#nobody stays around unless they feel connected to a person

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

"I'm glad you found a family." -Amiee

"W-what... those guys?" -Eliot sputtering

Yes, Eliot. Those guys. The very same guys who you couldn't walk away from. The same guys who get on your nerves- but for some reason you protect. Those guys who have you wrapped around their fingers. Who remind you that your smarter than you think.

Those guys as in;

Nate who needs protecting from himself.

Sophie who needs protecting from her past.

Hardison who needs protecting from his mind.

Parker who needs protecting from the monsters she's lived through but are still around.

You, Eliot- you big teddy bear- decided they were worth it. So you stayed for them. You sir, stayed because they needed you.

Those guys are your family.

[asstrolo]

PISCES PLACEMENTS.

one thing you need to know about Pisces is that they always look aloof and are extremely observant.

✦ Pisces Risings have a very good intuition to situations involved with emotions and other people's feelings, they can read them very well, but should always be careful as they can appear to think they know what a person is feeling when it could be something completely different.

✦ People with a Pisces stellium deal with very difficult mental health problems, like any other water stellium (or any stellium) their emotions are at an all time high and can make it hard to put things into perspective when it's all just one energy. To add that Pisces are mutable energy and that energy is very volatile, balance is not something that comes easily to them, unlike fixed signs like Aquarius, Pisces stelliums get trapped inside a thought or a scenario in their head a lot, it's really hard to make them come back to reality unless they are aware of what they are doing. This does not mean they are unstable or untrustworthy, they are wise and can with frequency have prophetic dreams

✦ One thing about Pisces mercury is that they will lie unprovoked, they often lie for their peace of mind so people would leave them alone, but other times they just lie because they can and I can confirm this as a Pisces mercury I lie a lot about things that don't matter like when I buy something and I tell my family that the person that sold it to me recommended it because it's really good, that's a lie nobody recommended me anything

✦ I do believe Pisces like to be sad more than they liked to admit, as the sign is known for not being present and you can always see them not wanting to be in the real world, sometimes they can use their moods to escape real life issues or responsibilities

✦ Jupiter in Pisces generation are really good at spotting a person's energy, they tend to have luck in everything esoteric but can shield on that a little too much, have an over positive or negative view of life as they have a strong intuition sometimes they will fool themselves into believing something just because of the ~vibes~ thy feel, a little too delusional sometimes ngl

✦ Pisces in anything but specially Pisces sun people are very addictive, is the Neptunian force, when people talk about Pisces have addictions to escape reality that is valid, I do believe they are super intoxicating to be around, is something about them that leaves people wanting more. Watch Pisces people that are famous, Hozier and Rihanna, Maddison Beer or Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, and the most Pisces of them all was Kurt Cobain with a extremely present Pisces stellium and a Water dominance with a Cancer moon and Scorpio mars, he looked almost like a cult leader and that's the magic of Pisces, they can draw people in so easily it's hard to know where you start and they end, but that's the magic of mutable signs

✦ Pisces men why are you like that? I'm not a mind reader don't make me kill you

✦ As Saturn is transitioning Pisces people with this placements can feel like it's just one thing after another, they can never really be calm because Saturn is not about calm at all, it's about responsibility and maturing in the blink of an eye, they will be confronting things they used to sweep under the rug, which is something difficult to do for Pisces placements as they can be too n their own world to see certain things surrounding them

✦ Continuing the Pisces/Saturn transit, this can obviously be felt more on where you have Pisces in planets or house. Venus in Pisces will be dealing with a lot of hard lessons in love, if you have unhealthy patterns that follow you through all your relationships and it can feel very overwhelming when you try to connect with somebody but is impossible because there is something you must learn, or you view of love could be very different when you start your first healthy relationship or stay single for your mental health. It really does depend on the person as Saturn has lessons in all shapes and forms . Pisces in the 9th house could mean responsibilities outside their home or comfort zone, or the impossibility of traveling due to these responsibilities. College or School can take a significant time in your daily life as someone who is starting to take it more seriously, or the sudden decision to leave a career to chase other dreams. Either way, it's a challenging time for the dreamers

✦ Pisces placements and always looking like they don't know where they are

✦ Since Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac they do encapsulate a tiny part of all the signs and that's why they can be so changing, Pisces Sun and Risings are known to be really good actors like Anya Taylor-Joy having a Pisces rising or Oscar Isaac. They can mold into a different personality very well and that's part of their empathetic tendencies too

✦ to me pisces placements embody the forever I hate it here I want to be inside my mind palace ALL THE TIME there's a reason a lot of pisces placements are actors or writers, they continuously try to run away from real life!!

a pisces placements song in my opinion

[paperultra]

candy stripes.

Pairing: OPLA!Vinsmoke Sanji x Fem!Reader Word Count: 5,048 words Warnings: Swearing, hospital setting [A/n: Soulmate AU. :)]

sortiger (adjective): delivering prophecies of the future; having the qualities of being oracular

Nobody else can see the string but you.

You wish you didn’t. It has no texture, no weight, so you can’t understand why it can’t be invisible too. But the string demands attention with every use of your hands, seizes your eye when you wash dishes in the morning and brush your teeth at night, a garish and bloody red that matches the stripes of your uniform.

You hate your string and you hate the color red.

Miss Xinyu, the old lady in Room 30, has one too. At least, that’s what she had told you when you gained the courage to mention yours one day, not knowing what it meant and how much you would come to dread it.

“It’s your red string of fate,” she had explained. “It connects you to the person who understands you more than anyone else in the world.”

In other words, your soulmate. Your one and only.

Miss Xinyu says you’re a lucky ducky, knowing what your future holds.

Her string goes into the ground now. You don’t think being reminded of a dead person whenever you look at your pinkie is very lucky.

The biggest reason why you hate the string so much, though, is because you’ve always had a problem doing what you’re supposed to unless you want to, which causes a lot of trouble for a nine-year-old girl. You already have trouble being nice to patients who are mean to you, so how can you love and wait for someone you’ve never met? It makes you feel icky.

Why can’t you choose? How come you have to have one at all?

Your only source of comfort is that your string is very, very thin and runs out of the hospital. That means your soulmate, whoever they are, is very, very far away. You’d very much like it to stay that way.

But it doesn’t.

—

Nurse Taoh wants you to watch the patients in Room 8 while he finishes his charts. You don’t really want to, if only because it’s Nurse Taoh asking – he likes to order you around more than Dr. Gu – but you don’t want to get into trouble again, so you go.

(… And okay, you are just a little bit curious about the new inpatients. You only know three things about them: one, they were brought in together last night while you were in your room poking holes into your paper instead of correcting it; two, they’re a man and a boy, presumably father and son; and three, everyone says it’s a miracle they’re still alive.)

(Then again, you’ve seen many miracles here.)

The unit is quiet as you walk down the hallway. Quiet, but not silent, as your polished shoes squeak like little mice against the floor and you whisper the room numbers as you pass by them. Two, four, six – eight.

You stop and knock, three sharp raps against the brown wood.

“Hello?” You open the door and poke your head in. “My name is –”

The squiggly-patterned curtain that often separates patients for privacy is drawn, and you clamp your mouth shut as you realize the patient closest to you is asleep.

Shutting the door silently, you creep closer to the foot of his bed. The man underneath the sheets lies quietly; he is little more than a skeleton, eyes sunken and bones sticking out underneath blistered skin. His beard is long and scraggly, but it pales in comparison to his mustache, each side braided and sticking out to the sides.

He looks angry, even though he’s sleeping. You hope he’s not the type to wake up and yell at you as you tiptoe past to check on the boy.

You pass the curtain, catch a glimpse of the bed sheets, and see –

Red.

Your feet root themselves in place, the room suddenly devoid of air.

You stare. Blink hard, twice. Look again. Then, trembling, you look down at your hand.

Your eyes trace the string around your own finger, following down to the dip of it that barely touches the ground and back up over the blankets until it ends in a red loop around the boy’s pinkie, tied off with a little bow.

Your stomach turns.

Stumbling forward, you make your way to the visitor’s chair in the corner. You slump down into it and stare straight ahead at the curtain, refusing to look at the boy’s face.

He continues to sleep.

You don’t want him to wake up.

—

The boy does not stir during your first meeting, but that small mercy is quickly eclipsed two days later by a single bowl of chicken broth.

The look on your face is sour as you walk down the hallway again, the broth splashing up against the lid with each step. Because most of the patients in the hospital you live in are elderly, the staff have somehow gotten it into their heads that you simply must spend time with the boy in Room 8 because he is your age and you need to socialize with other kids. You very much don’t want to. Not with him, at least.

Dr. Gu is just leaving the room when you arrive. She gives you a quick smile, the corners of her eyes wrinkling, and pats your head.

“So you heard that the boy woke up, huh?”

You grunt, looking away with a pout. “Can’t you give this to him, Dr. Gu?”

“Nope. I have to finish my rounds,” she says. “Go in and have a chat. His name is Sanji. You’ll like him.”

“I doubt it,” you mumble underneath your breath.

Dr. Gu probably hears you, but she doesn’t scold you, merely patting your head one last time before you enter Room 8.

The dividing curtain is drawn this time. The window curtains are pulled back, too; it’s a somewhat cloudy day outside, but bright enough to sharpen the shadows on the walls and make the boy look even paler than you remember.

His eyes are closed as you approach. A sprout of hope that he might have fallen asleep again blooms in your chest – you’ll just leave the broth on the table, you think to yourself, and go about the rest of your day. Nobody said you had to watch him drink it.

You get about five feet away, already planning to drop some books off to the other rooms, when the boy’s nose suddenly twitches.

His eyes open to thin slits. Your hope shrivels like a weed in the desert as he speaks.

“What’s that?” His voice is quiet and raspy.

Your eyebrow twitches. “It’s just chicken broth,” you say tartly, setting the tray down on the overbed table and turning it around so that it’s over his lap. You take off the lid and steam bursts from the bowl.

The boy reaches up to rub his eyes. The red string dangles from his pinkie, and you quickly look away with a scowl.

“Who are you?” he asks, scooting back to sit up more as he gradually becomes more alert.

Reluctantly, you give him your name. “Will you need help with the soup?”

He shakes his head. His gaze latches onto the contents of his bowl, and he stops, transfixed.

You scramble to stop him as he suddenly grabs the bowl and attempts to gulp it all down in one go.

“Don’t do that! You’ll throw up!” Without thinking, you seize his hands and pry the bowl away from his mouth. A few drops of broth splash over the blankets and his gown, and your irritation grows. Now you’ll have to fix that. “Drink it slowly.”

“I haven’t eaten anything for weeks,” the boy complains. “What do you know?”

“I’ve been studying medicine since I was a little kid,” you retort. “So I know a lot.”

He frowns. “You are a little kid.”

“I’m nine years old!”

“No, I’m nine! You don’t look as old as me!”

There’s no way this … this brat is the same age as you! Fuming, you let go of the bowl and jab a finger at his face. “I am nine years old and I know more than you! You can’t drink the broth like that!”

You’re met with silence. The boy’s eyes are wider than saucers. Pride wells up inside you at your ability to shut him up.

But then he puts the bowl down and seizes your hand, and your pride gives way to horror as he folds down your index finger and lifts your pinkie – the pinkie with the red string wrapped around it.

He lifts his own pinkie, the rest of his fingers folded. Your jaw clenches when you see how the string has shortened to mere inches, bridging the space between his hand and yours.

“Holy shit,” the boy says. The largest grin spreads across his face, and it’s blinding and scary and you hate it, you hate it. “It’s you! You’re my soulmate, aren’t you?!”

“No,” you reply quickly, whipping your hand behind your back and backing away. “No, I’m not!”

“But you see the string too! I knew I’d meet you some day. How come you’re”— he pushes the table away, eagerly but just gentle enough so no more of the broth spills—“how come you’re hiding it behind your back?”

“I’m not your soulmate,” you bark, panic rising in your chest. “Don’t you ever say that!”

You only catch a glimpse of the hurt that flashes across the boy’s face before you turn around and dash out of the room.

Mrs. Hong finds you in the storage closet later, curled up behind the shelves of gauze and IV tubing. She coaxes you out with a promise of rice balls and no questions asked. You wish all the adults were more like her.

—

The next day, Miss Jaylee hoists you over her shoulder like a human sacrifice and brings you to Room 8.

“I don’t want to see him! You can’t make me!”

“He’s refusing treatment and food unless he sees you,” the woman answers briskly, each of her steps jostling you up and down. “You don’t want to be responsible if Sanji dies, do you?”

“I don’t care if he dies!”

Miss Jaylee clicks her tongue and walks faster.

You flail, feeling a little guilty for your cruel words but too proud to take them back. Sanji couldn’t have heard you, anyway, and nobody here is going to let him die no matter what he does or what you say.

You hear a door swing open. Miss Jaylee walks into Room 8 and turns around, and you lift your head, glaring at Sanji as his face lights up and his cheeks turn rosy.

“[Y/n]!”

Your own cheeks burn in embarrassment at the position you’re currently in. This, you only now realize, is way worse than walking into the room voluntarily.

“How come they’re carrying you? Are you okay?” he asks.

“Let them treat you,” you snap, arms limp and dangling. “And eat your stupid food or I’ll get in trouble.”

“Okay.” You nod, opening your mouth to speak again only for him to continue, “But only if I get to talk to you afterwards.”

What is he, a prince?! What makes it so easy for him to demand such things?

“That wasn’t what you told them,” you protest, squirming, but Miss Jaylee only tightens her arm around your waist.

(“Be nice,” she warns. You growl.)

“It’s important,” Sanji stresses, looking pointedly down at his hand and then back at you.

You bite down on your tongue as the red string glimmers in the light.

Dr. Gu and Nurse Taoh stare at you expectantly. Your neck is starting to ache from craning it, and there’s a feeling that you’ll never stand on your own two feet again unless you do what he wants.

“… Fine,” you hiss through gritted teeth.

Only once you promise to stay does Miss Jaylee let you slide off her shoulder. You stand to the side, arms crossed impatiently as they take Sanji’s vitals and ask him some questions. He’s only half paying attention, head turning to look at you more than once, which you merely turn up your nose at.

“All right, we’ll leave you two to chat now,” Dr. Gu says. “If you need anything, just let [Y/n] know, okay?”

“Okay,” Sanji says.

With that, the three adults leave, and you and Sanji are left alone once more.

“I’m glad you came. They were starting to get mad at me,” he says, then cuts straight to the chase. “How come you don’t want to be my soulmate?”

“Because I don’t want a soulmate,” you immediately reply.

“But why? It’s nice, isn’t it? Being special to each other?”

“You can’t be special to me. We’re not even friends.”

For the second time, Sanji looks hurt.

“…We’re not?” he asks. You shake your head. “But … you brought me food.”

You’re befuddled. “Because Dr. Gu made me,” you say, trying to ignore the disappointment on his face. “Besides, I yelled at you yesterday. Friends don’t yell at each other.”

“I thought that you were maybe just really surprised …” His voice gets smaller and smaller. “Some people get mad when they’re just surprised …”

“I wasn’t surprised. I saw it when you were still asleep.”

“Oh,” Sanji mumbles. He looks down at the sheets, scratching at the wrinkle in the thin white fabric. “Okay.”

He says nothing more. You fidget, wondering if he’s pretending to look like he’s about to cry or if he really is trying not to. You’re not good with people who start crying.

You chew on your bottom lip. Sanji tucks his hand with the string on it underneath his bed sheets, his eyes disappearing behind his tangled hair, and fine, you feel kind of bad whether he’s tricking you or not.

“I’ll only be friends with you if you don’t talk about being soulmates,” you finally tell him begrudgingly. “Not ever, okay?”

His head shoots back up. “Really?!”

“Only if you don’t talk about it! I’m serious.” You huff at Sanji’s sudden change in mood and click your tongue. “If you stay sad you might not get better.  Don’t get the wrong idea!”

He nods, grinning bigger than ever.

Oh, dear, you think as he promises that he’ll be a really, really good friend, you might have made a mistake.

—

By the fifth day, Zeff, the man who was brought in with Sanji, is awake.

You hear them arguing before you see them, pushing a cart of books for Sanji to browse through as per your agreement the day before. They’re loud, and Sanji calls the man an old shitbag right as you knock and push the door open.

“I’m here,” you announce, and the two quiet down to look at you. You give Zeff a polite smile. “Hello, sir. I’m [Y/n].”

“Hello, little miss,” Zeff says, his features softening from the angry expression he’d directed towards Sanji a moment before.

“Why are you being nice to her and not me?” Sanji pipes up from his side of the room, all puffed-out cheeks and petulantly crossed arms.

“Because she don’t make my ears ring with nonstop whining,” the man answers sharply. “Now get a book and read so I can finally have some peace and quiet.”

“You get a book and read,” Sanji grumbles.

“What was that, boy?”

You cut in before they start bickering all over again. “Do you want a book too, Mr. Zeff?”

Zeff’s gaze flicks over to you once more, and your shoulders tense. The man takes a deep, calming breath, and then he sighs, reclining back into his pillow and closing his eyes. “No, thank you, little miss,” he mutters. “Reading’s no good for my head right now.”

“Do you have a headache?” He grunts in affirmation. “Do you want me to get a nurse?”

“No, no, don’t need any of that.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a headache,” Sanji accuses.

Zeff’s mustache twitches. “All you need to know is that you oughta stop yappin’ when a man wants peace and quiet!”

(Not again.)

As you give up and walk over to draw the curtains, Sanji says your name desperately. “Can we read somewhere else?” he pleads when you glance at him. “I don’t want to be stuck in here with him right now.”

Narrowing your eyes, you appraise his weak-looking frame, pointedly skimming past the red string that snakes over to you. “Can you even walk around yet?”

“Yeah,” he says defensively. He wriggles out of the bed sheets and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Holding onto the side rail, he stands up and grips the IV pole for support. Though he’s a little shaky, he shuffles a few steps towards you and smiles when he manages to do so. “See?”

Well, you think, if you and Sanji stay here, you’ll need to have some light in order to read. But it will probably help Zeff if the room is as dark as possible, so if you guys go somewhere else, Sanji’s lamp won’t need to be on.

“Okay,” you agree. “Wait here. I’ll get some slippers.”

Ten minutes later, with Sanji shuffling along in his slippers, IV pole in one hand and your arm in the other, the two of you arrive at the common room and find chairs in the corner to sit down in.

“These’re mostly history books and stories for old people,” you explain as you pull out the one cooking-related book you could find from the top basket of the cart. “This was the only food one I could find.”

“That’s okay.” Sanji takes the book from you and begins to flip through it. “Oh, this one’s about seafood in the South Blue! Have you ever had any?”

“No.”

“Me, neither. I’ll try it someday, though … hey, this fish looks like a fried egg!”

Against your will, you perk up. “… Really?”

For the next half-hour, Sanji fawns over the spices used on grilled Sea King meat and how to cook wine clams and the best fish for South Blue-style sushi. And it’s … not boring. He doesn’t hog the book, and the pictures are cool, and he asks you which ones you think are the coolest or would taste the best. Looking at a book with another kid is different from reading with an adult. It feels like you’re sharing, not like you’re being tested on your comprehension or how to pronounce long words.

Hanging out with Sanji is okay when the string doesn’t sour it.

“So you want to cook all of these one day?” you ask after scanning through a full-color page of steamed Ocean Hawk feet.

“I want to cook things from all four seas,” Sanji says. His legs bounce with excitement. “That’s why I’m gonna find the All Blue.”

“What’s that?”

The boy glows.

“It’s where the North, East, South, and West Blue seas all meet. Think about it – fresh-caught fish from all over the world all in one place! I’ll be able to cook dishes no one’s ever cooked or tasted before.”

You’ve never heard of such a place. But Sanji talks about it with such conviction, such resolve, that you figure the All Blue could really exist.

“I hope you find it,” you say, and you mean it.

“I will.” Sanji closes the book. “And when I do, I’ll cook something just for you. A-As a friend.”

He peeks over at you, his eyes even brighter and bluer than before, his cheeks flushing a familiar red. And you find yourself believing him, just a little bit.

—

Sanji keeps his promise.

You know he still likes you (blech) and so does most of the staff (double blech). Nurse Taoh thinks it’s funny and teases you about your little boyfriend in Room 8 who always asks where you are. Mrs. Hong reminds you to be sensitive whenever you stop by to pick up meals. Dr. Gu tells you to tell her right away if Sanji ever does something that makes you uncomfortable.

But he never does. Sometimes his words spill out clumsily like a broken faucet and other times he blushes and stutters, leaving you to wonder what he’s going on about, but he doesn’t try to kiss you or hold your hand, and he doesn’t say a word about the red string that is very much still there. If anything, he just annoys you at times, with how nice he is to you and how sunny he gets when you eat lunch with him sometimes.

You’ve never seen somebody so happy to be in a hospital before, even if it’s just because he wants you to like him. It’s weird.

It’s on the eighth day of Zeff and Sanji’s stay that you learn not everything is how it seems.

You’d gotten in trouble the night before for digging holes in the garden – you had kept the seed from your dinner plum and wanted to see if you could make it grow, but Miss Jaylee had caught you while taking Mr. Hu out for some air – so you’re somewhat grumpy on your way to Room 8, two notebooks in hand.

One of them is blank for Sanji. He wants to record all the meals he’s gotten and write down how he would make them. The second notebook is full of your notes that you need to study for your quiz tomorrow.

Zeff is sleeping again when you enter. You move quietly across the room to where Sanji is lying with his back to the door.

“Sanji.” You can see his shoulders tense underneath the sheets, but strangely, he does not roll over to face you. “I have your notebook.”

No answer. That is even stranger.

Frowning, you walk around to the other side of the bed. Sanji moves to bury his face into his pillow, but not before you hear a very soft, wet sniffle.

“Sanji?”

“Sorry.” His voice is high and so muffled you can barely understand him. “You can just leave it on the table.”

“Why are you crying?” In the back of your head, you know it is not the most sensitive thing to ask. But for some reason, you need to know. “I won’t laugh or tell anyone.”

You hear another sniffle from the mop of blond hair. It takes a long time for Sanji to answer, but he eventually does.

“I don’t like hospitals.”

Your brow furrows. “Oh,” you say, somewhat surprised. Most people don’t like being in a hospital, you’re pretty sure of that, but you didn’t know Sanji didn’t like it this much. “Why?”

Maybe he’s tired of getting poked all the time, or the bland food, or the hospital smell. Nobody here can change that. Maybe he’s homesick. The hospital can’t fix that, either.

Sanji turns his head slightly and takes in a small, shuddering breath. “’Cause it … it makes me remember my mum … when she was sick,” he mumbles, almost too quiet to hear.

“… Oh.”

You had assumed, upon learning that Zeff and Sanji were not at all related, that Sanji was like you and never knew his parents. He’d never talked about having any before, only his time on the Orbit and with Zeff. But he does know them – his mother, at least. And she was sick. The memory is what’s making him so sad, and it’s yet another thing that the hospital can’t help.

You don’t want him to be sad. You did make him your friend, after all, even if he does annoy you sometimes.

“I’m sorry,” you say, standing awkwardly with his notebook still in your possession. You remember what Miss Jaylee has told other patients before. “That, um, must have been really hard for you.”

Sanji squeezes his pillow more tightly.

Should you go? Should you talk to him some more?

“Please don’t tell anybody,” he whispers before you can decide. “Especially Zeff.”

“I won’t,” you reply firmly. “I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry I can’t hang out today. I really wanted to, but, um …”

“It’s okay. We can do it later.”

“Okay.”

You set his notebook and a pen on the bedside table. After some thought, you refill his water and, after even more hesitation, fix the bed sheets on him a bit so they’re not as twisted up. That is the best you can do.

The red string follows you as you quietly leave Room 8, and you don’t think about it at all.

—

“How do you spell necessary?”

“N-E-S-E-S-A-R-Y.”

“That doesn’t look right. I think it’s S-S-A-R-Y.”

“Maybe you can find it in the book,” Sanji suggests, kicking his feet as he lies on his belly next to you.

“Yeah, maybe.” You flip through the pages of your textbook, searching for the correct spelling lest you get marked off again.

It is the tenth day. Sanji is doing alright, and Zeff is up and about with his new leg. Dr. Gu says they’re good to go, so they’re leaving after Zeff finishes breakfast. You’re not sure how to feel about it.

In the meantime, Sanji is helping you with your essay about scurvy. He knows quite a bit about it, which makes sense since he’s lived at sea, and you hope the perspective he’s supplying will impress Dr. Gu.

(“That’s why every ship needs a good cook,” he tells you proudly. “We make sure everyone eats right so they stay healthy.”

“That’s why you and Mr. Zeff are going to have a restaurant ship, right?”

“Mmhm.”)

Sanji rests his face in his hands, cheeks squished against his palms while you continue to scan through your textbook. You finally find the word in a photo caption and, with a triumphant noise, jot it down correctly.

Someone knocks on your door. The two of you turn to face it simultaneously.

“[Y/n]?” It’s Mrs. Guo.

“Yeah?” you call, already slightly irritated.

“Is Sanji there? It’s time for him to leave.”

A frown presses down on your lips. Sanji sighs and gets up as slowly as possible, taking his notebook with him.

“Coming,” he says.

The two of you dawdle on your way to the hospital entrance. You pet Cabby the dog when you run into him and his handler and stop by the kitchen so Sanji can thank the cooks. There’s no rush, not really, but an uneasy feeling continues to well up in your stomach anyway.

Upon arriving at your destination, Zeff waiting at the double doors with a giant bag of treasure slung over his shoulder, Sanji stops and turns to face you.

“I’m – I’m going now,” he says, as if just realizing it.

“Okay,” you say.

You and Sanji stand in silence for a moment before Sanji’s bottom lip starts to wobble.

Yours starts to wobble too. The uneasy feeling in your stomach bubbles up into your throat and behind your eyes.

“I’ll write you,” he blurts, voice cracking. “You’ll come visit, won’t you?”

“I don’t know.” You don’t know if they’ll let you. The hospital is busy and the ocean is big, bigger than you, and you don’t know it at all like Zeff and Sanji do. “But I’ll write back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

You are crying now.

For the first time, your arms wrap around Sanji, and he clings back as both of you bawl. Your tears and snot stain the shoulder of his brand-new clothes. Your uniform grows damp at the collar. It doesn’t matter at all.

“I don’t know if I’ll see you again,” you croak into his shirt, face hot and eyes blurry.

His grip tightens. “You will,” Sanji replies in between sniffles. “I know it. Even if it’s when we’re really old, we’ll see each other again.”

“Okay.”

You believe him. Not because of fate, but because you want to.

—

You write to each other every single week for the next ten years. You tell each other everything.

Well, almost everything.

—

“You seem nervous,” Nami says. “Don’t tell me a little bribery got under your skin?”

“No, no.” You wipe your hands on your thighs and try to relax against the back of the booth. “Just … not used to places like this, that’s all.”

The Baratie is nicer than you imagined. Sanji had kept you up to date over the years, sending newspaper clippings and recipe drafts as the restaurant he and Zeff founded grew in staff members and reputation, but seeing it in person is a whole different deal. You’re telling the truth when you said you’re not used to a place like this.

But it’s not why you’re nervous.

“Hey, look!” Usopp exclaims, pointing across the room. “I think those guys are gonna fight.”

The rest of you look. Near the kitchen, two men are arguing, and the pink-haired man sitting at the table stands up when the pirate shoves his food onto the floor.

Usopp sucks his teeth. “Yikes.”

Luffy leans forward in interest. Zoro simply stares, and Nami rolls her eyes.

One of the waiters approaches them. You watch as he tries to deescalate the situation, but neither party is having it.

The pink-haired man draws a gun.

Within seconds, the gun and both would-be brawlers are on the floor.

The waiter shoves his foot into the pink-haired man’s back to keep him down, then picks up the plate of bread rolls again, stepping over both groaning bodies with the ease of one who’s done it before.

He reassures the other customers as he approaches your booth. You’re not concerned about the fight so much as you are about the way that you know.

It’s been ten years, but you just know, even before he gets close enough for you to see the red string that trails up and disappears into the black of his pants pocket. Even before you see the blue of his eyes and the annoyed set of his brow, exactly the same as you remember.

He places the rolls down onto the table, and for the first time, you wonder what you want.

“Hi, welcome to our shitty restaurant where the only thing worse than the ambience is the food. My name is Sanji. What can I get for you?”

[acourtofthought]

@oristian just received an anon that read the following:

The difference between Elriels, Eluciens, and Gwynriels is that Elriels actually like the characters. We like canon Azriel and Elain and don’t need to assign them other characters’ characteristics or rewrite them. We appreciate the way they have been presented, flaws and all. We are invested in their story thanks to canon, not despite it.

Canon Elain does not wear Illyrian leathers.

Canon Elain does not wear a necklace that she returned to Az therefore unless it's fanart depicting Solstice night and only Solstice night, it's not canon.

Canon Elain does not enjoy wielding a dagger.

Canon Elain does not have tattoos.

Canon Az does not train Elain or take her on spy missions. He didn't even want her searching for the Trove. Canon Az got reprimanded by Amren for not believing in Elain.

Canon Az's shadows do not play with Elain, by his own admission in HIS POV they tend to disappear around her.

Canon Az has not thought of a future with Elain beyond his sexual fantasies.

Canon Elain is NOT "Velaris's Princess" which is a wild thing to say since Velaris already has a QUEEN in Feyre.

Canon Elain would not be fine with Az's torture of defenseless people.

Canon Elain likes sunshine and flowers and is bothered by cruelty.

Canon Elain, despite her proclamation that she's part of the NC and would do what is necessary has the life sucked out of her while wearing NC black.

Canon Elain is different from her sisters, as stated in the books and interviews from the author herself.

Canon Elain is NOT described as being Illyrian at heart the way Nesta was.

Canon Elain, despite Nesta's belief that Elain is doing just fine with her friend and hobbies (something Nesta can only assume from afar considering canon Nesta avoided Elain for a year), confirmed that she has trauma that nobody seems to acknowledge.

Canon Az is connected to the Illyrians and the Valkyrie.

Canon Elain is not.

Canon Elain is connected to Vassa and Koschei through her visions.

Canon Az is not connected to either.

Canon Az did not acknowledge the trauma he heard Elain speak of.

Canon Elain did not acknowledge Az's struggles though she's apparently well aware of how Az was bothered by the scent of her bond.

Canon Az avoided Elain for nearly a year though she never asked him to stay away, though he knew she was fighting with Nesta, though he knew she was mourning the loss of her father.

Canon Az showed yearning for Mor while Elain sat in the room with him.

Canon Az felt something spark in his chest at the thought of another female's happiness.

Canon Az never gave his dagger to another female outside of Elain yet made sure Bryce knew what NESTA did with it during the war.

The ONLY thing that Elucien's and Gwynriels fail to adhere to at this point in time in terms of these characters is who their endgame person will be.

It seems we are the only ones who have a fairly good read on their behaviors, who they are, what's important to them, where they would thrive based on how they've been described and who they would best be suited to.

These are books and just because Elain said, "I'm part of this court and will do what is necessary" it doesn't in fact mean that Elain will forevermore be happiest in the NC and has to live there for the remainder of her immortal life simply because of a statement she made in a book prior to her own POV, a statement she made while still processing her trauma. As readers of books, we are fully aware that many times what a character states while processing trauma is not a true reflection of how they feel.

Not when the author placed that single comment on the floor then continued to build onto another pile of bricks next to it.

One brick being Elain needing sunshine.

One brick being "but Elain wearing black, no matter how much she claimed to be part of this court....it sucked the life from her."

One brick being Elain missing the flowers in winter.

One brick being that the NC doesn't turn to Elain for help.

One brick being that we're told Elain might be acting a certain way so as not to disappoint her sisters.

One brick being that Elain loses her color in winter.

One brick that the rose necklace given to Elain needs light in order for it's true depth to become visible.

One brick being that Elain is a rose bloom in a mud field filled with trampling horses while Nesta in that same Illyrian camp was a newly forged sword.

One brick being that Elain's scent is "a promise of Spring".

One brick being that "but the spring court had been made for someone like her."

One brick being that the author said Elain took she and Lucien by surprise.

One brick being the author telling us that Elain and Lucien (not Az) are both happiest in nature.

Just because Elain doesn't seem to want Lucien right now doesn't mean that won't change in the next book. Just like who Aelin wanted changed drastically over the course of multiple books. As did Chaol, as did Feyre, as did Nesta (since she didn't seem to want Cassian at different points throughout the series) as did Eva, as did Juliette, as did Elizabeth, as did Claire, as did Violet, as did Sophie, as did Francesca, as did Tessa, as did Harry, as did Katniss (and so on).

Only paying attention to the direct quotes from a character or their behavior while dealing with trauma, thinking they know everything they need to know about them before they've even had a POV doesn't prove they know them better. It simply means they're choosing to ignore that Sarah is the kind of author who leaves crumbs for readers, who often writes her FMC actually wanting the thing that she insists she does not, who often writes her FMC avoiding her destiny before finally embracing it.

E/riels don't like canon Elain or Az more than Eluciens and Gwynriels. They like a one dimensional version of the characters where everything said and done could not have any deeper meaning.

"Az wants to eat out Elain and Elain wants to kiss Az which means they want to be together forever!".

Versus:

"Az and Elain wanted to hook up but it's clear they were both in a bad place and probably not in the right headspace, especially as neither was first willing to discuss the struggles they're both having".

This narrative that we don't like canon Elain, Az, or Gwyn is tiresome. The only thing we don't like is shipping Elain with a guy who the author has clearly written been as someone who, despite his and her willingness to hook up months ago on their timeline, wasn't there for her when she was put into the cauldron, wasn't there for her when she was suffering from severe depression (even drawing straws so he didn't have to stay with her), who never offered her a kind word about the death of her father, who avoided HER for an entire year because he couldn't handle a bond that will always exist, who looked at another female with heat and yearning while she sat in the room with them, who never bothered to check on her after any of her fights with Nesta, who couldn't admit to his best friend that he had any real feelings for her and that he wasn't just looking to get laid, and who hadn't thought of a future with her beyond his sexual fantasies.

All canon events.

[onewomancitadel]

A scattering of TWC impressions, which I played because a mutual posted fanart featuring a guy with long hair and I wanted to see if he had long hair in the game. The character my protagonist romanced only had long hair in a flashback. I told you, they are trying to contain me

That being said, I'll try to be fair:

By Book Two I was calling that the mother is a traitor, and I presume the epilogue in Book Three confirms this. My favourite silly thing that authors do is something like:

"I'll never forgive anybody who ever does this."

[Character who is later never forgiven for something immediately speaks]

"I sure hope nobody betrays us."

[Traitor speaks]

or in the case of TWC, every time a Rogue leader was mentioned, Rebecca immediately began speaking. It's just a subtle way of linking information together that most people aren't going to pick up on, outside of actual hard clues (e.g. there's the bit where Rebecca gets the pure DMB, and somehow Murphy had pure DMB on hand, the repeated emphasis on doing anything for her child, caginess about leaving being a leader of the Chamber/the dad thing, etc.)

I cannot imagine how much work it was to twine together a CYOA game and try to structure the prose as part of that experience, so I tried to be really gentle on that aspect when I am at my most critical with such a thing.

Present tense works best with first person (there is one time that I've read third person present tense and it's transcended my issues with it, I think because there was a real deft employment of where it's good for - especially sex scenes) in my experience because it reflects that natural English conversational tone, though my preference would still be first person past tense, for the sake of CYOA I can see why it was chosen. That being said, I think it really did struggle at points trying to marry a past tense reflectional tone to the present, and there were times that the description of the environment was especially clunky. I wrote a post about dialogue tags that was implicitly about this series lol.

I did pay for all three books so I'm not knocking on something a fan put their heart into, hahaha. To its detriment I think the quality of the prose depreciated by Book Three - having gone back to do a second playthrough to do a male protagonist/Morgan playthrough, I don't think this is recency bias. In terms of actual structure, Book Three probably has the overall better dramatic moments but experiences a weakening of connective tissue - lots of 'and then'..., and fewer scenes where I can smash my dollies together.

This really brings me to my issue which is that I didn't go in knowing it was all about romance, and I really wish - ironically - it had leant more into being about romance.

The plot is there to carry the development (which I enjoy, unless you are able to write something truly literary) up until it fell more like it was beginning to overwhelm it by Book Three - then again I hated the fake dating in Book Two because it's a beloathed trope of mine, so maybe I'm just hard to please. I think this might be an issue of the will-they-won't-they Adam romance, which - whilst I love slow burn and most of all absolutely love slow burn which dicks around - really needed to torture Adam more and torture my protagonist more to get the message through, I think in part a consequence of the tone of this sort of story which is trying to feel grounded, but I would choose sensible character development in exchange for tonal compromise (especially as it would be constrained to one route). I'm willing to be seated for people who try to stay away from each other - yess please yummy yummy - but you need to feel comfortable in getting the emotional cattle prod out.

And I wouldn't be so upset about the realism of portraying a 900 year old vampire knight unless the setting leant hard into that 'supernatural-but-realism' modern style of cynical writing... like, you can't have characters laugh about believing in God (when God structured that period of Adam's early life and magic is real and a Gnostic-esque Echo World is also real...) and then get mad at me when I want you to portray a 900 year old vampire knight properly. He sounds like a traumatised soldier from 20-30 years ago; did he change with the times? Did he never fit in back then anyway? I guess I just wanted to go weirder! Also what's his attitude to sex. Lol

Also the fact that human bloodsucking didn't come up until the end of Book Three made me very disappointed. I wanted him to try sucking her like as early as Book One. I wanted to suggest it as a thing to help them fighttttt but it could also be so so sexy. 🥰 It felt a little like dramatic scenes kind of get postponed. No idea what Murphy is doing now

That being said, the most important thing to me were the nonviolent resolutions and being nice to the monsters. I think the real reason I kept playing is because it did keep offering outcomes that let me try to be peaceful and show compassion to the big sad mean monsters... whether that was in the romance itself, or towards the antagonists, that was actually great fun.

It's not even something you necessarily get to do in a Bioware game because combat is considered the lifeblood of video games (maybe in some older games you can talk down the antagonist, thinking of the original Fallout here - but notably its sequel eschewed this, almost like a joke) and the type of character I tend to construct for this setting is the gentlest I can think of, just because such gentle characters are so rare. So it's very very valuable to me to get to play that.

That actually brings me into what I liked about the romances, which is that I never had to consistently hit a 'flirt' option - something I hate about how RPG's construct romance now - because that's not even how people become attracted to each other! - and it asked me what route I was going to take. Notably on my second playthrough, it asked me why I had been avoiding Morgan - so it actually integrated how you met those hidden romance checks into the storytelling, even when I went through a romance with fewer checks seemingly hit. (I think this might've been because I let her wait outside? But why would I force my character on her? Lol).

And because Detective Majestic (okay I was thinking of Destroy All Humans because cops/supernatural/special agencies, I wanted something silly, and then they kept using her surname the whole goddamned playthrough...) is so gentle, she never pushed Adam not even once, and it let me keep playing that way without punishing that playstyle because it didn't ~meet the romance checks~, but it also had romantic scenarios where neither of them let themselves do anything hahaha, which was amazing. This is probably the rarest portrayal of romance I've ever seen in a CYOA/RPG, and pretty much redeemed my experience because it was so fun to actually play something unique which met me halfway. That in itself is very hard to do - the reason you'd structure something linearly with absolute checks is just because this method is very complex to write. Now you've got more than 'romance - no romance' to write a route for.

So the discovery element was really the strongest, and I enjoyed it for that reason above all else. It let me be nice, pacifistic, and play a romance with a unique approach - and though I am not always the kindest on some requisite romance tropes (part of the reason I liked playing a gentle character is that I like the subversion of pushy romance tropes lol) it was admittedly quite fun!

I'm glad I checked it out, so now I know who is the one with long hair and who isn't, and though I am rather curmudgeonly, I had a little bit of fun. I can definitely see how this would service a rich transformative fandom - especially because I don't know if you could reasonably write a sex scene in the main story proper. Blood sucking might have to supplement it... that's what the vampire can be a facsimile for, just with a much more negative portrayal, lol. Probably a separate thesis to be written on why the vampire has enjoyed a burgeoning positive reception in modern romance.

[perpetualexistence]

An Appetite for Knowledge: An Intellect Devourer Noah AU

So, based on me watching clips of Baldur's Gate 3 and @total-drama-brainrot's false hydra Heather post, I couldn't help but think to myself: 'Why should Heather be the only one who's a DnD monster?'

Hence me making an AU where Noah's an Intellect Devourer. If you know what it is, you know EXACTLY what kind of horrifying implications that has. Though the name itself is also an explanation of what one is.

I've made a whole horror one-shot showing those implications that you can check out here! I highly encourage you to read it first for maximum suspense before reading on where I fully explain what Noah's deal is.

Also, the first pic you're going to see if of a brain with legs so keep that in mind for the kind of tone this AU's going for.

Noah's one of these little scamps:

Intellect devourers are squishy little guys whose whole purpose is someone unlucky enough to cross their path, use psychic attacks to paralyze them, and then consume their mind and memories. They replace the mind they just ate with themselves, and now have a body to use to lure people towards mind flayers.

They can crawl out of their new bodies at will, or else be forced into leaving through certain protection spells. But there is no getting the original person/brain back short of performing a literal miracle.

Typically they work on orders from the hivemind they're a part of. Without orders, they'll be skittering about either following the last thing they were told or keeping themselves alive.

That's the situation that a certain baby intellect devourer finds itself in. The hivemind that it was once a part of got destroyed by an adventuring party. But they failed to do it properly. Rather than killing everything connected to the hivemind at once, they only severed the connection from the main brain to everything else. They had no way of knowing it at the time, so everyone thought the problem was dealt with.

Leaving strays such as this creature without a name to fend for themselves. It's smaller than the rest, and knows staying with a group will make it more likely to be noticed by adventurers that want it dead, so it scampers off on its own to find a body it can safely hide in.

It finds a small child all alone on his way to wizard school, takes over, and names himself Noah. He was lucky to find himself a child genius that's effectively a 3rd level wizard. He's got access to a spell known as Nystul's Magic Aura that lets him still appear as human through magical means unless someone really tries pressing him with magic. Eventually, he'll also get access to Nondetection that'll prevent others from targeting him with spells to find out what he is without first dismantling Nondetection.

Combine the fact that this is the kid's first time in a new country, nobody has any context of knowing that Noah's acting weird. He's hard to detect, and he'll only get worse as he learns more magic.

Luckily for everyone, Noah's lazy thanks to how spoiled he's been with the body he's managed to snag. He also isn't required to kill anyone thanks to a hivemind.

He's fairly content with only snagging as much intelligence with others as he needs. After all, if dead bodies start piling up in a wizard school, life is going to be a lot more difficult for him.

He just needs to be within 10 feet of a person in order to feed from them. He can unleash a mild psychic attack to steal some of their knowledge, but for them it feels more like a headache. His favorite feeding ground is the library. It's easy enough to believe studying and stress are causing a headache and making it hard to remember something rather than an intellect devourer feeding on the knowledge you're trying to learn.

Plus, Noah rather likes reading. Before he got into his human body he couldn't see in the traditional sense. He could only sense things around him, and detect anything with intelligence from 300 ft away. Any knowledge he got had to be stolen. So now that he has the opportunity to learn that doesn't require him putting the work of stealing it from someone else? Of course he's going to take it.

He is capable of a more powerful psychic attack to incapacitate someone, but that's harder to hide. He never plans to use that unless his life was seriously in danger.

He also surrounds himself with people who are physically stronger than him to make up for his own lack of physical prowess. Hence him sticking with Owen, Izzy, and Eva. The wizard school he goes to is either really near or partners with other nearby adventuring school, which is how he meets them.

Does he truly cares about them, or does he just keep them around because they're useful to him?

It's hard to say. He was also the kid-equivalent of an Intellect Devourer when he possessed his first human, who also happened to be a kid. He was cut off from a collective before he was fully formed., Most of his personality is heavily influenced on the kid.

He actually understands what empathy and morality are, which are more than what most of his kind can say. But they make him uncomfortable, so he's much happier to just not think about it. He just knows he likes having his chubby buddy and Team E-scope around, and he's go no reason to feed on them. The only one smart enough for his palette is Izzy, and she's tinged with crazy so he's Not Touching That.

He won't feed on Alejandro either, but that's for a different reason. Alejandro's certainly smart enough to be on the menu. It makes it even tastier that he's got cunning. He's smart enough to figure out that Noah's more powerful than he looks/is hiding something. He's dangerous to be near, but Noah still will.

After all, Noah's got to have a backup plan if anything happens to his current host. He'd lose his ability to cast spells like before, but he'd gain a stronger body, and one with money to boot.

Still, Alejandro's nice company for now, so there's no need to be hasty with the emergency murder plan.

Noah's eventual plan is to be a part of the adventuring party that Owen and Izzy are trying to create with him, Eva, and Alejandro (and possibly Tyler because Team CIRRRRH shall live forevermore in my AUs).

He can travel around, sampling knowledge from across the continent. When they do need to fight monsters for the sake of 'doing good' and getting paid, everyone else can take the hits while he casts magic from the back while remaining unharmed. No one will ever be the wiser.

This isn't going to go exactly how Noah wants because somehow everyone else is going to find out about Noah being an Intellect Devourer.

I'm currently torn between two ways of it happening: Someone is casting Protection from Evil and Good on the whole party and Noah isn't able to get out of it, forcing him out of his body.

Or they get caught by something else (possibly mind flayers), and are put in separate cells. Noah scurries out of his human body in order to get out, consume and possess one of their captors to release them all, and then gets caught by the others when he tries to scurry back into his body.

Either way, it's not going to be fun for everyone else to grapple with the fact that the scrawny little nerd they know has killed, and has no problem with killing again if he thinks he needs to.

[lov3rsrck]

COWBOY LIKE ME |

Chapter two: Make The Deal

Mattheo Riddle × Hufflepuff!OC

Series trope: Fake Dating

Chapter two summary: when confronted by Mattheo about his letter, he and Cordelia strike up a deal.

Warning: none

Author's note: sorry for taking so long to post chapter two, I’ve been in such a depressive state lately

Enjoy reading and feel free to give me helpful criticism :)

Overall masterlist | series masterlist | chapter one

“CAN WE TALK?” Cordelia's eyes stayed focused on the envelope in Mattheo’s hands rather than his eyes.

“Uh…no?” Cordelia turns to rush away when she feels a hand on her arm, stopping her.

She shuts her eyes tight. This is not happening, oh my god.

“Look, we really need to talk.”

She stayed quiet.

“Listen, i'm not freaked out by the letter or anything, but we really need to talk.” he reiterated once again.

Cordelia took a deep breath as she looked at the ceiling.

“Fine, Fine. About what?” She turned to look at him again. Obviously she knew it was about the letter, otherwise why the hell would Mattheo riddle be talking to her? Why would the scariest slytherin be standing in the hallway asking her to talk?

Mattheo looked around at the students throughout the hallway surrounding them before speaking,

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” his mouth changed into a joking smirk, “I mean, unless you want everyone who doesn't already know to find out about your little letters.”

Cordelia cut him off with a swift no, and agreed to find somewhere else to discuss this whole mess.

THAT’S HOW SHE and Mattheo end up sitting on the ground in the courtyard, partially hidden behind the rose bushes.

Cordelia waited for him to speak. After all, it was him that wanted to talk about the dumb letter.

“I’m flattered, really I am–” Cordelia scoffed at his cocky tone.

“That letter wasn't even supposed to be read by you–or anyone–so don't get too excited.”

Cordelia crossed her arms over her body. She wanted to crawl into a hole and die. She wanted to fold inside her own skin and disintegrate completely.

“This might be…confusing, I guess, but your little letters could be a good thing for the both of us.”

“Please, how could the whole school knowing I wrote love letters to people I had crushes on be a good thing for me? That sounds more like a death sentence.”

Mattheo rolled his eyes at my negative words, “Give me like five seconds to explain.”

She sighed but let him continue to explain his reasoning behind bringing her here to talk privately.

“I need someone to date that's gonna piss off my father. You need to get Cedric and whoever else got a letter off your back.”

Cordelia blinked once, then twice, then furrowed her brows. “I'm failing to see how those two things are at all connected or relevant.”

Mattheo groaned as his hand ran over his face, acting like he said something extremely simple for Cordelia to understand.

“I’m saying that by getting this,” he said, referring to the letter in his hand, “it is going to solve both of our problems.”

“You,” he exaggerated and pointed at her, “are the exact type of person that my dad despises. You’re not a slytherin, you’re not a death eater, and you’re a mudblood.”

Her eyebrows raised at that word. Mudblood. Jesus, his dad is more of a jerk than I imagined.

“And who's a better person to keep Cedric from telling everyone about the letter or being weird about it than me? This whole damn school’s scared of me. Nobody’s gonna talk shit about you or the letters if you’re with me.”

Cordelia thought hard about what Mattheo was saying. Was he seriously implying that they date? That's a ridiculous plan, even for him.

“Nobody’s gonna believe that we are together. Come on, you and me? Dating? That's the most far-fetched idea I've ever heard of.”

“If you have a different plan, then I'm all ears.”

But she didn’t have another plan. She could only think of dropping out, but that would be crazy to do over something like this.

“Come on…Cordi.” He smirked at the nickname.

“You don’t get to call me that.” Cordelia shut him down quickly. Only her real friends got to use that nickname.

She stayed silent for a minute before sighing, “Fine, I'll do it. But there has to be rules.”

“Rules?” She nodded.

“Yes, rules,” she grabbed a small piece of paper and her quill from her bag, “since we’re not actually dating, there are certain things that we can’t do.”

Matteo leaned closer to her to examine the list as she wrote it, “like what?”

“Well for starters, you can’t kiss me—”

“Wait, wait, wait. How is anyone going to believe in this,” he motioned his finger between the two of them, “if we never kiss.”

Cordelia bit her lip as she thought about it.

“...We’re just going to have to show them we’re ‘together’ in other ways.”

He thought for a moment before he gave her his idea, “Are you against holding hands? What about tie switching occasionally?,” his mouth grew into that dumb smirk he always seemed to do as he thought of something else, “that’ll give people the impression that we spent the night together, if you know what i mean.”

She scoffed at his inappropriate words. Of course he'd make it dirty, its mattheo riddle.

“Okay, gross, but I guess it could work. But you can't go around saying we…do that. And no, i'm not against holding hands.”

Cordelia began to scribble out a list onto the paper:

1. No kissing

Mattheo grabbed the paper and quill from Cordelia when she finished, writing his own thing down.

“What are you writing?”

Mattheo didn't answer her at first, scribbling down words that she couldn't see from her spot across from him.

“There’s a quidditch game tonight, and you have to go to it,” he began.

“Okay? i go to all the quidditch games–” he cut her off, finishing his own sentence.

“And you have to cheer for me and wear my jersey.”

The game tonight was Hufflepuff vs. slytherin. She looked at Mattheo like he was crazy, “Wait, I can't cheer for you?! The Hufflepuffs will all but disown me if I cheer for the opposite team.”

“Oh yeah, because they’re totally not going to ‘disown’ you for dating a slytherin?”

Cordelia hadn't thought about that. They were going to look at her badly anyway. Between the letter to Cedric to her now being with Mattheo, whether it's fake or not.

“Oh, right. Fine, whatever, I'll cheer for you.”

2. Cheer for Mattheo at all quidditch games

Codelia takes the paper back and writes as she speaks.

“Obviously we can't tell anyone if we want people to believe we’re really together.” Mattheo nodded his head in agreement.

“And I want you to walk me to all of my classes.”

“Why?” Mattheo’s brows scrunched up at her request.

“Because it's romantic, that's why. You were the one that said we need to make this as realistic as possible.”

He sighed but nodded his head. Cordelia went back to writing the list.

3. Tell nobody

4. Walk me to my classes

“Anything else?” Cordelia looked up from the paper at him. He was already looking at her.

“Nope, don't think so.” Cordelia fiddled with the quill in her hand at the awkward silence between her and Mattheo.

After what felt like forever, He spoke.

“So it's official, we have a deal?” Mattheo asked and the two of them stood up from the ground finally.

Cordelia folded up the paper with the list on it and placed it into her bag before looking at him.

“Yes. We have a deal.”

CORDELIA SAT IN the corner of the library after the whole exchange went down, staring down at the list she and Mattheo made. There was one thing that she felt was missing.

5. Don't fall in love

After all, she wrote that love letter about him for a reason, even if it was when she was younger.

overall masterlist | series masterlist | chapter three (coming soon)

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I was brainstorming ways to make Marinette (and everyone else) keeping Gabriel's identity from Adrien work.

What if, in S5, Lila was redeemed and Felix was set up as the future antagonist? Of course, S5 would have to be majorly reworked but the basic concept for just Lila is:

Lila is fired by Gabriel earlier, being devastated by fading back into a nobody (no mastermind stunts). Marinette talks to her and they build a awkward connection.

Lila becomes more honest to the class but doesn't reveal her previous lies. She simply acknowledges that making unkeepable promises could backfire, like with Gabriel.

Lila finds out about Marinette's identity through her perception of lies and reveals Gabriel's identity (+ maybe some stolen floor plans or something).

After the finale, Marinette is torn on revealing Gabriel's identity to the public & Adrien and confides in Lila, the only other person who knows and boy is that unlucky.

The thing is Lila's concept of good is still undeveloped, more logic and less empathy. To her, the main focus is keep everyone happy. 1/4 because it's "right" to see smiles and 3/4 because it's "smart" with the Butterfly still active. So, Lila recommends keeping it a secret.

Marinette is still hesitant but decides it would be best to keep it a secret, if only while the Butterfly is still active.

The main point of making Lila the sharer of knowledge is that she feels no obligation towards Adrien and (well-intentionally) encourages Marinette to feel the same way.

Also, no one knows Adrien is a sentimonster. Kagami isn't involved, so the only available person would be Nathalie and she can be written off as indefinitely comatose. As for Felix, Gabriel's identity and the human sentimonsters should be brought up in S6.

Ideally, Felix reveals to Adrien that he is a sentimonster near the beginning of the season and Adrien learns to accept it at the end of the season. Then, Marinette recognizes Adrien's maturity and shares Gabriel's identity with him.

I like elements of this, but I think season five is too late in the game to redeem Lila without it being a major story arc that spans at least half a season. You could have done it after season one, maybe even season two, but season three made her way too evil without adding any complexity to her character, which is very much needed for people to see her in a sympathetic light.

I don't think most viewers would be satisfied by her lies staying a secret, either. I know I wouldn't, but I think you could potentially rework that element? Have her exposed and ostracized and that be what leads her and Marinette to become tentative allies? Maybe Lila is desperate for revenge on Gabriel to the point that she no longer cares about Marinette because Marinette has really done nothing noteworthy to Lila (why does this show love giving people baseless vendettas against Marinette?) and Lila knows Marinette will do anything for Adrien, so Lila recruits Marinette to help her? It would be hard to pull off, but not impossible.

I do like Felix being the new big bad more than Lila, though. However, he's going to suffer from the same issue Gabriel does unless you nerf the peacock. Namely the issues of the character's power set being way too overpowered for them to come across as smart while still losing every battle. You could potentially get around that if Felix refuses to make sentimonsters, though? But then you'd need to come up with a way to keep him threatening. It's a hard balance to strike with the peacock. The butterfly is much easier to nerf. For the peacock, I just flat out redesign it because of all the issues it introduces and I was doing that long before the senti nonsense.

[owliellder]

Music Recs (for writing)

I thought it would be fun to make a post of the type of music I listen to when I'm writing while also providing music recommendations cause i love finding new music myself. obviously I'll add more as I go along

I use music to help with feelings (like angst, love, fluff, etc) since I struggle conveying those naturally and I only really use apple music because spotify has always evaded me, so I'm literally just going to write each song and then link it on youtube 😭

also heads up, my music taste is EVERYWHERE so there is no rhyme or reason to any of this

Fluff/Happy Mix:

Fall On Me by R.E.M.

Fresh by Daft Punk

Keep Feeling Fascination by The Human League

Around and Around by John Denver

Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits

Feel It All Around by Washed Out (don't mind me, just adding Washed Out's entire discography here)

You'll See It by Washed Out

Angst:

Veridis Quo by Daft Punk

Face to Face by Daft Punk

Wicked Game by Chris Isaak

It's Raining Again by Supertramp

Take The Long Way Home by Supertramp

Eyes Without a Face by Billy Idol

Goodbye Again by John Denver

Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve (this is a very specific type of angst I feel)

Belong by Washed Out

Phone Call by Washed Out (this version of the song can only be found on youtube)

You and I by Washed out (again, this specific version is only on youtube)

Clap Intro by Washed Out

What Once Was by Hers

Just Wait Til Next Year by John Maus

Sprawling Idiot Effigy by Nero's Day at Disneyland (I do not suggest you listen to this one unless experimental music is your thing cause I tend to listen to Nero's Day at Disneyland when I am too under-stimulated to write)

(In) Love:

Love Story (Instrumental) by Lana Del Ray (I put this on loop for hours it's such a beautiful instrumental)

Digital Love by Daft Punk

Cheri Cheri Lady by Modern Talking

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths

Linger by The Cranberries

Annie's Song by John Denver

The ENTIRE Paracosm album by Washed Out (trust me on this one it all flows as one song)

Eyes Be Closed by Washed Out

Amor Fati by Washed Out

Everything in You by Adventure Time (ft Half Shy) (the Fionna and Cake series ruined me)

Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, London Festival Orchestra

Baby I'm Yours by Cass Elliot

Stay by Oingo Boingo

Spice 😈:

not a lot of this yet since i tend to listen to my BG music when writing smut

Lose Yourself to Dance by Daft Punk

Make Love by Daft Punk

Hurt/Comfort:

Something About Us by Daft Punk

Instant Crush by Daft Punk (ft. Julian Casablancas) (I really like Daft Punk)

Why (12" Version) by Carly Simon

Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac

Dreams by Fleetwood Mac

Back Home Again by John Denver

Poems, Prayers, and Promises by John Denver (I also really like John Denver)

Kids by MGMT

The Ghost Inside by Broken Bells

Andromeda by Weyes Blood

Luck by Washed Out

Far Away by Washed Out

Fly Away by John Denver

General Scene Building/BG:

now this is my favorite part since these are what I use most often when writing. you can pick out obvious tone indicators here in the titles 😭

a way i've learned to tap into certain feelings for when i'm writing is by using my own feelings on personal experiences, so a lot of these playlists i'm linking I have a lot of personal connection to (also because they're all so damn specific)

you're inside the last memories of a dying person (playlist) by nobody

you're an astronaut lost in space (playlist) by nobody

i feel like i've been here before (playlist) by nobody

|| nobody here || Silent Hill fog core playlist by Armand Tormo

February 22, 2001 - A liminal playlist by Dan

recalling moments of a christmas that never happened (playlist) by nobody

you're visiting the grave of an old friend while remembering the moments you spent together (playlist) by nobody

you found a place where spring is eternal (playlist) by nobody

you're staring at the ceiling while creating romanticized stories in your head (playlist) by nobody

you're walking under the golden trees watching the melancholic leaves dancing in the air (playlist) by nobody

Lost in the Poolrooms (a visual vaporwave mix) by K1K1n

Music for Vibin' on Jupiter's Hydrogen Sea (vaporwave mix) by olimar124

Unknown Songs (Lost Media Comp.) by Christopher Cherigo (one of my hyperfixations is unknown songs lololol)

[spookyxspells]

🕸️ 𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 & 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝟏𝟎𝟏: 𝐀 𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐡 🕸️

🪦 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘪𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘯, 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺, 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭, 𝘴𝘰 𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘳𝘺.

💀 Boundaries guide 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 behavior.

🌊 𝑩𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫𝑨𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑺 𝑨𝑹𝑬:

⚡️ 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 expectations and needs that help 𝒚𝒐𝒖 feel safe and comfortable in 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 relationships.

⚡️ a personal rule 𝒚𝒐𝒖 make to protect 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 from other people/triggers.

⚡️ boundaries are setting limits to what 𝒚𝒐𝒖 are personally willing to do or tolerate [i.e., I won’t be around XX (because it upsets and triggers me)]

✨ a lot of people get confused with boundaries because they want 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 boundary to 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 what 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 do.

✨ Boundaries are about the outcome for 𝙪𝙨, to protect or contain 𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔, and to connect with others, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 to disconnect ourselves more

✨ Ultimately, a boundary is something that 𝒚𝒐𝒖 have to determine for 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 ― not something you can force 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙚 to comply with.

💀 Rules guide 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐄𝐋𝐒𝐄’𝐒 behavior.

💥 A rule is something that says what 𝒊𝒔 and 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 allowed. (i.e., No smoking in the house.)

✨A rule is something 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝙚𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙘𝙚 on 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙚 to 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 [and can easily be weaponized in hostile/toxic relationships and situations (landlord/tenant, romantic relationship, familial relationships, etc)].

✨ Rules are hard fast, less forgiving, more specific and are usually created to prevent chaos or for safety reasons.

✨ It may be tempting to lay down a laundry list of rules in order to make relationships/situations less messy and chaotic, but that’s 𝙣𝙤𝙩 how you establish meaningful connections with others.

💫 So, basically :

🏹 Boundaries = “I Won’t.”

• 𝙄 𝙒𝙊𝙉’𝙏 stay in the same room as you if 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙧𝙚 going to yell at me.

🔪 Rules = “You Can’t.”

• 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝘾𝘼𝙉’𝙏 use social media.

✨ Protecting yourself relationally means having a healthy understanding of where 𝙔𝙊𝙐 end and 𝙊𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙎 begin.

✨ 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙬𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙬𝙚 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙧 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨.

🔥 “No,” is a full sentence. Unless you’ve sold your soul to a crossroads demon, nobody is entitled to an explanation unless you choose to give one.

🔮 And, as always, time is fake and everyone you don’t know in public is an NPC, so don’t worry, they’re not paying attention to you, I promise.

[nightmare-the-cat]

War Dogs

I do a bit of world building

Gen does a bit of pining

……….

The sunlight was fading in the distance, colder weather bringing longer nights. Gen had taken to leaning on the railing of the old playground to observe this phenomenon once its timing began lining up with his walks back home.

Beni called him sentimental. Gen thought she was talking out of her ass. Watching the light fade from the world at this vantage point was breathtaking, the skies bleeding into ever darker colors until the pitch black of night completely took hold…

Made some of those more painful Corrupted raids worth the trouble.

“Why am I not surprised to find you here?” Gen stiffened as a warm hand landed on his shoulder to accompany the rhetorical question, before Guren emerged at his side to share in leaning on the old metal bar. He was staring ahead, indigo eyes focused on the setting sun in the distance. His expression itself was soft, relaxed-a rarity these days. Warm light kissed his tan skin, giving him an almost magical glow, like something out of a fairy tale. “Still, it’s as beautiful as I remember. The view from here”

“Yeah…”

Gen wasn’t really looking at it anymore, though.

A comfortable silence filled the air, Gen having to resist leaning into the warmth radiating off the shorter boys body. The sun continued sinking below the horizon, evening winds of autumn tugging at their clothing and hair. Gen could hear the silent melodies these seasonal winds produced, a symphony of life preparing to endure the coming winter. It was then when the winds were their most intense, their songs harsh and commanding, a stark reminder of how much power nature still held over all life on the planet.

Gen had a feeling he was the only one who truly understood the wind, to experience these melodies in their purest form. An invisible power that impacted all, no matter how big or small, gentle enough to provide a cooling breeze in summers, or raging tempests in temperatures below freezing.

He once tried to explain these concepts to the other knights, and Beni, but Guren seemed to be the only one who truly understood what he meant. Toxsa was far too calculative in mind, Chooki, too energetic and straightforward. Ceylan didn’t care much for the whimsical, and Beni was too logic oriented to wrap her head around the concepts-assuming he was just waxing poetic at the time.

Guren was different-never dismissing the abstract, but never trying to force it to conform to logic either. He accepted things as they were, preferring to take them in at their purest, in a sense. He asked how the winds sang about oncoming storms, or thier melodies during dry spells. Gen could never really give him a logical answer, but Guren understood anyway.

Even without the weird ESP being in play.

In fact, Gen was ninety percent sure Guren grasped abstract concepts better without direct contact with thoughts of the person explaining them.

It was probably why Guren viewed that ability as a curse. As he explained it, he never had peace when it switched itself on-the thoughts of himself and the other knights spilling into his head unobstructed. Even the thoughts of Beni, the lucky one between the two of them, who managed to sever her connection to Vanetta’s Core before the merge with her soul passed the point of no return, sometimes slipped through, though much quieter than those of the knights. Guren would get no peace unless he was completely isolated from those he held dear, but tended to show up to school with those telltale green eyes anyway. It was a silent suffering-one that may have stayed a secret if Guren wasn’t so open with the team.

Unlike someone else they knew…

“Maybe we should use this place for the next meeting” Guren murmured, breaking the silence as the last light of day sank below the horizon. “It’s better than those abandoned buildings, at least-and much more quiet than the main park”

“Meh-I’d say the roof of my apartment complex is better suited. Nobody cares to go up there” Gen murmured, their current problem of displacement having forced many relocations in the past month. “I’ve been monitoring it for a while-even set up a weird little chair sculpture a few weeks ago. It’s been left undisturbed”

“Maybe… this search for a new meeting place has been nothing but a drag” Guren mused, his expression having tensed a bit from talking about the teams situation. It was an understandable discomfort-he’d been the one who discovered the truth. The fact that all their souls had been sold and butchered-forever bound to servicing the balance of energy in the universe…

It felt like a sick joke.

Gen hadn’t believed it at first. He’d so desperately wished it was a stupid half-baked prank conceived by Ceylan or Toxsa that had pulled Guren in. The crushing pain in his chest when Guren had snatched his Core Brick and smashed his boot down upon it-that was impossible to deny.

Gen wasn’t sure what happened next-he’d been in shock. He only knew Guren had taken the other three Knights somewhere, and when they’d returned…

Well, the scorched beret clutched in Guren’s shaking hand probably said enough.

“I have to ask…” Gen found himself speaking, the memory having brought the words to the surface. Guren tilted his head in Gens direction, his gaze not really leaving the skyline, even though the sun was long gone. “The old man… what happened that day?”

“… He was in on it” Guren answered after a moment, his expression unreadable. “ALL of it. He viewed this fate, of our souls split clean in two, our humanity stolen away, an acceptable price for the continued existence of mankind”

His expression hardened.

“We decided if that choice wasn’t ours to make, then destroying the Guardian’s Portal wasn’t his” Guren spat, lips curling back into a snarl for the briefest of moments, before smoothing out into something more neutral. “If it isn’t obvious, that thing stopped being necessary a long time ago, we were only conditioned to use it so the Gaurdians could keep an eye on us-and call upon us whenever it struck their fancy, should their planet not do so itself”

Guren finally turned his head to meet Gen’s gaze.

“White tried to stop us-and he ended up hospitalized from the incident” there was a slight tug at the corners of Guren’s lips, almost as if he was suppressing a smirk, but there was no way of confirming it. “Dad visited him-told him to leave the city and never come back, or he’d take a monkey wrench and finish the job the portal failed to do himself”

“… Your dad really said that?” Gen asked, a bit disbelieving, considering how mild and kind Guren’s father had been in their interactions before. “Wait-why would he even-“

“Dad was the guy who built the back up plan in Benham Tower” Guren explained, gesturing in the direction of the glimmering spire, bathed in artificial light. “The Gaurdians told him the bare minimum to gain his trust, so he would do their dirty work for them here on earth. If he had known everything, I’m quite sure he’d have never brought me here”

“…. So the Black-“

“Yeah, the Black Key lock was also him” Guren chuckled, positioning himself so the railing was at his back, still supporting his weight. “He knew a lot-just not the most important bits. Well, not until he found me right after I’d given myself a nasty shock-dropped my Core Brick in the tub while wrestling a certain cat of mine into his yearly bath”

The redhead chuckled again, the sound entirely devoid of humor.

“I can’t imagine that was pleasant” Gen muttered, a bit concerned with how detached Guren seemed from such an experience. “You must have been drowning on air-how on earth did you piece together what was happening while being deprived of oxygen?”

“I didn’t. Max did” Guren hummed, a bit of amused relief seeping into his tone. “Turns out those old wives tales about cats being able to see human souls may have had a nugget of truth to them-otherwise I couldn’t tell you how he figured out that my Core Brick being submerged was behind my sudden asphyxiation. The little bastard actually dove into the bath for the first time EVER to get me out”

Gen couldn’t help but snort at the story, embarrassing as it was morbid.

“Yeah, I know, hilarious. Dad found me gasping for air on the floor, dry as a bone and clutching a wet Core Brick, and put the pieces together” Guren hummed, his smile becoming much more genuine. “He was PISSED, and stayed mad. I was genuinely surprised when he actually came back from that hospital visit-I was SURE he was gonna be arrested for murder”

“All of us should be so lucky-to have a dad like that” Gen chuckled, the image of Guren’s mild mannered, bespectacled father caving the old man’s face in with a wrench tickling the funny bone in the most morbid of ways. “I guess we know where that temper you developed came from”

“HA! No. That came from mom” Guren replied, amusement spread across every bit of his beautiful face. “She threatened to strangle a guy with his own intestines once, when I was real little. Nobody saw the rage coming, she had such a kindly face…”

The smile vanished. Quietly, Guren turned back around, bangs obscuring his eyes as the moon, a waxing crescent, began to emerge in the inky black sky. He produced his Core Brick in a practiced, fluid motion of the hand, running his thumb down the side.

“It’s probably for the best she never had to see me become this” the redhead murmured quietly, a gentle night breeze lightly tousling his hair. With minimal hesitation, he drew his arm back and flung the brick as hard as he could into the darkness. The telltale glimmer of red light came a moment later, and Guren produced the brick again, like it had never left his grasp.

“How much do you think that would hurt if the Core hit the pavement?” Gen asks as Guren wound up another throw.

“A lot, if I had it my way” the redhead muttered, flinging the Core into the darkness once again, this time with much more force. “Dropped it off the school roof once-it’s just inside the “respawn” distance. Stupid things are somewhat immune to fall damage”

“Not shock resistant though-that boot you slammed into me hit like a truck” Gen murmured, watching Guren repeat the throw again. “You’re pretty reckless when it comes to your own well-being, you know that, right?”

“Better I experiment myself and report results than letting you all learn the hard way” the redhead replied, twisting his wrist and flinging the brick like a frisbee that time. “Toxsa’s been experimenting too-pairs up with Ceylan for it sometimes. He’s much more shock resistant than the rest of us”

“I would’ve assumed it was Chooki” the dark brunette hummed in an attempt to lighten the mood, bringing a little smile to the other boys face.

“He can certainly give you a shock with those knuckle stingers” the redhead joked, producing the Core again and tossing it up in the air. “Beni suspects they might be venomous-she’s getting pretty pissed he won’t give up a sample for verification”

“Not surprised-Beni’s always been fascinated with poisons and venom. I’m pretty sure she’d make a killing in pest control with what she’s concocted with her dads old chemists set” Gen muttered, shuddering at the memory of the feral rat who’d made the grave mistake of ripping into Beni’s favorite cookies. “She made a mouse EXPLODE-even keeps the skeleton on display as a kind of trophy”

“I always wondered why she had that thing on the tea table-she puts it in goofy poses every time I come over” Guren chuckled, catching the Core and tossing it up again. “Ceylan likes glaring at it from the upper level”

“Better that than a repeat of the whole gerbil fiasco” Gen hummed, smiling a bit as he saw Guren’s expression soften again. “Or worse-that squirrel thing. I’m pretty sure you traumatized those kids”

“Yeah-having a prey drive is NOT fun, I don’t know how you haven’t snapped” Guren chuckled, subtly licking his lips. “I will admit-the squirrel tasted pretty good. I don’t think dad would approve of me experimenting with rodent meat in the kitchen, though”

“You’re always welcome to use mine-it’s practically untouched” Gen hummed, stretching luxuriously to loosen up after standing in the same position for so long. “Just-don’t pop the eyeballs like tic-tac’s, I only needed to see that once”

“Dude, you’re missing out. I’ve been eating eyeballs since I was six-there pretty good after a good broiling” Guren argued, pushing off from the railing, tucking the Core back away as he motioned for Gen to follow him. “They’re like if chocolate was a type of meat-“

“Guren I swear to Christ I will throw up if you dare finish that statement” Gen chastised, trotting after the redhead and giving a little slap to the back of his head. “Oh fine-I swear you’re such a baby when it comes to gore…”

The pairs voices faded away after that, leaving nothing but the sliver of moon as company for the forgotten playground

…………

@skittykat501 @kazumahashimoto

[magemelondew]

Hi again, follow up question, can I have facts about Arc? (I love their design sm)

YES! I would love to! Sorry for delayed response.. life happens. There's just.. so much to say about Arc. They are just...mmmmmm!!!! so blorbo!!!

Not only are they the funniest damn guy, they're a pseudo-mascot of the rp discord server I'm in!

(Art by @azul1462, p1nkwub on discord, @actualsquid, and @ieattoothpasteveevo !!)

They're!!! Like a big ol' lizard!! And my absolute dork.

There's also a running joke where if you say the word "arc" in any way, Arc will magically appear to say hello. Nobody is safe. But people love it!! And I love Arc's eccentric mad scientist nature.

Arc uses They/He pronouns, and while they prefer they/them, he/him is appropriate too if that is easier for the other person to refer to them as. They have a preference for they pronouns because it refers to both Ray and Spark! And while Arc finds great pleasure in individuality, they can't deny that the two other wubboxes are responsible for their existence at all.

As for their personality, they're very outgoing, adventurous, but still remain very welcoming and cheery. They can't stay in one place, and are constantly on the move. They want to know all there is to know about the observable universe, that being the main driver for their expeditions. Often they can absolutely explode with questions, asking too many at one time from pent-up excitement. Anyone that Arc has ever had interest in will know how little they understand personal bubbles.

Arc can absolutely flip on a dime, and are mildly unpredictable. Fortunately, they have the sensibilities of Spark, something that did not exist in the original rare wubbox, and is still exploring this part of themselves.

I've gone over this before, I think, but Arc is a wubbox fusion! The wubboxes involved are Ray and Spark, the two dorkiest wubboxes, and the two sides of Arc, like the right and left brain.

Spark is constantly anxious, incredibly sweet, and also the emotion and musical part of Arc's mind. He keeps the emotional connections to memories, but does not have the memories himself. He's very musically inclined, and can remember voices and songs.. but not names or faces. He only becomes stable enough to stand on his own when melded with Ray, and that's where his character really shines through. He always seems to be trembling like a newborn puppy, and only feels normal around Ray.

Ray, on the other hand, is logical, brash, and ever-curious about fucking everything ever. He gets himself in danger as a result, and can explode with questions. He has all the information, and is more than happy to tell you everything he knows, but he has no emotional attachments to any of them. Ray often feels very empty as a result, and where there would be other feelings are replaced with anger. He has quite the temperament, and can get angry when he doesn't get what he wants out of a inability to understand in the emotional sense.

Often when Arc is feeling absolutely fantastic, both sides actually lose individuality, but the worse they feel, the more separate. But it can be somewhat controlled, such as when Ray and Spark make calculated movements like dancing and running, they work in tandem. Although when they are asking questions, they work separately, Spark asking the questions Ray comes up with as he writes and observes. It should be assumed, but they can actively hear each other's thoughts at all times.. unless they get into an argument, then the separation begins to occur.

They love music with a passion, and are always listening to a song through their headphones! They actually have very sensitive hearing, and the headphones work to block out sound and to provide music for the Spark in him, who finds himself needing it sometimes when he gets too stressed out or when he needs a break, leaving Ray in control.

Ray and Spark both receive euphoria in this state as well, both receiving the lacking elements of the other. When necessary or wanted, though, they can take control individually as well of the body.

For example, Arc can write and participate in a conversation at the same time, the writing being Ray, and the expressing being Spark. Often times, Arc will use Ray's handwriting for notes since it is robotic and clean. Spark's handwriting is a fucking pain to read, but it is full of character, being very shaky and expressive. Arc never uses this one. But the two sides can work to make an in-between, which is both clean enough to read, yet still looks like genuine handwriting! This one is used for personal uses, such as writing journal entries about their day, or letters to others.

Not only this, but while it may seem as Spark is unstable, as is Ray, feelings of anger can split the two, not only sadness. And while disagreements are rare, they do happen. And so if both sides fight, then the two are individuals again.

If u want to know Anything else about my sweetheart boy pls ask me!!! Hee hee!! All other characters are free for questioning too, and you can even speak to them directly if you'd like!

[dapper-shipping-forever]

I wanted to write Vash going feral in like angel form to protect defenseless Gill. Because feral beast modes are like fucking hot. It's also written with 1998 T.rigun Vash lmao

Takes place when like Vash is on the cusp of realizing he loves her. When he knows that his feelings for her are deeper than he'd let on before.

Enjoy reading this ! Reblogs always welcome 🌸

💜💜💜

---

It was a bit difficult knowing exactly what was around her. Gill had felt herself hit the ground, her leg hurt and guns out of reach. Then, feathers everywhere.

Fluffy, white feathers drifted in the air around her and surrounded her in the embrace of giant wings, and it looked like electricity arced everywhere haphazardly. There was roaring of some kind, fierce and protective too. In that confusion, the red floating above her first clued her into who was shielding her now. Because that red was of Vash's beloved red coat.

His arms held him aloft just a hair above her, forearms planted into sand and fingers digging chasms into it with clawed hands. She couldn't see outside of this cage with the feathers and way his body curled around her entirely this close, her face was in his chest. But above the roaring and electricity, she heard somebody, the person who'd attacked them, fleeing. But it was several minutes after that and Vash hadn't relaxed a fraction; he stayed exactly where he'd been. Gill knew he probably wouldn't calm soon unless she helped. Though, now to figure out how. Vash was wreathed in ferocity, something feral like an animal laced his body.

"Vash? Darling?" She started, wiggling to try and scooch forward to see his face. His response was a low growl and to lock himself firmer around her, his arms shifting to keep her in place and put himself closer now. "Alright, alright." She says, tone indicating she got his point not to move. His rationale was obviously shot, it was more like he'd become instinct incarnate, and if she must guess then that sole instinct currently was 'protect'. It mightve been flattering that he would reach this state for her safety, but she cared more about getting her sweet darling back to her currently. Slowly, amongst the hum of a low growling, she moved her fingertips along his chest, letting him track her careful movements. Her hands fanned out and went under his arms to wrap around his torso, running into the bases of wings and adjusting to settle behind that spot. She tugged him closer, practically crushed under his body but not caring. "Vash, I promise I'm safe." She tells him. "You saved me, thank you; now, you can relax because there's nobody around who can hurt me. You hear that? Come back, baby." There's no verbal response, but she thinks she feels some tension ease in him as he hears her voice underneath him; the electricity stops. Taking the chance, she moves slowly, getting herself out from just being tucked away in his chest. She sees his face finally in this state, and her breath hitches momentarily. More feathers line the planes of his features, and his eyes are wild with an otherworldly glow inside. He's snarling, fangs barred to any threats. and his gaze isn't on her. He's exclusively staring above her at the sand; she's certain he could turn it to glass. Not having that, she gets as near his face as she can, though isn't fully able to reach it given how tightly he's secured her here, and brings one hand behind his head, the other repositioning further along his back; she makes him look into her face. Getting closer, forehead to forehead, she makes sure he can look only at her. "It's alright." She tells him.

Slowly, as she maintains this reassuring physical contact, slowly she sees him release his worries and the sense return to his body. She connects with this raging beast trying to stand between her and any danger as minor as a strong breeze. She watches clarity bring his eyes back to their normal gentle gaze. Feathers creep away from the corners of her vision from his face, and she more feels than sees the wings around them leaving him. All the while, he holds her steady gaze, neither looking away for a short second. She's here, she does her best to convey. Her fingers soothe his hair, they rub into the taut muscles between his shoulders. His shoulders slump, curling around her. "I, Gill, are you," He swallows, stuttering. There was some strain in his voice, holding back that beast. "Hurt at all?" He let's out a shaky breath as he shudders; it fans across her lips. He's searching her wildly, watching her for any indication that someone hurt her; rather, she understands the silent question of if he had hurt her in his ferocity too.

She smiles, shaking her head. "I'm alright." She reassures Vash, gentle and quiet, yet firm enough to not be questioned by him.

He trembles. "I'm sorry." He whispers.

"Why?" She coos. "I just said I'm alright."

"I," He catches his breath, eyes squeezing shut in self inflicted pain. "Hadn't meant meant to forget myself that way; I probably just scared you. I know I wasn't being careful; I could've hurt you accidentally. Fuck, forgive me." The way he's curled around her now isn't like when he'd been protecting her previously; he's more simply clinging to her, sorrow replacing rage. His head moves to nestle into her, seeking her comfort despite feeling he isn't deserving; truthfully, he imagines her shoving him back but he chases her comfort before she does.

"Darling, nothing you've done scared me. If anything did, it was the fear I wouldn't be able to call you back from that anger. But you're here, you're safe and you did save me, and I'm glad for that. Thank you, Vash; you've never failed to be my knight. What a kind man you are." She kisses the side of his head, holding him close to her.

She let's him just steady his breaths, allowing him to respond when he's calmer. "Thank you." He finally says. Opening his eyes to look at her again, his smile wobbles a little as it sets itself into place. "You have no idea how glad I am that you're alright."

Her hand settles on his cheek. "Is it anywhere near how glad I am that you're alright?" She asks. She taps him playfully with her thumb and earns a small laugh from him finally.

"Well, possibly yeah." He blows out a soft sigh, nuzzling into her palm. He's glad she isn't trying to push him away now. He lets his eyes close as he takes in her warmth. When he reopens his eyes, they look directly into her. "Can you stand?"

She would prefer to just continue laying here under him, but it might be awkward to tell her friend that. Instead she hums. "Yeah, I can."

Vash looks relieved, and he moves to lift himself off the ground. Standing above her, he bends his waist to offer her a hand. Does his face look a little red or is she projecting that, since she knows her face is probably red.

She takes his hand, warm and and little rough from his dark glove, and starts to stand. Part way to standing, though, she hisses. Dropping back to the ground, she looks at her leg and sees the gash on it. Ah, she had kinda ignored that to focus on calming Vash earlier. "That hurt." She mumbles.

Concern twists Vash's expression. "You were hurt." He remembers now seeing the splatter of her blood on the ground, that having played part in his rage. He looks vaguely like a kicked toma chick seeing her injured.

She shakes her head, using his hand again to stand fully now. "It's good." She says simply.

Vash crouches, peering at her injury; in a gentle hand, he holds her leg. It isn't deep, but he knows it'd make walking on it painful. "Either way, would rather you not put your weight on this." And without any chance for her to object, he carefully scoops her legs from underneath her and stands again with her securely in his arms now. He adjusts her to make sure she's comfortable, trying not to move her too much though.

She snaps her head to him, surprised to be off solid ground. "Vash, I can walk, yknow !" Her face definitely feels warm.

He laughs. "I know that." He says, already walking with her in his hold.

She hugs herself, deciding to just allow this since she knows he won't relent on taking care of her this way; that protective instinct is part of him no matter his form, she's always known about that. She takes the chance to give him a knowing smile, a little flirty comment like what's pretty usual for them. "You know, I feel like I find myself in your arms quite often, darling. Are you just looking for excuses to sweep me off my feet?"

And he looks at her, with the softest smile she has seen, and that little crinkle around his eyes that could only be something genuine. "Maybe I am."

That expression is full of such fondness that it stops her in her tracks. Any other flirty comments she was brewing just turn to steam. She just looks at him until he has to look ahead of them to walk as smooth as possible, and her eyes drift to stare at herself. That expression, it might be her being too optimistic, but it hadn't just felt friendly, it felt like something much more; something she's been desiring about since she met him. She swallows. It feels like taking a chance; she slowly let's her head nestle into his chest, the steady movement of his long legs gently rocking her. It feels good. His hand on her upper body adjusts on her shoulder, and he squeezes her just a little closer and holds her just like that while he walks.

[ifs-pack--empirio]

I only wanted to help. I was ashamed, embarrassed, remorseful; defeated. I let the pack down. I let those around me down. Maybe my/our confidence in the workplace should stay down. Maybe our (my?) tendency to speak out and our (my?) meticulous inquiry and task designation needs to just... really not be the presence that it is. Not once has it paid off in the entire 5 weeks we've been working there now. I've risen numerous comments, concerns; halted numerous processes to make sure they're going okay; but... maybe only once have I felt like it was actually worthwhile, like it actually did pay off. And even that instance I knew I was overstepping. I could feel it so bad and so hard. I should've stayed quiet. I shouldn't have said anything. What I need to do is operate in silence save for what is genuinely necessary. Offer nothing to no one. Carry out what's ordered or asked of me promptly and swiftly. Ask questions only to the extent that it's strictly necessary-- nobody has liked the extent of my questioning. I just wanna make sure I get it right. I just wanna make sure I don't screw everything up. I just wanna be thorough and reduce the possibility for error to its elemental. But I can feel the irritation and agitation of my coworkers and superiors. I don't belong here. Not with the people that are here. The job itself is great, honest. I don't not belong doing the job. But I don't belong here, in this workplace. The extent to which I'm an outlier is painful. I can feel it every day: the chasm between me and the others, whoever it is I'm with. Only with the one person have I really connected with naturally and had an affinity toward... and that person is, the circumstances are... It's a situation. Even with that person do I need to lie low and mellow out. "I know when I'm wanted, I'll leave if you ask me to-- mind my own business and speak when I'm spoken to." Those lyrics are how I need to be. I need to mind my own business and speak when I'm spoken to. I need to keep my ears level and my head angled ever-slightly downward, my tail at rest if not lowered somewhat when spoken to. I can only exude my confidence when I'm alone in the rooms with the dogs. I need to exude my confidence there because the person controls the energy of the room with dogs-- I need to be calm, confident, and chill in order to keep the dogs calm, confident, and chill. But when it comes to the other humans? I am smothering; the devouring mother archetype. I need to simply do as I do without consulting someone else unless it pertains to... I don't know. I can't even think of a solid rule of thumb right now. Clearly "at my discretion" is not fucking working but I can't think of a qualifier that would work. The others merely do as they will, and sometimes it results in an inconvenience but that's the worst outcome I've seen from this strategy. My strategy, on the other hand... perhaps it's worse than an inconvenience-- it's an annoyance. A nuisance. A leech, a codependent leech. I need to not be dependent upon my colleagues. I need to not hinge what I'm doing upon what they're doing. I'll just take the list of tasks that need completing for whatever it is and start doing it. Maybe I shouldn't really even keep track of who's doing how much. ... except to ensure that I'm not consistently freeloading and doing less than my associates. I don't know. This part isn't a good strategy admittedly-- it would be the exact same problem if I just went ahead and did everything without telling them: me overstepping the line.

[TBC-- character limit]

[eucatastrophicblues]

Tips for people converting to Catholicism as an adult?

For reference, I was raised baptist and I have Catholic family. I was always interested in Catholicism but I could never convert because of my family. I realized not long after getting accepted to college that the university im going to has a huge group of Catholics. There’s a Catholic Church on campus and a Catholic student center.

I’m just kind of scared of showing up and knowing nothing?? Idk. Sorry if this was a weird question 😊

tbh I’m kind of the right person to ask? I’m an adult convert, and I was raised Evangelical. I have one Catholic cousin, and she and I both went through RCIA as adults because our families were pretty anti-Catholic and have only really softened as a result of seeing how religious we both are. So I know exactly what you mean when you talk about not being able to convert because of family.

I’d encourage you to start out by going to a few Masses if you can. It’ll let you get a feel for how the service goes, what an ordinary Sunday looks like, all that good stuff. You’ll also be able to find out pretty fast if you like your local parish or if you want to go somewhere else.

You’re not going to get singled out - you’ll be one of many people on a Saturday or Sunday, and while the priest or priests might say hello on your way out you won’t get subjected to a ton of questions about who you are and how you are and if you believe. The Mass will be in English unless it specifically says it’ll be in another language, and if you’re in the US you’ve got better odds of finding a Spanish Mass than a Latin one - don’t worry about getting lost! There will also be either missals or books with the liturgy and the readings. You’ll be able to follow along just fine. When it comes time for the Eucharist near the end of the service you’ll be just fine if you stay in your seat and pray, nobody will think that’s weird, though you might have to get up to let other people around you.

If you like that, go to the student center! RCIA classes start in the fall, and there will probably be information or guidance for signing up while you’re there. If your student center is really giving you bad vibes (racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc) but you like the parish it’s connected to, reach out to the parish office directly and ask about RCIA. If there’s another church in town you like better, ask there. Send an email and they’ll give you all the info. It’s a free program, and it’ll take up a couple hours once a week until Holy Week when it eats your whole life until the Easter vigil.

But my biggest tip is honestly to remember that you don’t come in knowing absolutely nothing. Being raised Baptist means you know the Bible pretty well, you know about why Christ died and what that means, and you know about a lot of the shared core values. You shouldn’t ever feel judged or singled out or pressured for being a Protestant convert, and if you do, then you’re not the one at fault here.

And of course my inbox and DMs are open if you need absolutely anything. I’ll be praying for you.

[many-but-one]

As someone with ASPD/ASPD traits, this is a very accurate description of how we view the world. I want to add a bit more to explain how/why these traits occurred in our circumstance, someone who is an HC-DID system who survived child torture.

Our disorder is a product of what we experienced and who we interacted with. We were taught that violence is the answer to everything, that everyone in the world will manipulate you and hurt you, so you have to do it first. That nobody cares about you and if they say they do, then they are lying and trying to get close to you to hurt you again.

This causes us to be extremely avoidant of relationships of any kind. Sure, we have friendships and romantic relationships, but “true” friends (some ASPDers call them Exceptions) are few and far between. Most friendships are surface level, often times we view these surface level friendships as “we keep them around in case they will someday be useful to us and our survival” because our survival has always been the only thing that matters to us. Close friends and romantic relationships are the only people we can’t think of in this way.

And we hate that this is the way we think. We are cognizant of the thought process behind making friends and we are cognizant of the way we view relationships with humans and the world around us. We hate that we find ourselves thinking in the same ways our abusers did, but when you are subjected to these themes throughout your developmental years, it is a hard habit to break. It has taken years of therapy to be able to even learn how to ask someone for help, because when we asked for help or comfort as a child, we would be punished severely. No love or comfort was safe, it always came with a price, there was always a caveat, and it became ingrained that any love and care is transactional. It has taken years of difficult therapy work to even begin to break this thought process. The first time we asked for comfort and it did not come with a caveat or punishment, we were actually more triggered than if it would have come with punishment. Being cared for without something in return felt unreal, it felt like we needed to hold our breath, to wait for the moment the person who cared for us changed their mind and decided to harm us anyway. It is a difficult way to live, to truly believe that no human being is safe, that they will always hurt you, or they will always abandon you. The few times we’ve let people into our life in adulthood this belief has only been solidified. It causes us to be extremely cautious when exploring friendships and relationships, and to assume that no matter what we do to be a good person and hope someone stays, they leave or they hurt us anyway. We are doing better with this thanks to therapy, but it’s still a difficult thought spiral to break away from.

With therapy we have gotten better at learning how to make connections. We may not have emotional empathy, but we have a lot of cognitive empathy. Some of our parts of self do seem to have the capacity to feel empathy, but that’s not true for all of us. Cognitive empathy helps us relate to others and understand them, but it causes us to come off as cold and analytical, or highly logical in the way we deal with not only our emotions, but other people’s too. We hold emotions at an arm’s length because they can be used to manipulate us, and so unless we really trust someone (a task of legendary difficulty) we rarely ever open up our true thoughts and feelings for fear that we will be harmed with the information shared.

It’s extremely demoralizing to try to look up anything about a disorder you suffer from and only seeing info related to “how to spot a sociopath” or “how to manipulate a sociopath back” or “10 reasons why people with ASPD are dangerous” or “5 reasons to never date someone with ASPD.” Or news articles saying all pwASPD are criminals just like the guy that killed someone last week. Or seeing part of the diagnostic criteria being harming people or animals. (Side note: Every person with ASPD I know loves their animals, usually much more than they like people, if they like people at all)

We aren’t soulless monsters, we were people who were hurt and failed in childhood, just like any other cluster B disorder. Cluster B disorders are personality disorders that are highly based in having a traumatic upbringing, and folks with ASPD often were never allowed to express their emotions without severe consequences, whether that be via emotional neglect, physical abuse, or outright child torture like us. We weren’t allowed to scream or cry or they would hurt us or other children worse, so we learned to dissociate away our emotions to such a degree that feeling them in adulthood causes severe levels of panic and fear. It is only to the closest of people that we truly Trust that we feel like we can express anything other than surface levels of emotional output, and that doesn’t make us evil or conniving or some monster. We were a kid who couldn’t feel, and we took that into our adult life.

Don’t even get me started on how most of our rage and aggression is taken out on ourselves rather than others, and how our chronic levels of boredom and depression can cause us to seek out feelings in other modes, usually via self injurious or reckless behaviors. It was especially bad when we were younger, but we’re coping better with it now.

This disorder sucks. It’s not a fun thing to always keep walls up to avoid being manipulated, it’s not fun to never truly connect with anyone except maybe one or two people, it’s not fun to notice others’ weak points easily and know that if you wanted to, you could exploit them and you wouldn’t even feel that bad about it. We rarely feel remorse for actions, especially if it was actions to keep us or those we care about safe. We CAN care about people (especially fellow traumatized people) but the level of avoidance we have instilled in us prevents us from ever being willing to truly and deeply care about and connect with most people. It fucking sucks.

Welcome to my Ted Talk about AsPD, or Antisocial Personality Disorder, which the internet likes to coin as sociopath 👌🏻 if you don’t like long infodumps about stigmatized mental disorders from someone who is diagnosed, move on.

Quick toxic rundown: People with AsPD are generally characterized as emotionless, violent, manipulative abusers who kill animals and like to make other people their bitches. The biggest pet peeve we have is the emotionless, sadistic and abusive generalization.

Personally, we are highly neurotic, with highs and lows of: depression, frantic drive, self abuse tactics, chronic fear, lapses of rejection, overwhelming over-analyzation, grey area thinking, false goods and false bads, ultimatums, obsessive compulsive behavior, harsh self demands, and irritability.

AsPD is a disorder that is caused primarily (according to current research) by trauma and abuse in childhood; most notably being emotional neglect and absent caregivers that cause a child to have emotional shutdowns and repression episodes in an attempt to self soothe. Primary caregivers who do not bond with their children are also a factor. Children learn how to behave from those around them. If a primary caregiver is emotionally distant and unavailable, children will learn that is normal behavior and that’s how people are. If a primary caregiver does not provide empathy and sympathy during moments of distress and fear, children will learn that aloofness and disregard of others feelings is normal behavior. If a primary caregiver does not keep a child safe, children will learn that they should not prioritize their own safety or the safety of others. You can find my follow up post regarding this here.

Neglected and abused children often act out trying to get attention and help, often acting out in bad ways because they lack the ability to articulate what they’re feeling and what is happening to them. The pipeline for AsPD typically is: Oppositional Defiance Disorder as a child, Conduct Disorder as a teen, AsPD as an adult. There are a lot of warning signs cueing that AsPD is becoming a risk for development, but often kids do not have a support system to help negate it as it’s their support system that is usually a factor in its creation.

Being AsPD is like being an emotional La Croix 70% of the time. If you’re depressed, then it’s like someone in the other room has depression and is telling you about it. The other 30% of the time, if you’re depressed, your brain doesn’t understand how to handle it so it’s an ultimatum between doing something drastic to remove the Trigger or ignoring and dissociating for days on end.

People with AsPD are very good at ignoring things. Honestly it’s problematic as fuck but it’s not hard to ignore major issues when you just, don’t care. It’s not in the terms of being cruel or making ourselves not care, but the fact that finding the emotional willpower is so far out of our feasible reach we don’t do it. This causes us to piss people off because we don’t have the capacity to care as much as they want us to, even if we can and do to an extent.

Think of it this way: empathy/sympathy is a deep tub of water that everyone has. They can easily fill their measuring cup for the needed amount of empathy without any issues and it’s easy for them. People with AsPD don’t have a tub of water. We have shallow skillet. When we try to dip our cup to fill it, we can’t, it always comes up short and it is difficult to get any water in it as there is no room for the cup to dive. Our ability to care is limited because we do not have the same emotional resources everyone else does.

❌ False Positives & False Negatives ❌

I operate on what I’ve learned are called false positives and false negatives. These are things that are trained into the brain from an early age based off of childhood trauma and other factors. False positives are a distorted version of why we do something to help ourself and for our own good, meanwhile a false negative is something we do because it’s a threat, or based out of fear.

❌ Some of my false positives:

- It is good to be afraid of nothing

- It is good to adapt to someone’s personality if they are stronger than you

- It is good to isolate yourself

- It is good to be a silver tongue because you can get into any place you want

- It is good to become a social chameleon and shape yourself to whatever those around you need/want most, because then you have no chance of being abandoned

❌ Some of my false negatives, which can explain the false positives as well as core beliefs:

- it is bad to be afraid, if I am afraid then I am vulnerable and it can be used against me

- It is bad to be emotional or show concern for others emotions because they do not care for mine

- It is bad to be able to be exploited, because I believe it is everywhere

- It is bad to allow myself to be bored, because boredom begets bad thoughts and no one can or wants to help me when I spiral

- It is bad to not shape yourself to the social circle, because people quickly grow tired of those who do not match them perfectly and being discarded means I failed

My core beliefs can be viewed as the root for the false positives and negatives, because they are based on the core of trauma, abuse and neglect. They come from patterns and instances that make someone with AsPD become the opposite of what they experienced:

- eat or be eaten

- If I don’t show that my bite is worse than my bark, I will be taken advantage of and I must remain on top because the ones on top are safe

- I must look out for myself because nobody will do it for me

- It doesn’t matter what happens to me, therefore it doesn’t matter what people think of me

- If I cannot do something well, then I should not do it at all

- If you are dependent on others for emotional and mental well being, you are weak, therefore I must isolate myself to avoid becoming codependent and a burden and useless

- If I can handle the stress of a situation better than everyone else, therefore I will keep the problem (financial, emotional, mental, etc) to myself to reduce chances of being abandoned due to failure of perfection

People with AsPD are hard to get along with. We often:

- are always anticipating a fight

- lack respect for authority

- ignore social structures to an extent

- tendency to lie if it’ll lessen punishment or if we feel the lie is more acceptable than our actions

- limit social support because it’s wrong to be dependent on others

- have an inflated view of our own importance — which turns into a self ridicule for believing someome like me could be found important to others —

- can be rude and inconsiderate of others feelings somewhat unintentionally

- are unable to read the correct social cues in relation to empathy towards people and animals

- am constantly confused by others dependence upon empathy and inability to make desicions from logic based standpoints

We can’t speak for everyone who has AsPD, nor are we saying that no one with AsPD is capable of being a murderer/abuser etc. but we are saying that y’all need to stop automatically classifying someone as a certain “type” as soon as you know about their disorder.

One last thing I do want to point out is that it is not uncommon for people with AsPD to derive some sort of enjoyment in causing harm, doing something illegal, hurting someone or animals, etc. This entirely stems from lack of environmental control as a child. Being able to control what happens to others or being able to control the things you say or do that hurts someone else is a hefty high to get addicted to; it soothes the underlying itch of not being able to control your own trauma and abuse, so in turn you push these behaviors onto others and enjoy it because it gives you a sense of power and control. Some people with AsPD do genuinely love hurting others, and some enjoy hurting others when they believe it’s deserved or their ire has been stoked. Some enjoy causing pain to those they think deserve it, and others don’t care who they hurt as long as they feel like they’re in control of the situation.

Hope this have some insight into AsPD 🤙🏻 if y’all have any questions, shoot.