#mun adds her two cents

[fasterthanmydemons]

Here are a few potential scenarios for Pietro + the Gotg lmao.

And nobody is canceling you Silence!! Hahaha omfg, only an idiot would ‘kill the messenger’. You get into your characters so you write a really good Pietro and if he says something stupid and accidentally makes Mantis feel guilty for what her father did, it’s not your fault. I am a HUGE Mantis fan and I’m not upset. Maybe anyone who got 'upset’ was because they wanted these two to *smash* LMFAOOO. Like there’s BugBorg (Nebula is a cyborg), FrostBug (Loki is a frost giant), Drax and Mantis even though it’s canon they aren’t attracted to each other and have like a father-daughter thing, but still, I guess their ship name would be DestroyerBug and… with Pietro??? FastBug? QuickBug? SpeedBug? NyoomBug? SilverBug? IDKK but like, it’s okay if they don’t get along all the time.

The timeline is important too, this is RIGHT AFTER CIVIL WAR so they’re both still growing as characters. They’re gonna fuck up. LET THEM BE FRIENDSS LET THEM ARGUE AND HAVE MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND BE FRIENDS UGH. I’m a fan of shipping myself but like, characters can also be friends.

I can’t speak for all the Mantis fans but what truly upsets me is people ignoring the character and being racist against the actress, I’ve read comments like “howww can she be Ego’s daughterr he’s played by Kurt Russell and he is white and she is Asiannn!!!!” Like dude, the actress is half-white half-Korean! She could absolutely be Kurt Russell’s daughter. But again… they aliens 😭 And when they call her 'useless’ because she’s not tough in a Gamora way or in a Nebula way… but she’s strong in a Mantis way, she’s strong as hell?!?!??!????? Not to mention she is literally the “Celestial Madonna” in the comics, there was like this prophecy about “the perfect woman” who will give birth to a figure known as the “Celestial Messiah”. And the Celestial Madonna had to be either Wanda, Agatha Harkness or Mantis. And it was MANTIS! SHE IS IMPORTANT AS FUCK??????? And she’s a Celestial in the MCU already soo those who say she’s useless should 🤐🤐

Sorry for this little rant. I’m not Mantis mun btw I’m just a fan of Mantis. I get upset when people do this kind of stuff but you seem to like Mantis (even if you didn’t, that would be ok, it’s the disrespect and even blatant racism sometimes, that’s gross af) so don’t worry, Pietro clashing with Mantis is not what offends me it’s literally the bigots but you ain’t one of them.

Keep up the good work 🥰

__________

{out of breath} Oh, I know! It was a joke, I know I’m not being canceled. I just thought it was funny the amount of backlash I got for “hurting that precious cinnamon roll.” It’s funny to me because... I’m not my muse? I didn’t hurt her, Pietro did, hahaha. And secondly, I love how all these Mantis fans suddenly came out of the woodwork messaging me to be like HEY... HEEEEY... DON’T HURT OUR BUG GIRL. I love Mantis, and I felt bad that she got hurt, but eh, these things will happen when you get someone who talks before he thinks like Pietro.

As far as shipping Pietro and Mantis.... *shrugs* I feel like there’s some attraction there, certainly on Pietro’s end, but the longer they interact, the more I feel like a full on ship is just not going to work for them. Mantis-mun can add their two cents here if they want, but... yeah, especially on Mantis’ end, I feel like it wouldn’t work, personality-wise. As in, their personalities clash too much. And really, both characters have a lot of unresolved issues and demons, and whereas other ships have demons that are actually complimentary to each other, or have ways of dealing with them that actually help the closeness and involvement of the other muse, Mantis and Pietro tend to push each other away with their demons. What I mean is... what comforts Pietro, makes Mantis uncomfortable, and vice versa. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, conflict in rp is fun and interesting, but to me it kindof makes a ship impossible. A romantic one, anyway. Friendship and being like... cooperative and supportive teammates? I feel like those are possible with some effort and time, for sure. *punts to Mantis-mun if I’ve said anything completely wrong here, heh*

And omg, I had no idea Mantis was so important in the MCU?! I still need to watch all the Thor/GotG movies. I’ve got some personal hangups I need to push through to do all of that, and lately with work and family stresses keeping me pretty run down, I just haven’t been willing to watch things that I know will trigger me and make me sob, heh. But I really do intend to watch them, I’m not just saying that. I just have to wait for a time when I feel a bit stronger emotionally. I’m guessing after the holiday season, during my break from work. That might be a good time to try and get through them all. Although I do wanna watch the Xmas special with Mantis and the giant candy cane, like... I NEED to see that because CUTE. Also, for Teeturtle fans, I saw this the other day on their site and it’s? So cute? I might die of cuteness overload? If you’re interested in buying it, you can here:

I MEAN LOOK AT THAT, HOW DO YOU HOLD ONTO YOUR SHIT LOOKING AT THIS PURE ADORABILITY?!

Eh-hem. XD I actually wanna buy it so badly but I feel I really can’t since I haven’t seen anything and haven’t earned it with my fan efforts, heh. Although... I have Grogu shirts and I haven’t seen a single episode of that either. He just looks like Gizmo and I’m an 80s child, so I jumped in and accepted the cuteness. Maybe I should do the same with Mantis, because I know I already love her just from the little I’ve seen. XD

Also ugh, I had no idea that people were racist towards Pom. T^T Noooo she’s such a good actress, people stop being crappy. Can’t we all just get along? I’ve loved her in MCU things, the Oldboy remake, and Black Mirror. I feel like I’ve seen her in something else too but it escapes me right now. She’s gorgeous and extremely talented. People need to calm down and be kind.

I do like Mantis! =) She’s visually very cute, I love her character design, but beyond that... she intrigues me. She’s very deep and complicated, and that’s speaking my language as a writer. I don’t feel I could ever write her myself, that’s just a sense I get. There are several characters I know I can’t get right for whatever reason, but I still love them. Besides, I don’t need to write her because Mantis-mun does an AMAZING job of that already. ^_^

I guess we’ll see how things pan out for Pietro and Mantis... and Rocket too, haha!

[thenexusofsouls]

as fun as it is to see Tony being teased abt his daughter's ships, that is like... denying you and Carter's mun the chance to actually /write/ communication between muses, Tony or others? like I wonder if Pietro and Carter would have gotten together at all had the one anon not pushed them both, because pushing for a ship makes it feel forced when it doesn't have to be like that? you and Carter's mun are talented and would have found a way to get there just fine. seriously, ppl... stahp, pls.

{i am the caretaker of souls} Oh, no it’s okay! I mean, I guess I can only speak for myself, but I’ll tag Carter’s mun too ( @starcchild​ ) and she can weigh in on the topic if she wants. I honestly don’t mind those kinds of asks, for two reasons...

1) We can answer the asks just to have those interesting confrontational moments, but then we don’t have to actually include that in our overall ship canon if we don’t want to. Sometimes it’s fun to try different scenarios for the hell of it, but then we might decide to not keep it in the overall story we’re writing. Or, we might decide hey that was fun, but let’s go back and actually do a thread on all that development we skipped. We’re actually doing that with Pietro and Basch right now, going back and developing some of the earlier aspects of their relationship with Carter. With memes and things introducing random ideas, we seldom write a story from start to finish, but rather we jump around. We might write the same things three times if it’s fun and we just like it. So at least for me, I don’t mind jumping around or even doing the same scene in multiple different ways. As long as Carter’s mun and I are having fun with the writing, that’s all that matters.

2) Sometimes it forces muses to admit something, talk to someone, or bring up an issue that they otherwise might not have, or it brings up a topic we might not have thought of yet. I know for me, it’s a fun way to connect rps across more than one of my blogs, which I honestly love so much. But yeah, with a lot of muses tending to keep mum about things or wanting to bottle stuff up, sometimes a little anon here and there to nudge them is interesting. It stirs things up, and here’s nothing wrong with that. It gives us more things to write from more angles, and just because we write something in response to an ask, that doesn’t mean we can’t redo it completely in a thread of our own. So why not try all the things? =)

What we write is generally very fluid and not set in stone at all. A least for me, and that’s my impression of Carter’s mun as well, but like I said, she can add her two cents if she wants to. Sometimes we will jump right to a ship having a kid when we haven’t even written their first date yet. Then we’ll go back and do something earlier. Then back to later. I think because sometimes the moment is right and the inspiration strikes to write a certain scene, and why wait? We can always go back and fill in later. That’s how I used to write my own original books, out of sequence, so I’m used to forming stories that way. I really don’t mind it at all!

[cfmanymuses]

What’s something you wish to improve?

Questions for the mun.

My motivation to write?

No, that's a joke. There are several things I'd like to improve on, I just need to work around burnout and brainrot. I'd love to get more practise with my male muses, the problem there is I lose muse for them really quickly. It's one of the reasons why I'm still iffy on adding Heizou and Kazuha.

I'd also like to improve on things like settings and stuff, and get more practise with some of my AUs.

"That's one way of saying that she still has mermaid brainrot." ...Why do these always end with one of my muses calling me out?? 🤣

[fidelissimi-a]

Dionysus: red, white, or rosé?, Poseidon: list three fears

SEND ME A GREEK GOD

Dionysus: red, white, or rosé?

I wish I had a real answer to this but I don’t drink wine, or alcohol of any kind.Ruby says she’ll take red though, but only if it goes well with whatever she’s eating. 

Poseidon: list three fears

1) anything hurting my kids2) sharks3) clowns

[symbioteburnout]

This is kind of a vent, nothing serious of course, just been mulling something over. If any of you follow Linkara, he posted his review for the event comic; Heroes in Crisis. It’s a pretty good review, you should check it out. Here, I’ll even leave a link to part one of the review.

Now, I’m not venting because of the review, Linkara tears this event several new ones, and rightly so. Rather, it’s something Linkara brings up in part 3. In his closing statement, he brings up why he gets so passionate about comic writers killing characters off, and why he often gets upset by it. A lot of it I really agree with.

Whenever I get nervous about Andi being dragged into an event comic, it’s usually because most event comics typically come with a high body-count. More often than not, these deaths are usually B-tier or lower characters, and it’s usually for shock value, or to show the villains of the event mean business and are willing to kill indiscriminately, or to just play them up as more threatening. Of course, usually the deaths are just for shock value. And because Andi falls into the category of B-Tier or lower characters (I’d say she’s honestly somewhere between C and B considering she DID get her own series, for a time), that means Andi is potentially on the chopping block every time.

So when an event comic is coming up, say, I dunno, Absolute Carnage, or the upcoming King in Black (both by two living pieces of human garbage Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman), and Andi has a chance of being in those events (she was in Absolute Carnage, it’s unclear if she’ll be in King in Black but I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Scream get involved somehow). Given her status as a lower tier character, of course I’m going to be nervous that she’s probably going to be killed off in these events. And you know what I usually hear when I voice these concerns?

‘Eh, no one’s ever really dead in comics.’

‘They’ll be back, no one ever stays dead in comics.’

‘Why are you so upset about a fictional character, they don’t stay dead.’

I’d like to counter with something Linkara says in his closing statement in part 3.

‘Sometimes they don’t come back.’

Linkara then goes on to cite several DC characters who were killed off, some of whom were brought back due to fan backlash, or due to their popularity, but not after being dead for several years in real time, and then also lists characters who have died... and are still dead even after being dead for over 20+ years.

To add my own two cents to the pile, I’d like to bring up the character of Rikki Barnes.

Rikki Barnes, aka Nomad, aka Bucky was killed off in the comic ‘Onslaught Unleashed’, and was (for all intents and purposes) wiped from existence. This was back in 2011. Rikki only just got revived in the 2019 series ‘The Future Foundation’. She was dead for 8 years, I didn’t even know Rikki was a character until meeting fellow RPer @noworldnomad​. Had I not met Rikki-mun, I probably wouldn’t even know who Rikki is to this day.

How many other people can say they know who Rikki Barnes is? Chances are, not many. The same can be said of Andi, who was originally contained to a few Venom comics, helmed by the second most popular Venom, Flash Thompson. Most people didn’t know Andi was a character until recently, she’s been around since 2012-2013 at least. And while she is a fan favorite among most small Venom groups, there are still plenty of people who don’t know her. (Funny enough, when I submitted a portfolio to Marvel once that had some art of Mania in it, the editor in question told me I ‘wasn’t allowed to use my original characters and could only draw Marvel characters’, I had to send them official images of Mania to prove she was a canon Marvel character)

Most people don’t even know about her former symbiote counterpart Mania, which for years was just ‘the Venom clone from that one spinoff comic’. Marvel didn’t start referencing Mania and referring to it as Mania until the Absolute Carnage event, after-which, the Mania symbiote becomes a snack for Carnage and hasn’t been heard from since.

Andi has also had several false starts, has been teased on numerous occasions only for those stories to never pan out or see print. Venom vol II got cancelled and left on a cliffhanger about Andi and her Hellmark, which was never explored again because Flash bailed and joined the Thunderbolts, then the Guardians of the Galaxy. When the authors of those two titles (Brian Michael Bendis and Charles Soule) were asked if Andi would appear or be mentioned at all, both writers responded with ‘Who?’.

During Flash’s time with the Guardians, there was a sub-plot that had the Guardians stranded on Earth, and had a spin-off series called ‘Guardians Team-up’ where the various members of the Guardians would team up with an Earth hero for their own contained one-shot issues. It was revealed that Flash was supposed to have an issue where he’d reconnect with Andi. That book never saw print.

The next time we would ever see Andi, was at the tail end of the short series Venom: Space Knight, which teased more adventures with Flash and Andi... only to be followed up by a new Venom title with a new host, and with Flash and Andi nowhere to be found until the anniversary issue which revealed Flash getting sucker punched and losing Venom.

We wouldn’t see Andi again for a couple years until Venom Inc, where she gets the Mania symbiote stolen, tries to get it back from the trash who stole it, and just GIVES UP.

Eventually, Andi did come back for the Absolute Carnage event, which had me on the seat of my pants because I was sure Donny Cates, the head writer of the event, was going to use her as cannon fodder along with several other minor characters to play up Carnage as more of a threat. WE ALREADY KNOW CARNAGE IS A THREAT!

Heck, I was actually convinced they DID kill her when she winds up impaled on a meat-hook in the tie-in comic; Absolute Carnage: Scream. Thankfully, she wasn’t dead and eventually bonded to the Scream symbiote.

My problem is that, with another Cates written symbiote gore-fest coming up (sometime this fall I think, depends on whether COVID affects printing comics again), and the likelihood that Andi and Scream will play a role in that, especially in light of her series getting cancelled. I’m worried that this will be Andi’s final outing. And because Marvel editorial has actively gone out of its way to push Andi aside and throw her back in the toybox whenever she’s served her purpose, I’m worried that if Andi dies, that no, she will not be back later, that she will be dead forever, and given how Cates loves killing off female characters (just about every major character death in Absolute Carnage was a woman), he’ll likely shrug it off or try to downplay the significance.

To quote Linkara again (paraphrasing), sometimes when characters die in comics, sometimes they don’t come back, and if they do it’s usually because fans demand they come back. Death only seems to matter, if nobody in charge cares about them. And in that case, it doesn’t matter.

Do I hope that Andi and Scream WON’T be killed off? Of course I do! I love this character, I want her to keep going, I want her story to continue, I want another Andi series, whether she’s Scream or somehow gets the old Mania symbiote back. I want Andi’s relationship with the symbiote explored more, I want more of her backstory revealed, I want to know if there were plans to set her up with ‘Guinevere’ and what Guinevere’s true identity really was. And if Andi is killed off as a result of King in Black, chances are fans of Andi’s, myself included, never get those answers. 

Do I trust writer’s like Donny Cates to do her justice? After he killed off several female characters in his last gore-fest of a comic event? After he took She-Venom, and turned it into a rape story, and then tried to claim it ‘wasn’t rape!’. Of course I don’t trust Cates. I don’t trust Ryan Stegman either as an artist. While he may not have any say on the story, he has been the artist on a couple books where Andi was put through hell (Venom Inc. being chief among them) and joked about what happened to Andi in the issue where she’s gets lit on fire, and mentioned how he drew a page of that scene that was way more graphic in the original draft (i.e. Andi would suffer several serious burns and would also be left naked in the alley after her symbiote is stolen).

So if Andi is killed off in this event, of course I will be upset, because given Marvel’s track record with her, she either won’t be coming back, and if by some miracle she is revived, it will NOT be soon.

[thiscrimsonsoul]

The Mun Ponders Some of Wanda’s Rings...

{out of paprikash} For no reason at all, I feel like looking into some of Wanda’s rings as far as what they’re made out of, what they probably cost, what they might have meant to her, and who might have given them to her. Because things and stuff and I love doing senseless metas like this about my muses. XD

Wanda wears a lot of rings in each MCU movie she’s in. It’s kindof her thing. As someone who has also worn many rings daily for years as a way of expressing herself, I fully support Wanda’s love of rings, heh. And yet, I wonder... how did she get them all? Did she buy them herself? Were they given to her? Let’s do some sleuthing, shall we? I’m going to limit myself to just one hand in Ultron, otherwise we’ll be here all night, lol.

The ring on her pinky is a wire wrap design done in gold-colored metal, containing a red stone. I can tell you that this is going to be a fairly inexpensive ring. The wire, while gold-colored, is not gold. Not solid, not 18K, not 14K, and I’m guessing not even 10K. The reason for this is that gold is an incredibly soft and malleable metal, and if anyone tried to do a wire-wrap design with it, it would bend and break and fall apart. Getting down to maybe 14K or certainly 10K, the gold is mixed with other metals to be stronger, but usually even 14 parts or 10 parts gold is not going to be used for something like a wire wrap design. Gold is considered “too good” a metal for that kind of design, most often, since there is a lot of waste metal that’s produced when making such a design (from clipping the wires shorter and such), and no one wants to just throw away bits of unused gold.

So if it isn’t gold, it’s going to probably be something called “gold-filled,” which I never really understood the name for, because it means gold plated. As in... coated on the outside. But anyway, this is usually done over Sterling Silver or something called “base metal,” which is just an alloy of inexpensive metals. The gold is applied in super thin layers on top (microns thin) to give the illusion of gold. Gold filled wire is used for wire-wrap designs, so this is a possibility. If it is not that, it might be another gold-colored metal like brass, but most likely it’s gold-filled wire, making this ring fairly cheap, expense-wise.

The red stone in the design could be a lot of things, but it is likely not ruby (not often used in affordable designs like that one). It is in bead form (in a wire wrap design, the wire that makes the ring, bracelet, etc. also supports the beads by being fed through drilled holes in the stone), so it is likely a less expensive stone, such as various types of dyed red agates, carnelian, red onyx, etc., like these:

Beads are considered very simple ways of displaying stones, and more expensive stones are not drilled and polished into beads as sometimes they crack and are useless. If you have a really expensive stone, you don’t want to take a chance that drilling or grinding it down to polish will split it in half. So yeah, that wire wrap ring of hers is probably very affordable, like around $15-20. She could very well have purchased it herself at some point. Given that it’s on her pinky, I’m thinking that she either bought it herself when she was younger, or her parents bought it for her, when she was little and her fingers were much smaller. Now that she’s older, it only fits on her pinky. So it’s a ring similar to this, only with a smaller bead in it:

The ring (or rings, if they’re two that are stacked?) on her index finger looks to me to be either highly polished Sterling Silver or, more likely given the whiter color of the metal, something called Thai Silver, which is purer than Sterling at 97.5-99.0% silver. It does not tarnish like Sterling Silver because what actually tarnishes in Sterling are the other metals contained in the alloy. Being purer silver content, Thai silver doesn’t have this problem. So given that the ring (or rings) is bright white in color, it might be a purer form of silver.

Even so, it’s thin and the design is very simple (just a twisted or “rope” design), so it is only going to cost around $15-20 for a single band, $30-40 for a pair of them. It’s possible she purchased this for herself as well at some point. 

Okay but now let’s move on to another ring in that picture above, her talon ring.  Regardless of which canon you follow (comics, movies, or canon-divergent), the basic sense of Wanda’s life is that her childhood was fairly poor, she and Pietro lived on the streets for a while after their parents were killed, and then they were kept in a laboratory (by the High Evolutionary, Hydra, whatever you follow), after which they gained some amount of freedom before joining up with the Avengers. Ish, heh. Right? None of that screams wealth and privilege. And yet... some of Wanda’s rings are actually very expensive...

Her talon ring is a high-end designer piece. In the “real world,” it is designed by Pamela Love. It is made out of Sterling Silver, which is, by definition, 92.5% pure silver (this is why it is often stamped “.925″). The rest is usually a combination of copper, zinc, nickel, etc., mostly to make the metal harder so that jewelry doesn’t bend easily and break. This is especially important in a wrap-around design like this, where one can squeeze both sides of the ring and bend it very easily.

As someone who makes their own jewelry and works almost exclusively with Sterling Silver findings and other components, I am familiar with how it is priced. With no designer name attached, Wanda’s ring, give its size and shape and the oxidation which is usually applied after casting using an acid solution application method, would probably be in the $50-70 range. Once you add in designers, middle men, vendor overhead, etc., the price goes up from there. Right now, if her ring was available (it’s currently sold out), it would sell for $200, according to this site. That is... not cheap for your average Sterling Silver ring of this size/design. If I saw that price tag on a ring like this in a store, regardless of how much I liked it, I would probably laugh cynically and walk away.

The last ring in the photo is hard to see, but it’s on her middle finger and worn in a midi position. Most analyses I’ve seen during my research seem to agree that this ring is also by Pamela Love, and is an arrowhead ring:

This ring is also no longer available on Love’s website and doesn’t even have a page with a price on it for me to look at, but if it is priced anything like the talon ring, it is probably at least $200. I am even willing to say it might be closer to $250 or $300, given that this design looks more substantial and probably contains more Sterling Silver than the talon design. 

What I’m getting at with the last two rings is... given hers and Pietro’s background, I don’t think either one of them could afford rings like that. And even if they could, the money was better spend on food and other necessities, and with Wanda being the more prudent one of the pair, she would be the last to spend exorbitantly on things they did not need to survive. So what the hell, right? How did she get them? The simple answer is that Marvel can put on their characters whatever the heck they want, but that’s lame. I want an in-character reason.

My overall sense of the rings on this hand are that the pinky ring was probably something from her childhood moved to the pinky for size reasons, maybe purchased by her parents and given to her, the index finger rings (I believe they might be two stacked) could have been bought by her or Pietro later on, but the talon and arrowhead rings.....................

..................Pietro freakin’ stole those for Wanda. 

He had to.

He picked out an expensive table at a market or hit a little boutique store (because Wanda is worth it, in his mind), was in and out in seconds, grabbed what he could, and gave it to his beloved sister. This is canon for me now and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. 

...and if that’s the case, then they are probably very precious to her. I have no doubt that wearing rings is part of Wanda’s own personal expression. Pietro probably knew this, and that’s why he stole rings for her specifically. But beyond just a fashion statement, Wanda’s rings might have special meaning to her if Pietro or her parents gave them to her. I wear two rings every day that my mother, who is no longer living, gave to me. It’s possible that Wanda does the same thing, wearing jewelry that was given to her by people who meant a lot to her, but who are no longer with her. 

Aaaand that’s my amateur analysis of some of Wanda’s rings. Now that I’ve bothered to look into all of this, related info will probably seep into my rps. Because that’s what happens when I start fleshing out canon muses to a minute-detail level. XD Feel free to comment with your two cents on the subject if you wish!

[sally-mun]

My shitty few days

Sorry just need to purge for a while.

So as I mentioned the other day, we had to put Autumn down. We’ve only had her for a couple years, and it was very, very sudden. I’m finding myself handling this loss really poorly compared to the other cats, I think because it’s so out of the blue rather than having been something we saw coming for a while.

Autumn was due for her normal annual appointment for shots and a physical, but over the last couple days we saw she’d been breathing a little heavily. I kept trying to listen to her breathing to get a sense of whether or not she was congested, but she was purring almost every time, so it was hard to hear anything at all. The one time she wasn’t, it sounded slightly stuffy, so we assumed she had a headcold, which Morrigan had dealt with before, and figured she’d need a round of antibiotics. We took her to the appointment on Saturday and explained the situation, and our vet tech took her in the back to weigh her. Everything was just... so normal.

Eventually the doctor came in with two x-rays, which was already a worrisome sign. She showed us one that she said was a normal x-ray from another cat, which already told me that something about Autumn’s was abnormal. She showed us how the lungs are supposed to be a dark spot in the front, and the heart is down here, and x-y-z, then switched over to Autumn’s chart. There was no dark spot for the lungs at all, and the trachea was pushed way up near her spine. She explained that Autumn had an enlarged heart that was pushing up on her lungs and that the cavity was full of fluid, and that she was in congestive heart failure and they had her on oxygen in the back room. From the sound of it, she probably would’ve only maybe gotten through the weekend at best had she stayed home, but the stress of riding in a car and then going to the doctor had accelerated her decline, and she really only had minutes left.

We were in utter and complete shock. I just... could not believe what I was hearing. I understood what I was being told, but part of me still just didn’t understand. I could not believe that she wasn’t coming home with us, that this would be the last time I’d ever see her. All of a sudden I could only think about how there was no ‘wind down’ period where we could make peace, and do our final iterations of our rituals, and take lots of pictures, and say our goodbyes. I realized that @fini-mun had no idea what was going on, and I called and said to get to the vet immediately because Autumn was about to die. More than anything I was haunted by a dream I’d had earlier in the week, in which Autumn was being put down and I remembered grabbing her off the table and shouting “What are you doing?! She’s so young!!” and just screaming and screaming as I felt her die in my arms.

When Deebs arrived they took her off the oxygen and brought her back to the exam room so we could see her for a few minutes, and it was clear that she was suffering and that even if we didn’t do it now it wouldn’t be long, but that the humane thing to do was to do it then. It was just all so rapid and there just wasn’t time to come to terms with it or get our proper goodbyes in. She just. disappeared. And as such I still haven’t felt yet like she died so much as I feel like she was taken away, and I’m having a lot of difficulty getting my psyche to even accept that it’s not that she’s missing, it’s that she’s gone.

Autumn’s death is almost exactly 2 months after Morrigan’s, and that is also messing with me, because I’ve never dealt with back-to-back passings like this and now Rory is the only cat. I’ve never had a single cat and the house feels so much emptier than I would’ve guessed. What’s worse is that Rory is a very social cat, and now he’s by himself. He’s had stress reactions each time one of the cats has passed (Morrigan in particular seemed to upset him), but he seems to be really urgently looking for Autumn. His entire social group is gone, and given that he’s only 5, they were all cats that were around more or less his whole life. He seems very disturbed to be the only cat and has been following us around and trying to get our attention and leading us to random places. Where’s Sally? Where’s Morrigan? Where’s Autumn? And I hate that I have no way of explaining any of this to him. All he knows is that they’re missing, and I can’t tell him where they went.

I had to work that day, too. Luckily my boss was really sympathetic to the situation and juggled the schedule around so that I’d only have to be there for 4 hours instead of a full shift, and she did that while on vacation, so that was really nice of her. Unfortunately this was a weekend where I had to work both days, so I couldn’t take Sunday to deal with it either -- but then it got even harder.

So on a Sunday, you both open and close because the mall hours are shortened, and you typically have one associate to work with, sometimes two if it’s a holiday weekend or something. This week, I only had one -- and he had texted me saying that he was feeling sick. He said he’d texted everyone on our team asking someone to take his shift and couldn’t get any takers, and he didn’t know what to do. This guy is generally honest and reliable, so I didn’t have any reason not to trust him. I told him if he could just make it in, I’d have him only do cashiering and I’d take care of the rest, but he said he hurt to even get out of bed, so I told him I’d figure it out. When I got to my store, the first thing I did was call some neighboring stores to see if they could send someone over. I was sure that out of 3 other stores, SOMEONE had to be able to help, but, no. No one could (or would) come help.

This was a huge, huge problem for several reasons. First and foremost, you’re not only not supposed to work alone on a Sunday, but you’re not allowed to close alone, period at the end. When we leave the store we do bag and pocket checks on each other, so if I’m not working with anyone, there’s no one to check me. It gets worse, though, because my boss is on vacation right now, so I’m responsible for doing the “Monday Madness” (aka a shiiiitton of administrative stuff), buuut I’m not able to work on Monday, so I had to do it Sunday. Furthermore, my company holds contests among the stores to see who can sell the most push items, and in my district we’re divided into teams of 5 to report on how much we’ve sold, aaand in this instance our store was a team leader, which means we have to call the other stores to check on them and record how they’re doing. On top of it all, this just happened to be a VERY busy Sunday; my store (or rather, I) did over $1,800 in sales, which is outrageously high for that day of the week.

It was just... such an enormous amount of work. Managing the store is a huge amount of work even on a normal day, but on this day I was both opening and closing, running the contest, performing Monday Madness duties, and still intermittently trying to get someone to come in and help me, all in the midst of an $1,800 sales day -- plus all the little responsibilities I have, such as trying to get add-ons for certain products (which I’m scored on) or trying to ensure that I sell contest items in at least sets of 2 (which I’m also scored on) and filling in the day planner (which typically takes the better part of an hour), plus just simply -cleaning- the store and getting jewelry out of the locked cases and greeting people that come in while I’m in the midst of a transaction and getting product down from high shelves on a ladder and trying to watch out for and deter shoplifters. It was just so, so, so much to handle on my own in 6 hours. By the end of the day I was so spent that I kept pausing because my brain couldn’t keep up with what I was supposed to say at check-out. Quite frankly I’m amazed that my drawer was only off 10 cents. Plus somewhere in there I was supposed to get a lunch and a 10 minute break, but obviously neither of those happened. The only thing I was able to consume over the course of the day was half a bottle of water.

Today I’m off, but it’s still no time for rest or relaxation. The only reason I’m off today is because my mother needed to have surgery done and I requested the day off because I needed to be able to drive her, get her medicine, and look after her once we got home. Had to be up at 6:00 this morning because we had to be to the hospital by 7:45, but we were aiming for 7:15 in case we ran into problems. For some reason I talked myself out of bringing a bottle of coffee to substitute for breakfast. What can I say, I don’t eat terribly well when I’m not in a great place emotionally. I finally had an opportunity to find something to eat around 11:00.

Anyway, I can at least say that the hospital staff was great and hanging out with my mom for a couple hours before they took her off to surgery was nice, but I was just so, so tired. And even though it was a relatively minor surgery (to fix her deviated septum so she could breathe and sleep better), there’s always that bit of stress with knowing that your family member is being put under and their well-being (or even their life) is in someone else’s hands and things do go wrong sometimes, and even following the successful surgery this is a procedure that needs particularly high guards against infection and I still need to be on my toes even though she’s home. My mom is doing okay but she’s still in some pain and there are a lot of things she can’t do for herself right now, so I’m having a hard time really letting myself settle down and relax because I don’t want her to fail to rouse me and try to do something herself instead and start bleeding or get an infection or otherwise get hurt because she’s woozy from the drugs.

I’m off tomorrow too so I can continue looking after my mom, so maybe in that time I’ll finally be able to take a deep breath, but who knows honestly. It’s just been. a lot over the last 3 days. I feel emotionally shot and even though I’m constantly tired I feel like I haven’t slept even when I have. After tomorrow I work 4 days in a row at my job, which isn’t necessarily bad but it’s always tougher when my boss is on vacation because invariably SOME shit goes down and I’m stuck mopping it up and trying to make it better before she gets back. Hopefully Sunday already fulfills that, but at this store, you never know.

So yeah, tldr: my life is a mess and I have no idea when I’ll be feeling better.

[blue-eyed-devils]

a-kitten-with-claws???

Character in general:

Kit is a full bodied woman with a rich, complex flavour that lingers in your mouth. No wait, I’m talking about wine again. Ha!  But seriously, Kit is a nuanced well developed Original Character. 

How they play them:  

I’ve met more than my share of shrinks IRL, so I know what I’m talking about when I say Kit’s sessions really do sound like something a shrink would say. Even in casual encounters or meme, Kit comes across very in control of her emotions, just like any good psychologist. Great job there!

The Mun:

Lovely genuine person. Always takes the time to chat/say hi even though she’s superbusy IRL. Top value. Just feed her wine!

Do I:

RP with them: yes!Want to RP with them: yes! Go do it now!

My Feedback on the blog:

Clear, simple theme with very easy to find links. However the color scheme, dark red & black is a bit overused in themes. Perhaps it’s your love of red wine? Haha! I love the detailed bio, and the playmates section is very sweet. My suggestion would be to add a verses page and to add a page with references for Kit’s house/offices/other details - but that comes down to personal preference of course 

That’s my two cents.

[lakewoodsecond-blog]

LAKEWOODSECOND’S RP PLOTTING CHEAT-SHEET!

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

Mun name: charles! you can also call me charlie. OOC Contact: ims are just fine, but if we’re mutuals you can ask for my discord!!!

Who the heck is my muse anyway:

audrey jensen is that kid every high school has--- the emo kid, the goth kid, the weird kid, the artsy kid who’s always carrying a camera--- the one who’s different, who dresses differently, who doesn’t fit in. the thing that sets her apart from, say, me in high school, is that audrey doesn’t take any shit. she’s the weird kid, but she’ll absolutely drag your ass in any given situation.

she goes viral on the internet more than once. the first time is because she’s caught making out with a girl in a parking lot, some popular kids film it, and upload it to youtube. the second time is because she’s helped to kill the serial killer in lakewood. the third time is because some kids try pulling a prank on her, pretending to be the killer, and she winds up stabbing a kid. he doesn’t die, but they were absolutely livestreaming the whole thing.

she’s a survivor, unwilling to let anyone bring her down if she can help it. she’s 100% the ‘i’m not going down without a fight type’. in every single verse, her most important person is noah. he’s her best friend, her soulmate, her qpp, and she will wreck you if you put a hand on him. 

Points of interest:

other characters will absolutely notice her appearance--- she’s small, she’s muscular, and she’s grungy af. her presence is loud even when she isn’t, she’s almost always holding a camera ( unless it’s been taken by the police for evidence or unless she’s going through some intense stuff like being tormented by a killer ). she’s hard to miss. her behavior is very harsh. she’s the kind of person who will call you out on your crap, call you an idiot ( and mean it ), who will shove you into a locker for looking at her friends wrong. in season two, her behaviors change. she’s being texted by the killer who’s threatening to reveal her secrets, and she becomes much more tense than she usually is. normally her anger is just sort of simmering beneath the surface, a constant part of her being, but in season two it’s as if it’s just come up to the surface, vibrating on top of her skin.

she’s paranoid, she’s jumpy. when she’s freaked out and someone is trying to point something out to her that she doesn’t want to see, she has them spell it out to her. 

if she likes you, she’s a little softer. she smiles more, she’s protective, she expresses her concerns very openly. 

honestly, for someone who’s usually very open with her feelings and her actions, she has a lot to hide. she’s a liar.

What they’ve been up to recently:

right now my blog is all over the place--- i’ve got lots of verses and lots of things in each verse--- so i’ll answer this as a sort of post-canon situation. in my post canon verse, as a default, i sort of imagine that she goes off to new york the way brooke does and goes for film studies. her goal is to become a director. this does, however, depend a bit on where noah is planning to go, because i think she’d ideally like to live with him during their college years.

Where to find them:

she’s usually at school, at noah’s house, or at the grindhouse ( the coffee shop ). it’s typically not hard to find her if you’re looking for her! 

Current plans:

i don’t really have any! honestly i usually play lots of threads by ear--- i’m not super great at plotting--- but i’m open to all sorts of ideas.

Desired interactions:

whoo boy okay so!! first of all i really want more actual killer audrey threads. i think a lot about her having been one of the killers, having actually been piper’s accomplice, and it’s honestly one of my favorite verses. i like pushing the limits of what audrey would and wouldn’t do if she’d crossed the line into killing nina, and i’m always up for talking about it.

i’d also like more interactions surrounded by audrey’s love for film. i don’t get to focus on it a lot--- in truth, carrying around a camera isn’t really a plot point that’s easy to work off of--- but i’d like audrey to either talk to people who have an interest in her work or for her to actually work with people on films!!!

also like i said i’m open to all kinds of stuff! got an idea? come at me!

Offered interactions:

as far as things that audrey can offer up that other characters don’t, there’s sort of a world of possibilities.

want someone to drag your character? want someone to threaten them with a 99 cent voice modulator app? want someone to film them for something? want someone to talk about horror movies with your character? 

Current open post/s:

here is my meme tag!

here is my open tag!

Anything else?:

i have links to my pages in my little sidebar thing so that people can get info on me/audrey even in the event that they’re mobile! my timezone is EST and i work a lot/am a grown up/whatever other reasons so sometimes i’m not always around. i promise i’m never intentionally ignoring anyone that i’m mutuals with and if you’re ever interested in knowing anything about audrey ( or me! ) please ask! i live for asks.

Tagging: oh man anyone can take it from me but i’ll tag The Squad bc why not so!!! @lakewoodfourth @lakewoodthird @lakewoodfifth @keptsecrets / @hercrime