#not one that consistently goes to shit every few weeks/months

[strangedisciple]

i think my sleep schedule is slowly fixing itself

[fryingpan1234567]

some CHB headcanons

every cabin has LEDs around the inside, but there’s a constant battle over what color they are

Percy has his rippling back and forth from teal to blue and it looks like light dancing through water all over his walls and floor

the Apollo cabin can usually settle for orange and yellow as a common ground

the Aphrodite kids have a different color for each time of day and sleep with pink on the lowest brightness setting

the Hermes cabin has like ten different strips and they’re all constantly shifting

Demeter cabin’s shifts with the seasons

ANYWAYS MOVING AWAY FROM THE LEDS

they have movie nights, which I will talk about in a different post

before everybody goes back to school, the Aphrodite and Hecate cabins have a massive salon at the end of the summer with new haircuts and magic hair dye and outfit recommendations and fake but enchanted sturdy nails and a whole bunch of other stuff and basically it’s a week straight of spilling hot tea between everyone in camp

if someone asks where a camper got their hair done when they get back to school they just go “oh, um… summer camp.” and their friends will snort and be like bro isn’t summer camp the opposite of a makeover?? but they get no argument, just a shrug and a half smile

when I tell you pride month over there is a fucking riot

because Mr. D is in on it, right?? because he’s the god of gender?? and Chiron is aroace and has been raising dumbass gay heroes for literal centuries?? PLUS the sheer fucking amount of queer peeps up in there?? dude yeah

cabins competing for who shows the most pride

Demeter’s roof is covered in rainbow flowers

Hecate’s is enchanted to emit actual light in whatever flag colors of whoever uses the front door, even when they’re straight (it’s just a rainbow)

Percy collects a bunch of shed scales from the hippocampi at the bottom of the lake and then puts them all over his cabin

I could make a whole post about CHB pride but

every single Apollo kid is also a theater kid fight me

Rachel Elizabeth Dare painted a skateboard for Percy’s birthday and he brings it everywhere now, it even sits in his backpack at school

Leo, Annabeth, Percy, and Piper fucking love horror movies. Frank, Hazel, and Jason fucking hate them. They watch through their fingers, if at all

Piper loves the band Surfaces with all her heart, but she also is a die hard Green Day and P!ATD fan

Jake Mason is covered in burn scars up to his neck, just like Deadpool, just not bald lol

Hephaestus and Apollo kids faintly radiate warmth (like more so than a normal person)

the Stolls sometimes stay at camp year-round because their mom is off on international missions that are too high-risk for them to help with

the seven are AVID Smash Bros players

really everyone but

not as many people go to the Athena campers for help with homework as you might think, but whenever anyone does, they’re happy to help

the sun chariot blasts music at a frequency only the Apollo kids can hear, so their life kind of has a shitty soundtrack that consists of a mix of Broadway, Queen, modern stuff, and random bits of Beethoven every now and then

the Romans swear on few occasions

the Greeks know when to swear and when to be polite

the Valhalla peeps swear unbridled and all the time

the Egyptians never swear (in English)

for the longest time, Will Solace thinks the only gift from his dad is his healing prowess— which is obviously great, but he expresses being upset over the fact that he’s not very good at archery

well, considering this is the dumbass who didn’t bring a weapon to actual fucking Tartarus, Nico drags him to the weapon shack thing immediately afterwards and made him pick something out

he's immediately drawn to the Celestial Bronze shotgun.

Nico’s just like “what in the redneck shit did you just pick up” and Will jokingly aims it at his chest and grins and says “you know I’m from Texas, right?”

that’s how they find out Will is one of the damn best marksmen in Greek demigod history

some of the Disney nerds in the Apollo cabin sing What Once Was Mine to the little ones who need bandaids for knee scrapes and give them lollipops afterwards

Percy Jackson absolutely used to make poverty and struggle meal jokes all the time, but he got weird and concerned looks for it at CHB, so he kind of just stopped. But one day, aboard the Argo II, the PERFECT opportunity came up and he just HAD TO and as per usual— everyone else looked at him like he’s crazy— but Leo laughed so hard chocolate milk came out of his nose and that’s the story of how the two of them became Best Friends

[cutielando]

Heyy can you write some headcanons or a oneshot ab charles dantinga an emo girl and she plays bass in a band too?

emo | c.l.

my masterlist

you met in Las Vegas at an after party after the Grand Prix

he didn't typically go for emo girls, but there was just something about you that he couldn't resist

you began talking and he found out that you also played bass in a band

of course, being the gentleman he was, he made sure to attend at least one of your concerts before he left the US and went back to Monaco

true to his word, he was in the first row at your band's concert, the night before he was supposed to catch a plane back home

he took you out after the concert that same night, claiming he couldn't leave without going on a date with you

and everything was history from that point on

it was hard to maintain the relationship at first, the distance taking its toll on you guys for the first few months

but then you made the decision of quitting the band and move with him to Monaco

Charles had been wary at first, thinking that you were only doing it for him, but you reassured him that you had taken the decision because you felt like it was the right thing to do

you would most probably keep the relationship a secret for the first few months, just to see where it goes

after you were both sure you were completely in, you slowly started showing the world little bits of your relationship

his fans absolutely loved your dynamic

you also had such different energies, it was refreshing to see you two completing each other

dates every Friday night

he would encourage you to start playing again

flew out your former band to Monaco so you could play together

attends all of your concerts whenever he can

flies you out with him to his races and makes sure to show you off to everyone

posting sweet stories and pictures of each other

even though your sense of style consisted primarily of very dark colored clothes, you would start wearing bits and pieces of the color red whenever you were in the paddock or seen in public

also influencing Charles who would want to match your style while out and about

would love the shit out of you

his fans would become more obsessed with you than him

his family also loved you and how you brought something fresh into Charles' life

his mother made it her mission to take you out around Monaco every week, except when you were away with Charles

everyone admiring how much you take care of him and keep him grounded

adopting a black cat after getting Leo, because why not

black cat, golden retriever energy (nobody can convince me otherwise)

teaching you what proper love feels like

you took a while to fully open up to him, but you eventually trusted him with your life

you love each other with your entire souls

being one big happy family

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[wimble-warcrime]

been watching wayy too many bushcraft stuff and wilderness survival competition tv shows, so im inspired first COD fic, but i've read too many not to contribute at this point

-bushcrafter!simon riley who is not normal about anything, lets be real here. he spends 6 months deployed in bumfuck-nowhere roughing it with the boys, only to return his own little piece of land in the middle of civilized bumfuck-nowhere. he bought the property after a night of too many drinks and decided in his drunken stupor that he had no need for people or pagentry. and he was right

-he sells most of his earthly possesions, putting whatever he can't (or won't) sell into a storage container he hauls up to the property. at first, with his military training and field experience, he gets by on the bare bones while he figures his shit out. this isn't some survival expedition with a clear goal--he's going full wildman, living in the woods like this. the only address he has is a p.o. box at the closest town's post office. it's a bit of a pain getting down there, so he goes only when he's visiting the local hardware stores--he becomes a familiar (albeit masked) face with the locals

-his set up is pretty swanky after a good few months in the wilds on leave. he may or may not have (but he'll never admit to it) scrolled on pinterest for a wee while looking at what the bushcraft and survivalist lads were building for some inspiration, but at the ends, he's mighty proud of his little cabin in the woods. each time he comes back from deployment, he adds more to it, eventually expanding it to have a sort of functioning toilet and shower, a little woodstove and a relatively comfortable bed.

-one day after a particularly grueling mission, he decides to see just how far he can take it. he's been hunting for his game and gets a box of the community garden vegetables delivered to his driveway every week, but he wants more of a challenge. so he starts gardening. ever one for a flare of drama, simon starts using the bones of his kills to turn into some half-decent knives and other tools. and as much fun as it is, doing his dooms-day prepping shit (as price has lovingly called it) he won't admit he's lonely

-gets a rescue dog called lucky--lucky only has three legs and one working ear, but the mutt is so darn cute he has to bring the poor beastie home.

-the pretty bird who volunteers at the animal shelter is also cute, and lucky has grown on you. you're weary to part ways with the dog, but the masked man and his terrible flirting are endearing enough to smooth over the comfort. after he leaves, you're naturally curious about just who that man was. you hear around the town that he's a recluse who lives in the mountains like a caveman (he for sure could pull off a loin cloth with those hips of his) and that he gets the local garden delivery box every week

-so you do as any rational human would with that information and sign up to volunteer with the garden center. they let you deliver boxes after a few weeks of consistent effort, and when you're manager hands you the list of addresses, she makes it very clear that on box in particular is to be left at the drive way and that's it. he doesn't like people nosing around

-you save his delivery for last, driving up the 'drive way' to the edge of the woods and no further. like the foolish girl you are, you get out of the car and start hiking into the woods to deliver this man his vegetables. halfway, you find lucky running about, the mutt so excited to see his favourite human he almost vibrates right out of his skin he happily leads you to his new home, where the man you hoped to find is chopping wood out front. shirtless.

-you're content to salivate over this mans physique but lucky is determined to share his excitement with his second favourite human and announces your presence by barking.

-simon is silently thrilled you're here. ever since he met you when he adopted lucky all those weeks ago, he's been working up the courage to go back and befriend you. only problem is, simon is not normal about anything, so he instead starts fancying up his house in the hopes that you might see it one day. he told himself it was a delusion to think you'd just appear without any effort on his part. but luckily for him, you're not normal about anything either.

-you get the grand tour of the place, making a few remarks on the garden out front and the adorable little wood stove in his house ("My grandma had one of these in her house, she used to cook with me on it all the time. my apartment isn't exactly equipped for one, but i've always wanted one anyways"). when you see his bed, you can't help but sit down on it, needing to know if it's a comfy and sturdy as it looks (def not imaging why it would need to be sturdy--you're a big girly, furniture needs to handle all that extra fluff if you're using it) it is exactly as comfy as you thought it would be, lying back against the hand-me-down quilt and closing your eyes

-you make a comment about how many animal pelt are in the bed, praising simon's expert preservation of the furs and off-handedly remarking how you always wanted to learn how to hunt. when you look up at him from his bed, raking your eyes over his giant frame standing there with barely contained lust? well, let's just say he's ruminating on how big the newest addition has to be for a nursery

----

this is just a drabble, but my panties get wet at the idea of a wild, forest-dwelling man sweeping me off my feet and away from civilization to go live with him in his little hut in the woods. im the type of delulu that would HAPPILY be a bare foot and pregnant wifey living with my half feral man who worships me daily and lives to please me

did i maybe ready waayyy too man werewolf romance stories as a tween? why yes, yes i did. it altered my brain chemistry in a way you guys just wouldn't understand, but i cannot be normal about relationships anymore and it's a problem

ANYWAYZZZ hope you enjoyed, cause i know i did ;)

[lolokouhm]

Imagine Megumi being a kitsune and he finds love with a shrine maiden! Reader who previously took care of him when he was in fox form? Feel free to make this fluffy or smut, idk.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, whose heart and soul break into a million pieces after the tragic death of his beloved goddess.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who leaves the shrine and wanders for 300 years in his fox form, killing, destroying and toying with human lives, trying to forget about his own, burning pain - without any success. he cannot comprehend it - why would she give her life for these worthless creatures? his rampage goes on, and as his soul gets ripped to shreds with every kill, he's finally left with nothing, but an overwhelming emptiness and complete disregard for every life, including his own.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who gets outsmarted for the first time in his lifetime by no other, than a mere human. it's a stupid trap - a trick he shouldn't have fallen for. maybe he's just tired. maybe he just doesn't care anymore. maybe he wants to die.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who didn't expect that the one who would bring the death to him would have such delicate hands. even though he is barely conscious when your fingers graze over his bristling fur, Megumi is still able to hear your rapid heartbeat and feel your warmth when you scoop his limp body into your arms and press it tightly to your chest - if he had just a little more strength, he'd gladly open his eyes to see what kind of creature is that soft, but his eyelids are simply too heavy.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who is more than surprised when he wakes up in the morning and finds out that, apparently, he's not dead yet. what's even more surprising - he's not alone. and when you open your mouth and say how relieved you are that he woke up, he finally gets it. he almost laughs at how perverse fate can be, looking at your pure smile and traditional outfit. you are a shrine maiden, and, judging by the looks of the room he's in, he's at a shrine. again.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi who is still recovering, but the wounds don't heal well at all, despite your best efforts. you don't give up though - you feed him (even though he doesn't really eat at first), apply the ointment to his wounds and talk to him, even when he pretends he's asleep. at first, he finds it incredibly irritating, but as you babble and ramble about the life in the shrine for days, even weeks, Megumi starts to grow fond of your stories.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who's gone when you enter the room after a few weeks. right before you start to panic, a ridiculously handsome, dark-haired young man enters the room, dressed in neat, traditional robes and just one look into his eyes is enough to know who he is. you stare at Megumi, standing right in front of you, in his human form, arms crossed, as a soft, quiet "thank you" leaves his lips, and your cheeks burn brighter than ever when his cold, immense gaze falls on your face.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who finally talks to you, and even though your conversations still mostly consist of you saying some shit and him listening to it, they feel... good. there's a warmth to you he felt when you held him for the first time and Megumi still feels it - and finds it incredibly captivating.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who finds himself making a contract with the deity of the shrine, just to be able to stay close to you. it seems like the warmth is contagious, because as the time goes, he starts to feel it not only when you're by his side, but also when he simply thinks of you - and that's a very dangerous territory. a territory that comes with overwhelming guilt for his past actions.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who gets more curious about you in the next months, spends more time with you and wants to get closer to you - to the point it physically hurts. he knows your touch - you've touched him countless times, but for some reason, he longs for it in this form, in the human one. he'd sometimes walk past you in the gardens and play with a strand of your hair, just to get this little, cute giggle out of you - a sound so heavenly, it drives him insane. but that's all he can do. he simply cannot let himself stain you - after all, you're pure. so pure, and he's just filthy. the feeling grows and grows - until he cannot stand it anymore.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who just confesses to you. right in the middle of the night, under the moonlight, sitting on a wooden bench. With shaking hands and trembling voice, Megumi tells you all about the past, his past, and he cannot even look at you - he just doesn't want to see the disgust and the hatred in your eyes. no, he cannot see that - that would be too much to bear, a price he's not prepared to pay, at least not now. before he knows it, he cannot see anything at all, as the guilt and the pain he couldn't get rid of crawls out of him - and he cries. the tears fall down his beautiful face, more and more of them, and even though the feeling is weirdly relieving itself, the true purification comes in form of your warm hands on his cheeks.

thinking about Kitsune!Megumi, who spends the night in your arms, confessing not only his crimes, but also his feelings - and just before the exhaustion worth of 300 years of pain gets the best of him, he can feel your lips on his forehead, as light as a feather and hotter than fire. you don't hate him. you couldn't hate him. and by the time he falls asleep, you make sure he knows that.

thinking about the shrine's deity, who's more than content to see the reincarnation of her best friend find her way back to the one she loved. and even though love is the most twisted curse of all, it still is an incredibly beautiful one, isn't it?

[atthebell]

do you have any recommendations/resources to learn spanish?? i've been using busuu for about 104 days now, imo opinion it's actually pretty fun and i like it but i think my main problem with it is that it goes too fast?? it's hard to explain. it's also started to feel kinda repetitive to me. i still love busuu and i'm going to continue with my course, but it'd be nice to also have something else. like, preferably not an app, maybe a textbook or a website or something :D i don't really WHERE to find resources for language learning, despite being bilingual, i never really had to look on the internet to learn the languages i speak now, i picked it up from the people around me you know?

i've also been ''using'' duolingo but tbh, i really hate it. it feels boring to me, everyday it's ''ok what sentence am i going to be forced to write for the 40th time today?'' the single 'square' has 5 lessons and a 'unit' has around 10-8 of those squares and to finish a 'unit' you have to do about 50-45 of those lessons, which is shit because a 'unit' is only going to teach about 3 sentence structures and if you're lucky maybe 5. it's so shit, those greedy fuckers basically made it unusable. i've been using for about 140 days now, every single day i take at least one lesson, and it STILL has not taught me a SINGLE spanish tense. btw, i even had an entire phase where i would finish UNITS in about an hour and a half (1 min or less for every lesson) and still not a single ''pretérito Indefinido'' actual pain 🫠🫠 one day ll delete that app, one day (i guess that's why i like busuu in the first place, it actually teaches you these tenses and even some slang while duolingo makes you write ''papá, quiero visitar a nuestra abuela'' for the 700th time this week)

i want to watch vods and stuff, but tbh, i feel way too embarrassed? like, i don't know enough spanish to really understand them and even when they say basic sentences that i understand, i still have to listen to it multiple times and slow down the clip for me to really get it. the thing with spanish is that i'll understand the meaning of the words being said but i need to take a second or so to really comprehend what they mean together you know? i don't want to have to watch the stream slowed down because that would definitely make me feel stupid 😭 maybe when i have better spanish i'll start watching vods. although i do listen to spanish songs sometimes, it's fun :D

first thing: you don't have to feel embarrassed about needing time to process things/needing to listen to things slowed down. language learning is difficult and there are a lot of obstacles for many people; this is something i do understand and want to stress that i get that it's hard. you are not a bad person or an idiot or whatever for having a hard time understanding things-- you are still learning, and besides that, sometimes hearing things isn't someone's strong suit (it absolutely did not use to be mine, but i've practiced a lot and gotten much better at it. i'm still much much better at reading text in other languages, but it is something you can always improve on). if you need to take extra time to watch things, that is not a personal fault of yours nor does it make you stupid. everyone has different skill sets, and you can always practice to get better.

second thing: my own criticisms of both busuu and duolingo, along with their strengths. duolingo first, because i've used it since like. idk like 2016? not consistently but i've used it far more over the years and i'm very familiar with various changes they've made and the esp, ptbr, and french courses. busuu ive only been using for a few months

to get it out of the way, the recent change to laying off translators and using more AI in lessons. this sucks, obviously, for a myriad of reasons. machine translation cannot match with human translation, and frankly never will be able to. there are vast amounts of nuance and cultural context necessary for translation, along with the fact that an AI led course does not actually hit on all the things someone needs, particularly on a basics/foundational level. and from an ethical standpoint, laying off a ton of human translators because you think you can replace them with inaccurate machine translation sucks and is why so many people have dropped duolingo, myself included.

duolingo also has limitations in terms of format-- it gamifies language learning, which can make it feel more accessible to people and makes people want to open it and practice every day. however, most people use duolingo to do one lesson once a day and that's it. they're not getting in practice from lessons previously completed, they're not drilling vocab or conjugations, they're not actually maintaining or even remembering what they've already learned. obviously there are people (like myself, when i still used the app) who practice far more than that and continue to drill previous lessons, but that's not the majority, and it's not incentivized by the app. the paywalling of completing certain lessons and being able to drill error words also sucks for this reason. basically duolingo is not an ideal setup for actually maintaining knowledge once you go through it the first time and also the way the courses are laid out just. does not, imo, actually make sense. they rarely actually explain what they're trying to teach you and they don't get into enough detail on most concepts. and there is no incentive to review, which is hugely important. not an ideal situation for language learning, especially on its own.

my pros for duolingo: it gets you to practice daily. this is honestly what i use busuu for at this point-- when i get a notif for it, i open it up and flick through a lesson, but i also pull out a textbook or two to look at things there and practice stuff. if whipping out duolingo every day helps you practice a language, that is, at bare minimum, something. preferably you should be studying for at least 15min if not up to an hour or more of a language a day in order to really pick things up and maintain them; you can absolutely use duolingo or busuu for that (busuu i think is far less well formatted and oftentimes the lessons are very specific vocab, at least in the later courses).

for busuu, my issues are like. it's a poorly made imitation of duolingo, aside from a few things. the community aspect is something i REALLY like-- being able to send an exercise to a native speaker and get feedback on what to work on is great, especially with how it's a short answer question that lets you form your own sentences and try out vocab in context. that's a wonderful feature, and i really think it gets at something duolingo is completely missing.

but yeah like i said in terms of the lessons, busuu has very strange ways of teaching things. firstly, it's usually super specific topics and vocab that aren't paired with anything conceptually that helps you progress. usually in a language course, it's best to pair a concept you're working on with either relevant vocab or something that can be used to talk about similar subjects/in similar ways (for instance, subjunctive with food/restaurant vocab, so that you can build sentences both with the new vocab and using the new verbal form in ways that make sense, i.e. "I'll have whatever she's having, If I were to order the pasta, I would get a salad too," "If I were richer, I would always order filet mignon" (side note subjunctive is very difficult for eng speakers so idk if these examples actually make sense 😭))

also busuu will repeatedly teach me something phrased one way or with a certain word and then mark me wrong and insist i use a completely different word/phrase. i cannot figure out why it keeps doing this it's very frustrating. and it has recently been teaching me some european portuguese which is not what the course is supposed to be so i'm just baffled by what's going on there.

another positive for busuu, at least in contrast to duolingo, is it teaches you the vocab and phrases before quizzing you on them, which duolingo does not do. this is like a positive and also an "eh, idk" because i get why duolingo does that-- it's trying to throw you into using surrounding context to figure out what a word means, and that's a very good way to practice, but i think it doesn't necessarily achieve it well and sometimes will just spring random words on you without enough context for you to know what it's referring to without just clicking on the word anyway.

also neither app are good at teaching you verb conjugation or tenses which is really unfortunate for spanish and portuguese in particular, as they're both languages where verbs are really really key AND where understanding tenses and their names are important, particularly for native eng speakers who never got taught tense names or like. any terminology for languages in english 🙃

also here is a thing i wrote up complaining about duolingo & verbs ages ago: Duolingo does not teach you things explicitly. It expects you to pick them up in a semi-immersive style, which works okay most of the time for most people but for many people makes actually learning and understanding parts of a language very difficult. For instance, it won't teach you the exact difference in usage between ser and estar, in Spanish or Portuguese. This difference is something I spent weeks on in Spanish class in high school and continued to review the rest of my time learning Spanish in an academic setting-- it is a key element of two of the most important words in the language. Duolingo also doesn't explain stem changes or irregular verbs and their typical endings-- it simply expects you to pick these up and memorize them through sentence usage. Basically it's very obvious Duolingo was created by english speakers who were never taught key elements of their own language (this is not a dig on their personal fault; i was also never taught any of this shit about english) and don't know how to go about teaching a language, and the limited format doesn't help.

third thing, finally getting to what you actually asked: there are a lot of resources for learning spanish online! i'm not as familiar with them as i'd like, as i learned spanish in an academic setting, but i'll do my best to list some things out and anyone else can feel free to add on. i've been meaning to make a language learning advice post for literally ages and i guess this is going to become it lmao.

here is a video explaining how to make duolingo work for you along with other resources: A Linguist explains how to make duolingo actually work (tl;dr pair duolingo with conversation partners, textbook work, listening to music, watching movies, etc. etc.)

i've tagged this with my language learning tag, which has a bunch of resources including some specifically for learning spanish.

tumblr user salvador bonaparte has a drive of free textbooks you can check out here, including a ton of spanish resources. i also recommend looking around the internet/specifically linguistics tumblr to find more resources as well as looking at used bookstores/amazon/etc. for spanish textbooks to use, as that will provide a more thorough foundation along with other programs/types of learning.

i've never used babbel or any other online program like it, but spanish tends to be one of the more resource-heavy languages because it's so widely spoken, so typically spanish programs on various apps/sites are REALLY thorough (duolingo's spanish program is by far their best course, with a ton more resources than most other programs. you can go up to the equivalent of at least c2 on there i believe, versus many other languages where they don't even list the CEFR levels)

finally, the not-so-online answer: if you're in college/have a nearby community/junior college, consider taking spanish classes there! this option probably costs the most out of any others, but i genuinely think an academic setting is the a great way to learn a language for many people. if you're not one of them, that is totally fine, but an actual spanish course at a college is likely to be the most thorough way to learn the language. also many CCs/JCs offer spanish classes online, so if you can't drive or for whatever reason can't go to in-person courses, you'll likely still have options.

this is everything i can think of right now but i also want to add once again that learning a language is difficult!!! i know that, and i know that i complain a lot about monolinguals, but i am specifically complaining about people who refuse to engage respectfully with languages that are not their own and dismiss anything they don't understand as being stupid/not worth their time/culturally worthless. i am not complaining about people like you, who are trying really hard to engage with non-english content AND are trying really hard to learn another language.

i also think learning languages is one of the most incredible experiences there are and that expanding the kinds of cultural and social boundaries that you engage with is a really important facet of humanity that i wish more people would participate in. i get riled up because this is something i'm really truly passionate about, not because i think anyone is stupid or whatever for not learning. i want people to just try it and give it a chance, even if it's hard for them, and i'm glad that you are trying, anon. <333

[stilessflannel]

hey !!

im not sure if reqs are open or not i just wanted to atleast try..!!

may i req an percy x fem!reader thats similar to ame in NSO

(general headcannons pls!!)

like shes a streamer that also REEKS of bpd/j (i have bpd dw)

but also into the style cutecore instead of jirai-kei..?

but in general she's slightly unstable yet a SUPER popular streamer?

thx thx thxxxxx!!!! >w<

unfortunately i don't know ame-chan at all so i'm so sorry if this req isn't brought to justice 😭 🙏 stay strong with your bpd lovely >w<

⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩 .𖥔˚ PERCY JACKSON X GAMER!READER HCS

𝜗𝜚 ࣪˖ ִ𐙚 HOW IT STARTED

➴ percy had stumbled across your livestreams while he was in manhattan, camp half-blood being a few months away from starting for the summer

➴ he recognised your face from around camp - he was about to click off your stream as you normally kept to yourself at camp and he thought you were another struggling streamer

➴ but seeing your view count rise up by the thousands every minute intrigued him. your stream consisted of you lounging in your gaming chair, quickly switching between chatting about whatever was on your mind or picking fights with trolls in your comments that you destroyed with quick, witty remarks.

➴ if there was one word to describe percy jackson, it would be: sassy

➴ so seeing that you also didn't give a shit

➴ nice

➴ naturally he gave you a follow and continued watching all your streams

➴ so when he saw you at camp the next summer he immediately came up to you and started chatting about your livestreams and the topics you seemed to love discussing with your vast audience

➴ seeing your face light up when he mentioned he was a big fan of yours made his cheeks burn red (whos wouldn't if someone like you smiled at them, bffr)

➴ and the rest, as they say, is history

𝜗𝜚 ࣪˖ ִ𐙚 HOW IT"S GOING

➴ beach picnic dates >> percy loves being in the presence of the two things he loves the most in this world - the ocean and you.

➴ you stream some of the dates he takes you on around manhattan and all of your followers love you two so much!! whenever a troll comes in the chat you and percy ridicule them so much they leave

➴ at camp pulling off intricate pranks on Mr. D to the delight of your fellow campers (and chiron)

➴ you sitting at the poseidon table during meals to keep percy company because who wants their boyfriend to sit alone :(

➴ you sat with your siblings once after he threw your favourite meal across the dining pavilion at the ares table and he was depressed for a whole week

➴ sneaking off into the forest and making out behind trees while the campers are at the campfire >>>>>>

➴ lots of training together one on one, the challenge he's set you is every time you beat him in a sword fight he'll give you a kiss (he goes easy on you just to have an excuse to make out)

➴ through your highs and lows of raging emotions, percy's always there for you - always there to make you laugh, always ready with a comeback to your quips, always ready to wrap you in a big bear hug and never let you go. he loves every part of you because you're perfect the way you are <3

taglist: @izzieluvsdelusion @azure-drag0ness @vivi-anasan @percyssunlithope @amandareids @raysmayhem-72 // join the taglist here

[bookwyrminspiration]

quil is everything alright with that book

I'm kind of worried??

Tiernan de Haas's famous producer/movie star parents committed double suicide a few weeks before her 18th birthday (her dad was dying of cancer, but they didn't tell her, because they ignored her her whole life--this lack of attention/love is key to her later actions). Her guardianship was, for some reason, left to his estranged step brother he hasn't spoken to in decades, who lives in a mountain cabin with his two sons

Tiernan, for some reason (reckless anger?), is like yeah I'll move in with you guys, who I've never met before (he offered for her to emancipate herself but she said no...?). These guys consist of her step uncle Jake, and her step cousins Noah and Kaleb, who are both a few years older than her. Jake is an alpha ass, Noah hates his life and dad but can't leave (unclear why), and Kaleb hasn't spoken a word since he was four and is implied to like hurting women in bed.

Despite this, Tiernan decides to stick around, and by day two her Uncle is saying shit like "You're ours" and "this is your home", and Noah is like "let me perfectly explain your childhood trauma to you in the middle of this cvs." We don't see Kaleb until night 2 or 3, since he's been off in the woods, but the moment he walks in the door at like 1 am (covered in blood holding a dead deer) (Tiernan was getting some laundry) he immediately is like oh. A Woman To Have Sex With. and nearly rapes her until Noah pulls him off and goes hey...that's our step cousin.

The reason he was so immediately on top of her is because apparently??? there's just a constant stream of women in the house?? like Noah legit just wakes up with women in his bed waking him up to have sex. and so any woman in the house must be there for sexual purposes and is fair game

Anyway. Tiernan doesn't mention this, but gets into some spats with her relatives. Consisting of them making very deep, personal claims about her despite it having been, once again, like 3 days. Her Uncle is like "You never smile! you only speak in one word sentences! you never ask us questions!" As if she isn't among strangers and her parents died mere DAYS ago. yet, for some reason, she's like, damn...he's right. her uncle is also constantly like do NOT date the boys in town, do NOT go down to the pond alone, etc. etc.

Step Uncle Jake then starts unloading trauma while fishing about how he hasn't been near a woman in decades, since Tiernan's parents drove his first love to suicide (that why they haven't spoken in forever) and the mother of his sons is in jail. This turns Tiernan on. Later when Tiernan can't sleep, they nearly fuck in the kitchen, but stop and Tiernan finally cries over her parents death and how they didn't even leave her a note. Uncle Jake is like we're your family now and this is your home (it hasn't even been a week).

There's a time skip of a few weeks, where they're preparing for winter--because, I forgot to mention, they live alone at the top of a mountain and are snowed in for six months every year. Tiernan turns 18 (kaleb gifts her a hand carved belt that noah says is for bondage purposes), her cousins get into a fight in a bar over her, and they run away from the police to the house. The cousins stay up in case any of the people they fought try and get to the house through the snow, but they end up putting porn on the TV and having a communal masturbation session, nearly ending in Noah and Kaleb fucking Tiernan. Instead, Uncle Jake interrupts, and he spanks her.

And that's as far as I've gotten so far. So I'm reading a slow-burn (ish) romance of Tiernan falling for her step uncles and cousins. And they've just gotten snowed in for the next 6 months. So they're alone. and tiernan's now legally an adult. and no one here is well adjusted

send me your strength soldiers I think it's about to get even rougher

(I went into this book knowing exactly what it would be)

[golden-wire-caress]

(ok so to my knowledge this hyperspecific scenario hasn't been done before?? but if it turns out me from two years ago had an accidental subconscious theft moment, please let me know!! But here goes:)

So we all know the trope/idea of multiple whumpees captive under one whumper? Well here's an extension of that: two whumpees with at least some level of acquaintance with each other, both taken into long-term captivity around the same time, in the same cell. Maybe they have a limited range of movement from chains, or maybe they have free roam of the cell, but every 2-3 days the same outcome proceeds regardless: whumper hauls one of them out, tortures them for variable amounts of time, then returns them to the same cell.

Here's how it gets juicier: the whumper only ever picks one of them. Through the weeks (maybe even a month or two) that they've endured thus far, the whumper is consistent in only this regard and the ever-worsening intensity of these torture sessions. I love thinking about how this would affect the emotional dynamic between these two characters, there's so much shit there that can happen depending on their personalities!!! Perhaps the one being picked (A) grows to resent the other (B) while the other feels a burning guilt every time their fellow captive is tossed back into the cell. Maybe they grow to care for each other!! I'm very partial to that last point, but getting back on track:

This all horrifically culminates in a final session where whumpee A is brutally, permanently mutilated in some much larger/worse way. I'm thinking dismemberment of some kind, but feel free to take your pick otherwise!! After whumper patches them up, because of course they can't have their captive actually dying on them, they're thrown back into the cell. Whumpee B, who knows nothing of this other than 'this session is taking a disturbingly long time, what do you mean they'll be just a bit longer what did you do' is fucking terrified with whumper's work, and serves as whumpee A's caretaker over the next few days.

Then, four days after whumpee A is returned to their cell, whumper asks for whumpee B. With this cycle established, everything gets so. Much. Worse.

So yeah! Those are the thoughts for tonight. Or like, thoughts from several years ago that I still enjoy today, but regardless thank you for reading!!

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

Part Four [Progess & Foundation Laying] - 16/12/23

Hello! I actually have a non-depressing update to write today, what a time to be alive. Discussions of 2024 goals, and changes to my writing schedule ahead.

I’ve spent the last week or so basically already making a start on my goals for 2024, so that once January hits, all I need to actually do is maintain the momentum instead of spending the first few weeks undoing whatever bad habits I could let myself slip into just because it’s the holiday season.

My big goals for 2024 are nothing new. I go into every year wanting to read more, write more, and exercise more. The thing is, there was a time when I’d have these goals and each one truly would be starting from scratch. Before I started writing daily as a rule, weeks would go by where I didn’t write a single word, then I’d feel bad about not writing, which would make me want to write even less, and create that great little feedback loop from hell. I also went through a ridiculous reading dry spell during/following my uni years, because nothing makes you want to read less than doing an English Lit degree, and honestly I’d never been big into fitness beyond a few weeks-long health kicks up until I hit my 20s, either.

So when I’d first have these goals, none of the foundation would be there, and I was basically expecting my habits to go from 0 to 100 the second the clock struck midnight for the New Year. Recently, I’ve been doing things smarter.

Starting my daily writing streak on 1st January 2020 was a great starting point, because I haven’t missed a day since, and I’ll be hitting my 1500th consecutive day of writing sometime in the first quarter of next year. The year that followed that, 2021, I started to take my fitness way more seriously. I worked out on and off before that, but 2021 was the year where I did my first ever 75Hard challenge – successfully – in the summer, then another the following autumn, and I’ve done several since.

2022, as I’ve said, was a bit of a write-off because of everything I went through, but 2023 has been the year of upping the reading habit. Last year I read 14 books, this year I read 41 – with ~5 more being in progress, but I probably won’t finish those til New Year. My goal for next year is 50.

The thing is though, juggling these habits means that it’s been pretty common so far for one thing to fall by the wayside while I focus on the other two. When I did flufftober this year, I didn’t have the time to do a single workout the whole month. Or when I do a workout challenge, my writing output halves because it gets to the evening time and it’s just a struggle to stay conscious during the evening hours where I’d ordinarily get my best words in.

So my overarching goal for 2024 is to have a year where I just absolutely ace all three of those habits. I want to read lots, write lots, and get a great level of consistency with my workouts. I do have more minor goals that fall within all of that too, like finding a way of using social media that isn’t all or nothing. This year, my screen time has either been insanely high, or I’ve been on Instagram breaks for months at a time. Then I hang around until I can see it’s wearing on my mentally, and disappear again for a long stretch. I really want to find a middle ground with that – one that doesn’t have me being so terminally online that I feel like shit, but also one that doesn’t have me constantly missing out on cheering on overseas friends, with whom IG is my only source of real communication.

And, as I said on my main blog, another big thing I’m changing is really controlling where my energy goes with my writing, and when. Because I do have a bad habit of focusing on fanfic more than I focus on the novel. There are a few reasons for that, and honestly I don’t even regret it – yet. But if I don’t make any changes, there will be a day on the horizon where I do.

Fanfic has been, and still is, great for me. It gave me a community of amazing, kind, supportive, and generous people when I was in the lowest point of my life (and I cannot overstate how much that made that time bearable for me), and it has improved my writing by miles. I’ve had people in my life who do openly view it as me wasting my time because it hasn’t gotten me further in my writing career when you only look at the basic facts, and there have even been times when I’ve been tempted to give into their way of thinking. However, earlier this year I read some very early drafts of the novel – from way back before I even started Little By Little – and they were just not good at all. Then, I look at the chapters I’m producing now, and seeing how much better they are, and that change is thanks to the sheer amount of fic I’ve produced in the last few years.

In part it’s because of the fact that writing so often is bound to improve said writing, but it’s also because of the feedback I’ve gotten on those fics. Feedback doesn’t always only limit itself to reflecting on the specific story that feedback pertains to. Sure, sometimes it’s a case of “I wasn’t a fan of this plot point” or “I don’t like this character”, but other times it’s “I feel like there has been too much introspection in these last few chapters” (which was a big problem with my writing at the start of this decade, and really showed in early novel drafts), or “I really enjoy the humour you put in your stories” – because allowing myself to have fun and be silly with the narration in Catch the Wind, and seeing not only how much fun I had with that, but how much people liked that, really freed me up to add the same thing into the novel itself.

It all contributes, and while I do have a tendency to get upset at myself for reaching the ripe old age of 27 without having yet even queried a single novel, I look back on the stuff I was writing at the ages when I really wanted it to happen that specific year, and I can see that my writing just wasn’t ready for it. Now, thanks to fic, it is.

But that still leaves me with the fact that I now really do need to start prioritising my time. The discrepancy with fic and original work comes in the form of instant validation. With fic, I can finish a chapter, and if it’s a popular story I might have a comment on it within an hour. And it’s not that I feel like I can’t write without that, but because it’s such a help with my own anxiety when it comes to writing. I have a tendency to finish every chapter thinking it’s shit, and I don’t believe otherwise until I have that first comment telling me someone enjoyed it. With novel work, it doesn’t work that way. And because the novel means so much to me, that adds to the anxiety, until there are times when I’m so anxious about working on it that I can’t even enjoy working on it, because I’m just telling myself “what if this is shit? What if you’ve wasted ten years of your life building this world and creating this thing, and it ends up being for nothing?”

And I mean, it won’t be for nothing. If no agent wants to take it on, I’m not averse to the idea of doing a patreon type thing with it once I’ve exhausted every other avenue, but it is just that initial anxiety. I know it’s irrational, and my beta readers are really enjoying it, but the fact remains that I am a Frightened Bitch. It’s genetic.

But I need to overcome that, and I won’t overcome that if I’m running to the safety blanket and instant validation of fanfic whenever my anxiety spikes.

This is something I’d resolved to fix for quite a few years now, but I’ve never gone in with a specific game-plan, which means I then fall back into usual habits very quickly, because “idk I’ll figure it out” isn’t cutting it here.

So, I’m imposing a rule where I can only post one fic chapter, total, a week. Not one chapter of each fic, just one chapter of one fic. Fridays will be fanfic days, and I’ll post my chapter, and then I’ll go back to novel work. If a few months go by and I’m especially happy with novel progress, I might up that. I still want to take part in flufftober, but I’m really hoping that by then novel work will be so far along that doing so won’t be a problem, because it’ll be a nice break from edits rather than all-out rewrites. The plan is to also decide at the start of each week what will be updated next, let you guys know what it will be so you’re not waiting only to find out it’s a fic you don’t even read, and then rotate between that and the novel during that week. My current way of doing things is to have like 12 word docs open at any given time and just add to each one here and there until something is finished, but that isn’t the most efficient way to go about this.

I do have other set outlines as to how I’m going to achieve my other goals, rather than just “read more” and “exercise more”, because breaking them down into concise weekly targets to hit makes so much more sense. As for the screen time/social media dilemma, I’m going to be taking every Monday off of social media – with the exception of answering IG messages, because I use that in place of texting and I don’t want to completely self-isolate, just lessen the scrolling and the posting. I’ll also be limiting how often I can post, because the folk who follow me over there will know that my IG stories get a bit unhinged re: length at times. If I need more than that, which I think I will, I’ll extend the break to Tuesdays, too.

And the 50 book goal is pretty neat, because I can then just set myself with the goal of one book per week, or aim for 100 pages a day, which is fairly doable most days.

It’s going well, so far! I worked out five times this week, I’ve done quite a bit of reading, and I’m currently in the progress of updating every fic that I want to update before this once a week rule comes in (HTWA, Free, and Fallen Through Time are the top priorities – then, I think HWFG should roll around to be the first thing I update come New Year).

And to finish things off, I mentioned in my last post that I’m forcing myself to go out and do fun things for the sake of doing fun things at least once per month, beyond just errands and stuff that needs to be done, even if it just means a solo cinema trip or whatever. I did that this month, so have my proof of that in parting. Went to the city centre for lunch with a friend, and to take in the Christmas lights and snoop at the pretty clothbound classics.

So happy to be able to post something actually positive on here for once! I intend to keep that up, and I’m very grateful to the people who are following along on here!

[prynnehesters]

i genuinely need to pump this out bcuz i saw a reddit thread abt which bg3 character would be the best college roommate and im like, thinking about the types of roommates they'd be lmaoo

gale

has tara as an esa. sometimes she goes to class w him, other times she's free to wander in the woods or whatever. a lot of neighbors know her

math major

probably works as a tutor/librarian/does some research

goes to bed early

constantly at school

goes out to pub trivia once a month

can cook/hosts dinner parties sometimes, but has some snacks he is weirdly anal about you not touching

if he were to experience being broken up with, it's a week of crying, eating ice cream, and listening to pop divas

snores

wyll

education major

involved w the student council, does a lot of volunteering, coaches kids soccer

goes out to parties every weekend, occasionally gets into trouble

brings back weird people sometimes

wakes up early to go work out (has a consistent schedule)

astarion

prelaw (either polysci, compsci, or theatre major who hates theatre kids)

basically never in the room (comes back after you're asleep/leaves before you wake up)

has a wacky schedule

your stuff disappears (can be money, food, etc)

gets into some shady shit

not fully aware of how loud he is sometimes

will throw a weird party once in a while

halsin

geology major

probably works at a climbing gym

chill af

really good at communication (texts you if he needs something or if you need to expect something from him)

gone most weekends (either home, camping, hiking, or uh, something else)

brings back a lot of people (but always warns you beforehand)

karlach

communications major

probably a student athlete

smokes cigarettes

goes out and parties often

will be your wingman

sometimes sends cryptic texts with lots of emojis

probably a metalhead

shadowheart

very religious (probably changes from Christianity to paganism in university)

has a little shrine in her area that she's protective over

probably brought a lot of stuffed animals

listens to scary music, goes to a lot of underground shows

has a lot of suitors she has to turn down cuz she's waiting till marriage lmao (until she meets the one)

probably has periods where she won't leave the room, but otherwise eh

english major

lae'zel

kinesiology major

strict routine

will criticize you if something's not to her liking or if you don't do something well enough/clean something enough

international student

probably has someone over several times a week

also goes out on weekends (but you never know what she does)

minthara

business major

knows where all the shady shit is

gets involved in shady shit

probably had to bail her out a few times, but she never learns lol

she's probably gonna take over her parents company, nothing really matters to her lol (in college just to party)

talks in her sleep

you basically have to do all chores around the apartment cuz she always claims to be busy

jaheira

biology major

straight forward about expectations, nothing too crazy tbh

probably has a safe that's highly guarded

idk she seems alright. i feel like she has a pretty lenient schedule ngl

minsc

dropped out of uni/in local community college

boo is a service animal

you have to bail him out every weekend cuz he never learns and gets involved in weird shit

[ergativeabsolutive]

no wait spill the calendar nerd discourse, I want to know how we know that it's really tuesday

Well, what is Tuesday? The easy answer is that Tuesday is kind of a social construct and it's only "Tuesday" relative to our specific calendar system, which is 100% a human invention, but that goes without saying. I don't even need to say that weekdays as a concept are far from unique to the now-dominant western calendar, but I don't think it's useful to equate different calendars with each other (and more importantly i'm way more knowledgeable about the system I actually use and the history surrounding it), so I'm going to limit this to the system where today is actually called tuesday.

The real answer is that our calendar isn't just some arbitrary thing that we're just "keeping track of", but a complicated mathematical system that has been kept under extreme scrutiny for generations by nerds and religious officials all over the world to ensure that it remains in sync with various astronomical features, the seasons, holidays, etc. In fact, it was designed that way intentionally, so that we wouldn't have to "keep track", as that post says.

The Roman calendar was originally a 355-day lunar calendar, and like other lunar calendars, it was supposed to have an additional intercalary month every few years, which in the case of the Roman calendar was traditionally between February and March. Unlike modern lunar calendars though, the way this was supposed to work wasn't really codified, and instead it was placed in the hands of the priests to "keep track of", which as you can imagine usually meant "manipulate for political purposes". For example, if someone you don't like is in elected office, maybe the year should be shorter so they have a shorter term... 😏

That also meant that if Rome's religious officials were ever, say, busy doing other shit, sometimes the calendar would just get neglected and be allowed to get out of sync. So when Julius Caesar was elected pontifex maximus, and then proceeded to spend over a decade at war, the calendar basically got an entire season out of sync, because he was too busy fighting to actually do his job effectively. That's why, after the civil war ended and his power was secure, one of the first things he did was solicit the help of Egyptian astronomers to invent the Julian calendar. It was intentionally designed to keep track of the seasons etc. without human intervention, because clearly "human intervention" wasn't working. And for what it's worth, the Gregorian calendar is basically only a relatively minor adjustment to that same system, which otherwise has worked pretty consistently ever since. In other words, that post is kind of talking about a problem that really did exist at one time, but was already identified and solved over 2000 years ago.

Of course, at the time, the Roman calendar didn't have a 7-day week at all, they used an 8 day week, which operated according to its own rules and I don't really know much about it tbh. But I go into all this because, as far as the Romans and the people who use their calendar are concerned, the transition to the 7 day week happened after the Julian reform, which means that this transition happened relatively recently, well within recorded history, grounded in a system we know was already internally consistent. And in fact the 7 day cycle that the Romans gradually began to adopt around this time came to them via Greek astrologers, who based their system on the traditions that had already existed in West Asia. When the Romans adopted the 7 day week, they named the days of the week after the classical planets, and by extension, the gods associated with them. So, Tuesday is called "Tuesday" (tīwesdæġ/Tīwas dag) because for astrological reasons they associated this particular day in the 7-day cycle with Mars, and the Romans equated their god of war Mars with the Germanic war god Tyr/Tiwaz, so it ended up getting called that in English/other Germanic languages. It's important to mention that early on, this astrology-based naming system could be interpreted differently depending on when one considered the day to begin in the first place. It's possible to imagine a timeline where today was actually named "Saturday" in our system instead, without actually being a different day. Regardless though, there is, at least, archaeological evidence of dates as we would expect them to be, knowing this, being recorded just under 2000 years ago. So yeah, today really is Tuesday (or Saturday ig). It's definitely not Wednesday or Sunday, at least.

Despite the pagan roots of the weekday names though, the actual transition to the 7 day week as the default, as you might expect, is associated with the rise of Christianity, and the system as we know it was eventually codified by Constantine. And of course, once you have a consistent pattern codified into both religious and secular law, it's kind of hard to screw up. And again, we haven't.

tldr "tuesday" as such is kind of an arbitrary concept, but we know that the underlying calendar system is consistent, and Tuesday itself came about through, to put things extremely simply, the interaction between astrology and something like at least half a dozen different cultural-religious traditions, such that it doesn't really make sense to think today is anything else while you're still adhering the Gregorian calendar at all. As far as I'm concerned, "is today really tuesday" is two separate questions: "Is our calendar system internally consistent or has there been a mistake in its reckoning of days since it was codified" (which this answer was about, and the answer is yes) and "has the 7 day week in general stayed consistent and been accurately reckoned for its entire history and was that accurately integrated into our system in the first place", but that's more of a historical and religious question, and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't really have to have anything to do with with "Tuesday" or secular dating.

[qnewsau]

Soapbox. Prejudice: things are getting better

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/soapbox-prejudice-things-are-getting-better/

Soapbox. Prejudice: things are getting better

Prejudice impacts terribly on people’s lives even when it falls short of violence. Destiny Rogers reflects on experiencing a lifetime of anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudice and the recent realisation that things can be so much better.

When you shit yourself…

As a cancer patient, when you cough and shit yourself and — unable to clean up — must rely on a stranger to do it, then you know what it’s like to have not a scrap of human dignity.

But when that stranger treats you with kindness, respect and compassion, it makes all the difference in the world.

I speak from experience.

For most of my 64 years on this planet, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I have been accustomed to being treated as a lesser being. I’m far from alone. It is the common plight of minority groups. And generally no big deal to me. It’s wrong and it’s irrational but I know the people who treat me and others as subhuman are f*cking morons. That consoles me somewhat.

Of course, it’s not everyone. I grew up with a mob of kids in a small country town who never excluded me or treated me as any lesser because I was different. They have remained consistently decent human beings all their lives. However, an unpleasant note intruded in Grade 11.

Strange logic

The school in my hometown only went to Junior so I did Grades 11 and 12 in a neighbouring town. On a school trip, two Grade 12 boys who considered themselves lords of our little universe, stripped me naked in a shower and held a razor to my dick. I was terrified. They abused me for being a girl while threatening to turn me into one. Strange logic.

A few months later, on the last school day of the year, we could wear what we liked. I wore a skirt and blouse. The same pair of thugs rounded up a gang to do something I’d heard of but regarded as urban myth. Shove my head in a toilet and ‘show me the goldfish’. After they left and I stopped vomiting, I washed my hair in a handbasin, dried my tears and went back to class apparently without a care in the world.

What was the f*cking point? A lesson many of us learned in those days. Ignore it. It won’t go away. But no one is coming to your rescue.

Both those boys are dead now. Occasionally I see their names mentioned with condolences and think ‘What a pair of c*nts’.

I’m not big on forgiveness.

A lifetime of undeserved good health

At 64, I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of undeserved good health, avoiding hospital stays other than for nose and breast jobs (and possibly a facelift.🤐)

I enjoyed such good health I often told myself that one day karma would kick my arse in retribution.

And it did. This year I’ve spent weeks, nay months, in Queensland hospitals – both regional and metro.

The care I’ve been given is extraordinary. Queensland Health, in my experience, is far from the basketcase that sensationalist media platforms carry on about in search of clicks.

Illness is unpleasant. That goes without saying. But during my unfamiliar journey into the health system, I have felt safe because I have been treated with respect and decency.

My difference has made no f*cking difference.

I have experienced unbelievable kindness.

The strength of our health system is the people who work in it and, in my experience, they are magnificent. The health workers do a good job. That’s to be expected. It’s what they’re paid for. But it’s the extra human dimension that makes the real difference – the kindness, the respect, the decency… the lack of prejudice.

You cocksucking f*ggot… you ugly d*ke… you stupid g**k… you black c*nt…

Queensland Health employs people from virtually every demographic: race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, weight, age…

And that seems to be a key factor in the lack of prejudice I experienced during my hospital stays. Health workers are accustomed to working with and depending on all different sorts of people.

But they are not unfamiliar with prejudice. It is ever-present in their working life.

I have never before witnessed the level of abuse common in hospital emergency departments.

I’ve listened as nurses seamlessly transitioned from cleaning up blood and shit and piss and vomit to providing sometimes lifesaving care to patients bombarding them with relentless abuse.

“I’ll f*cking kill you f*ggot… ugly d*ke, stupid g**k, black c*nt…”

Oh yes!

Everyone is a f*ggot, d*ke, g**k or c*nt to an angry bigot determined to cast blame for their pain.

But not once have I seen a health worker refuse help to these horrendous people.

So this holiday season, be grateful for the amazing health care we enjoy in Australia and our incredible health workers. Whatever the outcome of my health battle, I know the difference it has made to experience such unprejudiced and non-discriminatory care just when I needed it most.

More Soapbox:

Was I the first Trans Santa? …and the grumpiest?

Sex Worker Health and Safety.

Image: Destiny Rogers

For the latest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) news in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[survivor76612651041]

Super Faded: black places

It's 2:30 in the afternoon all.the squares are at work luck I live on the rough side of town and lots active as usual at this time. The 24 hour stret crew is active. Pull up on em

Me What up ?

Street Cst:What up Dez

Me: You know me nothing but the mean green

Street cat: 4 sho what you need

Me: let me get 20 real quick

Boom it goes down the notorious drug exchange the Police have been villianizimg daily for years. Looks like buisness as usual

I go in to the Bodega buy some old English 800 and swisher sweet wraps. A 40 and a blunt man.

I pull up on my front lawn and do my normal ritual to escape the horrible world. Like the tobaccos you waste on the streets curb, then put that real shit in Instead and get super faded.

Super faded

Growing up my mom was so thrifty she never let me get the cool stuff she only bought me whst we needed Instead. They was Nike but they was sears roebuck joints ya know . I had to get my own street gear myself by mowing Lawns , doing odd jobs and shit like that. So I git my first consistent summer Jon getting g a real life check like 600 every two weeks at13 you feel like a millionaire from the hood with that much money young. Mom's as usual thinking conventional used to cut my hair fir free , I hated those cuts. Unk used to do a nice fade but it was hard to get to him. So I took my first check and went to the fir real barber shop , Mr wfros was my real shop but my first official hair cut was at this location

Me; let me get a (Nas) fade withthe waves on top.

Super dope hood barber: no problem

I had been brushing my hair alll month grease soft brush a d even stocking cap on the whole kit. The barber knew the style didn't have to explain

And got super faded

The barber shop the black man country club of sorts . We don't got marlsgo we got the barber shop.

I find so few places where I live to be black dominant these two places are some if the times I feel so truly authentic lying black with no shame. Kinda sad our black experiences are limited to so few places still.

Just some thoughts while smoking one

[souljournaler]

some journaling

my brain said "you better give me stimulation 24/7 or else im gonna start thinkin" and i looked at my brain in all its "electric meat reacting to a Full Moon conjunct retrograde Mars in Gemini" and i decided it's time to sit down and do some free-form journaling

oh my gods i just switched over to the legacy editor to write this and it’s night-and-day for how much better this works, lmao. anyway

yeah so this full moon was so aggressive that i started my period the second she hit 100% visibility.

PMS lasted what feels like a lot longer than usual, and i had cramps for days before i saw blood. the yoozh: sense of doom, squidward-style anxiety about the future, compelling sense of impatience, self-loathing for needing to rest, a little bit of task overwhelm, general tiredness

it doesn’t help that it’s been super overcast these past few days. ive literally gone from taking my observations every day to completely forgetting for days in a row. there is a HUGE weather system coming thru these next few days and so i imagine the air pressure is gonna be fluctuating wildly, so it’s no wonder i feel like shit

maybe it’s just because i feel like shit already but it feels like a bunch of important breaking points are being reached at once. labor strikes in nursing, academia, and coal, and hopefully the rail and air workers will join them soon. it seems like my prediction that “we’ll get a general strike whether we plan one or not” is coming true, just simply because working conditions are getting so much worse for so many industries that theyre all deciding they wont tolerate it anymore. though also, im sure a general strike is being planned, it just wont be called that, it won’t have spokespeople, and it won’t be under the name of any one organization

sometimes i get frustrated that i need to take time to rest when i feel crappy. i know that if i work through the crappy feeling, it just pushes the crappy feeling to Later and compounds with however crappy i was already gonna feel Later. so i have to deal with my crappy feelings in the present, when they come up, as they come up, or i eventually hit a breaking point and put myself out for weeks or months. it’s just frustrating because i procrastinated to do some things i needed to do with a consistent pace, but now i feel crappy enough to not be able to do much of anything, especially not the things i needed to do earlier

blegh. i guess i’m still practicing at pacing things well for myself. it doesnt help that the whole outside world goes at its own pace that is MUCH faster and more demanding than my internal pace

ive been talking to my peers about how ive been feeling frustrated that i amn’t who or how i want to be yet-- i still have to go thru that process of learning the new and cool shiny life lessons that i will pick up like a funky little crow and stick onto my sense of self, but right now i have that feeling like i just got a very cool new one of them bags that has the pin display on the front, but i only have like two pins and one of them is rusty from how long ive had it and i do not often have money to buy new pins for the display

the new shower feels really nice, at least. i didnt realize how much of a mood improvement it would be to simply have a nicer-looking shower, but there ya have it. also i definitely think that once i’m able to build my own bath/shower room, it will have a lot more color. and some plants. maybe even a lot of plants

i had a bunch of dreams last night about needing to get ready for something suddenly, like having to pack up after an event, or pack up to leave for traveling, or clean up a room with a lot of trash, and it was so stressful each time that dream me was like “fuck this, i am literally dreaming, cya” and woke up. i made sure to tidy up my space a little once i woke up lmao, especially after seeing a post from Unfuck Your Habitat like “are YOU living in a depression den?” and i was like “ugh fine, ok, fuck, you got me, yes im living in a depression den”

also, my partner is leaving for a trip in just a couple of days, and will be gone for a week. im already pre-grieving how much i’m gonna miss him. he always brightens any space he’s in. i wish i had a community that made it so i dont have to rely on him for so much of my in-person social interaction.

ive noticed that ive been staying up later so i can sleep through the time when he’s not here and maximize conscious cuddle time while he’s asleep

damn, that’s kinda sad now that i type it out like that. i wonder if that’s how kaede feels being the only cat here.

damn... sometimes i just need to cry when i feel lonely. it doesnt help solve anything, but it can be soothing to just let those sad chemicals go and take the time to breathe and remember that it’s okay to feel lonely. i miss my sisters. i miss my sibling. i miss parents i didnt get to have. i miss friends. im so tired of deciding not to be friends. im grateful for the people who stick around, but i feel sad that theyre so few and far-between

i guess the loneliness has a lot to do with the impatience for the future. i dont want to feel lonely anymore. i dont want the people i miss to feel lonely. i want my community to be closer together. having the server has been life-saving for some of us (it’s really lived up to its name) but tbh i would really like for all of us to be able to get together in the same place

anyway i’m starting to get distracted so i’m gonna go ahead and wrap this up. might write more later as i feel like it

cya l8r,

Sol

[f4irycafe]

𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 - 𝒂𝒐𝒕 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒔

⤷ summary: aot boys wth high maintenance girlfriends.

⤷ characters: jean, armin, connie, eren,

⤷ content warnings: suggestive themes, fluff, black!coded reader, college!au.

⤷ notes: my MEN.

PLEASE REBLOG

𝐣𝐞𝐚𝐧

baby boy is obsessed with you. like the biggest simp outta all of them fs.

jean isn't rich, but he's worked hard for all the $$ he has.

and he def doesn't mine spending all that shit on you okayyyyyyyyy.

he knew you liked to keep up w yourself, new nails and lashes every few weeks, new wig/braids/locs every few months.

he was just soo in awe of your presence for a while he didn't even consider how much that stuff costs.

"baby how much does your hair cost?" he asks you one day as ur just chilling on the couch in your dorm.

"couple hundred, why?" atp he knows all abt your hair care n stuff so this isn't no invasive ass question.

eyes = dropped out of his head.

he tries to play it cool like, "oh alright," but inside he's like, i've been letting her pay hundreds for her hair ALONE this entire time.

now whenever you mention you wanna go get ur lashes refilled, or ask him to pick a color, his first question is,

"how much is it?"

i feel like there is one or two services he chooses to pay for consistently, like braids and nails. he got money, but not that much so he can't be wildin out for you.

you get the biggest heart eyes when he does tho. sometimes you don't even have to ask and you get a veno notif on your phone.

"$250 from jean" - get the white tips i like.

cause yuk know, he likes to watch em when you ... yeh yeh u get it.

supportive, love to spoil you, but will act so nonchalant abt it.

𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧

rich boy armin? rich boy armin.

he lives a high maintnence lifestyle as it is, tailed clothes, designer book bags, shoes, glasses, family homes in europe. your typical trust fund baby.

honestly, that was the first thing he noticed about you. the nice but still lowkey car, the sleek bags, the perfect professional looking wigs and braids, even the smells you wore just exuded an air of confidence.

he loved it.

being a boy tho, he didn't realize just how much money went into upkeep with your look per week.

he was shocked, sure, but your finances barely made a dent in his pockets.

the type boyfriend to just hand you an asswad of cash at the beginning of the week and say "go crazy,"

at first you wanted to test just how much you could get out of him. a new white tie dress for some elite school event, the new apple watch that just dropped, wigs that cost upwards of $500 for you to only wear them for a week.

when you finally realized that this boy would do any and everything for you, you toned it down a bit.

but now, he pays for all your shit. eyelashes, hair, nails, perfume.

you still be paying for your phone, car, rent etc, but all that personal shit, yeah its his.

𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

hehehe. y'all know this is my husband quit playingggggg

while armin goes after the pretty rich girls, eren goes after the ones that do this shit just cause they can.

you be working for every inch of hair on your head trust and BELEIVEEEEEEE.

thats one of the things he admires about you, how hard you work for the stuff you want. even if that shit seems superficial to others, you can fr do anything you put your mind to.

another trust fund baby. (i hc grisha as a world class surgeon and carla as a lowkey fashion designer)

he just thinks ur so pretty. like jean, worships the ground you work on.

one night you're trying to set up an appointment for these fancy ass locs that almost touch the floor but you're stressin tryna figure out when you can fit another shift in at work between studying, classes and your extracurriculars while on ft w him.

he's quiet and contemplative on the phone, not really giving answers outside of "i'm sorry bae :("

in the morning you wake up to a venmo notif.

"stink-a-link paud you $600 - hair app. get those nails you've been wanting too."

at first you kinda freak out cause 600??? aint no one treated you like this before.

he just smiles when you try to call him, asking him to take it back.

"i got money to spend, and ik how much this style means to you. if you're happy i'm happy pretty girl."

the sweetest.

plus he gets bragging rights. cause who tf elses girl is looking this damn fine? right , no ones.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞

CONSTANCE

if you've been here for a while you know its rich drug dealer connie or nothin.

yall probably got together cause he was ur plug and gave u a lil too much free weed lmaooooo.

but he been payin for your shit from the start.

the only catch - u gotta get what he wants.

its never wack or emberassing, our boy got taste and an eye for fashion, trust he does u right.

he be putting the description in the venmo tag LMAO

"buss down 30in. honey brown beach wave ..."

LIKE BOY HOW U KNOW WHAT THAT ISSSSSSSSS? U THE OPPS OR SOMETHIN

sometimes he'll just give you like a color for the nails and hair. he don't be knowin much about lashes tho, but he likes the cat eye ones the most.

everyone is always thirsting after you fr.

makes him so proud. maybe a lil too proud HAHA

but he'll drive u to all ur appointments. he doesn't care how long they are he'll wait. or go home and bring u food if its a long hair day.

hypes u up so much when u get in the car talkin bout "you so pretty babe".

can't stop looking at you.

elles rambles: i - love them so much. biased w eren as always. but i want these boys to spoil me. specially connie :))))))0