: I doubt your endocrinologist will want to treat that, we typically don't treat adenomas that small

Endocrinologist, who took 3 weeks to review my results: I recommend just monitoring. It's highly unlikely that this is causing your symptoms, it's too small for that.

Me, July 2024:

[danielnelsen]

there’s so much i wanna do this week/month/etc but i’m just too sick, i have no energy, i can’t sleep, i’m constantly nauseous and headachey and on the verge of a migraine, i’m stressed and irritable and impatient and panicky…….how tf did i survive nearly 5 years of high school untreated if i can’t even manage this when i don’t have any major obligations rn

[mariocki]

Shadows of Fear: Sour Grapes (1.9, Thames, 1971)

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

"What? Uh, eh - eh, no. Nein."

"Habla... usted español?"

"Uh, no hablo. Inglés. English."

"Ich spreche kein Englisch."

"Oh, wonderful. Here we go."

"What d'you think he wants?"

"Feel free to ask."

[digitaldiseas3]

i’m so excited for my next opportunity to abuse substances

[daz4i]

how to stop thinking any good thing someone says to you (like compliments or being proud of you or other positive expressions such as these) is a lie just to be polite or bc they're biased and thus can't judge you work and your being objectively bc they love you. asking for a friend

[ncthandrake]

i was saying yesterday to a friend that i just wanted one day where my health isn’t incredible awful and it actually happened? wtf?

[areyoudoingthis]

I feel so ancient with this sex on screen conversation floating around because I've been through most stages of the evolution of queer representation on tv (minus the very early ones when i was a baby) and I know beyond a doubt where we're at with ofmd but what am I gonna do, draw a diagram of every battle I've been through that has led me here?

[quetzalcoatlrandomthoughts]

Took a 'I guess your sexuality' quiz (link)

I'm actually pansexual, but this was surprisingly close since being pan most likely wasn't an option.

[fictionadventurer]

Belle's first scene as a nurse in The Artful Dodger is a masterclass in how to get every nurse in the hospital to hate your guts immediately. They should show it to new grads as an example of everything not to do.

[apocalypticdemon]

only seven more weeks before I never have to do ethnographic work again. it's so far away but also..... so close.....

[mothercain]

The Consequence of Audience

As I went there through the long, long wood, I felt no-thing and I was no-thing and I was at ease. The grey ash trees and their mottled plumage were as one with each other, curving and branching to form a ceiling overhead. There was wide separation between trunks, creating vast corridors stretching off in all directions before me, behind me, all around me. O, what praise I could sing of that never-ending dusk fall I spent between those oaks! None came with me, none came upon me, for I was alone and I was at ease. Yet came the day the trees broke, the corridor ended, and I was thrust upon the rocky expanse that was the Great Dark. There I saw first face and heard footstep, few and far between, but I was no longer alone. It was a shameful deed to carry these two naked hands as they clenched hotly, now in full display for all to see. I had never noticed them in the wood, for I was at ease. Here, the taut skin seemed to stretch and sweat, almost glowing, as if exasperated of their own grip. For as I wandered the Great Dark, there was not but grey, barren rock as far as any eye could see. It did make a passerby out of an observer. I saw them trudge by, fingers dipped into their open mouths desperate for wetness, the lolled tongue. There, in the wood, I was the watcher, but here I am nothing but displacing air. Yet, within the smothering toil of my apathy, I had heard the bell. Murmur of God between their slick, bent fingers ruffled the hair on the back of my neck. My muscles groaned against the weight of the skin around them, aching to be set loose. All at once, I saw, from where I stood, there rose a great dome atop a hill on the horizon before me. Yes, I saw it there with mine own two eyes! The white exterior peered at me with flat orifices obscured through the mist, barely distinguishable from the dark sky behind it, as though all the world beyond the dome was cut from the same slab, only slightly effaced. The convex roof sat atop a disk, held up by great ionic pillars circling the temple. Steps radiated out and down the slope, like ripples in a pond escaping a dropped stone. It was greater than life, greater than the wood, greater than all else which filled this dark, and my gullible delight was that it was all mine. Yes, all mine! One could follow me to it but they could not follow me in. My hands stretched outwards with an audible cracking in the bone as I crept forward there. I could not tell you the rest. I would not even attempt, for it would change no-thing. To know if I did go completely naked into the theater of the divine. If I did need for no-thing, want for no-thing. If I was then full to the brim, cylindrical pull slid through my gaping jaw into my endless throat. If I saw it there, shimmering through the veil like pearlescent oil over crystal water. If it heard me singing with every atom that formed me, through every orifice and wound I had, polytonal in my begging for it to complete me with the fifth. If it looked into me, saw how I needed to know what God knows and to be with him. If it spoke back to me in flat dissonance, “how couldn’t ye?” It would be of no good to speak these things to you. In what way I was still returned to the ground, even if beneath it, intact with my puerile need to repeat my-self and my mistakes. Who would not climb the wall for a peer over the edge? The cautionary tale is the fool’s errand, and I am no fool. I am as my hands are; twisting in on themselves and bursting at the seams. I can-not contain the ache for sensation, just as I could not contain the grief as I fell, nor the agony as I crawled my way back to this rocky countryside, and lo! I am on my way there again now. I am, I am, I am! But I will not tell you the visceral details, as you already know them. You all do.

It’s happening to every-body.

[muffinlance]

Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.

Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.

---

Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--

Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and

and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.

Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.

Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.

“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”

---

She choose her own.

...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.

Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--

Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.

“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.

The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.

---

He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.

---

“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.

The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.

“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”

Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.

Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.

There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.

He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.

“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”

---

They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--

They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.

And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.

“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”

Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.

---

Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.

---

Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.

---

It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.

Oh. They were going hunting.

“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.

The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.

“I can hunt,” he scowled.

He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.

---

“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.

She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.

“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.

“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”

“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.

“Is it,” said Kanna.

---

Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).

Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.

“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.

“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”

---

Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.

---

Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.

The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.

“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.

“...No.”

“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”

She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.

---

Elsewhere, the war continued.

The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.

The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.

The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.

---

Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.