#leave my vyvanse alone assholes

[gutwrenchflowerbomb]

Grumble grumble grumbles about real life under the cut

This shit is lame.

So I’ve got a triple infection: sinus and both ears. I can’t take off work. My sinuses are so swollen than barely touching my forehead or cheeks or sides of my neck hurts.

I’m on day 5 of no Vyvanse, which is the medication I take for my ADHD that helps me get to like…a solid 74% functionality on my best days. It’s not because I chose to quit, it’s because there is a shortage. It’s on back order and no ETA. Why? Well because so many people are getting Adderall prescribed to them that it caused a shortage there. So docs started writing Vyvanse instead and have now caused a shortage of that. Except that Vyvanse doesn’t have a generic version. So it’s even worse. And I’m on Vyvanse specifically because adderall didn’t work on me. Imagine having such strong neurodivergence/adhd symptoms that taking the maximum daily dose legally allowed of adderall barely helped you stop leg bouncing much less help executive functioning. So now I’ve been forced to go cold turkey off of a med I’ve taken for well over a year.

I’ve also started my period. Not to humble brag but I’ve never really had acne, not even as a teen but right now I have not one but TWO zits: one in the most painful part of the nose and the other on my lip line, both are so swollen that just smiling too wide hurts.

Anyway that’s me bitching about everything because everything is pissing me off. It’s currently after 2am and I should have been asleep 2 hours ago. But I can’t sleep because I can’t fucking breathe and the cough is ugly.

[kyurilin]

IT'S TIME FOR TRIVIA BITS ABOUT CHAPTER 2 SO BUCKLE UP IT WAS A LONG CHAPTER

First shout-out goes to the fact that the opening cloudmic bit is the only part of chapter 2 that existed when chapter 1 was posted.

Shouta's habit of picking at his nails and shit when he's nervous and the fact the entire second bit of the chapter is shaped like that is a @shabby-blog idea that I ran with because I HAD NO IDEA where to go with the segment after cloudmic

i knew where this chapter needed to go (the reveal) but getting there was so stressful

NOBODY. NOT A SINGLE ONE. HAS BROUGHT UP THE RING DROP. I AM DISAPPOINTED. Shouta having wanted to ask Emi to marry him being the KEY factor in their breakup was also responsible for that Shouta and Kohana talk in a way and I loved it

So there's a lot of scenes in this chapter specifically that I've had in my head for years, particularly the reveal scene. I've known since the beginning that Nemuri would see them first, and it jumped between being when Shouta got home from running to just casually forgetting to wear his wristbands in the apartment. But I could never work out how to get it RIGHT with those and ended up with the one in the chapter. Where it got buried in the World's Okayest Uncle mug which is the BEST way I could have done it.

THE TOUYA SCENE GUYS. There's a LOT of backstory to the Todorokis being in Stray and it boils down to- Shouta became the teacher who looked out for his students and made a difference, and Touya is one of those. There's a whole spin off for Touya and his siblings in my head that basically begins with Shouta telling Touya that if he needs help he should ask, and Touya ASKS. And at first Touya kinda begrudgingly admits he's thankful he asked for the help since it gets him and his siblings to safety, but then it leads to Shouta becoming somewhat of a father figure to him. There's SO MUCH that I could write for it if I ever get off my ass. But for more quick details about Touya in the Stray universe- he does wood/metal burning art. He met Keigo while he still had a shitty convenience store job and they've been together 2 years. He's a sarcastic asshole but I love him

BACK TO STUFF THATS BEEN IN MY HEAD FOR AGES, SHOUTA TELLING THE BOYS. It was always going to go wrong! Hizashi was always going to be upset when Shouta said that he didn't want to know them, things were always going to get worse before they got better. And minus the dig about Shouta not deserving Emi, the scene has remained pretty much the same in my head as it is in the story and I'm GLAD

obviously that meant I had to do the bit where Oboro demanded he apologized

NOW FOR SOME OUTSIDE TRIVIA REAL QUICK

everything written up until Hizashi and Oboro talk following them learning Shouta's their match was written over the course of 2022-2023 in VERY sporadic bursts. The tiny bit where Shouta gets home and tells Emi he's fine was written on New Year's Eve. EVERYTHING after that point was written last week in the days before I posted it, thanks to the Vyvanse fueled writing binge I went into my last week off work. This might be why the last few segments of the story are SO LONG comparative to the rest of the stuff. Obviously I love this story very much but I had a hard time writing this chapter so knocking it out and finally getting it done was SUCH A RELIEF. And it would have taken so much longer if I hadn't had my medicine fueled writing spree

Now, another thing that's always been planned from the beginning is Shouta running away after he tells Hizashi and Oboro. Oboro was always going to be the one finding him. Most often this was a very heated scene where Oboro finds Shouta and Shouta tries to get him to leave him alone, but when it came to planning it for real something softer seemed better. It was an outline of the last bit of the chapter I wrote out for Shabby that was the first time the idea of Shouta returning to the park from his childhood came up and just the idea of Oboro and Shouta having a serious conversation on the swings was way too good to pass up. I'm very proud of how that scene turned out, honestly. Shouta telling Oboro he'd found Sushi was also always a part of it, and so was Oboro having kept the umbrella

Shouta going to his sister first when un-running away was somewhat supposed to mimic when he first saw her again in chapter 1. Speaking of things related to Kohana, the idea of Shouta having attempted to run away from her early on was a spur of the moment choice that I'm happy with

Shouta telling Emi about the ring was NOT in the plans but it felt right. There was a lot of closure in chapter 2 for things like that, and I liked that I was able to splice it in before the big FINAL moment

THE BOYS TALK IT OUT. Obviously another big scene I've had in mind. I always knew it'd be an infodump for the readers because it kind of warranted it. Shouta had to be able to explain why this whole thing was so much of a struggle for him and it was meant to show him as ready to open up to them, which I hope to god came through as more than just him throwing this awful stuff at them. Oboro giving Shouta the umbrella back is one of my favorite things I've kept in my head since forever. And connecting Hizashi and Shouta through the overdose was another thing that was relatively newer (still old enough that Shabby only knew the story WITH that connection). I knew it was going to hit hard, but it gives Shouta this moment to realize that without Hizashi being there for that- AS TRAUMATIZING TO HIM AS IT WAS- he never would have made it to this point. He wouldn't have gotten to see his sister again or enjoy the time he had with Emi or even know something as small as the fact that Sushi lived too. It's a good payoff for both of them- Hizashi now knows that this person is alive, and Shouta now has someone to thank for him being alive. This whole ending scene was hard to write since I wanted to make sure it wasn't BORING but also it was SO NICE to finally get it out of my head.

this chapter was 30k. Next chapter will not be 30k because holy shit. It doesn't need to be. But I ended the chapter on the idea of them being at minimum friends, so the last chapter will focus on when they're TOGETHER. Because it does happen. I just have to work out how I'm going about that since I haven't written any of chapter 3. I deserve a break after my ridiculous writing spree.

thank u everyone who reads this trivia and go read stray pls and thank u

I'd like to formally announce STRAY CHAPTER 2 IS HERE