#mentioned ish

[stray-cattt]

the pain is gone, but all your scars remain

A Nimona (2023) hurt/comfort fanfic, if you'd rather read it on A03, here's the link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48475993

Summary: Basically, Ambrosius and Ballister are getting ready for bed and things are still a bit awkward and tense between them so they talk about things.

Content/Trigger Warnings: None that I can think of

Ballister carefully disengages his prosthetic arm and sets it on the table across from his and Ambrosius’ bed. Sometimes it’s like it's still there, his arm, he can feel it. The pain comes and goes, sometimes aching, other times more like a quick sharp pain, there, then gone. Ballister stands there deep in thought as his gaze is fixed on his prosthetic as his mind replays it all, without realizing it his breathing becomes shallow.

A knock from the bedroom door interrupts his thoughts and slowly he tears his gaze from the table. The door slowly opens to reveal Ambrosius dressed in his pajamas, fidgeting with his sleeves that are slightly too long, before lifting his gaze to meet Ballisters.

“Everything alright? You haven’t got dressed for bed yet.” Ambrosius asks, concern laced in his eyes. Quietly he shuts the door behind him and inches a bit closer to Ballister, placing a hand on his right shoulder, the action seems to pull him out of his mind.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about things and got a bit distracted,” Ballister lets out a weak laugh only meeting Ambrosius’ eyes for a brief second before his eyes linger on the table again. Ambrosius follows his gaze and lets out a small sigh as guilt begins to plague his being. Before Ambrosius can get a word in, Ballister continues, looking him in the eyes.

“I’ll go get ready for bed now, I’ll be back in a bit.” Ballister gives Ambrosius a small smile before grabbing his PJs off of his side of the bed and heading toward the bedroom door. Ambrosius nearly grabs his hand to stop him but stops himself and lets Ballister walk through the door. 

Ambrosius feels a weight crashing onto his chest as Ballister softly closes the door. A shaky breath leaves him as one of his hands grasps the front of his shirt. He sits on the unmade bed as his thoughts begin to race about all that he’d done to his lover, it had only been a month since everything had all happened. Neither of them had really talked in depth about what happened, yes there were the rushed apologies right off the bat, but they hadn’t really expressed to each other how it had all impacted them emotionally. Maybe tonight would be the night they could talk about it, tonight, tomorrow morning, sometime soon, they needed to talk.

Ballister tossed his dirty clothes in the hamper in the corner of the bathroom before taking a look at himself in the mirror. The bags under his eyes were heavy, and even after returning next to his lover's side, and stopping the director he still didn’t feel at rest, he couldn’t. Thoughts of Nimona often plagued his mind, if maybe she would return by whatever magic that had created her. He hadn’t gone back to their ‘evil lair’ yet, it still seemed too painful.

Of course it wasn’t only the thought of Nimona that haunted him, it was also scars left over from what had all happened in those few days, weeks maybe? Everything had happened so fast time seemed to slip his grasp. The scars, mental, emotional, and physical all had yet to heal completely, at points Ballister worried that they never would.

Ballister took his hand and ran it through his hair. He needed a shower but hadn’t found it in him to take one, at least not tonight. Sighing, he dropped his hand from his hair and quickly brushed his teeth before leaving the bathroom.

Ballister didn’t knock before he entered his shared room with Ambrosius. He expected Ambrosius to have already been laying in bed, but the bed had yet to be made and instead, his lover was standing in front of his prosthetic. His fingers lightly traced the wiring and metal with a sense of melancholy. The closing of the door caused Ambrosius to jump a bit, pulling his fingers away from Ballister’s prosthetic. Startled, he turned his head towards the door making eye contact with his lover.

The silence between them was heavy and dense, the unsaid words threatening to choke them as they stared into each other's eyes. Ambrosius was the first one to break the silence as he cleared his throat and took his eyes off of Ballister, now looking at the bed.

“Want to help me make the bed?” Ambrosius suggested, scratching the back of his head. For the most part, they had been behaving as they always had, but sometimes it got awkward and stiff as if the air molecules in the air had stopped moving. Ballister blinked for a second processing Ambrosius’ words before nodding and walking over to their bed. They both fixed the sheets together standing on their respective sides of the bed. With the bed made, Ballister turned on the lamp on the right side of the bed as Ambrosius turned off the main lights of the room.

Neither of them said a word as they lay down in their bed getting situated. Given that they were both in bed now, Ballister turned off the lamp and all that illuminated the room was the lights of the city filtering in through the thin curtains covering the window. They were quiet for a few minutes more before Ambrosius finally spoke up.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry, I know I’ve already apologized to you before right after it happened and a couple times after but I feel like we haven’t really gotten to talk about it that much with everything that’s been happening since the queen died. I am so genuinely sorry for how I treated you and your friend Nimona,” At the mention of her name Ballister stiffened a bit, he knew that eventually, they’d have to have a real conversation about it, but he didn’t expect it to be this night.

“I treated both of you unfairly, and while I never believed that you had actually killed the queen, I didn’t say anything to stick up for you and in staying silent I sided with those who were hunting you down. While everything turned out okay in the end, at least… for the most part, I shouldn’t have stood by their side. I should’ve questioned what the director was telling me and not seen Nimona out to be what she wasn’t. While I’ve apologized hundreds of times for your arm, I will apologize for it again, even though it’s what we were trained to do, I took a part of you that you can’t get back and have caused you pain and harm. Sometimes all my mind can do is replay my actions toward you at that moment and the moments following. I wish I could change my actions and go back and know what I know now back then, but I know I can’t. I just want you to know how much I love and care about you, Ballister,” Ambrosius confessed, a few stray tears making their way down his face as he reached out to brush away a couple of tears that had fallen from Ballister’s eyes.

“I know Ambrosius, and I love you too, and care about you so much. I really appreciate all that you’ve said, and I want to acknowledge that you were being manipulated while this all happened. You don’t have to carry the weight of it all, let some of it fall onto others. I would’ve probably responded the same way had our positions been switched. In the end, the person you are now is not the person you were back then, and that’s what matters. I’m in love with you, not your mistakes. While I’m glad you were able to acknowledge them, they don’t define you. While they’ve left scars, scars will heal someday, even if they feel like they won’t. I know I feel that way sometimes. Someday the pain will be gone, and all that will remain will be the scars and the stories they hold. I’m not sure if I’m making a lot of sense here, but I want you to know that together we can grow and move past this. You don’t have to feel guilty, you’ve suffered the consequences enough.” Ballister responded gently to Ambrosius, now caressing his face with his left hand. 

A weight had been lifted off the both of them, even if just a little bit, things were more manageable. Together they held each other and cried for what seemed to be an eternity but wasn’t quite nearly as long. They lovingly stared at one another, the filtered light highlighting the tear tracks that had run down their faces like rivers.

They talked a bit more after the tears had died down, being honest with each other about what they had been feeling. Talked about things they’d only ever share with each other, and by the time they had reached an end to their conversation, the majority of the city had fallen asleep.

In silence they held each other, Ballister held onto his lover’s waist and laid his head on his chest as Ambrosius traced patterns into his back. Together they lulled themselves to sleep to the sounds of the city of those who stayed awake in ungodly hours. Tomorrow would be a new day for them, things would be different for the better. Plus, maybe even Ballister would stop by his ‘evil lair’ and run into a friend. But who knows, that’s tomorrow, and right now he’s sleeping by his lover's side, content.

[prokopetz]

Evil wizard casting testicular torsion on their hated foe, except the hero is a trans man, so all it does is turn their packer upside-down.

[just-french-me-up]

Kinda obsessed with the condoms handed out at the Olympic village, we love to see it

[dardrian]

note to self:

eating is not self harm unless you are eating an allergen on purpose

You did not self harm today

even though

even though today was

bad brains low spoons fatigue curse combo

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[syoddeye]

you sign up for one of those 'learn to farm in a different country!' programs and wind up in scotland.

the owner meets you at the station, a bit surprised to see you. (you can’t blame him—you don’t look the farming type.) but he’s excited for some ‘new meat’ around the farm. he says something about possessing a love for teaching and training in ‘the ways’. he chats your ear off the whole drive to his remote sheep farm.

it’s a little weird there’s no one else from the program at the property, and that the three other farmhands are a bit older than you expected. he shows you around, and explains the ins and outs of the operation. points out a display of medals and badges, waxes poetic about he and his mates finding ‘peace’ in raising sweet lambs. his phrasing’s a bit weird, but it’s harmless.

toward the end of the day, exhaustion catches up. you traveled across the world and slept on planes and trains, and you’re ready to tuck into a real bed. after dinner, when you ask about the lodging situation for visiting volunteers, there’s an awkward pause. four sets of eyes exchange looks that instantly send chills down your spine.

why, you’ll be sharing a bed with one of them. it’s that or the barn. and none of their former guests have preferred the barn.

meanwhile, back at the station, a sweet elderly lady tells the station manager that she can’t find her newest farmhand, who was due to arrive hours earlier.

[jinaxxo]

memory no. 8 redraw ☀️🌿

[stargirlanthem]

every day, i feel less and less real ✶⋆.˚

[iamenits]

Screenshots of McCoy smiling (and a few where he isn't) from every Star Trek episode in production order.

[antikr1sta]

(tw sh/blood/vent art) "i hate it here, i hate the smell and fluorescent lights, but most of all I hate you", he utters, gazing at his own face in the reflection of a dirty mirror; as both are only hanging on by a thread.

blood/injury tw ↓

..yeah.. i really really hate it here

[prokopetz]

One of my perennial probably-never-gonna-do-it ideas for a tabletop RPG is... well, okay, have you ever heard of Chronica Feudalis? It's a tabletop RPG set in 12th Century England, except its central conceit is that it's actually from 12th Century England, in an alternative history in which tabletop roleplaying games were invented during the 12th Century rather than the 20th. The text is written entirely in character as a medieval English monk, with commentary by the contemporary editor who ostensibly translated it from the original Middle English.

Anyway, if I ever find the time to perform the historical research to properly do it justice, some day I want to write a Prohibition era hidden-world science fiction game (i.e., a superficially realistic setting with the science-fictional elements forming a "secret world" within the ostensibly mundane milieu), presented as a game written during the actual 1920s in an alternative history in which tabletop roleplaying games were invented and popularised by H G Wells.

[heartnosekid]

hello friends, i have to vent a little here. i apologize in advance.

so, my sweet girl snowbelle has been struggling with a condition called megacolon since we took her from a neglectful home several years ago. she has had consistent flareups and has had to be sedated multiple times to control her condition.

her condition has been well controlled for a few years now, and she usually only has to be sedated twice a year at this point.

she will be going to the vet tomorrow for her second flareup this year and she has developed some other new issues along with the normal ones. i am so worried for her and if i could, i would ask yall to please keep her in your thoughts when she is at the vet and during her recovery. she is my entire world and it pains me so deeply to see her in any amount of discomfort.

if yall have any words of positivity or encouragement, feel free to leave them on this post. i would be very grateful for any kind words.

as always, i love you all and thank you for letting me have this space to speak with you all. 🩷

- ish 💕

[spibder]

unseriousness

[meamiiikiii]

5% of a color headcanon.... two versions since b&w emphasizes the dagger more i think but i still like the warm tones ASFSADA

i am not biased towards rainbow daggers whatsoever i promise (lie)

((also friend is streaming now and im there too!! bit more info linked here, its rated mature tho))

[nanavn]

For @shanastoryteller who asked for the gut bacteria expert's* recipe:

The professor's green energy smoothie

Ingredients

(two servings, according to the original)

half an avocado

half an apple

the juice from half a squeezed lemon

1 pinch fresh ginger

10 grapes or half a kiwi

5 dried walnuts

1 sheet nori (the kind used for sushi)

4 bunches of spinach

1 bunch parsley

a handful of broccoli

a handful of bean sprouts

half a glass of herbal tea

Preparation

Prepare the vegetables and fruits by removing the core from the apple, the peel from the kiwi, etc.

Put the vegetables in the blender with the herbal tea (cooled) and blend until it becomes a very fine-grained, green and fragrant smoothie.

Garnish with fresh herbs according to your taste preferences.

From https://livsstil.tv2.dk/mad/opskrift/professorens-groenne-energigroed (translation: https://livsstil-tv2-dk.translate.goog/mad/opskrift/professorens-groenne-energigroed?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=da)

My tips

The taste is pretty neutral (YMMV) but if you substitute ingredients, it may affect the taste - cabbages in particular

I usually double the recipe and have it over two days - I can't be bothered to keep half an apple lying around

I use a tall container with a volume of 1,6L/3.4 pint - that's on the small side for my version

I wouldn't make bigger portions than can be eaten over two days, and unless consumed straight away it must be kept in the fridge - you're risking a bacteria bomb instead of a nice smoothie...

I rarely use lemon, but use a few good slices of ginger (peel the whole chunk, slice and freeze for less fuss)

If you live near an Asian market, they probably have bigger packs of nori. I buy one with 50 sheets - it's *much* cheaper per sheet than the supermarket's price

I skip the parsley (can't be bothered) and buy chopped (see next bullet point) frozen spinach and add to taste

Instead of broccoli (expensive; doesn't last long in the fridge) I buy whatever cabbage is cheapest and use a large handful of it chopped up some (the fibres in cabbage and whole spinach leaves does not play well with my blender - YMMV)

I use a large mug of herbal tea and add psyllium husk for more fibre

In general I substitute/add veggies/fruits if I have something going a bit overripe (buying a load of bananas cheap and freezing them if they go brown before eating: also great for this); if I'm out of grapes, I add raisins ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IIRC he's a proponent of using organic prooduce. As you can tell from my notes I'm cheap and/or poor cost conscious, so I buy the cheapest. It's up to you :)

I eat this in addition to whatever fruits&vegs I usually have - it's an easy way to up my intake and get some things I don't eat a lot of (e.g. cabbage, spinach)

I make my own beansprouts - but this is already too long, so it's in the next post

*Oluf Borbye Pedersen - from the link:

Intestinal Microbiome Research OP is a leading partner in the EU-Metahit initiative (www.metahit.eu) which delivered the first and second gut microbial gene catalogue of 3.3 and 9.9 mio microbial genes, respectively, from the human intestinal tract.  With quantitative metagenomics he and his team demonstrated in a population sample that about a fourth of adults is markedly deficient in gut microbiota diversity. The same individuals were featured by insulin resistance, overweight, dyslipidaemia and proinflammation. OP et al. reported the first quantitative metagenomics study of gut microbiota in type 2 diabetes, prediabetics and women with gestational diabetes and they discovered a new biological fingerprint, gut enterotypes of the human host. In addition, in recent studies of the human gut microbiome, Pedersen and colleagues have teased out drug effects versus disease effects on gut bacteria composition and function. Recently, they reported the first example of gut microbes linked to human insulin resistance. Mechanistically the investigators extended and validated their findings in in rodents. The Pedersen team has done several interventions targeting the human gut microbiome and blood metabolome including the impact of broad-spectrum antibiotics and of dietary gluten content, respectively. Studies that influence dietary and medical practice.

[fictionadventurer]

I keep thinking about Lewis' review of The Hobbit, because he claimed that the main thing contemporary reviewers compared it to was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Was fantasy in that poor of a state that Alice was the closest thing they could think of? Comparing that chaotic fever dream to Tolkien's intricately crafted world? Lewis does specify that the comparison is that both books are by an "Oxford professor at play", but they're otherwise so different that putting the two in the same category baffles me.