#like I guess that's kind of a trigger for me

[scorpiossslut]

Sweetheart Syndrome— Rafe Cameron. (Part three)

pairing: bsf!rafe x reader

summary: Rafe and reader have always been inseparable - best friends since childhood, their bond seeming unbreakable. But when Rafe's affection for her morphs into something darker, he will stop at nothing to make her his. She is blissfully unaware of the darkness growing within him, finds herself caught between love and fear, unsure of where Rafe ends and she begins. As his manipulation tightens, she struggles to hold on to the person she once was.

Warnings: possessive!rafe, borderline obsessive, crazy!rafe, violence, jealousy, thoughts of murder, unprotected sex.

3. Warning signs.

“Jealousy isn’t a feeling. It’s a warning sign.”

Song: “Serial Killer”— Lana Del Rey.

There was something different in Rafe’s silence tonight.

It wasn’t the usual detached cool or gritted annoyance. It was heavier. Coiled. Like a trigger under pressure.

She didn’t notice.

She was too busy flirting.

It wasn’t even real flirting — not to her, anyway. Just her being her usual self. Being too friendly, too oblivious. Laughing too loud. Tossing her hair. Sipping out of someone else’s cup like she owned the whole damn place.

The guy — Eli, or Evan, something with an E — had a stupid tattoo and a backwards cap. She complimented it.

Rafe watched from the shadows, leaning against a driftwood log with his jaw locked so tight it hurt.

Topper and Kelce were behind him, drinking and watching, too — but only Rafe had that still, razor-sharp expression. Like a blade not yet drawn.

“You good?” Kelce asked, eyeing him carefully.

Rafe didn’t answer.

“She’s just talking,” Topper offered, trying to keep things chill. “She’s always like that. You know how she is.”

“I know,” Rafe muttered, but his voice didn’t sound like his own.

He was barely hearing them. His eyes were fixed on her — her smile, her hand on the guy’s arm, her mouth close to his ear. She laughed at something he said.

Rafe’s fingers twitched. Topper said something else, but he didn’t catch it.

Because Leah had just touched the guy’s chest.

That was it.

⸻

No one saw Rafe leave the fire.

No one noticed when he disappeared into the tree line near the trail where Evan/Eli would walk alone later.

But hours later, news would spread fast — someone got jumped near the beach path. Broken nose. Cracked ribs. Said it was too dark to see who did it.

She found out the next morning through a friend’s story.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, sitting on Rafe’s kitchen counter, scrolling. “That guy I was talking to got beat up. Last night! Can you believe that?”

Rafe looked up from pouring orange juice. “What guy?”

“Um… the one with the stupid leaf tattoo? He walked me to the cooler?”

Rafe didn’t blink as he feigned innocence. “You were with him?”

“Barely,” she said, frowning. “He just gave me a drink and told me I should model or something dumb. He seemed nice.”

“Guess not nice enough,” he said flatly.

She tilted her head. “You’re being weird again.”

He handed her the glass. “Just saying. People aren’t who they seem.”

She took the drink, watching him with narrowed eyes. “Why do you always say shit like that?”

“Because you don’t.”

“What does that even mean?”

He didn’t answer.

She huffed and took a sip. “Whatever. You’re in one of your moods again.”

He didn’t say it, but he felt it down to his bones.

You shouldn’t have smiled at him like that.

You’re mine.

Even if you don’t know it yet.

Rafe.

I don’t even remember a time before her.

She’s just… always been there.

Bouncing into my house without knocking, getting peanut butter on my shirts, calling me “Rafey” like it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing in the world. And I let her. Even then.

She was loud, and soft, and always glowing. The kind of girl who trips over nothing and laughs like it’s magic. And I used to think she was annoying as hell.

But I also used to wait for her.

Every morning, I’d check the driveway to see if her bike was there. Every night, I’d find an excuse to text her about some stupid movie or ask if she had my hoodie — even if I knew exactly where it was.

It wasn’t love at first. It wasn’t even attraction. Not really.

I didn’t see her that way — not until I was sixteen.

I remember the moment.

She was lying on the beach with me, sun on her skin, babbling about nothing — something about watermelon lip balm and how she wanted to get a nose ring. I was staring at her. And something… shifted. Just like that.The way her mouth moved. The way she smiled without looking at me.

It wasn’t cute anymore. It was something else. Something deeper.

Worse.

I wanted to touch her hair. I wanted to pull her closer. I wanted to grab her and ask her who she really thought about when she kissed boys in spin-the-bottle.

And it got worse.

I’d check her phone when she went to the bathroom.

Just to see. Just to know.

I told myself I was keeping her safe. But if I’m honest?

I just can’t stand the idea of her thinking about someone else the way I think about her.

She didn’t even notice. She was always soft like that. Always trusting. Always mine — and she didn’t even know it.

I started following her. Not in a creepy way, not at first. Just… making sure she got home okay. Watching from across the street. Keeping an eye on who she talked to.

Then I started staying up after sleepovers — watching her sleep, just to make sure she was okay.

Nobody loves her like I do. She doesn’t even love herself the way I love her. But she’ll understand one day.

I know it’s not normal — the way I need her. The way I’d kill for her.

I don’t regret what I’ve done tonight to that douchebag. Not in the slightest.

I tried to stay calm. I really did.

But then he leaned in. Said something near her ear. She laughed.

And I swear to God, I felt my heart snap in half.

So I broke his face.

I don’t remember how many times I hit him. My knuckles are still raw. Split open. I can’t even make a fist without feeling it throb. I had to make sure she couldn’t see it. But it felt good. It felt right.

If I hadn’t done it, he would’ve kept pushing. I did what I had to do.

And if it happens again… I won’t hesitate to do worse.

[candywife333]

You Could Never

Pairing: Jungkook singer x chubby y/n

PART 1 of Places You Never Were

Not edited as usual and should end with part 2. Really poured my heart out in this one, hope you like it!

Triggers: sad feelings, crude words and description, intense unrequited love, heart break

She had loved him in the silent ways. And he had simply let her, as though he was doing her a favor.

He never asked for anything but he always accepted. The hearty home cooked meals , the cheerful messages reminding him to sleep early and take a break when he needed it, the silence when resounding echoes of the world around him got too loud. When he needed an escape. Always there.

Foolish girl. I was always there. Invisible, woven into the tapestry of his life --a single seamless thread overarching the entire narrative. Always there, but never seen.

Too trivial to be seen. To be seen with. In the background of his life like a never ending tune.

Even the way he broke up with me was trivial. Like I held no meaning to him after 5 long years of holding him down. It was a text, after he had left for one of his international tours with the rest of his group.

I never told him about what I saw in the studio that day. I simply bottled it up, the grief and then the rage, rocking myself to sleep in tears -dwelling on things of the past that would haunt me.

That night was when they all hitched a late night flight to America from South Korea. It was 5 AM when I received the text, "Let's take a break Y/N. I know this feels like it came out of nowhere, but come on. You know that we haven't been the same since a while now. It's best for me and you , so we can stay focused on our professional goals".

I read the text, a manic, dry laugh escaping my throat. Like something in me had cracked. Permanently. Focused on professional goals. So that was what he was doing with that dancer in that studio late into the evening. Pursuing professional goals. I see, I guess that's what they called whoring around nowadays.

We both knew whose goals he truly cared about. His. Because, even though I had been transforming his career and his life selflessly, mine had changed very little. I was still under-study to a producer, not even an official one. That's what happens when you take shit. From everyone. Including people at work. I guess my relationship dynamics had translated into my work as well.

Days evolved into weeks.

Weeks of unwashed, crusty dishes and funky smelling, dirty hair. But if I didn't show up for any more days- I would be unemployed. So I went back to work. The producer I worked under, Kang, still forgot my name though I had been working with him for a number of years. Still getting his dry wash, still making his piss water coffee, still organizing messy shelves-fixing his life instead of mine. Still unnoticed.

But the world doesn't wait for you. Even when you are decaying and decomposing inside. The machine of the industry won't ever stop. For anyone. The world wouldn't let me recover, headlines flooded with rumors of his projects, his hook-ups, his relationships, collaborations, him.

The text still reverberated in my ears, as if he had spoke it out loud , "Let's take a break". Five years down the drain. Spilled milk. And maybe that's why they call these things break-ups. Because it literally breaks you from the inside out... corroding parts of you that you tend to take for granted. Trust and optimism in the world gone in the blink of an eye.

Those were the days I wish my love was unrequited. If it had just stayed a pipe dream, at least it wouldn't have broken me like this.

I still didn't know where I went wrong. I still didn't as I went through the motions of my monotonous life. He had been warm to me. Kind and considerate, loving. He had called me his rock, his calm in the storm that was his life. All lies. I should've known that I was just a phase in his life. A passing summer rain. We were too different to work in reality.

His life is noisy and vibrant. He lives in stages and luxury hotel rooms. Rented Villas. He passes through places, nothing ever permanent. I live in the embrace of soft blankets worn out by the passage of time and faded covers of books I have thumbed through the pages of a million times. In an apartment I had stayed in for 6 years now.

My eyes fall on memories--all too painful. I try not to think of them, to not see them. Mementos of times gone by. A backstage pass, a hoodie he left behind, a birthday card signed in his messy loopy signature. The pain never dulls, even though its been a few months since the fall out. He has been jet-setting across the globe for his tour.

And just when I thought it could not hurt anymore than it already did. I saw them at the award show. The dancer and him. Walking hand in hand. The dancer was dressed in a golden shimmery fabric, floating across with floor with her lengthy, frail arm on his buff, tuxedo clad shoulder. My producer had told me to come, a networking event from hell.

I was dressed in black, as most of the junior crew were. A drab black shirt and pants that couldn't cover my hefty frame well enough. As if it wasn't enough to see him with her, his speech poured salt on the raw edges of my wounds. "Thank you to our fans, our team, our families", he drawled smoothly. "And to all the people behind the scenes who have seen all versions of me and still helped me to walk this path and achieve so much when I was lost. You are all part of my journey and I am forever grateful".

I felt like I had been sharply slapped on my cheek. I had been relegated to the supporting cast in his life, the side character, the background. It seemed to me, that's all I ever was. The supporting character in someone else's life. He looked through the crowd, his gaze fixing on me - a flicker of recognition. A momentary lapse in his nonchalant composure.

I look forward at him as though he was immaterial, as though he was invisible. Because to me in that moment that was what he had become. He had erased my existence from his life. And he did so proudly.

I didn't win anything that night.

But I sure as hell was done losing.

________________________________________________________

The studio looked different now that it had nothing to do with him. I had purged all signs of him from the studio. The ones that I could anyway. Gone were the days were I scurried around like a mouse, silent and hesitant to pitch in ideas.

I stayed longer than everyone else. I was building myself. Something I should have done from the beginning. Instead of building up someone else. Learning and absorbing all the skills of the producers and engineers around me. Fine-tuning layered vocals, manipulating sample sounds to fit in with a track. Lacing together vocals with syncopated beats.

I asked. Something I never did before. I let them take a risk on me, trying the controls myself when they offered. I worked on demos on my own and one day when I was busy munching on a veggie sandwich , my boss came in, a wry smile on his face , crooning melodically, "You've got it".

I stared at him confused. Stuttering, "Sss...ir what do you mean"? He went on resolutely as though he had made up his mind, "You got it kid. The gumption and the genius. Drop all the projects you are working on as of today. You will be working for a solo artist, crafting together their title tracks".

I sat there completely mind-blown as he walked away as fluidly as he had come in, just as silently.

I worked on the tracks day and night. The rough work schedule and my disinterest in food making me lose weight and gain skills I never thought I had. I thought I didn't have it in me. But I layered every track, made every decision regarding arrangements- no matter how minute. I could hear a hint of the insertion of one trumpet and the chords of one piano piece and know which part of which track I was in. I was obsessive. It had to be how I envisioned it.

The room was silent the day of the title track recording. "Alright", I said to the awaiting room, all head producers and boss in to hear the recording. "Let's make sure the verses for track 3 are minimal , raw, with low reverb. Pull in the strings, and build the tension . Make sure to make it sharp in terms of enunciation of lyrics because once we break the tension... there will be silence in the track ".

The young soloist frantically noted it down, teaming with fear and wide eyes as I explained how it should progress.

One of the senior producers who wouldn't even have acknowledged me before raised his hand. "Are you certain that such a drop, with silence, wouldn't be too precarious. Don't you think it would lose the interest of listeners"?

This time was not the time I doubted myself. I had slowly stopped doing that as I had crafted these tracks together. "I am sure", I firmly responded. " There are too many ballads-especially pop ballads nowadays with the same over produced noises. Silence occasionally would do the audience some good".

There was a brief overture of silence in the room till another producer sighed.

"Let's give it a go".

In the booth, the artist sang the song over the arrangement, and as i sat in the control room--I felt so joyous. Something I hadn't felt in a while. The tracks with the voice sounded honest...truthful... and so beautiful. I let his voice crack because that brought beauty to some tracks. The rawness with the music arrangements enveloping them, even brought tears to a few producers in the room.

When the artist came out of the booth, he fearfully looked at me, "I am so sorry... for my voice cracking. I promise I will do better. Please let me record them again". He looked at me, like I would take away everything he worked for. But I am not that type of person...I don't take people away from their dreams.

I whispered back to him, "We are keeping the tracks as is. If your voice didn't crack, I would feel like you were singing lies. But you can't lie on these tracks... they have to be honest , even if they are painful. Thanks for lending your voice and bringing them to life".

He smiled back at me, his pink bangs fringing his watery, teary eyes. And you know what, I was not at all close to this guy. But I could feel my eyes tear up too. Some bonds are forged differently. We laughed at each other , leaky eyes meeting as the rest of the producers clapped me on the back, exiting the room.

It was the birth of something new.

______________________________________________

The track dropped 2 months later. No heavy marketing circuit. Just a midnight release and accompanying dance performance done by the artist to certain tracks on music bank and other channels.

It was everywhere by that morning. Flooding the radio, in all stores, in clubs, cafes , playing everywhere--even in a few ads and the central track anticipated to be in one long awaited korean drama which had already included it in its trailer .

The title track dominated the charts with its "charming simplicity" and "devastating lyrics and arrangement". Even the most astringent of critics lauded it as a "heart wrenching series of compositions that mimicked the death of love". Artists used it in edits and sang along to it. Even avid indie lovers who tended to harp on mostly overproduced pop songs spelled it out to be " the sound of scratching your soul on glass shards , melancholy and akin to slowly bleeding to death".

Placed in cursive handwriting below the title, in credits was my first name. Embossed in red script on the bottom of the album. Something for once, in its entirety, belonged to me.

The artist, Jimin, blew up overnight as well. He was a part of Jungkook's group and a lesser known member. He had been struggling til now to make an identity for himself, to distinguish himself as he had what some considered " weaker vocals" and only dance skills to show. But with this album, he ascended into the ranks. Showing up on billboard, even getting international acclaim. Invited to perform at the VMAs.

With my production and lyrics, and his innate talent, he beat out Jungkook's solo for the No. 1 spot on the Korean Hot 100- and stayed there for 4 weeks straight.

His fans argued that it was a fluke, a temporary deviation. Nothing to write home about.

But the talents and the machinery of the industry knew better.

Jungkook may have been spectacular, but he lacked depth. Depth and soul that the newcomer had. Singing that sounded like crying... that resounded in the souls of everyone who heard the artist live. And now the soul had someone's name encrypted into it, one that the industry couldn't afford to pretend away any longer.

Headlines ravaged the press, "Rookie member Dethrones Veteran Soloist in Weekly Chart", "Clash of Members due to Superior Skills ", "The Death and Birth of Pop".

All dramatic titles that reached me. I laughed dryly at the soap opera that was being played out in the headlines.

My life sure was changing quickly. I was being fought over...artists wanted me to direct and produce their albums. I had moved out of my apartment into a cozy house that I had always wanted, since I was a little girl. A homey, spacious cottage with a massive garden filled with fruit and flower trees.

My earnings were sky-rocketing and I bought properties to ensure that in case something happened, I still had the means to stay in my new house (that I now never wanted to leave).

At work I felt like I belonged. The other producers listened to my thoughts and took it seriously. I had my hands in a lot of projects. And it was all working out.

I showed up on my first talk show , a panel named "The Sound of Music". It was an entire show talking about female empowerment through music as a medium. The host of the show asked, "You have been behind the scenes for the longest time. Was your success something you expected"?

I pondered the question for a bit. "No, definitely not. But I built it , thinking that the outcome was inevitable . That there is no way I could possibly fail".

And that is how I continued my work. My newfound stability was reflected in my appearance. I had lost some weight from following a healthy lifestyle and my curves that had at one point made me look frumpy, now looked well-proportioned on my frame. No way would I be a model by any means, but my figure suited my frame. I was feeling more active than ever.

But life can't stay perfect like that now, can it? A headline dominated the frame of the news articles, "Idol involved in DUI, severely injured. Can he survive this"?

I stared at the title in bewilderment. Can he? Did he survive? I guess we'll find out.

[max1461]

I now feel that I know exactly what's happening. I have developed a model of this condition that has been incredibly predictive, but:

it seems to defy all medical logic

I struggle myself to believe it, even though it keeps being predictive

The alternatives are basically psychosis and PTSD, because those seem like the two conditions that could make me think I have a predictive-but-medically-impossible model, when in reality I'm just suffering from some kind of delusion. But three neurologists and two psychologists have all dismissed psychosis, even though I've asked them all about that possibility several times (because, fuck, on priors that's a lot more likely). I still think PTSD may be involved somehow, in light of the fact that this seems to be praying on my greatest fears, and there is a flashback-like element to it. But it would need to be a symptomatically very atypical manifestation of PTSD. Not impossible.

Here is my model:

I have such a vivid memory because I associate sensory information with body movements/sensations, and can re-trigger the sensory information by repeating the body movement. I guess this would be some type of synesthesia?

The body movements are tic-like, in that they're often involuntary and can be triggered by sensory stimulus that is related to the one they encode. Whenever I remember an event, these movements trigger and allow me to re-experience the sensory details.

The experiences are vivid but internal.

If the tics is interrupted by other sensory experience, that gets layered on to the original experience it encoded. Mostly when these tics happen though, I am sufficiently absorbed in my own mind that external data is not written to them.

At the dentist, I was making a face which encoded complex sensory and emotional information, due to the nature and content of the panic attack I was having. When I got the anesthesia, my nerve or something got frozen half way through this tic. Uncertain if nerve damage or psychological artifact of the experience.

Thus, I became stuck in a state of perpetually experiencing the emotional and sensory content of that panic attack.

My body keeps trying to "complete the tic", by twitching my face in a certain way. However, it can't. I have repeatedly felt the tic try to go off in my face, I feel some of the twitch and an intense straining sensation, with a feeling that I am about to exit the dream-like state I am in, but the tic fails and I remain in this state.

Because of this, two things happen. Any experiences I have get written to that tic, which feels strange and stressful (because of the intense emotional content encoded there). This explains "the mush".

Also, because the tic can't happen, it tries to come out other places, in other body parts. This explains why I keep feeling the same pattern of movements elsewhere in my body, which feels proprioceptively wrong and foreign because that's supposed to be my face. It feels like it's my face, even it's in my stomach.

By going off in these other places, the tic acquires sensory information associated with them, which is why when it tries to go off in my face again it's weirdly "deformed"—by these other body parts!

The tic is currently settling into a new center of mass(?) in my stomach, so it keeps feeling like my and other people's faces are there.

The tic has a distinct "deformed part", which proprioceptively feels bulbuous and pulsating, and a "correct part", which proprioceptively feels like a series of facial twitches

This corresponds to the correct part of my memories and the mixed up part, which I tap into by directing my bodily focus. When the tic is happening, I can literally get more correct thoughts and memories by focusing on the non-deformed part.

Because I am stuck half way through the tic, and my mind is not used to being there that long, I am experiencing all this hyper-vividly, like hypnogogic hallucinations. I do actually get imagery almost this vivid for short moments as tics are going off in ordinary life, but this is stuck that way.

The "hole" in my thoughts is whatever physical part of my body, presumably in the upper throat, is failing to activate and allow the tic to complete. This is why focusing on the whole, or trying to push the correct thoughts through, often causes me to gag or throw up.

It's something like that. I don't know how that could possible work but this has been so predictive of a model that it's hard to ignore. What the fuck do I do about this?

[bardic-tales]

The Space Between - An FWC / FF 7 Crossover Fic

Summary: In a twilight dreamworld between life and death, Bianca (16) meets Sephiroth (18): two broken souls who recognize themselves in each other before reality pulls them apart.

Pairing: Bianca Moore (F!OC) / Sephiroth

Other Characters: David Moore (minor), Krista Gilmore (mentioned), Rosen (mentioned), Paramedics (minor)

Possible Trigger Warnings: Abuse (implied), blood, character death (referenced), emotional trauma, mental health struggles, medical emergency, mention of suicide ideation, self-harm (implied), violence (referenced)

1.

The world breathed silver.

The air, if it could be called that, shimmered with soft light that held no source. Trees arched overhead in reverent curves, their bark the color of frost, their leaves translucent and glinting like glass dipped in moonlight. There was no sun or warmth here: only a neverending twilight. The kind of silence you could fall into and never come out.

Bianca stood in the center of a clearing, gown flowing around her like ink dropped in water. It was a black fairytale creation, sheer and delicate. The fabric whispered against her legs with every breath of wind. Tiny silver stars were embroidered across it, mapping constellations she didn’t recognize.

She never wore things like this. And she never braided her hair like this either: split down the middle, tight and neat, as if someone else’s hands had done it.

She didn’t know where she was.

More pressingly, she didn’t know why she was still here. Why she was still anywhere.

Krista was dead. Krista was dead because she had killed her. That truth pressed against her ribs like a jagged thing, sharp and hot and always there. She had been ready to stop feeling. Ready to sleep. There had been blood, too much of it. She’d been floating in a static white plane and then . . .

. . . And then this place caught her. Or maybe she caught it. Dreams didn’t normally form this way, did they?

Something moved through the trees.

Bianca turned sharply. Her heart gave a rebellious thud. Then she saw him.

He stepped through the silver forest as if it parted for him. Shoulder-length hair, paler than the leaves around them, framed a face sculpted with such unnerving symmetry that it almost hurt to look at him. His coat hung open slightly. His expression was neutral. Too neutral.

He looked like someone trying to remember if they were supposed to feel something. Was this Heaven? Was he an angel?

They stared at each other for a long moment. Both were still as statues, as they stared at each other.

Finally, he spoke. “You’re not from here.”

His voice was smooth, but not emotionless. Deep, with a note of confusion buried beneath the calm. Bianca didn’t answer at first. Her throat was dry. She hadn’t even thought she could speak here.

“I- I don’t know where here is,” she said softly. Her voice didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. The dream absorbed everything. “But I guess that makes two of us.”

He stepped closer, slowly. Cautiously. His eyes, green, slitted, and almost luminous, didn’t leave her face. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “In sleep. In pieces. But it’s different now.”

Bianca’s brows furrowed. Something about him tugged at her chest. Not attraction—something deeper. Older. A familiarity that shouldn’t be there. You’re the same as me, something whispered in her blood.

Bianca’s brows furrowed. Something about him tugged at her chest. Not attraction. Something deeper than surface level attraction. Older. A familiarity that shouldn’t be there. You’re the same as me, something whispered in her blood.

“I think I’m dead,” she said. Despite her best efforts, her voice broke, cracking with grief and the need for someone to understand how she felt. “Or supposed to be.”

He paused. A subtle shift in his expression. It was just enough to register. “That makes two of us.”

She blinked at him.

He looked down and flexed his hand, as if testing whether it belonged to him.

“There was a boy,” he murmured, his voice distant now. “Rosen. I killed him because he asked me to. He was the last of his people. He said… he didn’t want to be alone.”

Bianca wrapped her arms around herself, her sheer sleeves crinkling like starlight. “There was a girl,” she whispered. “Krista. She lied to me. And I loved her. I thought she was saving me. But she wasn’t. I killed her to save myself and I —”

They didn’t say anything for a while.

The wind moved through the trees with a soft, rustling sigh, like a thousand voices lost in the vacuum of time.

He approached, more confident now. He moved like a soldier—controlled, and purposeful—but with something aching beneath it: a pain that Bianca felt in her soul. Like he didn’t know how to be anything else but a soldier. He stopped just an arm’s length away.

“I don’t know your name,” he said.

“Bianca.”

His gaze softened almost imperceptibly. “Sephiroth.”

Something clicked, but not in her mind. Her soul leaned forward. Sephiroth nodded once, like the name tasted familiar in his mouth, though he couldn’t say why. “You’re not human,” he said suddenly.

Bianca’s brown eyes widened. Those words stung. “Yes, I am.”

They stood there, watching each other with the kind of stillness that comes before a storm: or a revelation. A thread shimmered faintly between them, pulsing red before vanishing from view.

“I don’t belong anywhere,” Bianca admitted. The truth was out before she could catch it. “They killed my mother in a ritual. I’ve been running for years. And now? I don’t even know if I want to keep going. I don't want to keep going.”

He didn’t flinch, but something about his expression tightened.

“I never met my mother,” Sephiroth said. “They told me she died giving birth to me. I carried a picture of her for years. Lost it. I think I looked for her in every face I passed. Hoping someone would say her name and it’d feel like coming home.”

Bianca’s breath hitched. Something about that shattered her. Something about that made her recognize the man he would become: her other half.

“You sound like you’re supposed to be a villain,” she said, a bitter little laugh escaping her. “But you’re not.”

He stepped even closer.

“You look like a fairytale,” he replied, eyes tracing the stars on her dress. “But I don’t think you are.”

She gave a dry laugh. “It’s not even mine. None of this is.”

“Maybe it is,” he said, almost gently.

The world hummed around them. Not threatening and not warm. Just awake. Watching as if it had been waiting.

“What is this place?” Bianca whispered. “Why are you here too?”

Sephiroth shook his head, and the silvery strands brushed against his cheeks. “I don’t know. I was dreaming. I think. I usually see shadows. SOLDIERs. Fire. My mother hugging me in a meadow. But this? ” He looked around. “This is peaceful.”

She looked up at him, and for a moment, just a mere second, she imagined what it would be like to belong here with him, as if they were made from the same broken star but split.

"I usually dream of fire, too. Of ash. Of devils calling to me," She admitted, the first time she gave those dreams a form. "Perhaps, we are not alone anymore."

Something glowed faintly around their wrists: a thread, almost invisible, forming a delicate heart-shaped pattern before flickering out.

Sephiroth looked at her like she had just said something he’d been waiting to hear his whole life. He lifts turned upward into a sad little smile and opened up his mouth to say something else.

Then the world cracked. The silver trees began to blur, and their edges smeared like black paint in water. The stars on her gown dimmed. Her chest constricted, as air whooshed out of her lungs.

“No, Sephiroth, wait!” Bianca gasped, holding a hand over her heart and reaching for him with her other. “I don’t want to—”

The forest vanished. He vanished and all that was left was the screaming ache that she had not been a lone.

2.

She woke to the scream of sirens and the burn of lights too bright. Pain returned all at once: her chest, her wrists, and her throat. The sharp scent of antiseptic filled her nose. She blinked against the flashing lights and saw David, her father, hovering.

His face twisted in worry, as his hand gripped hers so hard it hurt.

“Stay with me, Bia," he choked out. "Please. don’t go."

She tried to speak but couldn’t. Something was in her throat, preventing her from even speaking. Her ears rang. She tried to speak his name, Sephiroth, but the name stuck within her, burying deep within the layers of memory, physical pain, and grief.

In a place separated between space and time, Sephiroth jolted awake with a sharp gasp. His fingers tightening around a bedroll. The canvas ceiling of a field tent swayed above him. A lantern flickered from a hook, casting sleepy golden shadows across the military-green fabric. Rain ticked against the outside like whispered warnings.

He sat up too fast. His head spun.

“Sephiroth?” came a groggy voice from nearby. Genesis, curled up in a sleeping bag, as the young man cracked one eye open. “What now?”

Sephiroth didn’t answer. His breath steamed faintly in the cool mountain air. Beside Genesis, Angeal slept like a stone, snoring softly under a rumpled blanket. A worn copy of Loveless sat on a crate nearby Genesis, half-open like it had fallen from tired fingers and it had.

The fire in Sephiroth’s chest hadn’t gone out yet. Not fully. His heart pounded like he’d been running, but towards what, he didn’t know.

The silver forest was gone, but the feeling lingered.

He pressed a palm to his sternum, trying to steady it. Trying to hold onto the scent of glass leaves, the hush of the twilight air, the echo of a girl’s voice that still rang in his head and through his blood. "You're not alone."

He could almost see her: black dress moving around her like smoke, stars on her bodice and sleeves, and brown eyes full of something sharp and kind. Bianca. That was her name, wasn’t it?

But even now, in the cold Wutain night, the syllables were slipping. The memory of her face blurred at the edges like water on ink. Details unraveled. Was her braid left or right? Were the stars on her dress real? Was she real?

His breath caught. It was fading. Already.

He clenched his jaw and stared at his hand, turning it over like he expected to see something wrapped around his wrist.

Sephiroth had to be mistaken. There was nothing: no thread, no mark, just skin.

He lay back slowly, staring up at the roof of the tent, the metal taste of loss sitting thick in his mouth. There would be more missions. More training. More silence.

But he would always remember, for a while, that once, in a place that smelled like forest and night flowers, someone had looked at him like he was more than a weapon. And, more importantly, that he had looked back at the broken girl and saw her.

@themaradwrites @shepardstales @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap @seastarblue

@inkandimpressions @arrthurpendragon @projecthypocrisy @serenofroses

[musashi]

i’ve never quite “gotten” adrian andrews, what’s your take on her? i guess im mostly confused about how she still managed to appear stable after celeste’s death without anyone to be dependent on, altho i might just be forgetting a LOT of the details of that case

the human brain is amazing and incredibly resilient. adrian's hyperindependence was a faulty coping mechanism & an attempt to emulate celeste's own behaviour.

when put under extreme stress, the brain can do all kinds of crazy shit, including just straight up drastically changing one's personality or facilitating an individual to do that themself. this is a function of all kinds of disorders!

for example: no one loves me and now i have narcissistic personality disorder. you would think that no one loving me would make me a beaten waif who wanders around sadly all day moaning about how no one loves me. but that kind of extreme stress put my brain into survival mode, since humans can't survive without love/social support. my brain was like, "shit!! we're not getting any support or care!!! QUICK WE GOTTA MAKE OUR OWN!!!"

now i'm chronically obsessed with myself. literally have obsessed with myself disorder. many such cases.

in extreme cases you might see plurality. trauma often triggers dissociation which triggers a brain to split into multiple personalities/identities. though this is a disorder of its own, the waters between singlet and plural are pretty murky because brains do a lesser version of shit like this all the time to cope with stress. and that's what happened to adrian.

adrian's "true" personality is the one we see in T&T. she is anxious, scatterbrained, clumsy, and emotional. at some point, she internalized the idea that these traits were undesirable, and that she had to cling to others who had their shit together for guidance, because clearly she was in no shape to live her life alone. she clung to celeste, and celeste killed herself, and adrian was left at her lowest without the life preserver she'd been clutching tight for the last however long. and her brain, in full crisis mode and actively suicidal, attempted to fill the void celeste left behind. it did this by transforming her into celeste.

adrian's personality in JFA is her best attempt at an impression of her mentor. she is trying with all she is to emulate everything about celeste--crafting herself into a cold, hyperindependent businesswoman with no time for anything besides her career. it is a costume she wears to prevent herself from falling apart, and it is the armour that keeps her safe.

adrian's character arc is about making peace with herself and learning to let go of the instinct to revolve herself around others. this is why she is so different in T&T. in JFA, her facade is revealed to be just that, and so there is no point in putting it up any longer. adrian is forced into a position where she must now face in kind the person she is beneath all that coping.

who she is... is a bit of a mess! who she is is riddled with nerves and not quite as put-together as she would like to some day be. but as it turns out, everyone likes her just fine that way, and even though she makes mistakes, those mistakes are not the end of the world. most importantly of all, who she is is adrian. her own person, with her own life, and her own unique talents that deserve to be explored.

[fhylie]

the shift towards 5.5 or whatever it will be called has been interesting from the outside. I think I decided early on that I had not much interest in supporting a change; either make a new edition or don't, you cowards.

since all these updates have bracketed that whole OGL business, and since I have friends who are pretty into M:TG, it's extremely easy to see that Hasbro is only interested in extracting rent from its properties, but also, the fact that this is their focus automatically makes it so all of their products contain this kind of fatal flaw that hangs over game design.

you can kind of see it in progress where, first of all, isn't it funny that for the longest time you couldn't buy dice or other accessories from them? I understand that dice are super easy to make so they couldn't possibly corner the market, but they could have at least tried to have official products.

second, you get products like Critical Role, which arguably led to a revival of popularity of their product because of the way it was presented and the passion of mercer's little group of actor friends. which, to be clear, is great for them. I have my minor issues with CR, but it's never been that they're fake fans or only in it for the money or whatever.

third, you get assist aids and character sheet trackers like dndbeyond, which interestingly was advertised by CR pretty heavily, leading to its success. it was a pretty good product, when it was separate from Hasbro, behaving more like a passion project made by people who seem like they missed the very functional 4E character builder. constantly updated with new material, back end programming making it so new mechanics released in modules were supported by the website's functionality, etc. their drive before selling their product was to make it functional and useful, and maybe this was only in service of creating a product that was designed to be sold eventually. however, notably, they did not collect rent. then it's sold to Hasbro, and they go for subscriptions. you can microtransaction yourself into having one feat or race at a time out of a new book if you want (at a cost that would make buying each individual item probably 10x the cost of the book). they stop updating functionality from any new products. in other words, they sit on what once was a useful tool and it stagnates.

alongside this, you have the types of products released by Hasbro during this time. one adventure per year, which is.... fine. it's fine, I guess. thank you for making them, adventure writers in question. tasha's cauldron being an official release of a lot of previously published UA material, most of which was not updated at all. mordenkainen's tome of foes and monsters of the multiverse having huge chunks that are nearly identical. it's easy to see in comparison that they're not interested in creating; after all, it's a lot easier to purchase the products of fans who understand the product and the community and public desires than to employ someone whose job it is to track this kinda shit.

I guess my whole feeling on these events is essentially disappointment. I feel like if Hasbro wants to be regarded as the big boy in the room where it comes to games companies, they could act like it instead of flailing around trying to own everything by proxy via OGL shenanigans or feeling as though they're required to monopolize and purchasing other people's work and then sidelining them. I also think this feeling is echoed by bigger actual play products like d20 and CR where they continually are trying out systems that are not 5e, and while they may not say it's out of protest for observed behaviour, they kind of don't have to say it out loud, do they?

by Mike Shea on 5 August 2024:

Hasbro may be hurling D&D towards a digital future but we already have everything we need to enjoy this game for the rest of our lives. Hasbro is super-excited for a digital D&D future. They're tired of selling us, as Penny Arcade perfectly describes, a single hamburger we can share with our friends every week for thirty years. Hasbro wants subscription revenue from every player every month – not just the single purchase of a book you can keep, share, and use for the rest of your life. Hasbro doesn't want to sell you D&D. They want you to pay rent. Chris Cocks, Hasbro's president and former president of Wizards of the Coast, is pushing hard for a digital future. He already said they're running experiments with artificial intelligence saying "D&D has 50 years of content that we can mine". The new head of Wizards of the Coast, the subsidiary of Hasbro in charge of D&D, is a former Blizzard executive who replaced a former Amazon and Microsoft executive. They posted a new D&D product architect job with a clear focus on digital gaming and a new "monetization designer" which is as close to "professional enshittifier" as I've heard of in a job description. So yeah, Hasbro is really excited to charge monthly fees and microtransactions for D&D and ensure you never stop paying for it. But I have good news for you. It doesn't matter. Here are four reasons why: 1. The three D&D core books are the only D&D books that really matter and they're going to be physical books. 2. With rulesets released into the Creative Commons, anyone can build digital tools, adventures, supplements, and even entire RPGs – all fully compatible with D&D. 3. We have 50 years of previous versions of D&D we can play, multiple competing and compatible 5e variants from other publishers, and hundreds of other RPGs we can enjoy. 4. We have several independent digital platforms we can use to run our games online.

[keep reading]

So Mike Shea's argument here is that no matter what Hasbro does, D&D is enshittification-proof. Personally, I agree that tabletop games (all of them, not just D&D) are to a large extent resistant to that, due to the nature of the game, but digital platforms are another matter. Then again, I have zero interest in digital platforms, so I don't know how they work. Can you incorporate non-SRD material in an independent VTT, for example? Does it matter? No idea!

For traditional D&D, I think it's always had (in its entire history, all editions!) two distinct modes of attracting people:

here is an Official Book of Rules! I should buy it (or borrow it, or pirate it) and use it, because it's an official and authoritative publication

here is a Good Rule! I should incorporate it in my D&D game because I like it, and I don't care where it came from and in what format, official book, third party, homebrew, DMs Guild, hardcover book, piece of paper, pdf, a reddit post, my own noggin.

But last year, they tried an new thing and released a set of 25 monsters for $6 only on D&D Beyond. No physical print, and no pdf. (Previously there had been digital-only releases, mostly short adventures, but in pdf form.) And although I have no way of knowing how sales went, I strongly suspect this will NEVER work. It's just a bunch of "assets", it doesn't register as an Official Publication, there's no incentive to get it as such. So we're left with "is it a good rule?", and there it competes with a million other rules published for fun and/or profit by other people. Why "buy" that one? (You're not quite buying it: if D&D Beyond goes down, poof go the monsters!)

So yeah, I think they'll try to enshittify tabletop D&D, but they'll go about it half-heartedly (to go full in, they'd have to drop the printed books, and there's NO WAY they'll do that), and simply no one will care, D&D doesn't work like that.

[miyuskye]

I found this scene in particular so odd and out of place in the new episode. Apart from the fact that Stolas has no right to be angry at Blitz for "not saving him" when Striker kidnapped him nor to be upset that he didn't tell him about Striker's attempt at shooting him. In Loo Loo Land he's perfectly capable of defending himself (even when he hired Blitz for protection!), why is he complaining that an imp, the lowest class on the hierarchy isn't protecting one of the highest?

In that scene Stolas accuses Blitz of not understanding "how much he cared about him", but has he forgotten that he was the one who couldn't stand up not to Asmodeous nor to the accusations of him "sleeping with an imp"?

This reaction shows the actual opposite of what he's telling Blitz he did.

I read that Stolas is supposedly also not aware of ~things~ but why is the narrative conveniently forgetting about his faults as well?

Onto the "apology tour" subject: I fail to understand why Blitz owes Stolas an apology. The only time he was shitty to him was actually in Ozzie's when he asked him on a (fake) date without telling him all the story. But they didn't talk about that not during that episode neither during Apology Tour. Is it because doing this would have forced the narrative to acknowledge that also Stolas was at fault during that episode?

All the other times they interacted (on and off screen, their chats don't really mean anything since it seems that's the way Blitz writes in general), Blitz was being good to him (not that he had any other choice, due to their society ranks and their deal).

To me, this looks like bad writing. But if someone has a different take, I'm happy to hear their interpretation.

[herba-mysticas]

The zero lab battle theme won't leave me alone so I decided to draw my feelings

[illithiddies]

This interaction from before everyone finds out Astarion is a vampire is actually so insane to me. What do you mean the monster hunter from Baldur's Gate doesn't know about Cazador, but the archmage in Waterdeep who reads a lot of historical texts does?

Is it just an open secret everywhere except in Baldur's Gate, where people just don't really notice or pay attention to it? Like this shit is in books, apparently, if it made it's way to Gale. It's a published thing. It's known.

Astarion didn't even mention his last name.

[sangcreole]

damn. this is genuinely the only space on the internet where I feel completely at peace.

[vampirefangs]

i know "i saw the tv glow" is very metaphorical but also if you are/have been mentally ill/delusional enough in just the right ways it can be relatable in a literal sense too

[max1461]

I'm getting suicidal and need this to improve quickly.

Feels like normally I have some... mechanism, that has a variety of functions. It pushes away thoughts that are too upsetting, it occurs when I commit to a specific decision, it occurs when I exhibit emotional inhibition. Basically like something that puts the breaks on my immediate mental state and re-focuses my attention on higher level goals and commitments, or something. It's an inhibitory response I guess. I used to perceive this as a basically internal thing, with a physical correlate: usually when this response would trigger, I would feel a slight kind of "gulp" sensation, like a little bit of muscle movement in my upper throat?

Since I went to the dentist, it's felt like something in the back of my throat is numb or immobile, and therefore I can't trigger this inhibitory response. So my thoughts and emotions are all over the place, I keep feeling it trying to trigger and failing, and it's causing me huge problems.

I don't know which direction this goes. It's possible that it's some kind of tic, maybe I have Tourettes as one neuro suggested, and it's a tic that usually goes off, but it can't because of like nerve damage that's physically impeding it, so there's a build up of the premonitory urge? That certainly accords with a lot of the internal experience of this. Other possibility is like: so when I was at the dentist I was having a panic attack, and so I was intentionally impeding this inhibition response (because otherwise I would have been too afraid to get the local anesthetic shot). I do remember doing this, intentionally impeding this response. And I was panicking pretty hard. And when I was given the anesthetic, like I said, it felt kind of good at first, it felt like my panic was stripped away and my whole body felt warm and so on. So maybe I just... unlearned this inhibitory response in that moment? And I don't know how to trigger it again? Neither the psychological nor the physical side of this response seems to be working. There is a definite sensation that something in the back of my throat is "frozen".

And right, the weird mental imagery. As I've said elsewhere, I've always had very vivid mental imagery, including visuals, sound, smells, everything. Now it hasn't been this vivid in the past, and in the past I've been able to control it, obviously. But it usually is very vivid. I could make it as vivid as it currently is by concentrated sufficiently. The problem is it's like that all the time, and I have no control over the content. But the imagery itself isn't totally unprecedented for me. Two neurologists have mentioned synesthesia as playing a role, which I definitely have.

But, really, I have felt since the beginning that there is only one possible solution to this, which is to get that inhibitory mechanism back again. Can anyone help my brainstorm how I might do this? I have already tried a lot of stuff. I have tried relaxing and letting it come, I have tried focusing really hard and pushing it through. I have tried thinking about things that would normally trigger it. I have tried decoupling it from the physical movement, like trying to simply activate the mental side of it and ignore the physical. All of these have almost worked in the exact same way, where it totally feels like it's gonna come and then just doesn't.

One way or another this is destroying me and I really want a solution.

Oh, right. Right. I have other facial tics (that's the term I'll use), as I've said in other posts, associated with specific emotions. So if I'm sad or happy my face scrunches up in a particular way, etc. I would not previously have distinguished these from just "expressions", other than that presently it's clear there's a premonitory urge. These are also not working? But I think a lot of them also usually co-occur with the inhibitory response, so maybe that's why? One way or another, I have felt them coming out in other places. I have felt them try to trigger in my face, fail, and then trigger in my hand or my stomach. It's the same pattern of movements, immediately and intuitively recognizable as the same tic, but occurring in my hand or stomach. And it triggers a similar-but-alien-and-disconcerting emotional response as the one in my face would trigger. And I feel like as these incorrect tics(?) trigger, I am like relearning all my emotions into these crazy alien things.

I just fucking need this shit to stop. Does anyone have any new ideas?

[alchemiclee]

I think doing shipping through and aroace lens makes things complicated but also interesting. I think one reason I don't enjoy straight ships as much is because it's very rare for people write/talk about them with a queerplatonic dynamic. straight romance is so "normalized" in society, it's hard to get any other dynamic out of those ships from other people in conversation or writing. it's mostly always romantic. (especially when "guys and girls can't be *just* friends" is extremely common and has ruined mamy of my own friendships) but I enjoy a handful of a straight ship with that dynamic. it's just way more rare to see talked about than gay ones from my observation. anyway point is, more queerplatonic type ships and stuff please! those aren't explored enough!

[effervescent-fool]

theres a will wood fan on youtube who puts a Trigger Warning on their videos any time will wood happens to be shirtless in them. which is extremely funny but also im not laughing

[sodrippy]

accidentally thought about trying to cook in my mother's kitchen and now im so stressed out i cant sleep 👍

[jimintomystery]

This algorithm is picking a fight with me that it can't win.