#my entire personality for months now (and i was still reading it after i purged my dash. i was just trying to get rid of a paper trail

[c0rpsedemon]

these ppl are annoying love and light

[nxposure]

On my last blog, I wrote about my eating disorder at great length. I think it's time to do it again. If you don't like long text posts, feel free to skip this, but don't skim read it and reply because that's not nice.

TW if you need it, eating disorders, self harm, body dysmorphia.

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People seem to think that eating disorders don't really apply to men. I spent my entire childhood listening to just about everyone passing judgement on other people's weight. As a boy, my apparent role models were all athletes, thin or muscular actors, skinny popstars and guys in music, and any husky person was either funny or tragic.

As I got older, I noticed these attitudes getting worse. Muscular men between acting jobs would stop cutting and starving their bodies, but would still look like peak physical condition but would be referred to as having a 'dad bod'.

Older still, I'd see people waggling their little fingers making jokes about small dicks, or laughing about people who cum to quick. People were too tall or not tall enough. Then they'd be too skinny if they were too fat. Then, laughs about baldness or their bodies being too hairy. It went on and on.

It melted my brain. I wanted to be whatever this idea shape was and deep down, I knew it wasn't possible, and I developed an immovable self loathing that I suspect I'll carry with me through my whole life.

I'd hear women getting similar criticisms, and the criticisms came equally from women and men, gay and straight, and of all races and creeds, and I think somewhere in my thoughts, I gave up trying to find a peaceful way of navigating this and began to purge every time I ate. I was playing a lot of team sports and would vomit before every game. I'd then go home, eat, and repeat. I became dangerously thin and people would tell me my body looked great.

I would pass out a lot through exhaustion and my eyes became dark. At some point I collapsed and hit my face on a shelf, then a radiator, and pretended to everyone that I'd just been in a fight.

After a short time thinking I'd fixed myself after scaring myself when I'd collapsed, it started again. I switched out bulimia for anorexia. I was now not eating at all. I remember hitting my hand with a spoon over and over when someone brought me some food to work, anxiety in overdrive as I hoped they wouldn't notice me not touching any of the food they gave me. That happened a lot and the back my hand was frequently purple with bruises.

I've kept a photo of a more recent period so I have something to check, in case I've dropped too much weight. This was me not that long ago, irresponsibly thin and I'd made myself very poorly. The skirt is cute though.

It was around this time that I'd collapsed again, this time in public. I was rushed to hospital with malnutrition and it was in the middle of lockdown so hospitals were swamped and everything was weird.

I was given a COVID test and while the nurses went to do my test, I sneaked out of the hospital because I didn't want them to tell me anything about how thin I was, even though they'd already clocked me. I walked home and collapsed three more times in the street, and twice more at home. I managed to get myself back to hospital eventually and spent the night under observation and was fed sugary gels and put on a drip to try and replace some of what my body had been missing for months.

I again discharged myself and ran away from the problem.

I was disgusted with myself. I was being irresponsible. I thought I looked enormous. I then made myself more depressed because I shouldn't talk about people's bodies like that. I loved people of all shapes and sizes and here I was, judging someone for being fat. I didn't eat or drink a single thing for two weeks after being in hospital. I was going mad. It was time to tell my friends what was going on, and it turned out a number of them had already worked it out.

One of the things I needed to fix was some of the people I sought advice from. I'd found people in secret who also had eating disorders and people who self harmed. It sounded like we were helping each other from the outside in, but the reality was that we were all enabling each other. Some call it trauma bonding. I call it unwell people egging each other on and even being competitive about it.

One girl said to me that my eating disorder wasn't as bad as hers. She gave me tips on how to act like I was getting better to other people. Saying you're trying is as good as actually trying, she added. It's all part of the performance.

I didn't want to be ill. I just wanted to not feel violently sick when I thought about my own body existing. I wanted to not be perceived at all, and to be left in darkened rooms, wasting away. While I spent all those nights, just lying there, I realised that this illness wasn't like other illnesses. Cancer wants to devour you. Broken bones want to heal. This eating disorder wanted me to stay alive but maximise the suffering in a prolonged bout of self harm. Me being dead was no use to my dysmorphia. I did just enough to stay alive, so I could maximise the suffering. It was like an endurance sport with no medal.

At some point, my name was put forward to appear on a news programme on national television. One of my supposed support network worked in TV and was asked if they knew anyone who had what had been rebranded as 'manorexia'. It's funny - even when showing concern, people still do stupid things like giving an illness that applies to anyone a ridiculous name. We don't call it blokeaemia do we?

After speaking to the genuinely respected and very nice journalist who I'd seen on television a lot, she was heavy handed in her questions. Things like "is it just vanity then?" is one that sticks in my memory. After 3 days of back and forth, the news story was dropped because a panda had given birth in a zoo somewhere. My sense of the absurd and gallows humour kicked in, mercifully. Men's eating disorders, relegated beneath a captive animal having a baby.

Another friend who was genuinely being well-meaning told me how brave I was, "going around telling everyone you have a woman's disease". I wasn't angry because I knew what they meant, but to someone more fragile, it could have gone horribly wrong. Another friend simply said "I don't want to ever talk about this - it's too upsetting."

I became aware of famous men talking about their eating disorders. A politician called John Prescott spoke of his and everyone laughed at it and made jokes on panel shows, based entirely on the fact that he wasn't thin enough. Everyone laughed at Hugh Jackman on talkshows when he spoke of the starvation and duress he put his body under to look a certain way for movies. Thin women were pointed at when they put an ounce of weight on. I heard women sniggering about other women saying "what does she look like in that dress?"

More recently, people would berate the 45th president of the United States for being "fat", rather than going after more pertinent things like his whole personality and terrible views. Fat, in this instance, was the ultimate sin, not being pro-fascist. I noticed how many larger men were clowning around at their own expense, and women would coo about them online. People like Jack Black - talented, good looking, charismatic - would be met with "I don't care that he's fat".

So where am I now? Mentally, the damage is done and I don't think I'll ever lose the will to harm myself. However, since my last collapse, I swore I'd never go there again. I rigidly eat three times a day. I've actively learned to enjoy the cooking process. It's been incredibly difficult, perhaps in part because I stubbornly refuse any professional help. I looked around for a psychiatrist who would help at one point, but every single one told me that they weren't taking men on.

Way back when, I started sharing photos of my body on Tumblr in a state of undress because I wanted to normalise how I looked. If I sandwiched myself between everyone else's nudes which I thought were beautiful, then I gave myself a chance to think the same of my own. It certainly helped. There's something about the kind of people this site attracts that celebrates a variety of people and I can be flooded with dopamine when my photos get complimented. They're compliments from people that sometimes get it, and that matters. Some people just think I'm being thirsty, and sometimes, they're absolutely correct.

My stomach has grown. There's fat bits on my back which I've never seen before. My neck got chunky where my jawline used to be razor sharp. At long last, I'm learning to love this. I love the softness of people's bodies, and it's taken me decades to realise that I'm just people too. I wear soft clothes that feel nice against my skin. I've collaborated on photos with wonderful people. While my dysmorphia is so bad that I doubt I'll ever find it easy to sexually pleasure myself, I've been shocked to find that people on here have actually had me feeling like a viable and sexy person! It's a completely new feeling to me and I'm trying to get better at taking compliments instead of pushing them away.

I've written about this before and at some length, but I feel it's important to do it again so it doesn't get lost. It might help someone. It might help people understand me better. It might help someone understand what their friend is going through. It might just be enough to offer an interesting perspective and nothing more.

I'm doing better than I've done in memory and it's weird and makes me feel vulnerable. I don't want to get complacent and writing this reminds me of how far I've come and not to let this terrible illness sneak up on me again. I've been through some horrendous emotional stress recently, and that's exactly the kind of time where a thing like this can reintroduce itself into my brain.

I'm doing okay though, genuinely. I can only write about these things when I'm in a good place. I hope you are too. If anyone ever needs to speak to me about anything like this, I can't promise I can fix you, but I can definitely empathise and I will root for you.

(please forgive any typos or garbled language in this - I wrote it in one take, off the cuff, without editing)

[arenee1999]

I thought I had found something special in OFMD and its fandom.

There have been characters through the years that I've identified with in a fairly superficial way. Studious, likes to read, awkward, lonely, bullied -- and my list of favorite characters paints a rather revealing portrait. But then I found Our Flag Means Death and I found myself identifying with multiple characters in a deep, visceral way that I have never had before. And I found a fandom full of people that felt the same way.

Then the darker side of the fandom began making itself known. Close minded, racist, homophobic, puritanical twats. The canyon that despises Ed and Stede, the gentlebeardies that despise Izzy. All of the people treating Rhys, Taika and Con like dogshit and treating your fellow fans even worse.

And yet, through that many of us still managed to love the show, the characters, the cast and crew and each other.

Then, right when literally everyone was expecting a renewal announcement we were told it was cancelled. Many of us fell into depression. We rallied as best we could to fight for our show. But we were still left reeling.

That same day one of my only friends (and the only one I could talk to about anything)  stopped talking to me. But I pushed that to the side and spent all my energy on the fandom, on Xitter, posting and talking and making as much noise as possible with everyone else.

Then March came around we got that announcement. Despite our efforts and a large portion of the industry on our side, we weren't going to see anything come of our efforts. At least not for the foreseeable future. Long term has yet to be decided, but short term there's no hope. Many of us that had been holding our depression at bay with frantic activity, crashed, hard. Some of us were still able to find solace in the fandom. Our love of the show hasn't diminished after all. So we reinvest in what made us love the show from the start and we let it heal us once again as best it can.

I'm one of the ones that crashed. And I was left with no one to talk to. I held myself together for awhile but eventually began to spiral. Tried pushing away everything because if I don't feel anything it won't hurt as much. I had made rather startling progress on extricating my last couple hyperfixations. And I was rapidly becoming dangerously, severely depressed. Then a month and a half ago I find out why my friend suddenly stopped talking to me. Apparently I talked about OFMD too much and he just couldn't handle it. I was simultaneously too much and not enough. And as I was suddenly and violently smacked in the face with a wave of despair, I dug around to figure out what pulled me out of the last few bouts of heavy depression I suffered. Because fuck knows, I was in desperate need of something. Turns out the last two times it was Taika (both directly and indirectly with Thor Ragnarok and OFMD) and before that it was HP fanfiction (for 10 years HP fic kept me mostly stable and functioning). Which explains entirely why my depression kept getting worse by leaps and bounds as I was in the process of purging all of that from myself as much as possible. So I took a good hard look around and decided my mental health was more important than protecting someone else's feelings. I immediately quit trying to unravel my core psyche and personality and was just starting to reach something resembling functional.

And now the fandom has once again erupted into puritanical, homophobic bigotry and hatred. And I'm finding myself shutting down. The joy I was just starting to find again in this fandom is gone. I see nothing but ash and dust. Even the clips of Ed and Stede's first kiss, that usually bring an immediate swell of joy, leaves me feeling nothing but numb.

If you are that full of hatred for an aspect of the show, be it a character, a pairing, a plot point, a cast or crew member, keep it to your fucking selves. Create closed groups, communities, discords etc. with the rest of the hate filled "fans" and spew your garbage where those of us that are here for what we love can't fucking see it. We do not need to be splashed with the muck from your cesspit.

Better yet, listen to DJenks -

[maybeebeee]

Won't You Stay With Me, My Darling?

weeeee i'm writing again? i started writing this like two months ago and finished it at 1am so...do with that information as you will haha but I've been thinking about this au for aaaages and am glad that i finally finished writing something for it! hope you love it like i do :)

Pairing: Layla El-Faouly/Marc Spector, implied Layla El-Faouly/Steven Grant

Rating: G

Characters: Layla El-Faouly, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley (mentioned), Khonshu (mentioned)

Tags: AU - Star Wars universe, Jedi Layla El-Faouly, bounty hunter Marc Spector, mutual pining, fluff, first kiss, idiots in love

Word count: 2301

Summary: A Jedi and a bounty hunter face a moral conundrum. In other words...Jedha is a cold planet, and Layla doesn't do well in the cold.

Read on AO3

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Despite being a desert moon, Jedha is freezing all the time, which Layla had not been expecting the first time she had stepped out of her ship onto the planet’s surface. It’s been six months since then, and every time she’s come back it’s been just as much of a shock — and yet she still finds herself coming back again and again.

Of course, that’s mostly thanks to Marc. Or more specifically, Khonshu demanding that Marc keep coming back. The skeletal avian creature keeps promising just one more contract, and then the bounty hunter will be free, but there’s always something else, and Marc is bound until Khonshu decides to withdraw whatever hold he has on his already-fractured mind.

Layla still feels uneasy around the alien — ever since their first meeting when she had sensed the way the very air around him was almost stained with the dark side, she hasn’t trusted him. She trusts Marc, and Steven, and even Jake now that she’s met him a few more times, but not their…employer. Anyone who uses the dark side to indenture people can’t be trusted, no matter how “beneficial” the work they send them to do is.

And it’s true that Marc’s work is generally for good, it’s why Layla joined him on his travels in the first place. Taking down Imperial cells across the galaxy — especially those operating their own further very illegal and unethical programs within — is what she had already been doing herself, as a way to honour all of her fellow Jedi that had given their lives trying to do the same before the purge took them away. 

It’s nice to have someone else to fight alongside again, even if his employer is an untrustworthy bird creature who fell off the Jedi path centuries ago and has been using the dark side to bring people back from near-death and force them to serve him as his own personal bounty hunters until he feels like letting them go. 

It’s not like that’s Marc’s fault. 

In any case, Layla doesn’t mind coming back to Jedha regularly. It’s one of the few places in the galaxy she feels truly safe as a Jedi these days, and the hum of the Force through her veins when she’s here is always a source of comfort.

She’s trying to focus on it now, sitting on the floor of the small, draughty room she and Marc are staying in this time, but the cold nips at her even through her layers of clothes and makes it hard to keep her mind fixed on her meditation. It’s been hard enough to meditate since Master Taweret was killed — though Layla had been a fully-fledged Jedi Knight for several years before the purge, the loss of her old master had left a hole in her heart that she’s still not sure will ever fully heal, and reaching out with the Force had been almost impossible for weeks after Taweret’s death. She’s still getting used to it now, though it’s been nearly three years. 

People always spoke of how hard it could be to reconnect to the Force after the loss of their master, but nothing could have ever prepared her for how hard it would be after the loss of her entire Order. Not only is Taweret gone, but so is anyone else who could have helped her through this.

And then there’s the Marc issue. 

Her whole life, Layla had been taught detachment. Never letting her feelings compromise her work as a Jedi. Loving people and being compassionate but never allowing deep attachment to one person to occur. Even her very familial-like relationship with Taweret was on a knife’s edge of being too attached in the Council’s view, which was partly why she had been pushed through her Trials at only nineteen. And romance was absolutely off the cards.

Now though…the Order is gone, and Marc is here. Marc, and Steven, and Jake. But mostly Marc.

Layla’s been drawn to him from the first moment they had crossed paths, and it seems fateful to her that they’ve stayed together this long since then. The Force drew her to him, she’s sure of it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still conflict in her mind about it. 

She loves him, she has for some time now. She hasn’t admitted it out loud, but she senses that he knows, and it’s clear that he feels the same too. And although she’s made her peace with it, it’s something she’s still unsure of navigating, something that brings…not fear, per se, but an uncertainty that she’s not used to.

The Jedi had tried to keep everything so black and white. Light side and dark side. Since the fall of the Order she’s seen so many ways that it can co-exist and intersect — like in Khonshu even, someone who is so far into the dark side the Jedi would have written him off a long time ago if they’d known he was still alive, and yet he wants the Empire gone as much as anyone Layla would see as more typically light would. Granted, he has very questionable ways of going about his work, and she’s certain it’s more out of self-interest than the greater good, but…he’s still helping, in some strange way.

Layla’s grown less afraid of her feelings in the past months. She knows she’s doing work that the Jedi would be proud of, even if she’s not necessarily doing it the way they would’ve wanted her to. She’s confident, not afraid of igniting her lightsabers and fighting in the name of peace and justice; and not afraid of admitting, at least to herself, that her feelings for Marc are there. 

That doesn’t make it any easier to act on them, although her own hesitation is starting to drive her mad. It’s like she just can’t shake the hands of the Council on her shoulders, warning her that acting on her feelings could be a path to the dark side. She knows it won’t be — if losing Master Taweret taught her anything it’s that love has only made her more determined to stay on the path of the light, but…maybe it’s just that this kind of love feels like a violation of rules she’d been directly instructed not to break.

“You’re thinking so loud,” Marc comments from the doorway, where Layla knows he’s been standing for at least a few minutes, “I thought meditating was supposed to stop the thoughts.”

“It’s supposed to clear the mind,” She corrects, not opening her eyes, “But I can’t concentrate when it’s so cold.”

He finally moves toward the makeshift bed they’d set up in the corner when they’d arrived — it’s his turn to sleep on the floor, and thankfully he’s not complained as much as usual this time — and plops down on the pillows. He’s quiet for long enough that Layla finally gives up and peeps open one eye, enough to catch him staring at her.

She sighs and leans back to lay on the cold floor before she can think better of it, and a shiver runs up her spine immediately, “Alright, I give up. How long has it been anyway?”

Marc shrugs and holds up a tracking fob before just as quickly tossing it into his bag. “Long enough to debrief the bird and get my next job. We can go in a few days. Steven wants to get some supplies from the markets, which probably means he wants new clothes—” 

His gaze shifts towards the window for a moment, where Layla can sense Steven’s presence and almost picture his indignant expression, “Yeah, I’m onto you, no more ponchos…” Marc shakes his head, “Fine, but it better not be on me when I come in, ever. Anyway,” He glances back at her, “I think we’re all overdue for a good sleep. So…let’s do that first.”

Layla stands up and stretches out her stiff limbs — sitting down for that long really doesn’t do wonders for the joints, she thinks. “Good idea. Meditation is rest, in a way, but it’s still…taxing on the mind and spirit.”

“Again, thought the point was to clear the mind.” Marc imitates her with a half-smile, to which she shoots him a withering stare as she sheds her outer layers of clothing and climbs into the bed, “Sorry. Yeah, you get this look when you’ve been meditating, like you’re awake but you’re not really there again until you’ve slept. I do notice things sometimes.”

She purses her lips at him, fighting the heat rising to her cheeks at the notion of being so known by someone. By Marc. “So you do.” She muses and drops her head to the pillow, “Good night.”

“Sleep well.”

Layla tries, she really does, but it’s so cold. There’s several blankets piled on top of her and she’s still shivering despite her best efforts to stay perfectly still in the spot she’s already warmed with her own body heat. Thoughts of warmer planets swirl in her mind, of deserts with actual desert heat, or jungle planets with humidity that makes her hair frizz up something terrible but at least keeps her cocooned in warmth and relative comfort — at least compared to the bone-biting chill of Jedha.

It’s probably been twenty minutes by the time Marc speaks up again from his spot on the floor.

“Layla, I can hear you shivering.”

“I’m fine.”

Layla hears the telltale rustle of blankets and knows that Marc is standing, staring. She pointedly keeps her own gaze fixed on the ceiling. A beat longer, and another pile of blankets is dropped on top of her, on which she can faintly smell Marc’s familiar metallic, smoky scent. The man himself is still standing beside the bed, so she finally turns her gaze towards him. Even in the dark she can see how earnestly he’s looking at her, and it makes her heart leap up into her throat. Neither of them say a word. 

Layla is a little shaky as she lifts up the covers in silent invitation, never mind the cold air it lets into the bed with her, if only for a brief moment. Any hesitation she had been dwelling on before is gone, throwing caution to the wind and deciding for once in her life to follow her heart. Stars, the Council would be so disappointed in her. But it’s now or never.

Marc nods, wasting no time slipping in beside her and pulling the blankets tight around them both. Layla finds herself drawing close to his warmth immediately, curling an arm around his waist as his own hand presses tentatively into the centre of her back. They’re chest to chest, sharing the same breath in the almost nonexistent gap between them, and it’s so warm. 

Layla can sense his nerves — although she doesn’t need the Force to tell her that, with the rabbiting of his heartbeat thrumming through her so clearly she might’ve thought he’d pressed his own heart right into her chest in silent offering. It’s clear that their unspoken line has been crossed, they’ve gone beyond the threshold without even having to say out loud, “Come in.”

She reaches up with her other hand to trace her fingers over his cheekbone, and he lets out a long breath as he leans into her gentle touch.

“How long have you—” He starts hoarsely.

“Since the beginning,” She breathes, “Always.”

Marc leans in to press his forehead against hers, bumps their noses together with a quiet, disbelieving laugh, “The whole time. I was thinking this whole time that I was the galaxy’s biggest idiot, falling for…well, anyone really, but especially a Jedi who wouldn’t love me back. Hell, even Steven’s been telling me that. He’s…sort of in on this too, but it’s not like he would’ve done this, right? Honestly, I’m surprised I did it.”

Layla smiles warmly, presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, “I’m glad you did. I’ve been trying to work up the strength to tell you for so long, but you know it’s…complicated, with the lessons I had drilled into me by the Council for so long. But,” She punctuates with another soft kiss to his dimple, “This Jedi does love you back.”

His exhale is shaky, but he tilts his head to catch her lips with his own, and oh, Layla is well and truly done for. His hand is strong on her back, his mouth soft and warm and tasting vaguely minty — she never wants to taste anything else if she can help it — and all too soon he’s drawing back, though now his other hand is cupping her cheek just as she’s doing to him. She wonders vaguely if he can feel her blush under his fingertips, just as she can feel his. 

“You’ve stopped shivering.” Marc points out, but pulls her closer all the same.

She huffs out a laugh, “You’re warm.”

He sneaks another kiss before replying, “No more cold nights for you, hm? You let me in once and you’re probably not gonna get rid of me, or Steven when he finds out, just so you know.”

“I can live with that.” She smiles, “You’re all good company.”

Marc’s expression mirrors Layla’s, and it’s a while longer trading kisses and whispered stories of their many realisations of love for each other before they finally start dozing off, clinging to each other like they never want to be separated again. The galaxy is a tough place, and there’s still so much fighting to be done for the Jedi and bounty hunter pair before all this will truly get easier. But for now?

Layla is warm in Marc’s embrace. And that’s enough for her.

[jasper-borealis]

Personal post time babyyyyy

did I just bomb a crap ton of reblogs after not going on this site for almost 3 months, and now I'm going to rant? you betcha!!!

ok sooooooooo, I'm not having a good time with my faith. I have grown up my entire life as a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (or WELS for short) and for awhile now I just…I can't say I agree with their stances on…a lot.

what kinda scares me is that there are some folks who follow me who are highly involved members, and I'm honestly kinda scared of them sending this post to my family…so you know who you are, please please don't share this post with my family.

honestly if I tried to put all my grievances with the WELS in this post, it would be the length of the journal entries I write in a fugue state, so I'm not going into all of it. But my biggest issues I have are A. they way they go about reading the holy texts, B. how strongly political they get (some are better then others, but others…), and C. their internal synodical doctrines (Prayer fellowship is one of the biggest for me)

How they read the holy texts. as I've been studying theology, and the bible, more and more, I've been finding I take massive issues with a litteralist reading of the western cannon of the bible. I find that the bible makes much much much more interal, spiritual, and logical sense, when you read a majority of the bible as Wisdom Literature. I still read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) as basically inerrant, and the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and mostly inerrant with stories/parables mixed in. The WELS' official way to read the bible is as 100% literal, and thus must be applied to our modern day directly [except those pesky verses about slavery, those they don't take literally (although some do…and it's terrifying), because ya know…they aren't hypocritical at alllllllll] and I just do not see strong reasons for reading the texts that way, I understand why they do…but I don't agree with it.

-How Strongly Political they get "a few years ago, some black robed heathens announced that gay marriage was totally fine. are you going to listen to some black robed heathens? or the eternal God who instituted marriage in the first place"…….this is a almost direct quote from a sermon a month ago, so ya know…totally Apolitical and able to reap those fun tax except status perks… this was just one thing…while the WELS is better then a lot of churches, and the church body mostly stays out of things…they don't do much to stop pastors and individual churches from becoming a propaganda branch of the political right wing…

-their internal synodical doctrines The WELS is full of internal doctrines on how things work…and the biggest one I have issue with is their doctrine of "Prayer fellowship" it basically states they WELS members are not to ever pray, or worship, and any non WELS members. the only exception is when the member themself is running the worship service, or leading the prayer. the WELS gives biblical verses that "support" this doctrine (just like the verses they use to say women can't vote in any internal church affair, or hold any religious position, I.E Pastor, Elder, President.) I have looked at these verses for a long time, and while I understand why they get those positions from those verses, I just don't agree with them at all. It all comes from a literalist (and context blind) understanding of the texts, and I just can not say in good faith that I agree with them in any way shape or form.

This all comes in tandem with the knowledge that I am going to be Excommunicated sometime this year…why? because I'm a big ol fruit. I tried for YEARS, to not be queer. I did everything, I prayed night and day, I self harmed constantly, like some kinda Augustinian monk, to purge these "fleshly lusts" from my body…for two years. I begged God to kill me almost every night…the only reason I didn't do the deed myself, was because I was afraid if I took my own life…I would end up in the fires of hell…I also didn't want my family to be heart broken…cause I love them all so much, and I just didn't want to hurt them… To say that these years left lasting scares, is a understatement. I have only recently, through the help of friends and a therapist God put in my life, have been able to live with a sliver of hope in my future. every time I get punched…or slap myself…I am instantly reminded of my self harm (I hit myself with my fists as my main source of pain). to say that I will be working on undoing this mess for years so come, is obvious, but fortunately, I see light at the end of the tunnel, and every day had been getting better. I accepted my Queerness about 9 months ago. I changed my mind, when a friend sent me some theological sources, and talked to me about it…and it took awhile, but I eventually changed my mind about how I was destined for hell for something I tried, and couldn't change. Initially…it was terrifying…what was I going to do? basically everything I ever thought was true was under question…and even after basically spending every day of these past few months in furious study…I still don't know all the answers, but I am confidant enough to say I do not think that God has any issue with queerness.

So now my life has changed, from one of intense self hatred and depression, to one of constant low boiling fearand terror…I am closeted, because my mother and father are very homophobic and transphobic, and I am terrified of what will happen when they find out…do you know what that does to somebody? to love your family so deeply, and your parents to love you deeply back…but behind every hug, is the knowledge…that they hate so vehemently, something so thoroughly ingrained in who I am…that they don't know about…it honestly sucks so much. I cantor (lead the hymns) at my church, and my church loves me for it, and I'm very popular over all with my fellow parishioners…but knowing that every smile, and "thank you so much for singing today!" or "Oh you did so well! I always love your voice"…will be wiped away when I come out of the closet…

I am planning on coming out sometime later this year…when? I'm not sure…but I know I can't keep this mask up for much longer…because while I don't self harm, and my mental health is slightly better over all…living a lie to your family because you know they will hate you…is kinda a drag on the ol brain. I've come out to two of my siblings, I have 6, so I came out to the two sisters closest to me ( I love all my siblings hugely, but these two I have just been slightly closer to) and both of them are chill, one of them made it very clear that she was here for me, and that when the time comes, she will do her best to do damage control….and the other basically went "Ya no shit Sherlock" and has been chill about it (both reactions where kinda hilarious, and I love them even more for it) Once The WELS hears of my coming out…I will immediately be called for a "Church discipline meeting" aka a inquisition with the elders and pastor, where they will try and get me to recant my "sins"…but as a famous theologian said-

"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves-I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. So Help Me God. Amen" -Martian Luther, Diet of worms, 1521.

-so I honestly don't think I will even bother to go to that meeting…because I don't want to go through that hurling of fire and brimstone. I honestly think I will just send a email in response…and just let them decide how to go about it. Will there be consequences for this? yes… but God is with me…amen.

[downstarr]

In These Hollow Stars - Star Trek x OFM

Three years before the start of the Dominion War, Captain Edward Teach resigned his commission to join the Maquis after a treaty between the Cardassians and the Federation puts his home colony in the hands of the Cardassians. He and the crew of the Raider, Revenge, were among the only Maquis to survive a purge. Ed and his crew spent the rest of the war working independently to pick at Cardassian defenses. For their service, the crew of the Revenge was offered a pardon. Ed is now the captain of the Concorde, a Nebula-class ship that is half stuffed with experimental technology, and half obsolete. They have spent the last few years doing gruntwork on the edges of Federation space. Their latest mission brings them to the Cardassian system of Goralis, which was once the site of a Dominion experimental weapons facility that experienced a catastrophic accident and contaminated the entire system. Their job is simply to map the contaminated area and send that information back to Starfleet. It's just another routine mission for the crew of the Concorde, until a surge in power through experimental systems picks up a hitchhiker on the holodeck...

Chapter 1

Captain’s Personal Log

Stardate 55553.6

The Concorde is surveying the Goralis System in former Cardassian space. About a year after the end of the war, Starfleet discovered an abandoned Dominion experimental weapons facility that had been the centre of a catastrophic accident. That accident wreaked havoc with sensors and contaminated surrounding space. Our mission is to take readings of contaminants to prepare a report on a timeline for cleaning up the site and rehabilitating the surrounding space. 

This is the fifth survey mission we’ve been tasked with in the past six months. When I accepted the pardon for my defection to the Maquis, I did so believing what the Federation says about rehabilitation and second chances. Never mind that I don’t believe my choice to leave Starfleet to defend my home colony from the Cardassians are actions that need forgiveness. 

When Starfleet offered me a new command after the crew of the Revenge and I did our part to reopen supply lines along the badlands and root out the last few Breen beachheads in Federation space, I almost didn’t accept. It felt like an Act of Grace, the kind my ancestor, Blackbeard might have been compelled to sign when faced with the forces of colonialism. 

But I did it. I accepted the wrist slap and the black marks on my records. I attended mandatory counseling and re-training and gave a thorough accounting of my so-called crimes as a member of the Maquis. I never expected to be given command of a starship again, let alone the opportunity to bring along many of my old crew who had also accepted pardons.

It seemed too good to be true. Jury’s still out on whether it is. 

Concorde is an old ship, Nebula-class. The reason for giving me this command was the backhanded compliment that I had shown… ingenuity and an ability to achieve impressive feats with outdated and scrounged technology.

Outdated is a kind word to describe the ship’s systems. She’s no more than two or three years away from being mothballed, if Chief Feeney’s estimations are correct. The nacelles had to be completely rebuilt after the Invasion of Chin'toka and several of her systems have been rebuilt with experimental components that don’t always play well with the rest of the ship. I’m entirely convinced that if I hadn’t accepted this command, Concorde would be sitting in a scrapyard and cannibalized for parts. 

At first, it made perfect sense to be stuck on boring survey missions in former combat areas or areas too dodgy for the pure science ships. I knew I had to regain Starfleet’s trust. But it’s been nearly three years of grunt work, patrolling quiet borders or surveying celestial bodies for stellar hazards. The moment anything even remotely interesting comes up, either of the scientific or martial kind, Starfleet pulls us out and sends in someone else. 

I’m starting to take it personally. 

But I stick it out, mostly for my crew. It was a condition of their pardons that they serve, and I know they wouldn’t make it under any other captain and they’d be sent back to prison.

If future historians who decrypt these logs in a hundred years’ time wonder if Captain Edward Teach, once considered the brightest tactical mind of his generation, is bitter about his change in circumstances? The answer is yes.

Captain Teach tapped the console to end the recording. The formal log covered much of the same ground, but dispassionately delivered instead of the dripping bitterness of his personal log. 

He stood up from behind his desk and exited the Ready Room onto Concorde’s bridge. 

“Report.”

“We’ve finished surveying the rogue planet on the edge of the system, Captain,” rasped Isryah “Izzy” Hands, his half-Bajoran first officer. He’d been by Ed’s side as a member of the Maquis, and he followed him into Starfleet. He was one of those officers who would still be in a Federation penal colony if Ed hadn’t accepted command of the Concorde. Or maybe he would have been repatriated to Bajor even though he’d been born and raised in a Federation refugee camp. 

Ed had never met anyone with more intense survivor’s guilt. Izzy channeled the guilt of never experiencing the Occupation first-hand nor fighting in the resistance by hitting back at the Cardassians every chance he got. That’s what led him to the Maquis, and now, uncomfortably, to Starfleet. 

“Let me guess. Nothing interesting about the rogue planet? What’s its designation again?” asked Ed as he moved across Concorde’s small bridge. Unlike other Federation ships, the bridge was cast in dark, shiny metal with much sharper and bolder shapes than most. It was the only part of the ship that was new. It was also one of the ship’s experimental retrofits. 

The black alloy that gave the bridge its distinctive look had been devised from technology and samples Voyager had gathered on its epic trip from the Delta Quadrant. It had been named Torresium in honour of the ship’s chief engineer. The alloy was supposed to diffuse energy far more efficiently, which would, in theory, drastically reduce console explosions caused by EPS overloads. It made the bridge of Concorde look more imposing and less Starfleet, which suited Ed just fine. 

“The rogue planet is very em, round. And rocky,” said helmsman Ensign French, aka Frenchie. 

“Round and rocky,” drawled Ed. “Groundbreaking. Anything else?” He glanced up and to the left to Commander Boodhari,chief science officer. He was one of the few senior members of the crew who was Starfleet through and through and had no criminal record to speak of. 

“The planet is Class R, which is em, well, not exactly surprising because…”

“...that’s the designation for a rogue planet. I know,” said Ed. He sighed. “Go on.”

“Despite its designation, the planet has an atmosphere breathable by humans. The Cardassians started to terraform it a generation ago. But it looks like they abandoned it soon after they began. It’s possible that they didn’t know it was a rogue planet when they started their work. Sometimes orbital decay is not immediately evident, after all.”

“Or maybe other forces in this sector pushed it out of a stable orbit,” mused Ed.

“Possible,” said Oluwande. “Orbital mechanics are a lot less stable and predictable than you’d imagine. Three-body problem, and all that.”

“How many planets in this system?” asked Ed.

“Twelve,” said Izzy. “Goralis Five was the site of the research facility. Astrometrics is in the process of analyzing the orbital mechanics of the system to predict where we’d expect to see the greatest level of contamination.” 

“Is it possible the explosion at the facility turned Goralis 12 here,” Ed nodded to the screen, “...into a rogue?” 

“Entirely,” said Oluwande. “In fact, I’d say probable.”

Izzy gritted his teeth and stared at the display. It currently showed a map of the Goralis System, with the planets marked out and long-range scans showing the areas of highest contamination. “Fucking Cardies,” he growled.”Destroying everything they touch.”

“While I’d generally agree, Mister Hands,” said Ed, “Our intelligence says that this facility was established after the Dominion turned Cardassia into a puppet state. I doubt Central Command had any say in what the Founders ordered here.” 

Izzy just grunted. 

“Right. Well, it looks like it’s going to be another what…? Six hours before we know how far into the system we can get without risking contamination?”

“Yes, sir,” said Frenchie. 

“Well, in that case. If anyone needs me, I’ll be on the holodeck.”

—

When Ed resigned his commission to join the Maquis, he didn’t miss Starfleet bureaucracy, the boring diplomatic duties, or the uniform. He did, however, miss the holodeck. His Maquis Raider, the Revenge, was built for precision strikes and speed. There were very few creature comforts that even the oldest and smallest Federation ships (save the Defiant class) had. 

Ed exited the turbolift and headed down the hallway. He nodded at Mister Buttons, second officer and chief of operations. The Gullian nodded his white feathered avian head and clicked his beak. Buttons wasn’t his real name, but it was the closest word that a human tongue could fold around. His actual name involved a lot of squawking that he could, if pressed, replicate - but Buttons seemed fine with the shift in name.

“Commander,” said Ed politely.

Buttons croaked a syllable of greeting and continued on toward engineering.

“Captain.”

Ed turned and waited for Ensign Jim to catch up to him. The Trill security officer had a glint in their eye.

“You look like you’re excited about something,” said Ed.

“Olu said something about a rogue planet with an atmosphere? Any chance of an away mission?” asked Jim. 

Ed grinned. “Getting a little restless, Ensign?”

Jim canted their head. “Just a little bit, sir. I mean, we haven’t been off the ship in weeks. And that was a fucking starbase.”

Jim hadn’t been a member of the Maquis, but they had been a problematic officer Starfleet Command offloaded on Ed. They were incredibly skilled tactically and had three lifetimes of knowledge as a joined Trill. But their love of the fight rivaled a Klingon, and they had a tendency to go off-book. Just before Jim’s transfer to the Concorde, they’d been demoted from Lieutenant for insubordination. 

“Even if we get down there, I doubt there’s going to be anything for you to stab, Ensign,” drawled Ed with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “But if we determine there were any facilities down there connected to the experimental weapons facility, and if scans show that it’s safe enough, you might just get your wish.”

Jim’s eyes lit up. 

“If you want the best chance of being assigned to this mission, I’d suggest paying a visit to Dr. Ro’ach to make sure your anti-radiation shots are up-to-date.”

Jim made a face. 

Ed knew that would make Jim unhappy. Radiation shots made the Trill nauseous. Their symbiote had a particular sensitivity to it and it was unpleasant enough that Jim tended to prefer to deal with radiation exposure rather than take preventative measures. Which was reckless. Normally, Ed liked a little recklessness in his officers but not in this case. 

When Jim just stood there, Ed lifted his brows. “Well, do you want off the ship or not?” 

Jim rolled their eyes and huffed. “Yes, sir,” and then they turned to head back toward the turbolift.

Ed grinned, then continued on the way to the holodeck. There was only one on the ship, and he’d used captain’s prerogative to move a junior officer’s booking back so he could take advantage of a bit of downtime. 

“Computer, resume program Teach 169.”

The computer chimed. 

“Program complete. Enter when ready.”

Ed stepped forward and the doors slid open to reveal a bustling colonial street in the Carribean, circa 1717. He stood in the arch for a moment and tapped the console a few times. Older models of holodeck required that people change their actual clothes before entering the simulation. But Concorde also had a new holodeck in addition to a new bridge, reinforced with Torresium and updated with the latest in holotechnology. 

So when Ed stepped within range of the holoemitters, the computer rearranged the molecules of his uniform to something better suited to the pirate town of Tortuga. He was now wearing a heavy frock coat embroidered with a silver snake pattern, trousers, high boots, a sword at his hip and a blunderbuss strapped to his chest. 

Just as he was about to step into the simulation, the ship rocked and the yellow alert klaxon briefly sounded before it was silenced. Since the holodeck had integrated his commbadge into his costume, Ed hit a button on the arch instead.

“Teach to bridge. Everything all right up there?”

“Yes sir,” came Izzy’s reply. “Nothing to worry about. We just passed through an area of unexpected turbulence. We just got bounced around a bit, but engineering reports no damage and systems are reading normal.”

Ed considered abandoning his holodeck adventure and returning to the bridge. But it had been ages since he’d had time to just relax, and he was getting to a point in his pirate adventure that he’d been looking forward to for some time. “Contact me if there’s any change in status. Teach out.”

The arch with its exit into the real world and controls to access the program, should have disappeared the moment Ed stepped away from it. But it lingered several moments longer than it should. A curl of blue energy sparked along the Torresium of the new-model holodeck, then disappeared into the console itself. 

---

Continue reading on AO3.

[torahtantra]

49. Parsha Ki Setzei. "Into the Fire." Part 3.

Marriage Violations

There are rules to this that will help us understand how marriages, committed relationships made between self and the Israelites, Levites, Canaanites, Edoms, Tzavs, etc. are to be conducted so the fruits of the actions, Eshkol, the ability of different sorts of persons to live together in peace is achieved.

You may not marry someone from the same family.

Israelites do not marry animal-men or men who think they are gods.

Dishonoring the father and mother etc. means marrying into a quality of life less good than theirs. We are proficient at this. You may not marry the past and the present together and create a defective future.

Men and women who are Kohens are an ideal match in reality. The process of becoming a Kohen is deliberate. It is verily dependent on the nature of the self, understanding of the Pure Essence of the Self and the selves one chooses to accompany throughout life and whose characters you emulate.

Now read:

Stoning to Death is transition from an ignorant state to a more enlightened one via the practices named in the Torah. Just as in Eden, after the loss of virginity the little self dies and the adult self is born, so does the adult ego undergo death when it makes a mistake and realizes the consequences of its actions and sins no more.

13 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” 

15 then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. 16 Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 

17 Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 

18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels[b] of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

=A marriage needs to last at least 12 months before one fully transitions between being kedoshin and nsuin. Slandering the wife before she is completely known to the husband is a sin.

The Kabbalah of this Law is the same thing as suggesting patience and forbearance in just about any kind of undertaking that is new.

In the following section, all one needs to know is "do not commit adultery, do not lust after anything that does not belong to you" should suffice. Adultery makes a person, a relationship and all of one's relationships impure, it infects entire nations and it is to be avoided. See the Tantra below of Aaron and his Wife.

22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, 27 for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

-> Remember, it is good to pay for a good shagging or prostitute oneself to a master or the master to you if there is a skill or teaching you need.

30 A man is not to marry his father’s wife; he must not dishonor his father’s bed.[d]

=Do not remarry the past.

see:

Prohibited Marriages

A clear list of the individuals a Jewish man or woman may and may not marry.

CHABAD.ORG

*The Torah Tantra for "Sons of Aaron" begins when Aaron dipped his staff in the Nile the River of Life and it turned to blood. This was the very beginning of a new logic for living, governing, and advancing past the primitive conditions that always accompany despotic superstitious countries.

23 Aaron married Elisheba “abundance of God” , daughter of Amminadab “noble people”, and sister of Nahshon “strategic”, and she bore him Nadab “giving” and Abihu “worships”, Eleazar “humble, a servant of God” and Ithamar “Father of Tamar” and we know all about her.

"The Exalted Ones create abundance by marrying nobles. They are strategic in their worship and service of God and this makes them prosperous."

24 The sons of Korah "Frost of hell" were Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These were the Korahite clans.

Assir= “prisoner” - bound to, must refer to “loyalty”.

Elkanah= Godly, not inhumane

Abiasaph= “the gatherer” - “leader” or governor. 

"Prisoners of tyrants must be freed by Godly men, gathered to them and governed by them, educated by them and become trustworthy."

25 Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel “the fattener” “the provider”, and she bore him Phinehas “trusthworthy”. 

These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan.

26 It was this Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.” 27 They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt—this same Moses and Aaron.

The Parsha shall continue.

[hellotemporaryuniverse]

9, 17, 28 for the writing ask game!

9. How do you find new fic to read?

So I go into the Obi-Wan Kenobi character tag, right. And back when I first started, I had to go through the entire thing, all 20k fics or whatever, scrolling until I found something that looked interesting and reading it and then continuing on. Took me like ten months to get through all of them. And then I set the filter to show me just the fics that had been posted since I started reading ten months earlier, and went through that, and when I reached the end of that, I reset the filter, and went through the fics posted since however many months that took, and on and on.

Is it weird and a little bit inefficient? Maybe, but it means I don't miss the interesting fics that maybe aren't tagged effectively, or aren't as popular despite their quality or whatever.

Right now my filter is set for last September, so I'm a bit behind, because I haven't been reading much fic but that's okay.

-

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

Okay, okay. I started this series called The Will of the Force (hate the name now, want to change it), which is basically what if Obi-Wan was born 32 years later than he was in canon, Qui-Gon becomes 'Old Ben (Kai)' on Tatooine, and they manage to find each other and still become Master and Apprentice. It was meant to span from ten years after the purge to through The Return of the Jedi, and I got really excited about it, posted the first chapter and... immediately lost all motivation to work on it so it sits there staring at me from my 'don't want to abandon it' wips pile.

I would honestly much rather read something like this than write it, but I've never seen anyone with a similar idea so I just sit here and suffer.

-

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

Sort of? My kafé besties read almost all my fics in little snippets while I'm working on them, but never really in its entirety. I don't really have a beta or anything, I do my own editing.

[devildomwriter]

Obey Me As Tumblr #11

Leviathan:

>saves rare items for the most dire of situations

>gets through the whole game without using any of them

Mammon:

“What if there’s an emergency?”

-gets into emergency-

“WHAT IF THERE’S A BIGGER EMERGENCY”

•

Leviathan: If Santa keeps track of naughty kids every year and the year doesn’t start until January 1st, that leaves 6 days after Christmas and New Years left undocumented, so nothing you do can be held against you

Mammon: The Purge: Season’s Greetings

•

Mammon: A vanilla soy latte is a type of three bean soup

Barbatos: No

•

Mammon: Does mace work on birds

Mammon: If a heron is attacking me will mace be an effective deterrent

Mammon: Time sensitive question please respond

•

Solomon: Despicable me ruined the word minion whenever I become a supervillain I’m just gonna have to call them my homies or whatever

•

Solomon: What if when you went to hell you had to watch a cinemasins-style video of every sin you committed during your life as part of your punishment

Me: Why didn’t I get into heaven lmao???

God: Everything Wrong With You spoilers! (Duh)

•

Asmodeus: Be handed a letter by your maid. Break the wax seal. Read it with dawning understanding and then slowly look up into the middle-distance with an ominous smirk. Order your carriage to be prepared at once.

Mammon: Me getting a text and calling a Lyft

•

Leviathan: Any body know any substitutes for love and personal fulfillment

Beelzebub: Crunchwrap supreme from Taco Bell

•

Satan: Fun Fact: ever wonder why it’s called The Iliad? Because ilium was another name for Troy, and the -ad suffix was used to mean “The Story of” This means that if you translated the title, the Iliad should actually be called

Troy Story

Mammon: Thanks I hate it

Simeon: You got a friend in horse

Luke: YOU DO NOT HAVE A FRIEND IN HORSE

•

Satan: Nothing will fuck you up more than the realization that there’s no real reason the alphabet needs to be in order

Mephistopheles: the fuck

•

Mammon: Telling someone “you are shit” and “you ain’t shit” are both insults

Satan: But “you are not shit” is a reassurance

Asmodeus: And “you are not the shit” is an insult

Belphegor: And “you are the shit” is a compliment

Solomon: I present to you the English language

•

Leviathan: Do you ever look at your eyes in the mirror and be like “I’m looking at my eyes with my eyes”

Mammon: I DONT NEED THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW

•

Diavolo: Lollipops are so weird you’re literally swallowing your own flavored saliva

Asmodeus: What have you done

•

Satan: “Maybe if you go to bed you’ll feel better in the morning” is literally just the human version of “have you tried turning it off and back on again?”

Leviathan: What have you done?

•

Solomon: Some of us are still “it” from a childhood game of tag

Mammon: This fucked me up far more than it should

•

Mammon: Pineapple on pizza discourse is so ugly like no one can win

We’re all losers as long as we live in the reality where it’s commonplace to put fruit on pizza

Mephistopheles: Tomato is a fruit

Mammon: Blocked

Mephistopheles: You can block me but you can’t block the truth

•

Belphegor: What if sleeping is our natural state and we’re only awake to gather information for dreams

Lucifer: You stop that

•

Raphael: If you’re lucky your internal organs will never see the light of day

Mammon: What?

Raphael: At some point you will be the next person on earth to die

Mammon: Stop!

•

Satan: The guy on the radio just said “gas prices aren’t so bad if you consider you’re really buying liquid explosive dinosaurs” and my perspective on life is forever changed

•

Barbatos: Want your house to smell great? Put two caps of vanilla extract in a cup, place it in the oven at 300 for an hour and your house will smell like heaven

Simeon: Hack life here

Mammon: I did this once and I thought it said TWO CUPS of vanilla extract and my entire house smelled like pillsburry dough boy’s butt hole for a month

Last • Next

[mae-gi-writes]

Once Again (Pt.2) | Iwaizumi Hajime (Haikyu!)

ONCE AGAIN | PART TWO

Summary:

Iwaizumi’s broken marriage results in his five-year-old son trying to match him up with his primary school teacher, whom he thinks will make a wonderful replacement for a mother. 

Genre: fluff, angst, f! Reader x dad! Iwaizumi

Taglist: @multi-fandom-fanfic, @168-cm-png​, @bakugouswh0r3​, @yatoatyourservice​, @ayocee​, @marvel-ing-at-it-all​, @astrolcve 

A/N: Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist! Thanks to everyone for the kind feedback and for reading my work <3 

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He swings his beer over the counter, "one more."

He shouldn't be drinking. Imagine the damage it's doing to his organs, alcohol sweeping through his bloodstream and purging him of all coherent thought. Iwaizumi can hear Oikawa's nagging voice in his head even within the depths of intoxication.

Does he care though? He should. He should care. Because his job is basically to get people in their best shape.

And here he is, drinking away his sorrow, still shaken up by the way Hoisuke's fingers had grabbed for him that night. The bundle of nerves he'd squashed down had only intensified upon dropping his son on his mother's doorstep the same weekend and though he knew he should've said something to Mizune, he couldn't find the will to utter the words out, lest they came back to haunt him.

His phone buzzes in his pant pocket and after finishing it out with clumsy fingers, he manages to press down onto the green button.

"Yeah?"

"You're drinking!"

"No."

"Iwa-chan~" Oikawa's voice pierces through the receiver, sickly sweet and yet with a dark threatening undertone, "what are you doing?"

"Fuck off, shittykawa."

"Where are you?"

Iwaizumi doesn't answer. He doesn't need to, for Oikawa's already exclaiming the said bar's name as he takes another sip of his newly-filled beer glass.

"I thought you said you wouldn't drink anymore," Oikawa reproaches, "think of what Hoisuke would say--"

"I said fuck off."

There's a small pause where Oikawa bristles, before he says in a quieter tone, "what's wrong?"

Still, Iwaizumi says nothing but takes another huge gulp of his beer. His head feels buzzed, disoriented.

"Iwa-chan."

The said man press his lips in a taut line.

"Iwa-chaaaan."

"I'll talk to you later," Iwaizumi barely hears his friend's protests before he cuts off the call and downs the rest of his beer like a parched man, eyes narrowing towards anyone who dares reprimand him of his behaviour.

"One more," he rasps out towards the bartender, whose sending him a look that closely mimics one that clearly says he's had enough. But he scowls in response and that's enough to make the bartender's eyes slip away.

Seriously. What is wrong with him? It's already been four months goddamnit. Get over yourself. He wishes he could punch himself in the face. God, he sounds like a loser. He looks like one. And it's no wonder that his wife has left him for someone better, richer. Everything that he's not.

Not to forget that this wound will never leave their son's heart.

"One rum and coke please."

A presence lingers in his right and the brown-haired man turns with a glare at the ready, eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed in a thin line to scare whatever stranger that comes a little too close for his liking.

What the--

He stares at you. You stare back at him, just as dumbfounded. Looking the same, yet completely different.

"Miss Y/N?"

"Iwaizumi-san?"

He feels the sudden urge to hide his empty glass, "what--are you doing here?"

"Don't look so surprised, Iwaizumi-san," you chuckle at what you think is his flabbergasted expression, "I'm still twenty-six you know. I came here with a few of my friends."

His eyes slide towards the table in the far corner -- easy to spot since it's one of the loudest -- before he almost misses your question, "and you?"

"I come here often."

"Ah I see."

As you pay the bartender who slides your drink over, you bristle for a bit before you ask hesitantly, "mind if I sit here?"

Iwaizumi shakes his head. It's not like he can say no after all. You're his kid's teacher. And shit, how many beers has he had? He better not run his mouth. It's a dirty habit of his whenever he's shit drunk.

"So," you start off slowly, looking so out of place next to the said man with a scowl so dark it can scare off the most violent of gangsters that the corners of Iwaizumi's mouth tilt upwards in amusement, "how's it going?"

Seriously? You're seriously going to do that? His gaze searches your features for a moment, satisfied when warmth floods your cheeks.

You look away, "you don't have to look at me like that, you know. I just thought you’d want some company."

"What makes you think that?” Iwaizumi says while he flags down another beer from the waiter. 

You blink at him, “I can go if you want--”

The man sighs, rubbing his temples with tiredness, “that’s not what I meant.”

A weird, empty gap of silence ensues. Long enough that Iwaizumi gets his fourth beer of the night in his hand and he takes a grateful swallow. 

He really should not be drinking so much.

"Where do you work?” 

You’re persistent. He’ll give you that, “personal trainer. I work at the sports academy.” 

“That’s cool,” there’s a small smile edging upon your lips, “you like it?”

He nods, pauses briefly, before asking, “do you?” 

Of course it’s a little too close for comfort, especially since you’re Hoisuke’s teacher and all. But you merely relax in your high stool, swinging your legs while nodding eagerly. He can’t help but notice the tightness of your dark jeans, your black high-heeled boots, “I don’t see myself working as anything else. I’m bad with people most of the time.”

Taking another swig of his beer, Iwaizumi feels the tension slowly ease up from his shoulders, “well you’re way better with kids than I am.”

“You’re pretty good with Hoisuke."

“That’s because you haven’t seen him throw tantrums.”

You laugh, "oh don't worry, I have. I know all about his little fits. All my kids have one, at some point."

You say it lightly, but there's definitely love laced in your words and for a minute, Iwaizumi thinks back to the way Hoisuke kept on praising you, the way he spoke so affectionately about you.

"Do you still play volleyball?" You ask him while sipping on your drink.

He mimics the gesture, "sometimes. The guys are all over town so it's harder to meet up now."

"Dang, your team was so good though."

"It was Oikawa that held us together. We weren't that good," he tastes the bitterness of Karasuno's victory on his tongue.

"That's not true," you protest, fiddling with your empty glass, "the only reason why I watched Aoba Johsai's games was because I liked watching you play."

Dark coffee-coloured orbs sweep up to yours at that statement, as if trying to peel layers off yout shell, as if wanting to confirm the truth of your words. You feel like cowering away but you don't, instead holding his stare in hopes that he doesn't notice how your hands tremble slightly underneath his scowl.

And then, features softening ever so slightly, he murmurs out, "thanks."

You know he means it in the best way possible.

-----

One drink turns to two. And two multiplies by four. And soon enough you're tipsy off your head and singing so blatantly off-key you wonder why Iwaizumi's still by your side. You haven't been this drunk in ages and this sense of freedom makes you bold; you tug him to the dance floor to join your friends, order shot after shot as the music gets louder and your head gets lighter, proceed to blabber your mouth off about literally anything and everything that by the end of the night, you wish the ground would swallow you whole so you won't have to deal with Iwaizumi the next day.

You're not entirely sure how you find yourself being dragged by none other than the said man himself, or how your nose is currently lodged in the crevice between his neck and shoulders. But he smells good, like citrus and a mixture of mint and-- you sniff a little more -- is that cookie dough? Your mouth waters just at the thought.

"You smell like cookie dough," the words tumble out of your mouth in a jumbled mess and you inwardly feel like stabbing yourself.

So pathetic. Pitiful really.

"That's Hoisuke," Iwaizumi replies, surprisingly patient even when he's clearly not impressed, glaring at the lamppost ahead, "it's his flavour of the month."

"That's cute!" You giggle, "just like you, Iwa!"

The man sighs while shifting his grip upon your waist, "let's just get you to bed."

You probably doze off at some point or black out because the next thing you see upon opening your eyes next is the ceiling.

Hoisting your head up and groaning when your head pounds in warning, you lie back down as nausea takes over.

Shit. This isn't your room. You know that much.

What the fuck happened last night?

You remember dancing atop tables, remember spotting Iwaizumi by the bar and talking to him because he just seemed so sad and lonely. You remember dragging him onto the dance floor, dancing together, his hands on your waist--

You danced with Iwaizumi?!

The thought is enough to trigger another pounding. You groan once more, placing your hand atop your head in hopes that it will stop it from throbbing. It doesn't. But before you have more time to wallow in your self-pity, the door creaks open and your eyes almost pop out of your head when you spot a mop of brown spiky hair enter the room.

Iwaizumi.

Oh fuck. Your brain short circuits. Fuck fuck fuck.

Surprise crosses his face, clearly having not expected you to be awake yet. He walks over to place a glass of water by the nightstand and grabs your palm to tilt two aspirins into your hand.

"How's your head?" He asks.

"Fine," you wince. It's far from fine. In response, he holds out the glass and you gladly wash down the pills, warm and feeling suddenly vulerable under his stare.

Chewing onto the inside of your cheek, you muster up all your courage to ask, "what--happened last night?"

You don't miss the way his eyebrows shoot up, "you don't remember?"

"...no."

Is that amusement dancing in his eyes? You're not sure since it's gone just as quickly as it came before he says, "you got drunk. Danced on the table, had too many shots and made out with two different men--"

"I'm pretty sure the last part didn't happen."

"You said you didn't remember," he smirks lightly.

"I can't even flirt, let alone kiss strangers."

That earns you a chuckle from his part, causing your heart to flutter slightly as he straightens up, "you probably want to wash up. Bathroom's on the right. I'm in the kitchen if you need me."

"Okay," and as he turns away, you quickly add, "thanks, Iwaizumi-san."

He nods back, exiting the room and finally allowing you to collapse back against the bed to try slowing down your galloping heart. Jesus christ, you think to yourself as you slowly take in your surroundings. From the lack of furniture and with only a few clothes flung over a wooden desk chair shoved in the right, you guess it's his room. A closed laptop and a small plant sits on his desk. On the left is the nightstand filled with sports books and some manga, a closet shoved in a corner and the floor is made in veneered wood.

There's no sign of family pictures, nothing that indicates the warmth of a cosy household. It doesn't take a genius to understand why. While Hoisuke had begged you not to tell his father, you weren't a stranger to the young boy sobbing in-between breaks because he misses his mother.

Well, it's not like you're allowed into family affairs anyway, as much as that breaks your heart.

After a much needed shower and a quick brush of your teeth -- you had to make do with using your fingers with his toothpaste, too embarrassed to actually ask him whether he had a spare toothbrush -- you walk out into the kitchen to see Iwaizumi already seated at a quaint wooden table laden with eggs and toast. Behind him sits the kitchen stove and white countertops next to a fridge fitting snuggly on the left corner. On the far right of the room is a large dark grey couch and a tv set, and just behind it is a small hallway which seems to be the entrance -- guessing by the coat rack and array of shoes. 

"Sunny side up or boiled?" Iwaizumi asks as you take a seat opposite him. He has already poured you a cup of strong coffee and you inhale before sighing in bliss. Your headache already feels slightly better.

"Anything is fi--" you're interrupted by his scowl, quickly changing your answer to, "sunny-side up please."

He grunts, passes you the plate and digs into his own fried eggs, the soft boiled ones forgotten at the centre of the table.

"Uhm, forgive me for point it out, but that's a lot of food Iwaizumi-san," you mumble out, not missing the way his features harden slightly.

"Force of habit," he mutters in-between mouthfuls. He doesn't need to say more, for you're pretty certain he's referring to the family he used to have, those lazy Sunday mornings that started out with brunch.

You eat in companionable silence and though it'a definitely less awkward than last night, your mind still races trying to figure out what to say to erase the permanent furrow between his brows.

Or is that his normal demeanour? To be honest, you're not quite sure yourself.

So you settle for thanking him for last night, to which he replies, "do you usually drink that much?"

"No," you duck your head, avert your gaze, "I got carried away. I'm really sorry."

"Well I wouldn't have expected my kid's teacher to be that wild," he muses while taking a bite of his toast.

Alarm zaps through you, making your eyes go wide, "I swear I'm not usually like that, really. I just--this was an exception--"

"It's fine, miss Y/N. I know," his brown pupils lock onto yours briefly, "I'm not going to report you."

"I--" nothing can really make up for your behaviour last night. You know that much, "still, I'm sorry. That wasn't appropriate," you glance up, chest tightening at the intensity of his stare, unflinching. Unwavering.

He cocks his head at you then, a semblance of a smile along his mouth, "I was pretty entertained, if you ask me."

"Was I that bad?"

"No. But let's just say that you won't want to show your face around for the next week or so."

You groan and bury your face in your hands, "what did I do?"

"You might've broken a beer glass or two," he gives you a look, "on purpose. And tried to steal the Dj's headphones cause he wasn't putting the music you requested."

"Oh god," you want to bury yourself right then and there and to your surprise, you see him laugh softly before he nudges your coffee towards you.

"Drink," he orders, "it'll make you feel less shitty."

You're about to retort with a roll of your eyes, only to be interrupted by the doorbell ringing. From the way Iwaizumi tenses, you know it's not just the mail man.

Excusing himself to go unlock the door as you twist in your seat to follow his figure, shock courses through you the moment your eyes land on Hoisuke's.

Then, his mother.

An alarm bell rings through your mind.

"I thought you said evening," comes Iwaizumi's grunt, totally unlike the guy who'd been chuckling a few seconds ago.

"Hoisuke wanted to come back early for some reason," the woman says, her gaze flickering to yours for a brief moment. It's enough to cause you to swallow hard. She continues, "I'll pick him up on--"

"Miss Y/N?!" Hoisuke shouts out suddenly and before you know it, you're being tackled into the child's arms as if you haven't seen each other forever, "what are you doing here?! Daddy!" he whips his head around in accusation, "you lied about not really really liking Miss Y/N!"

"Wha--No!" Iwaizumi yells as you frown in confusion, "huh?"

"Daddy said that really really liking someone means you wanna be boyfriend and girlfriend with them, like he was with Mama before she moved houses," Hoisuke blabbers on, totally oblivious to how the three of you keep on staring at him in growing alarm, "and then I asked him if he really really liked miss Y/N because I really really like miss Y/N but he said no, but that's a lie!"

"Hajime, what is he talking about?" His ex-wife is quick to narrow her eyes, "what have you been telling him?"

"Nothing, it's not what you think--"

"I think," she pointedly glances at you, "I should leave now. We'll talk about this later."

And with that, she swivels around and storms out, leaving the three of you to stare after her in a mixture of shock and confusion.

Hoisuke, oblivious to the sudden tension, blurts out, "daddy, why is Mama angry with you?"

----

The few weeks following the tiny incident that had resulted in an awkward misunderstanding between you, Hoisuke’s parents and the said child himself had caused you to retreat back into the shell of professionalism that included avoiding Iwaizumi whenever it was deemed possible. It hadn’t been hard since he was usually present and waiting outside class to pick up Hoisuke right on time, making it much easier to avoid conversation with him altogether. 

You’d texted iwaizumi right after reaching your humble abode the day he’d practically saved your drunk ass and though you spent a few spare moments to chat in-between the bustling activities of life, it doesn’t erase the fact that he’s still Hoisuke’s father, one of your dearest students. That, and the fact that you don’t really find it fair to put Hoisuke in-between the two of you, if there’s anything worth digging for anyway. 

Who are you kidding? It’s not like Iwaizumi would ever be interested in you in that sense. Having spotted his ex-wife once or twice proved that his style was of more refined women, the type that would drink wine instead of chug down beer and who’d enjoy gifts such as perfume and romantic dates instead of going on grocery trips and meal-prepping for the entire week. 

“Miss Y/N!” Hoisuke’s voice pierces through your thought bubble and your eyes quickly find his grin as he jumps towards your desk, "are you coming to our house this weekend too?!"

"Wh--What? Uhm-- no I don't think so--" eyes quickly flitting over the classroom, you're relieved to find that the rest of his classmates are long gone, "I don't think that's appropriate."

"But why? I even told Mama that I wouldn't be coming this weekend because you were," he pouted and it took all of your determination not to melt, until his words registered in your brain and your eyes widened, "o--oh, but that's--"

"Hoisuke?" You both turn to see his father's head poking through the door. Your body reacts instantly, warmth flooding through your limbs and flushing through your cheeks.

"Daddy!"

"H-Hello, Iwaizumi-san," you bow your head slightly. He returns the gesture, facial expression not giving anything away. His son bounds up to him with just as much vigor, "daddy, can we invite miss Y/N this weekend too?"

You might have laughed at Iwaizumi's shocked face if not for the fact that you are the person in question.

He splutters, "Miss Y/N has things to do--"

"But she came last weekend!"

"Yes well, it's bad manners to impose on someone when they're not free," Iwaizumi replies sternly, "come on now, we're gonna be late for Karate."

With a loud sigh and a scowl that resembles so much like his father, Hoisuke mutters out his goodbyes while Iwaizumi catches your eye, bowing slightly and muttering a silent "sorry" before he guides his son out of the room. You're glad he's out of earshot that he can't hear the stuttering of your heart against your chest.

You place a hand on your chest, sigh tiredly before looking down at your students' papers, "get a grip, Y/N," you mutter to yourself.

But it's not that easy to control yourself when Iwaizumi is making it so easy to like him.

----

Iwaizumi: sorry about yesterday. 

Y/N: it's okay. Hoisuke’s young, it's normal for him to want for a motherly figure around.

Iwaizumi's fingers drum over his knee as he watches with slight interest the newest male volleyball team practice their serves. He shouts after a few, calling them out for theit lazy postures, but other than that he can't seem to stop his thoughts from winding their way back to you.

"Who is she?" Mizune had asked him on the phone on the day following their encounter. Her tone was friendly, yet held that tone of warning that he was so accustomed to.

"How does that concern you?"

"I want to know who you're bringing around to hang out with Hoisuke."

"She's an acquaintance of mine," he paused, "and Hoisuke's teacher."

"That's inapropriate if you ask me."

Scoffing, he replied, "like what you did's so appropriate?"

A small pause ensued. When she spoke next, there was no mistaking the edge to her voice.

"You can't keep using that against me, Hajime."

"Don't tell me who I can or can't hang out with."

He'd hung up without bothering to wait for her response, seething and red hot with rage blubbering through his stomach.

Of course now that he thinks it over, Mizune has a point. Mixing the professional and the personal have never ended in happy endings. Not that this has ever stopped him before. He doesn't believe in what everyone else thinks is right. That's also one of the main reasons why Mizune couldn't handle it anymore. Or so she said before she went to suck someone else's dick.

His phone vibrates and fishing it out, a scowl instantly shadows his face upon seeing Oikawa's name flash across the screen.

Oikawa: Iwa-chan ~ have you asked her out yet?

Iwaizumi has to force himself to stay in control and not pound his phone to pieces when he types out his reply.

Iwaizumi: No.

Oikawa: BUT WHYYYY~ YOU SAID YOU FOUND HER CUTE.

Oikawa: and Hoisuke likes her. He already knows her.

Iwaizumi: I didn’t say that. And she's not interested.

Oikawa: Just because you suck at picking up cues doesn't mean she isn't throwing them at you 😏😏😏

Iwaizumi: shut up, shittykawa.

Oikawa: Just do it or I'll do it for you.

Iwaizumi: I don't even like her that way.

Oikawa: why'd you rant about not wanting to hurt her feelings yesterday night then?

Iwaizumi's hand rubs at his face with a groan. Oikawa's a little shit most of the time, but he's a perceptive little shit.

Oikawa: I mean it. Ask her out or I'll do it for you.

Oikawa: gotta go now. Match is starting. See ya!~ muah ❤

"Dumbass," Iwaizumi growls under his breath before shoving the phone back into his pocket. Easier said than done to ask someone out so casually, especially when she's Hoisuke's teacher.

If she accepts, great. If she doesn't, he'll have to suffer through humiliation for the rest of the year or avoid picking up Hoisuke altogether.

Oh fuck it.

He lets his body send the message before his brain can catch up to the way he has thrown himself under the bus, shoves his phone back into his pocket and tries to put the thought out of his mind even though the device suddenly feels hot and heavy in his pant pocket.

Iwaizumi: we're having takeout and movie night on Friday. You're free to join.

----

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

⚠️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[kujakumai]

Hi, could you expand a bit on how the Mind Crush worked in the manga and Atem's s1 character development? the yugioh fan wiki is a bit vague about it

for context this ask was in response to this post. my explanation got really long whoops so I'm putting it under a cut.

Okay so it's been a hot minute since I read them, all the way back in like february, but as I'm sure most people are aware the early manga chapters had a basic structure where:

1) there would be A Bad Guy

2) Atem would challenge the bad guy to a Shadow Game, sometimes an established one but often some sort of makeshift game like "put a bunch of money on your hand and see how much money you can stab through without stabbing your hand."

3) The bad guy would lose the game to Atem, often because of the fatal flaw that made them a jerk in the first place, i. e. "so greedy that in an attempt to get extra money they went overboard and stabbed themselves."

4) Atem exacts what's called a Penalty Game on the loser, often some sort of karmic punishment--the asshole TV producer is blinded so he only sees in pixels; Mokuba has to eat the poisoned meal he tried to trick others into eating. Sometimes you just get set on fire though.

So the first difference between the anime and manga is that unlike the anime, where Kaiba is the only person to get a random post-defeat magic slap and Atem never uses those abilities again, in the manga it was perfectly well-established. Atem does this to everybody. He has the magic powers to do this, knows how to use them, and does it often.

For the mind-crush specifically, what it actually does--purge the evil from Kaiba's heart--is the same as the anime. The difference is the degree of consequence. In the anime, Atem crushes his mind and he has a minor existential crisis and leaves his company to...work on his duel disks and do a bunch of hacking stuff? Unclear? In the manga, Atem purging the evil from Kaiba's heart means he has to piece his heart back together without it, and while he does this he is put in an indefinite coma that ends up lasting six entire months.

So even if he was still doing shadow games throughout the series, the answer to the question of "Why doesn't Atem purge the evil from everyone's hearts?" is:

Manga: It hospitalizes a person for a very long time, which is very serious and very bad.

Anime: No idea, there do not appear to be any real negative consequences, we should just be purging all the evil all the time.

Still, though, let's say we've decided that putting Pegasus or Marik or whoever in a coma would be totally justified and worth it if it meant they would stop being evil. That sounds pretty reasonable!

Atem dishes out several more penalty games after Kaiba, but there's no one else of genuine big-bad-evil-arc-villain status until Pegasus in DK. Two things happen during DK: 1) Kaiba's castle suicide gambit, and 2) Pegasus tells them the millennium items are evil.

Kaiba's threat to throw himself off the castle works out much the same across continuities. Kaiba says he's going to kill himself if he loses; Atem tries to go through with it; Yugi forcibly takes over and forfeits the duel, and has a crisis because it terrifies him that Atem was willing to do that; Atem and Yugi have to mend bridges and agree to work together from now on and definitely not kill people.

The other thing that happens is that they defeat Pegasus, and we get this:

This is before Battle City where he learns he’s a pharaoh. Up until now, Atem has just been hanging out in Yugi’s head, with no idea where he came from or why he’s here or who he is, and one of the first things he finds out is that he’s supposedly an “evil intelligence.” He follows this up by demanding Pegasus spill his tragic backstory, while threatening him with a penalty game--or even, based on the wording, saying he’s going to give Pegasus a penalty game regardless, he just wants to hear the story first.

Afterwards, though, he doesn’t. Atem does not exact a penalty game on Pegasus. He doesn’t say why, but Anzu speculates:

Atem never does a penalty game after that. Not once, in the entire rest of the series.

So once again, the answer to the question of “Why doesn’t Atem purge the evil from everyone’s hearts?” is:

Manga: After dishing out karmic magic punishment after magical punishment, Atem finally did something so bad it made Yugi, who he loves, fall on the ground and burst into tears in horror and stop trusting him; not long afterwards he is told by someone who seems to know more about his origin than he does that he is “evil.” Scared and not wanting to prove Pegasus right or make his partner go through anything like that again, he never challenges anyone to another shadow game.

Anime: None of this. Atem spontaneously manifests his penalty game power for the sake of the Kaiba duel, after which it basically disappears, and we have no context for where it came from or why he never uses it again.

TL;DR: Mind Crush made a lot more sense in the manga. There’s a context for why he does it, it has serious consequences, and there’s a later context for why he never does it again. The anime removed all of these and as a result it comes off sort of random.

[thisdreamplace]

30 Days of Manifesting the Mental State (Part 1)

Guidelines:

- Focus on manifesting the mental state of who I desire to be

- Let the external world be, the internal world has all my focus

Why?

I was inspired by this short post:

Decide to Manifest the Mental State

My goal with this was to manifest my ideal mental state in regards to whatever I deem important to me, so this was a heavily self concept based challenge. Compared to the challenges I did in the past, where I was interested in physical manifestations.

Reflection:

Y’all, if you feel like you’ve done all you can do and you’re stuck, try this challenge. lmao You will be fucking read to filth. And it’s the best thing ever.

During the first week, I really got shown myself. Before this challenge I thought I was good with not taking the 3D too seriously. By implementing this challenge, I realized how much I actually paid attention to it for validation. Given this challenge is all about manifesting the mindset, I could no longer use the 3D an excuse for why I’m upset or wonder why I see no changes. Because I only had one job and that’s to manifest the mindset, no matter what the 3D shows. I often would remind myself, “I need to conform to myself first.” This helped me to stay on track during the first week.

Plus, I realized, once again I was slacking on everyone is you pushed out as a concept. It really was difficult for me to take responsibility for others. But thanks to this challenge, I couldn’t put this concept on the backburner anymore. And I know if I want the people in my world to change for the better, I must change for the better within first. Once again, “I need to conform to myself first” was such a solid reminder. How could I look at the 3D in disappointment, when I hadn’t even conformed to myself first? This is still a work in progress, but it’s at the forefront of my mind now instead of an afterthought.

After about the first week, things got easier. I read a couple posts that really clicked for me and it honestly became chill af after that. Things started moving more in my life. It’s honestly so weird how the law works. This shit really is subtle as hell, it’s so natural when your world starts conforming you barely even notice. There’s so many things that happen in a day that align with my new conception of self and it’s difficult to remember them all.

But basically, I moved into an entirely new state. Like, things just are not the same for me mentally or with the way I feel. Like... how do I explain this? Basically, my desired self concept has become so natural... a lot of my state of lack habits have disappeared. And I didn’t even expect that to happen. Like, getting worked up about how long it’s been... wondering if I did something wrong... like all of that just vanished. I feel extremely... fulfilled and satisfied. I actually know I did everything I could do. So what else is there to do? I don’t feel the need to search for more anymore. I truly feel satisfied with my mental efforts. I have done my best, now all that is left to be done is to live and allow life to do it’s thing, really.

On the final week, I hit a wall. It was like I simply could not shake the anxiety. Each day I was thankful it came to an end, hoping for a more pleasant following day... that didn’t come. The emotional rollercoaster! I would go from “it’s okay, I don’t need to analyze how I’m feeling” to “okay, wtf is going on????” I was a mess, but as always, I persisted. I know there’s mixed opinions on this, but from my experience I definitely have moments where my mind is purging the old story. And it’s difficult as fuck. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist because someone out there might be going through the same. I want y’all to know, we can make it through to the other side.

During those days, I had these moments where I can actually feel myself as God? And it’s not this super powerful feeling. It’s been more... calm and peaceful. Like I just know I am taken care of. Honestly, it usually only lasts in glimpses. But that’s okay. Because I know I am just uncovering that part of me more and more. It’s actually so exciting.

From experience, I know every dip like this on my journey has lead to more mental and emotional freedom. So even though in the moment it feels like absolute meaningless torture, I know it makes sense and it’s happening for a good reason.

But this is where I left off. The challenge ended before I was able to make it through the low moment. So now, I am just going to revamp this challenge with a part 2, with everything I have learned about myself from it.

Best Self Concept Manifestations:

- I have felt more fulfilled than I ever have in my life. And I did that on my own. Pretty fucking great. 

- The main theme on my journey has continued to improve: love. People LOVE me. Like they LOVE me lmao. I constantly get compliments on not only my appearance but also my character and who I am as a person. My ideal life is entirely in view, I can see the destination now.

- Not needing to constantly read about the law anymore. This is my favorite, because I love the law. lol So, when I deleted Reddit and actually had weeks pass where I didn’t feel the need to redownload it, it was like wow. I know everything I need to know. There’s nothing else to read. I have my comfort/motivation posts, and I would go back to those time to time. But I have very little interest in the search for “new” information now. There’s nothing else to learn, there’s only concepts to apply.

- Despite the downward spiral, I can say I have definitely seen improvement in my bounce back from the 3D circumstances overall. I have my moments, of course, but overall it’s definitely become easier for me to remember this world is malleable and nothing is set in stone.

- Kdramas. LOL I always end up watching one that aligns with my journey, which is cool af. I started “When the Camellia Blooms” while on this challenge and it was funny because my sister watched in months ago. And she was like, “Dongbaek (the female lead) is the character I said you remind me of.” Which was such a huge compliment. She’s literally what I strive to be? Loved for no reason other than existing and super pretty. LMAO She’s simply adored and unforgettable, simply because she is. That was such a boost to my work on my self concept. It may not sound like the best manifestation ever but for me it was motivation to keep persisting. If I can see it, I can have it. Period.

Conclusion:

This isn’t over yet. I am moving into part 2 of this challenge as we speak, which will be similar but with a more precise focus. So in conclusion, all I can say is try it for yourself. It’s definitely worth it.

Resources That Inspired Me the Most During this Challenge:

Nothing Outside Will Help You Change Your Mind

Dissolving Fears to Manifest Effortlessly

Self Concept, Self Love, and States

Hug Your Inner World Tight

[ciggylungz]

Eat your heart out

Blurb night- 1.8k words

(request: ok but what if u wrote one where y/n is a virgin and they finally did it after dating for months and then Harry's friends came to visit him and you overheard h talking how bad u are and all that angsty stuff...)

 Virginity

The word means a something different to everyone. Some people save it for marriage, some don’t care about it, others tie it to religion. It’s all up to personal interpretation and value. For Y/n, it’s not that she didn’t want to lose it, she just never felt ready until she met Harry.

She had met him through a mutual friend, they were both invited to a birthday party and just got on so well they decided to get to know each other better. Dates, hangouts, and many hours spent together later they had become official and now they’re 5 months in and going strong.

A few nights ago, she had finally felt ready. She had communicated to Harry at the start of their relationship she’d never been intimate with someone before and it might take her a while to feel ready to be so vulnerable with him, but eventually the night came and while it was a bit clumsy filled with trial and error she thought over all it was a special experience. Harry had made her feel comfortable, he had made her feel like she was beautiful and made him happy, so she’s completely confused and crestfallen at the words she’s hearing come from his mouth echoing through the spacious house.

“mate, it was bad. Like proper awful, I almost gagged at some points from how bad it was.”

A cruel laugh followed his words. Her chest felt hollow, like her heart had caved in just from his words. She couldn’t bring herself to stop listening, she guessed she was just a glutton for punishment because the hurtful words just kept coming.

“I thought being with a virgin would be hot!”

She heard the voice of one of his friends exclaim, she had never hated the sound of someone’s voice before that moment.

“so did I! it’s why I put up with the wait, thought she’d be bloody tight and a good shag, but I was dead wrong. She barely got wet; she didn’t even taste good! I couldn’t stay hard for shit, pretended to cum and everything just to get it over with. I didn’t know sex could be so bad!”

Another round of cackles and random bullying comments were made about Y/n among the group of men, at this point Y/n felt worthless. She felt like she failed, she felt dirty and stupid. Everything he’d ever said to her was now being questioned. she swears she could vomit.

“Jesus H, what a waste of a pussy innit? Don’t worry can get some girls lined up for you this weekend. Can trip and have a proper orgy, deserve it after pity fucking that dud.”

“Thank god! Need a good fuck after that nightmare. Line up a good few for me yea?”

Humiliated didn’t even come close to describing how Y/n felt right now. Not only had her boyfriend objectify and completely embarrass her to his friends, she’d just heard first hand that he hated it so much he had faked his orgasm, and was planning to cheat on her with multiple women in less than 24 hours. She was sick, her heart stomped on and her feelings completely crushed. She’d never felt so worthless, stupid, used and disgusted with herself. She had confided in Harry how she was scared to be vulnerable, afraid to be intimate with someone because she wasn’t ready to be so open and bare with another person. Harry had told her how she was worth the wait, how she was beautiful and he loved her but now she knew none of it was real. He’d just wanted to be with a virgin, and he hated the experience.

The vomit crawling up her throat had finally reached her mouth, the girl darting towards the bathroom to empty her churning stomach into the toilet tears springing to her eyes as her body tried desperately to purge out all the hurt yet the waves kept coming.

If anyone had heard her getting sick, they didn’t care since no one even called out her name. The girl didn’t even feel like an actual person anymore, just a defective object who was disposable. She couldn’t be here anymore, the emotional pain starting to manifest into physical symptoms as well. Her head pounding, stomach turning and ears ringing. It took all the energy she had left to shove some of her things into her bag to take back to her flat.

The girl was too humiliated to even face them, to confront Harry or mention what she had heard. She internalized all of it, pulling her hood up and ducking out of the front door silently. She suddenly felt lucky that the living room wasn’t in view of the entry way so she could slip out without detection.

 ----

y/n didn’t bother to leave a not nor text Harry about her departure, making her way on foot to the underground to get home. She hadn’t driven her car there since Harry had picked her up, and she didn’t have any service to get an uber so she opted for the easiest option.

The majority of the train ride she spent with her head down, thoughts racing as she desperately tried to suppress the sobs begging to be let out. she somehow managed to keep it together until she got into her flat, as soon as she shut the door her back was against it pained sobs wracking through her body.

When her bottom finally hit the ground she was reminded of the bruises she’d woken up with on her hips and ass from where Harry had gripped onto her.

Maybe that’s why he made me switch to all fours, he was so disgusted he couldn’t even look at my face. Maybe that’s why he seemed to get angry, I couldn’t make him feel good.

The soreness didn’t even compare to the internal injuries his words had left her with. It was as if she’d been clawed from the inside out, every hurtful word slashed at her organs. Her mind burning with self-hatred, insecurity and disgust towards herself. Y/n had always been insecure, she struggled with body image and confidence since she was a child and this ridicule of her natural state and what was supposed to be special tore her limb from limb.

She didn’t know how long it had been, she seemed to zone out finding herself laying in fetal position on the wood floors of her home. Her back was still pressed into the cold steel door, using what was left of her to stand to her feet and lock it, sliding the chain lock as well just to make sure there would be no chance of anyone disrupting her decent into the void of pain.

She didn’t get much sleep that night, her head wouldn’t stop pounding and her thoughts never eased up. She’d gotten a text from Harry asking where she was, her only sending a simple message saying she was feeling poorly and went home in reply.

Harry left her on read.

It must have been many hours since the sun had rose then set again in the time she’d laid still between her covers. She hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom or eat. She didn’t feel like a person anymore. She didn’t feel like she held any worth in any sense to anyone, seeing as no one had reached out for her in the hours she’d been MIA, not even the boy who supposedly loved her.

Y/n shifted her gaze to the clock on her nightstand, she then knew it was Sunday. It had been almost an entire 48 hours since she’d moved from her spot and by now she was sure Harry had been balls deep in numerous other women. Women who could give him everything she failed to, women who he desired and could get off with. They must be everything she’s convinced she’s not. Pretty, sexy, desirable, loveable, worthy of Harry’s intimacy. Something he regretted ever engaging in with his own girlfriend.

 ---

It was 10 in the morning on Monday when Y/n’s phone finally dinged. By Sunday night she had managed to drag herself to the bathroom to relieve herself and brush her teeth, yet she only then returned to her bed to lay in a depressed shame filled coma of sorts, she truly felt so heart broken it was like her body was giving up on her.

She caved and looked at the message, feeling another stomp on her deflated heart when she saw it was from Harry-

“you alright? Stopped by your work, they said you haven’t called out but you never showed?”

Y/n had forgotten about her job in her spiral, but even now she couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew she was already on thin ice with her manager for taking so many days off to see Harry preform or visit him on his breaks so it wasn’t a surprise if she got fired. She didn’t care though; she knew if she lost her job she’d be another month late on rent and end up being evicted since she couldn’t scrape together enough for last month either. This would lead to her likely having to move back home with her mother or find a hostile somewhere for women, yet she didn’t care. It seems silly that something as simple as someone commenting on her sexual skills would put her in such a state, but that’s not really the main focal point in her mind.

The thing that hurt most was knowing Harry had only been with her to get to take someone’s virginity, and she’d disappointed him so badly he talked shit about her to his friends and made plans to cheat on her. Harry had completely disrespected, objectified and crushed her, and he didn’t even know she knew but she decided he shouldn’t have to know she knew what he said for him to realize it’s wrong. He’s an adult man who knew full well how hurtful and horrid his comments were about someone he had claimed to love. He should have spoke to her if he felt that way, yet instead he played her and tossed her out like rubbish.

Harry broke her heart, one he’d known was already fragile and timid. He’d still said all those nasty things about her even after the nights he’d let her cry into her chest about how much she hated her body, how bad her self-image and confidence was, the way she felt like she was never good enough for anyone. His actions only confirmed what she’d always feared to be true.

Harry didn’t love her.

[bagog]

What On Earth Has Happened

Hey, no story here, no experiments. Just a play by play of an awful year in my life. Please don't reblog. Trying to just get it down in one place for people who care about me. Long, sob-story beneath the cut.

Air - 'Things are looking up!' I had started to drift a bit from tumblr. The porno purge came and a lot of my friends trickled off the platform after that. I went back to school, attempting to score myself a Masters degree in something that would pay enough to get me out of Student Debt. I was doing great, picking things up fast. I got a new job at a company doing pretty menial work, but the people I worked with were great conversationalists. The work didn't involve dealing with customers at all, paid well, and was small and accomplishable tasks. Essentially I was being prepped to take a better position at the place once I had my Masters. Covid happened, then. Earth - 'The Whole World Sucks Right Now' My company was "essential," so I continued going to work, now on weird schedules. The company I worked for was profiting off Covid, all the while making fun of it as an overblown conspiracy, even as their own epidemiologist urged them to take better precautions. Work became hard to swallow. Water - 'When your lowest place could be lower' The apartment I shared with my boyfriend flooded. The lowest place in any sewage system is typically the bathtub, such that if it backs up, it does so into that tub. Our lowest point is the toilet. So the apartment flooded. Three times. Roots growing through the sewage outflow meant that, often, you needed to wait a solid hour between toilet flushes, or else the toilet would back up with such gusto the sewage would slosh down the hallway and into the living room. We mopped many times. The problem was finally fixed 8 months later, necessitating our having to camp because our house had no water. Fire - 'To destroy all you've done' One afternoon, I smelled burning. Going to our bedroom, I found our shelf a column of flame. I could barely breathe for all the smoke, but I managed to grab a blanket and beat the fire out. On the other side of the room, the pages of the books upon another shelf had begun to crisp from the heat, the blinds on all the windows were warped. The whole apartment had been about to go up. I'm kinda scared of fire now. Heart - 'When moving is too much to ask' Personal health sorta hit a new low. Migraines kept me out of work for two full weeks. I have seasonal foot pain, I always assumed from hiking for a living in my 20s. Turns out it was gout, all the while. Gout is exceptionally painful: it's like a messy pile of razor blades in the ball of your foot every time you step down. At work, I could barely stand. Walking from my car to the door became something I needed to psyche myself up for. Not a lot can stop a gout flare-up once it's in full swing, so I just had to wait it out. For a month. Two. Some of the worst sustained pain I've been in. Little did I know that, in January, come the kidney stones. Kidney stones feel awful. Feel like total shit. Gout and kidney stones are comorbid--brought about as a result of the meds I take to help me focus. So any day I don't drink enough water is a day when my kidneys or my foot just starts aching. But going back to September of 2020... Homophobia - 'goddammit' Finally things are looking better. I'm limping quickly again. Then I am called into the HR office. I am told that two sexual harassment charges have been brought against me. I'm told that one individual has alleged that I, while in the restroom, used a reflective toilet brush to attempt to peep him under a stall wall. I did not do this. I do not understand--reflective toilet brush?? wtf. The second allegation: I just straight up looked over a stall at a guy. I didn't do this either. I'm asked to defend myself, I ask who or date or time of day. I am given nothing. I remark that I don't think I'm tall enough to see over the stall, and I do not understand about the toilet brush. Of the ten minutes of the meeting, I spend 8 of them trying to get my head around how a claim about a reflective toilet brush has me here. "Would you like us to go now to see if you're tall enough to see over the stall? If that would help your defense?" says the HR head. "Yes, I

would," says I. We did not go. I am told that the accusers have no reason to be collaborating, or to even know each other made a claim. This is bullshit, because it was a company of 80 people, and only a quarter of those employees used the restroom where my alleged harassment was to have taken place. Before I am dismissed from work for the day to go home and wait to find out if I'll be fired or not, I march into the HR office once more and say "I hope none of this is happening because I'm gay." The HR head looks positively offended. I got fired cuz I'm gay. Next day I got a call. They'd come to the "objective truth" (that phrase is burned in my mind), and were terminating me. Apparently they discounted the toilet brush rumor, after all. But they really honestly believed I looked over the stall at a dude. Nightmare - 'No Fear One Fear' Let me tell you something: this is a nightmare. This is my honest-to-god nightmare. I've been terrified of getting accused of something in a bathroom since I was 11 years old. I am incredibly self-conscious and careful in public restrooms. To be fired? From a place full of people I like? And all of them will think I'm a pervert. My boyfriend worked at the same place. He would now have to work there every day dealing with people looking at him and wondering what he must think of his boyfriend. That sent me on a spiral. I'm still out of work, almost a year later. It would have been the worst mental health crisis of my life if it wasn't for my boyfriend, my support network, and the meds I've finally been able to get ahold of. Oh, also. My two accusers? Were roommates. HR knew they were roommates. They basically collaborated on a story to get me fired. The story circulating around the place (I still have acquaintances I talk to working there) has dropped the reflective toilet brush entirely. I guess they thought it was too unbelievable. So anyway, the people who accused me are now telling a different set of events than what I was told. Absolute horse shit. Tried to go to my city's human right's council to see if my situation warranted further attention. I gave my side of the story--including tales of the straight manager who had had enough harassment charges brought against him that he was no longer allowed to meet female staff--which indicated I'd been treated differently and wrongly. My old job made an impassioned argument that the committee violated their First Amendment rights(?) ('Freedom of speech' is the biggie with the First Amendment, for people who cba re:USA). I won the vote!! But one member of the committee was missing. So there weren't enough people for the vote to pass. Dismissed. We took it to the EEOC to make an official federal complaint. Just a week ago, an agent of the US Government patiently explained to us that these laws are literally designed to fuck over the worker and protect the employer unless they are epically stupid, and unfortunately, mine had not been epically stupid. So there's nowhere to go, no recourse to be had. It's over, I guess. Family - 'How to sum it up quickly...' My family hit me with the old soft-disown. No more calls, no more communication. They think they are loving me by not having contact with me. By depriving me of my family, they hope it will make me realize that the path I'm on is destructive, and I'll return to them living an upright life. No. I'm living an upright life, now. And if my family can choose to throw me away, then they are not a family I choose. Then my dad hit me back two months later, absolutely gaslighting me and pretending we never had the disown conversation at all. Reality - 'I don't know who I am anymore' I have trouble knowing what's real, anymore. Every message my dad sends on the surface seems loving and supportive and plaintive. I feel I must be the one in the wrong. I got fired for bullshit reasons. It doesn't feel real. "My family can't possibly have ceased contact with me: that's one of those things I know can never happen!!" But that did happen. So what else that feels real, actually isn't? I do

mean to be so dramatic, and I won't apologize for it. But I truly do feel like my mind has been pretty thoroughly unseated by the last year. Whoever I am, I'm becoming someone different. More distilled, at very least. I've discovered a lot of things about myself: trauma that has likely led to a lot of my mental health problems. Discovered I actually have RAGING ADHD, and it has robber me of a lot of things I wanted to do, and now is sort of consuming me completely. I'm looking for help. Trying to get better. Here's hoping. Every bold point above could be its own book, for all my thoughts about them. But enough of that for now. Love you. Thanks for reading.

[spiritshaydra]

Looks like I haven’t posted art here in months and this is my fourth time trying to add a description to this because it keeps getting purged whenever I switch tabs >:( 

Anywho, here’s some Pokémon gijinkas I finished earlier in the week ^^

Additional info stolen from my amino post down below c:

Howdy!

This took me WAY longer than I thought it would. I started this group back in December, and only now just completed it ^^

I’ll be showing them off in the order I finished them along with some info on each character c:

✨Here they are!✨

🏙 Reshiram 🏙

She’s not as complex as the rest of the batch because she started off as just a headshot test and practice for drawing humans ^^’ then everything else kinda just got more complex. Her design is more of a work in progress than the rest.

She’s a living lie detector :)

🎆 Palkia 🎆

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She took a LONG time to draw and is probably the most complex. Sorta. She’s also probably one of the first gijinkas I’ve designed so her design is pretty solid for now. She’s based off of Roman gladiators and Valkyries. Palkia is also a total jock with a short fuse that constantly gets in fights with her brother, Dialga. She’s kinda a loud idiot but that’s okay. She’s also very rash and tends to act before thinking. Will kick down doors and attempt to put brother in a headlock. Probably chugs sport drinks and punches drywall. Will challenge poor unfortunate souls into doing arm wrestling matches. Has very strong opinions on science fiction. (Stuff with space is superior!) Curses like a sailor and likes to get creative with insults. Cannot organize things at all. Room probably looks like a bomb went off. Has the worst handwriting in her family. Middle child and the shortest out of her siblings. Is uncomfortable around Giratina but feels bad about it.

🌄 Giratina 🌄

Giratina’s another one that I’ve had designed for a while and am pretty happy about it! I tried to give her a more inhuman and unsettling appearance (gaunt features, pale skin, sunken eyes, long limbs, digitigrade legs, four arms, etc) She’s pale from the lack of sunlight and her hair is borderline uncontrollable. It’s in a constant state of poofy rat’s nest.

Believe it or not, she’s probably the friendliest out of her family despite her off putting demeanor. She completely lacks social skills and is still trying to learn how to speak normally after being locked away for eons. She’s best friends with a Shaymin and has gardening as a hobby. She just really wants friends :( She likes stupid paranormal shows and animated movies. Not violent at all unless provoked. Absolutely fascinated by car windows and toasters. She’s the second tallest and the “baby” out of her family. She wishes to have better relations with her siblings and parent but struggles :(

🌺 Shaymin 🌺

Shaymin. Oh boy Shaymin. So with her I was wanting to do something completely different from the usual Lolita and cutesy based gijinkas. So I made her a punk :) Shay acts like she eats nails for breakfast and isn’t afraid to fight god. She’s short but by god, she’s going to go for the kneecaps. She has a nasty temper and is very protective of her strange noodly demon bestie. Taught her how to garden. She’s loud, argumentative, and ‘Tina’s siblings are probably more scared of her than the Terror of The Distortion World. Does not do well in cold weather. She rides a motorbike, and is the one who generally drags ‘Tina around to get her used to the normal world. Big fan of slasher films and loud aggressive music. Loves nature and is generally enthusiastic about funky plants.

Very short. Very aggressive. Wears stud covered platform boots.

🪐 Arceus 🪐

Oh boy. Arceus.

He was VERY hard to design but I think I’m happy with the results. For now. I wanted him to look somewhat regal and nasty, and not exactly human.

He’s a major asshole, prick, and elitist, and is petty to the highest degree. Got offended whenever someone suggests that he should go to an anger management class. Probably a Karen. He’s the type to wear a fluffy bathrobe while drinking box wine on a lawn chair on the porch to look scornfully at the neighbors whenever they get too close. Not a great parent. (Loves his gaggle of goblins in his own strange way) Kinda hates everyone. Rude. VERY VERY short temper. VERY stubborn. He’s short and is going to make it everyone else’s problem. (Refuses to just... change his height himself. ‘Cause he’s some primordial creation entity. He just... doesn’t) He woke up one morning and just chose violence. takes great pride in his creations. Awful taste in music. No sense of style. Cant dance. He’s offputting and unsettling to be around because he has a very “off” feeling about him. Really really likes to get the upper hand on others. There are a f e w times when he actually acts like a decent person. Likes to put an air of regality onto him even though he’s a total train wreck. Wears three to four inch heels.

🌌 Dialga 🌌

DIALGA. I also wanted to do something different with him! So I made him a nerd. He likes to take things apart and put them back together. Especially clocks. He’s more level headed than his sisters and has a longer fuse than Palkia. But he’s also very stubborn. He’s a total workaholic and perfectionist. He doesn’t sleep much and can be a nervous wreck whenever he’s behind on whatever schedule he runs on. He gets into fights with his younger sister a LOT and will often try to use her as a lab rat. They’re sorta like Yzma and Kronk. But he’s less diabolical and Palkia’s more aggressive. Like Palkia, He also has very strong opinions on science fiction (Stuff with time travel is WAY better!) he’s also very organized if not organized chaos. He wears a heavy pair of boots that one could hear from a mile away. Think large goth boots with metal in the soles somewhere. Also a metal head. He will blast loud metal or rock music (sometimes more classic rock. Depends on the mood) as he works on whatever insane project he decided to tinker on. He has a large collection of very cursed socks. Somewhat poor eyesight. Generally easier to get along with than Palkia who’s more abrasive. He tends to think more before acting upon things. Probably runs on entirely coffee and energy drinks. B A D taste in fashion. But not worse than Palkia. Likes to read. Not very good handwriting. Tends to bump his head on doorframes. Will walk into things if lost in thought. The tallest out of his family and the oldest out of his sisters. He’s somewhat afraid of ‘Tina.

Approximate Time Taken: About 27 hours

Program Used: Procreate